Last Ditch Effort

by Isobella Crowley

  But, he wondered, how the hell had he lost his memory like this?

  Mindwipe, Taylor had said. “The second M.” He wondered if she had slipped out while he approached the door, moving at the speed of darkness to render Stan oblivious to anything a normal human being should not know.

  “Well,” Stanislaw began, “we have a fair drive ahead of us, so let me tell you a little about myself. It makes the trip less awkward, you know? See, I was originally born in Poland….”

  He ignored the man’s ramblings. Instead, he reflected on something else.

  The cold, bright, weirdly pleasant sensation when Taylor had touched him on the forehead hadn’t gone away yet.

  Fort Washington Park, New York City

  Stan brought the car to a stop. “Fort Washington Park, as requested. How far do you want me to—”

  “Try to get close to the bridge,” David interrupted and craned his neck to look around the area.

  “Okay.”

  Whistling and muttering inane commentary to himself, Stanislaw wheeled the car around and sought a place to pull over that would put the George Washington Bridge within reasonable walking distance.

  His passenger slowly registered the unexpectedly beautiful morning, all rose-pink and gold. The park wasn’t exactly deserted—it was rare for anything in NYC to be free from people—but it was far from bustling. A couple of joggers and one person nearby walking their dog were the only signs of life.

  The whole scene was too banally every-day to seriously accommodate the possibility of actual, honest-to-fuck supernatural beings floating around.

  David shook his head. In the light of day and far from Taylor’s spooky mansion, the rational and conscious part of his brain tried to tell him this was all a shitload of nonsense. Vampires? Lycanthropes? Fairies?

  But something within him felt different. It had ever since that icy tap on the head.

  He saw things he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before. Colors in the sky seemed brighter and more vivid. Shapes that scurried along the ground or flitted through the air, furtive and sinister. Things that appeared to glow in ways not intended by either nature’s original dictum nor the technology of mankind.

  It was as if a bright, cold light had begun to shine out of his head to add a hazy extra dimension to things that, in the past, had looked like they were all that was there. Now, he could see there was so much more.

  “Okay,” Stan announced and intruded on his brief reverie. “I think this is as close as we’ll be able to get to the bridge. Is it acceptable?”

  “Yeah,” David said, “here is fine.” He still had only the vaguest idea of what he was supposed to do there once he located this lair of the supposed Fae.

  The driver put the car in park and shut the engine off. He twisted to look back and draped an arm over the seat. “Do you want me to wait for you, Mr Remington? If it’ll only be an hour or two, that won’t be a problem. But if it’ll be all day…well, it’s in my best interest to—”

  “Yes.” He cut him off again. “Wait. It will probably only be an hour, I think. If it’s longer, you can leave.”

  Stan faced forward again and settled himself comfortably. “That sounds good. Enjoy your walk in the park. See you later, sir.”

  David unbuckled himself. “Thanks, Stan. Yeah, a walk in the park.” He opened the door, stepped out far more confidently than he felt, and took a deep breath as he scouted for the path of least resistance.

  The grass seemed fairly well-maintained, so he decided to simply walk over it and directly toward the bridge. “Hopefully, the fairies aren’t accompanied by junkies or gang members,” he grumbled under his breath. “I always wondered how they got some of the graffiti so high up. They must have the little flying bastards carrying the spray cans while the taggers direct from the ground.”

  An athletic middle-aged woman in skimpy jogging gear, sunglasses, and a white baseball cap ran past and gave him an odd glance. She must have overheard part of his conversation with himself.

  He waved a hand sharply in front of his face to clear his mind to focus it on the business he had to attend to. It wouldn’t help to be distracted by people who wondered why a well-dressed upper-class gentleman strolled through a park and mumbled to himself.

  The bridge’s huge posts were made of industrial pale-gray metal resembling construction scaffolding that had never been finished. They clashed with the nature elements—trees and grass and flowers and all that—of the rest of the park. The whole scene did not look supernatural in the slightest, even with his seemingly altered perception.

  David scowled and tried to focus.

  What, he wondered, did a fairy’s nest even look like? He glanced all around him as he walked and paused here and there to examine anything that looked out of place in more detail.

  His exploration found an old, dead beehive and a rather boring hole in the ground, but no fairies.

  “The bridge,” he told himself. “Keep heading under the bridge— Wait, what about trolls? I know trolls live under bridges but I’m not so sure about fae.”

  He passed into the shade of the great structure, which spanned the Hudson river and allowed easy access to New Jersey for anyone who actually wanted to go there for some strange reason. A few cars cruised above in both directions.

  “This is bullshit,” he murmured. “They’re setting me up to get robbed or something, aren’t they? Some thugs will pounce and take my wallet and say they know where I live, and Taylor will materialize and offer to ‘protect’ me from them in exchange for a small ongoing donation to her ultra-legitimate Italian restaurant. I should have known. They’re all in it together, trying to—”

  He stopped abruptly when both his brain and mouth ceased to function.

  Two small bi-pedal forms with wings floated—definitely airborne—about twelve feet in front of his face. Both had hands with thumbs—that somehow seemed important—and hair on their tiny heads.

  “Uhhhh…” he said as the breath leaked out of his lungs.

  “It’s not a lie!” the fairy on the left shrieked, although given its size, the shriek was not particularly loud. “You merely have a narrow and uptight definition of truth. You’ve spent too much time around humans.”

  For a moment, David was afraid the creature had spoken to him. It pointed at the other one on the right, however. Neither of them seemed to have even noticed his presence.

  “How dare you,” the other retorted waspishly. “Your nest is the one that keeps getting fat on deep-dish. You would rescind any word you’d said simply for human table scraps!”

  He stared and could almost hear the gears of his brain clanking as it tried to process this information.

  Both creatures looked similar—roughly humanoid but definitely alien, with flapping translucent wings like those of a dragonfly and delicate antennae protruding from beneath their moss-like hair. Their skin was a bizarre color that he could only describe as greenish-pink. However, the left one’s extremities were tinged with pale blue, whereas the right one tended toward peach or amber. Both were about the size of a grapefruit.

  “Now you’re the one who’s lying. Oh, the stench of hypocrisy.”

  David adjusted his tie. The argument seemed on the verge of violence, which meant it was no doubt time to do some of that mitigation.

  “Um…excuse me,” he said, in a clear voice but well below shouting volume. “It…uh, seems you two are having some…problems.” He wondered what they were fighting over and recalled Taylor’s advice that it was unlikely to matter much.

  Both fairies turned in midair to look at him. Their eyes were almost human but with an iridescent sheen like a fly’s.

  “What the shit?” the orange-tinged one burst out. “You can see us?” The other one looked equally as shocked.

  He smiled at them. “I certainly can,” he confirmed. “I’m from Moonlight Detective Agency, actually. I’ve been sent to help…uh, mediate this discussion. What seems to be the nature of the disagreement here
?”

  The two fae fluttered to face toward him and drew a little closer together, and he had the odd sense that a kind of silent communication had passed between them.

  “What is your name, mortal?” the bluish one asked.

  David, to his own surprise, blushed. Two emotions struck him at once. The first was a vague sense of caution—something he recalled from old legends about a person’s “true name” having power or some crap like that.

  The second was shame. He thought back to the news report on his now-infamous bacchanal and decided that he simply didn’t want to be known as David Remington.

  “My name,” he began, “is Remington Davis. What about yours? If they’re unpronounceable, round them off to the nearest syllable, I guess.”

  “What?” a thin voice screamed off to the right somewhere. “What? Who dares?”

  He glanced toward the new sound. From an ordinary-looking mound of dirt near one of the bridge-posts, three other small, winged forms had emerged. They now glided directly toward him.

  The orangish fairy looked at them. “This human can see us,” it squeaked, “and he said our names were unpronounceable.”

  Blinking in confusion, David glanced to the other side when another cluster of fairies—more blue-tinged ones this time—wafted up from another nest.

  Seeing its brethren approaching, the first of the blue ones turned toward its amber-hued rivals. “You probably were the ones who hired him,” it accused. “Sure, that was a clever plan. You hired the mitigation agency to send this idiot to insult us so we lose control and you win the argument. Well, it absolutely won’t work.”

  “Horseshit!” two of the orange fairies shouted in unison.

  The two tribes immediately returned to their heated argument.

  “Hey,” David interjected. “Hey! Shut the hell up, you little—fairies! For fuck’s sake. Neither of you hired me. I came here to knock some sense into you tiny-ass pricks.”

  All the fae turned to look at him.

  “You shut up,” they howled, almost perfectly unanimous.

  One of them then added, “Yeah, Remy. What a stupid name. It probably isn’t even your real one.”

  Now, he was pissed. He opened his mouth to let them know exactly how much.

  Chapter Six

  Harrison, Westchester County, New York

  In a dark, cavernous space, stone ground against stone. A slim white hand pushed away the heavy lid of the enclosing sarcophagus to reveal the more conventional but beautifully carved wooden casket within.

  Taylor drifted upward through the cold, stale air and her eyes opened slowly as the last of the sunlight died away. The night was newborn, and she was awake.

  Once she’d cleared the edge of her coffin, she allowed her feet to fall gently to the earth and stood in the natural fashion. Behind her, the stone lid scraped into place of its own accord.

  She listened intently but the house was silent. That disappointed her, but she’d had many, many years in which to learn to cope with disappointment.

  Only a moment later, her sharp ears discerned a slight commotion aboveground. Presley sauntered over the floor above her head, opened the front entrance, and admitted someone, who entered with heavy, shuffling steps and grumbled his way into the foyer.

  “So,” she whispered to herself, “he’s not dead.”

  “Taylor?” David’s voice called. “Where the hell is she? It’s, like, two minutes past sunset already. Taylor?”

  She wondered with amused curiosity how her inept human problem-child had managed to resolve the task she’d set him. Without thought, she floated to the door and took a moment to remember to put her feet on the ground before she opened it. She stood in silence and studied the mess of a human in front of her.

  “What,” she asked coolly, “happened to you? Did you complete the assignment?”

  He was covered in bruises and cheap, pharmacy-bought bandages and walked with a slight limp. His hair was untidy and tousled, and one of his eyes had swollen half-shut. In keeping with that, his clothing was ripped in various places, his jacket was gone, and his tie was askew.

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” he replied with bitter sarcasm. “Your goddamn fairies are now all one big happy family of murderous, height-challenged pricks with purty wings.”

  The vampire smiled inwardly but kept her face impassive. “Come with me into the kitchen,” she instructed and waved for him to follow her.

  He did, and she stood in the corner while he shuffled into the center of the room. She pointed toward the sink.

  “There’s running water and some paper towels. Wipe your face. It looks like it’s been oozing on your trip over here.”

  “Thanks.” He grunted with moody resignation.

  While he washed his face and hands, she inquired, “What did you get them to agree upon, David?”

  The flow of the faucet stopped. “They all agreed that they needed to kick my ass.” He sniffed. “Ow.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed and explained.

  “It seems my attempt at ‘straight talk’ with them wasn’t appreciated. They were arguing over…I don’t know, who is more of a slut for human pizza or some crap, and I tried to get them to all shut up and listen to me. Each nest also thought the other had hired me to cause problems. Which I did, obviously. They didn’t like my tone and thought I was being condescending. They went from yelling at each other to yelling at me.

  “So,” he went on, “they all started buzzing around, all pissed-off, and I got angry as well and accidentally swatted one of them out of the sky because I had flashbacks to stepping on a fucking hornet’s nest when I was a kid. I hit one of the blue ones, and one of the orange ones caught it before it crashed, which I guess was enough to unite all of them against the invading human. So they all ganged up on me and I ended up like”—he swept a hand down the length of his body—“this.”

  Taylor nodded. “You should have simply caught one of them and eaten it.”

  His eyes fluttered and normal functionality returned. “First of all, eww. Come on, eat a fairy? That’s messed up. Is that some kind of vampire thing?”

  She laughed softly. “You are already making my nights more amusing. Don’t believe everything you hear about vampires, David. Most tales are false. You’ll learn what’s true soon enough.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait.” He groaned “By the way, they asked me my name and I told them to call me Remington Davis. We might as well run with that. On, the job, I don’t think I want to be David Remington.”

  “Very well, Remington Davis. You found a novel solution to resolving that issue. Let’s find you a more challenging assignment, shall we?”

  David slumped against the door of the car. They were almost home. That was good, but he simply wanted to collapse into bed right now.

  “Damn,” Stanislaw remarked as the condo came into clear sight, “you live here?”

  The man’s memory had mysteriously vanished again after he had left Taylor’s mansion for the second time. This failed to surprise David anymore.

  “Yeppers,” he said wearily.

  “Isn’t this the place where that party happened a couple of weeks ago and there were all those lawsuits? I heard about that on the news.” Stan shook his head and uttered a low whistle.

  “I heard about that, too.” He sighed.

  Earlier, the bleeding and battered man had told the driver that, while searching the park, he’d been jumped by a pair of homeless individuals suffering from an excessive dependency on controlled substances. He didn’t want to bother contacting the police, though—too much trouble.

  Stan had chewed his lip in concern but accepted his explanation without comment.

  And now, they were strangers again. David begrudgingly concluded that he’d have to start finding alternative transportation arrangements.

  He leaned forward. “Drop me off here. I can cross the street on my own. And…uh, thanks for waiting for me all day.”

  The driver was obv
iously confused by this remark. He seemed to have no idea that he’d now worked as his chauffeur continuously for almost eighteen hours.

  It was probably for the best, though, given all the odd trips they’d taken. He dragged himself out of his seat and gave Stan a somewhat more generous tip this time. The man thanked him and took off, whistling cheerfully to himself.

  “Doesn’t he ever get tired?” he wondered. Then again, the guy kept passing out whenever he got mindwiped.

  The concierge noticed his condition as soon as he came into sight and immediately made a fuss over him.

  “Yes,” he mumbled, “I’m fine, Enrique, thanks.”

  The man escorted him into the lobby. A couple of snooty bitches in fur and Louboutins were there and gasped in disgust as he trudged by.

  “What happened, sir?” Enrique followed him and continued to fuss. “Did you get robbed?”

  “No,” he replied, speaking louder and not really thinking as the words flowed from his mouth. He was tired and sore, and he had a headache. “I had my ass kicked trying to break up a fight between some fairies.”

  The Paris Hilton wannabes looked shocked. Some of their best friends were totally gay people.

  David realized in irritation how that had sounded, and he slapped a hand over his face to drag it gradually downwards. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. No, I meant, real, actual—”

  He stopped and literally bit his tongue. There was absolutely no way he should blurt out his sincere conviction that he had, earlier this very day, had a violent altercation with the gossamer-winged denizens of the enchanted Realm of Faerie.

  There was no point in trying to explain any of that to either Enrique or the socialites. He limped into the elevator and smacked the button for the penthouse.

  By the time the light reached “P” and the elevator pinged, he was slumped against the doors. They opened and he stumbled out. Around him, the penthouse was clean and orderly, one hundred percent sane and normal.

  “Ugh.” He breathed deeply. “At least being gone all day meant there was zero chance of me turning this place into a satanic ritual aftermath scene again.”