Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

  Juliet starts to creep toward us. Kiwi holds her hand out in her direction.

  No, don’t, she mouths.

  Juliet stops in her tracks. The steel of my trident grows hot in my hand. That’s how hard my grip is. To my left, Kiwi slowly lowers her goggles over her eyes. She fixes me with a stare, then clears her throat.

  “You and Juliet,” she says barely above a whisper. “Get out of here.”

  When what she’s saying registers, I narrow my eyes. Like that shit is going to happen.

  I say in a whisper, “If you think we’re leaving you alone with these things, you’re crazier than I thought.”

  She waves me off. “Just go.”

  Before I can reply, she turns and races toward the first red-headed wee ling. As soon as she moves, the things start screeching. It’s a loud, high sound. The kind of sound that makes you cringe.

  Without knowing what I’m doing, I take off after Kiwi. As I reach out to grab her, something sharp and scalding hot bites into my ankle.

  I grit my teeth and face plant it into the ground. Another sharp pain just above my ankle. It makes the sound of a Band-Aid being ripped off a moist wound. I barely keep myself from crying out. Before the little shit can take another slice out of me, I force myself onto my back.

  A blur rushes past my vision. I reach for the most ready tool in my arsenal without thought to who else it might hurt; I open my mouth and let a wail rip from my lungs. The wee ling freezes over me, then splatters. Nasty black shit rains down toward me. I squeeze my eyes shut just before it washes all over my face.

  “Ugh.” I grit my teeth and turn back around. Then, I push myself up onto my knees. I’ll look at the damage later. I force myself onto my feet and limp in the direction I was going before I was attacked.

  Nothing that meets my eyes makes any damn sense. Bright sparks of red light up in varying intervals. Gun fire fills the air. Wee lings dart this way and that. A red beam rips into one, cutting it in half. Its body explodes to the ground. I glance down. I don’t know why. Some instinct.

  It’s the baby.

  No, not the baby.

  The wee ling.

  It’s crawling toward me. I shake my head and back away. Through the noise and the fog of gun smoke, I think I hear someone call my name.

  “Damnit, just stop!” I’m yelling at the thing. Backing away, I keep yelling. “Just fucking stop!” The thing looks up at me with big, bright eyes.

  Brown eyes. I’ve never seen Sadie as a baby, but in pictures her eyes were still this same warm brown.

  My favorite color.

  It half smiles.

  I sink to my knees and grip my trident.

  “Just stop! Stop it! I can’t!” My voice comes out a broken wail. The trident in my hands hits the ground with a clang. I feel the thing’s soft, chubby hands on my arm. I close my eyes and start to shake.

  “I can’t.” My voice is a whisper now. “I fucking can’t.”

  “Pike!” Kiwi’s voice comes at me from far away.

  The wee ling baby crawls into my lap. I open my eyes and peer down.

  I know what it is, but all I can see is a baby. Small. Innocent. Everything the world has lost. That everything freezes me. Even when the thing opens its mouth and reveals sharp, triangular shaped teeth. Even when its eyes glow red.

  I’m still frozen.

  It’s just a fucking baby.

  “Pike!” Kiwi’s voice is closer now. Too close.

  I glance up and see her darting toward me.

  “No!” I shout at her, and clutch the babe protectively in my arms.

  “Pike! You have to move! Now.” She comes to a halt in front of me, then reaches toward me and tries to force my arms open.

  “No.” I shove her away. “Get the hell away from me.”

  She lifts the goggles off her eyes and stares at me. Then, she shakes her head. “Fuck. We don’t have time for this.”

  A red beam darts from her eyes. It hits my arms.

  “Ah! What the fuck?” I drop the baby and grab the small burn on my arm with my left hand. As I look up, another set of beams spill from Kiwi’s eyes. I follow their target.

  There is no more baby.

  Just scorch marks where it used to be.

  Where innocence used to be.

  I start to scream. I don’t stop until something hard bashes me in the back of the head. Light explodes across my vision. Then, I don’t do shit.

  I wake in flashes of heat and pain. Sweat clings to me like a blood sucking tick. It seals me to something almost soft. I’m guessing a mattress.

  There are buzzing voices. Only Juliet’s is familiar. My eyes fly open. Ice blue orbs stare down at me. All of the events come streaming back to me.

  Then, I’m back in that tiny cell. An animal caught by the Enforcers. Juliet, my main tormentor, stands over me.

  I jerk to sitting and latch my hands around her throat. Her eyes bulge, but her expression doesn’t change.

  I hate that. I hate that her face never tells me shit.

  “Where is she?” I say in a warped version of my voice. “Where is Sadie?”

  “He’s delusional,” a voice I don’t recognize says. “I hope she gets back soon.”

  Ignoring the voice, I tighten my grip on the bitch’s neck. “You come for more teeth?” I hiss the words. “What have you done with Sadie?”

  A touch on the shoulder steals my focus from Juliet. I let go Juliet slipping away, and turn toward it. I stare up into a stranger’s face. She looks loving, face framed by unruly brown hair.

  “You’ve…bitten. … Times. You… lay down.”

  I narrow my eyes, trying to understand what she’s saying, but her voice sounds like it’s coming at me through white noise. Nothing she says makes sense. I turn back to Juliet. My mind seems to notice her for the first time.

  She looks like bitten shit. Hair matted to her forehead with sweat. A vacant look in the eyes. A slight shiver keeps coursing through her. Looking at her brings me back to reality. Back to more recent events.

  I suck in a pained breath. “Were you… were you bitten?”

  Juliet shakes her head.

  I can’t think of anything to do but nod. She’s suffering with me. Because of the curse I used to bond her to me. I think about feeling bad about that, but only manage to collapse back onto the semi-soft mattress.

  Someone above me says, “He’s burning up.”

  I wonder if it’s the kind-faced lady. Seconds later, a cold towel is pressed onto my forehead. It helps.

  Barely.

  I have another question for Juliet. About Kiwi. I can’t manage to open my mouth to ask. I let my eyes close and fall into more nightmares.

  About the Compound Six pit. About Sadie’s life being in my hands. About the discomfort Kiwi is starting to make me feel.

  I swim through all those terrors, until I find a safe and still darkness.

  I stay there a while.

  The darkness doesn’t last. It never does. Not for people—creatures—like me. Soon, the darkness ripples and light punches through.

  Then, I’m back in that hole. Back in that pit.

  Only, it isn’t Juliet who comes for me. Not even Boomer and his whip.

  It’s Sadie.

  I try to move toward her but I meet resistance. Glancing down, I realize I’m in chains. When I look back up, Sadie is creeping toward me. As she moves, a high screech fills the room. It comes from the axe she drags on the ground behind her.

  I blink, trying to un-see the image. This isn’t my Sadie. My Sadie uses ice skates, not axes. My Sadie doesn’t have that look on her face. That blank calm.

  The look I want to rip so often from Juliet’s face.

  “Sadie?” My voice comes out like a wad of sandpaper. I try clearing it. “What are you doing, Shorty?”

  Half her mouth turns up into a sneer. “Why did you do it?”

  I shake my head. “What?”

  Without warning, she raises the axe and slashes
it down into the metal of the chair between my legs. My heart shoots off, and I look at her, blinking and panicked.

  I open my mouth but no words come out. Only hard breath. Only terror.

  “Why did you do it?” she asks again. Only she doesn’t sound like herself. She never did.

  From far away, I smell sage and rosemary.

  I swallow and blink harder, as if the action will make this go away. Somewhere down deep, I know it isn’t real. But it is real.

  She rests the rusty blade against my thigh.

  “Why did you do it?”

  Sucking in air, I glance back up at her and try to be cool. “Do what?”

  She leans forward her greenish eyes stabbing me through the heart. I know what she’s asking. Of course I know what she’s asking.

  I can’t bring myself to admit that to her. The chair I sit in vibrates. That’s when I notice I’m trembling. And I’m cold. I hope she doesn’t ask me outright.

  The scent of sage grows stronger.

  “I think he’s coming out of it,” a voice that doesn’t come from Sadie says. I dart my gaze around, searching for its owner.

  No one else is there.

  My shivering grows violent. More sage.

  Gods, I hope she doesn’t ask me outright.

  Sadie leans in so close to me that our noses almost touch. She wears a full sneer now.

  “Why did you kill my mother?”

  I swallow a ball of dread, open my mouth to reply, but can’t. The violence shaking my body chatters my teeth. My only options are to be cold as shit and shiver my nuts off.

  “Why did you do it?” Her voice rises.

  I shake my head. Find something that resembles my voice. “I d-d-didn’t… She w-w-w-would have…”

  “Why did you kill my mother, Pike? Why did you take her away from me?” She’s yelling outright now. It’s a crazed yelling. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard come out of her mouth.

  “N-no. S-s…” I lower my head until my chin touches my chest. I can’t look at her. I can’t see that wild hate in her eyes.

  She keeps screaming, the noise growing more desperate. It turns me into a big ball of nothing. I’m useless. I sit there and start to sob. I start to tell her she would have taken her own life, anyway. That it was my twisted way of helping…

  Something hard strikes me across the face.

  I jerk my head up to find Sadie, unmoved. I shake my head in confusion. Before I can question how she hit me without moving, another hand slaps me across the other cheek.

  I jolt awake.

  The pit fades away, Sadie fades away, and I’m in the unfamiliar room I first found the darkness in.

  “What the… fuck.” I dart my eyes around wildly.

  I find Juliet, looking much better. Beside her is Kiwi, peering down at me with what looks like concern, and seated beside me on the mattress is a figure in a worn, dirty gray cloak.

  He or she is smearing green shit all over me. I jerk away. Then, I notice my leg is on fire. I glance down to find white gauze wrapped around my lower leg. Right where that wee ling took a bite out of me. It smells like sage and rosemary.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I say in a scratchy voice.

  He or she ignores me, opting instead to keep spackling me in green stuff. Has to be some kind of healing balm. It’s my best guess because I feel a little better.

  Still weak as hell, though.

  Still picturing Sadie lobbing my head off with an axe.

  “This is XJ,” Kiwi says. “I found her at a small settlement a few miles from here. It was lucky as shit.”

  I stare at this XJ as she works me over. I can’t tell what she is: Human, or something the gods made.

  I’m weak as hell. That wee ling must have zapped whatever juice I had left.

  “Yes, you’ll have to feed.” The voice comes from XJ. It is a thick, older-sounding voice. Husky. She finally looks at me with one gray eye and one white eye.

  I raise an eyebrow at her, wondering if she somehow heard my thoughts. Not many things in nature can do that. I’ve never met one. She pulls down the hood of her cloak to reveal a shock of purple hair. It’s a mass of curls. Piercings fill her face. Nose. Eyebrow. Lower lip.

  She’s younger than her voice lets on. No more than a few years older than me.

  Without saying another word to me, she stands and turns toward Kiwi. “I’ve done what I can. We’ll have to make use of that volunteer.”

  I try to sit up, but pain presses me down to the mattress.

  “What the hell is going on?” I manage to ask. “What volunteer?”

  Juliet eyes me. “Your song saved this town. We have a volunteer for you to make use of. To get your strength back. So you can heal yourself.”

  I want to roll my eyes, but can’t. “No, no way.”

  “Pike, you don’t really have a choice,” Kiwi says. “There’s still wee ling poison in your system. If you can’t get it out…”

  “You’re dead,” Juliet finishes, brushing her hands together like there’s dirt on them. “And if you’re dead, our mission dies with you. And that can’t happen.”

  I squint up at her. “Maybe I’ll just use you.”

  As usual, her expression doesn’t change. She just stares down at me with Juliet poker face. One day, I will turn that expression into something new. Something that pleases me.

  “You know we can’t do that, Pike,” Kiwi says.

  Before I can reply, a throat clears from the corner of the room. I crane my neck around XJ and spot a middle aged woman, face framed with brown hair. The kind face from before I blacked out. She stands up off a rickety stool and paces toward the group.

  “Um, if it helps the woman volunteer, she has no family.” The kind faced woman wears a weak smile. “No one to miss her. And she was most eager. And as these ladies have told me, you’ll die without… well, whatever it is you do. I really must insist.”

  I almost laugh at her use of the word ladies. And on her insisting that I kill one of her friends. I open my mouth and find nothing to say.

  My throat starts to burn.

  They’re right. I need to sing.

  I need to kill the burning in my veins.

  I don’t even know why I bother with the mental back and forth. I picture Sadie. The real one, not the thing of nightmares, and know I’m going to do it.

  They all know I’m going to do it.

  Again.

  “After he feeds, he should rest here a few days. Just to be safe,” XJ says to Juliet.

  Juliet shakes her head. “That isn’t plausible. We barely have a few hours, let alone a few days.”

  XJ shrugs her broad shoulders. As she does, I notice her height. She’s at least as tall as me. “Do whatever you wish. My recommendation is still a few day’s rest. Even after he heals himself, there is risk of delusions. Hot flashes. Things that may risk… what did you call it, your mission?”

  The two women stare at each other for several seconds.

  Finally, Juliet switches her gaze from XJ to me. “Pike, I need you good to go in a few hours. Are you going to be able to do that?”

  My eyes narrow. Sadie floats in front of them.

  I shrug. “Not like I have a choice.”

  Juliet nods, then flips her hair. I still hate it every time she does it.

  She waves everyone toward the door. “Let’s clear the room.”

  I struggle to sit up as the group staggers out of the door. Kiwi brings up the rear. She turns and gives me a look. I can’t read it. What she’s thinking. What she wants to tell me. I can only tell that she looks pained. Her expression makes me feel that discomfort I’m not a huge fan of.

  Before I can say anything, she ducks out the door.

  As soon as I’m alone, I reach down and gingerly touch my leg. I wince in pain and whip my fingers away like my leg is a hot stove and shake my hand in the air.

  “Gods, that stings,” I mutter to myself.

  My throat starts to burn hotte
r. I look around the room, hoping to find some source of water. A light knock rings in my ears.

  I glance at the door, my stomach twisting into knots. After a few moments hesitation, I say, “Yeah, come in.”

  As the door creaks open, I manage to swing my legs around the side of the bed and plant my feet on the floor. The door clicks shut, and I glance up. Almost as soon as I do, I burst into bitter laughter.

  “You have got to be shitting me.”

  The volunteer twists one leg around the other and stands with her head slightly down. The shy type. I glance her up and down and shake my head.

  “Get out,” I say, averting my eyes from her face.

  There is no movement. We sit in the room in an awkward silence I want to be rid of as soon as possible. With a sigh, I stare back up at her.

  The look on her face stops the words on my tongue. Her face is flushed, making the freckles stand out even more. She opens her mouth, then shuts it.

  The child still has braces on her teeth for fucks sake.

  I sigh. “You okay?”

  She nods her head too quickly.

  I bite down the pain. Apparently, next to dying, I have to help this girl with her feelings.

  “You got a name?” I say between clenched teeth.

  She nods again. Too quickly. A nervous little thing.

  I stare at her for several seconds, then stop myself from rolling my eyes. “You want to tell me what it is?”

  She shrugs and twirls a finger through her greasy, auburn hair.

  “Well, I’m Pike. Richards.”

  She sniffles, making her seem younger than she is. Then, she opens her mouth and says, “I’m Ana.”

  The muscles in my face feel tight, but I try a smile anyway. “Nice to meet you, Ana.” I fold my hands in my lap and peer up at her. “Now, you wanna tell me what’s wrong?”

  She looks at the floor and shifts her weight. “It’s just… It’s just you… You don’t approve of me?”

  I have to stop the urge to laugh. And it’s a very strong urge. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep it in. I gesture toward her with one hand.

  “Ana, how old are you?”

  She peers up at me through long eyelashes. “Twenty.”

  I cringe. She looks younger than she is. I lean away from her almost involuntarily.