by Amy Sumida
“Ku,” he managed to choke out, “Na waimaka o ka lani.” He launched himself at me and in those few moments I saw more than you’d think was possible.
I saw the local voyeur come striding to us, hand extended, face rapturous. I saw my hand gripping the blade and turning it. I saw the look of shock on my date’s face as the knife slipped into his neck. Internally I shouted “That’s not a knife, this is a knife,” Australian accent and all, and I almost started to giggle hysterically. It’s amazing what the mind will do to protect itself and, like I warned you, I think in movie quotes a lot.
My mind had definitely needed some protection. I used to think those horror movies with blood spraying from neck wounds were ridiculous and inaccurate. I don’t think that anymore. You hit a guy in the neck with a big blade and he bleeds. A lot. All over you if you just so happen to be beneath him at the time. It was extremely messy, to say the least, and potentially mind breaking.
I think the only reason I didn’t start screaming was that someone else beat me to it. The scream I heard was a terrifying mix of rage, frustration, and pain. It yanked my attention to the left, where I found the local man on his knees. He was right next to me. Way too close for my comfort. He reached for me and I didn’t think. I just reacted. I didn’t aim either. I just shot the knife out straight and followed through with my body.
I was suddenly grateful for all the self-defense classes Mom had insisted I take. The biggest advantage training can give you is faster action… automatic reaction. Your body moves before your mind has a chance to process things and it saves you precious, life granting seconds.
The man was suddenly gasping beneath me, the blade buried in his chest. He started to murmur some words in a language unfamiliar to me. Surprisingly, it wasn't Hawaiian. I panicked and stabbed him again. I knew a spell when I heard one and I also knew that any spell this guy managed to cast would not be beneficial to my health. He kept going and I kept stabbing, shutting my eyes to block out the carnage. I felt like I had a starring role in Psycho, the original not that stupid Vince Vaughn remake. All that was missing was the shower curtain and that ridiculously horrifying music. Although, the sound he made was even more horrific. I didn't open my eyes until he went silent.
The Heiau was gone, replaced by an elegant room in what must have been a multimillion dollar home. That's when I realized Ku had been chanting a spell to open a tracing point, a doorway to the Aether. The Aether, or the Astral as some call it, is a place of pure consciousness. It's also the link between our world and the realm of the gods. Think of reality as a spiritual sandwich. The Aether would be all the tasty filling packed between the bread of our worlds. If you wanted to go from one slice to the other, you had to get through the tuna salad first.
Okay, now I'm hungry.
Anyway, the Aether is also where magic happens. As a witch, I use it for crafting spells. I can tap into it with my mind and create new realities there. It's called spellcraft. Of course it's not as simple as it sounds. There's a lot of work and usually a few ingredients necessary for magic but once something is made in the Aether, it manifests on the physical plane.
When I was little, my mom told me stories of people who could travel the Aether, a practice called tracing, but the ability was lost to history. The spells had become scarce and unreliable, the destinations vague, the potential risks high. To take your physical body, make it pure consciousness, and send it shooting through the Aether to another location was a mind boggling concept to me. Yet there, beneath me, was proof it could be done. This man could trace, had in fact taken me along for the ride... and I just killed him. Great.
The body was a bloody mess. I'd nearly decapitated Ku in my blind attack. I didn’t know it at the time but it’s one of the few ways you can kill a god. Don’t laugh, there are monsters out there who can put their head back on and keep going without missing a beat. Or just sprout two more. Can you say Hydra? Beheading doesn't always work. I repeat; beheading doesn't always work. Remember to take the heart too. Oh and burning is usually quite effective as well but with gods, the head is the most important part to take. But I digress.
After I stopped screaming, (I was actually thankful I’d been able to delay the screaming portion of the evening for that long) I tried to wipe away the blood in a very Lady Macbeth fashion. Out damn spot, out. It was useless. I found the bathroom, not even caring that there could be someone else in the house, and went into the shower fully clothed. I can’t even remember what the bathroom looked like. All I recall is the way the water ran bright red and how I stared at it, mesmerized as it swirled down the drain. It was the first time I'd ever killed, as in anything. Well, except bugs but I think we can all agree that they don't count.
I stood under the spray and my body began to shake so I kept adding more hot water. It never occurred to me to take my clothes off. I just sluiced the water off them when I was done and patted myself dry with towels. I remember leaving the towels on the floor like I was an obnoxious hotel guest. What did it matter? I think any attempt at manners had been lost when I'd left a corpse in the living room.
I came out of the bathroom to complete silence. I don’t know what I'd been expecting. Shouting. Screams. Policemen waiting to gun me down. There was no one. I was totally alone… in the home of a god. It all sank in. The man praying to Ku. The Hawaiian in the trees. The Aetheric Plane. I had killed Ku. One of the main gods of the Hawaiian pantheon was lying on a white tile floor with his head barely attached because of me. What the hell kind of karma had I just racked up? Would it matter that it was clearly self defense? I decided it did. Then I decided to snoop around.
I mean I didn’t even know where I was. Like I said, I knew about tracing but had been warned at a very early age to never attempt it. So I had no idea if I was still in Hawaii or even on the same plane of existence. I had just traced! I could’ve been anywhere. Tartarus. Niflheim. Minnesota. Oh please, don't let me be in Minnesota. Well, then again, there is that big mall there.
I crept through the god’s house and hoped he was a bachelor. The last thing I needed was the Mrs. walking in. What's the proper thing to say in that position? “Hello Mrs. Ku, lovely home you have, sorry about the corpse of your husband. Oh and for making your husband into that corpse.” That was one conversation I didn't want to have.
The place was deserted though. I walked past room after room filled only with modern Hawaiian furniture (go figure). The golden gleam of Koa wood merged with Hawaiian textiles everywhere. High ceilings were crossed with wood beams. Creamy white walls were a stark contrast to dark, hand carved tikis placed artfully around the place. The Hawaiian statues looked like they were museum quality and they were all of the same god. Guess who… yep, him.
A set of sliding glass doors opened to a wide expanse of yard. That in itself screams money when you live in Hawaii, which I was relieved to find myself still inhabiting. Coconut trees crowded the edges of the well manicured lawn like gossiping socialites at a cocktail party, snubbing the shorter kukui nut trees around them. A retaining wall penned them all in, preventing any suicidal snubbed kukuis from leaping over the cliff beyond. The house overlooked Waimea valley. I couldn’t see it but I knew the Heiau was below and to the right.
You'd think a god would have an ocean view.
Relieved that I wasn’t stranded somewhere impossible to return from, I headed back inside. My brain had started to function again and it was reeling from the reality of my situation. I began to search in earnest, not with thoughts of thievery but simply out of plain curiosity. It wasn’t long before I found the one room that seemed special. The big KAPU (Hawaiian for sacred – don’t touch) written across the door might have given me a bit of a clue.
For lack of a better word, I’ll call the room a study. It was full of books and gadgets I’d never seen before. There were weapons everywhere, not just hanging decoratively on the walls but scattered on the floor, as if they'd been tossed there after a long day at the office, if you catch my drift.
With new knowledge came renewed fear. It would be wiser to appease my curiosity somewhere else. Somewhere safer than the home of a god I'd just decapitated. So I ran through the house, grabbing up a large bag (a piece of Ferragamo luggage to be exact, Ku had excellent taste) and hurried back to the study. The book went into the bag and then a couple of the more interesting gadgets on top. I told myself I was not a thief, I took them in the interest of knowledge and besides, Ku did try to kill me. To the winner go the spoils right?
By the front door I found a set of keys sitting in a koa bowl. I grabbed them up and continued my panicked flight right out the door, hoping the spoils included a getaway vehicle. I paused to get my bearings for a moment in a huge, circular, covered drive and located the garage set back to the left. A sleek, black Jaguar with an Eddie Would Go bumper sticker peered out at me indolently.
Eddie being Eddie Aikau, surfer and local hero who was last seen paddling away from the stranded Hokule'a canoe in an effort to fetch help. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that little bit of homage to local culture but I was. I mean damn, I’d just found out the gods were real; picturing them purchasing motivating bumper stickers was just a little too much for me. Then I noticed the vanity plate. KuKuK'chu stood out against the rainbow background of the Hawaii license plate. Hmph, Ku was a Beatles fan and, evidently, he was also the walrus.
I spared one second to giggle, nearly on the verge of hysterics, and then jumped in behind the wheel. In no time, I was zipping down a private drive and breaking with a squeal when I came to an imposing iron gate. I looked around frantically and finally found the remote clipped to the passenger side visor. With shaking hands, I hit the button and hit the road.
I haven’t dated a local boy since.
Fairy-Struck
Book 1 in The Twilight Court Series
You can get this book for FREE every 10th day of every month.
Chapter One
Once upon a time, isn't that how all fairy tales begin? Except this isn't your average fairy tale. There are no charming princes or wicked witches within these pages and the fair maidens are more deadly than any big bad wolf. This is a fairy tale in the truest sense of the words; a story about fairies... the real story.
My name is Seren Sloane and I'm an Extinguisher. That will mean nothing to you, I'm sure, so let me go back a little further. No one knows the true origins of the fey, I don't think even the fey themselves remember, but theories abound. One has them evolving alongside us but where we advanced in groups, banding together to become stronger, the fey morphed out of those outcast predators who were too wild for a pack. Those who don't believe in evolution, think instead that the fey issue from divine creations, angels fallen from God's grace. Yet another tale insists they were gods themselves, or demi-gods, led by a mother goddess named Danu.
A final theory suggests they were not gods or angels or outcasts, merely nomads from an advanced civilization. The Scythians or Sidheans, from which the word sidhe originates. Myths tell of these talented Sidhe coming to Ireland where they flung about their magic and generally wrecked havoc until the aggrieved locals fought back and forced the fey to retreat into their raths, holy shrines now known as fairy mounds. History has disguised the raths as burial mounds even though originally, they were thought to be royal palaces for portal guardians. Although I cannot validate the rest of the tale, I do know this; the fey don't live under mounds of dirt. The original descriptions strike closer to the truth. The raths shrouded portals not corpses. Hidden paths to the fairy world, a realm laid parallel to ours and not at all underground.
Anyway, we did just fine living side by side with them until humans started destroying the environment around those entrances to Fairy. Fairies don't like it when you mess with nature and when they stroll from their magical abodes to find that mess strewn all over their backyard, they get even more pissy. So they began to fling the mess back. All those old stories about fairies stealing babies and striking people with wasting diseases, stem from this time period. Things got real bad, so bad that those of us who had the gift of clairvoyance and could actually see fairies, joined together to defend the human race.
The first Human-Fey war erupted across Eire, now known as Ireland, and the losses on both sides were staggering. After the third war, a grudging truce was finally attained and councils were created to mediate between the races and support the truce with laws approved by both sides. A good start to be sure but laws flounder and fail if they can't be enforced. Both councils conceded jurisdiction over their people to the other, agreeing upon the penalties to be meted out should someone be found guilty of a crime. Rules for determining guilt and administering justice were set into place and military units were sanctioned to carry out the verdicts of the councils.
The fairies created the Wild Hunt. They gathered the fiercest, most terrifying of their people and trained them to stalk the shadows of our world, watching us like guardian angels until one of us breaks the law. Then the angels become devils who do much more than watch. Trust me when I say you don't want to ever meet a member of the Hunt.
To police the fey, we created the Extinguishers. Formed of the five great psychic families who originally defended humanity, the Extinguishers inspire a fair amount of fear as well. Armed with clairvoyance among other talents which varies by person but can include; telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, and psychometry, we also have some serious combat skills. Most humans don't have the ability to see a fairy unless that fairy wants to be seen, so both council members and Extinguishers must at least possess clairvoyance. The Council keeps an eye out for humans with exceptional psychic abilities so they can recruit more into their fold but Extinguishers are born into the job. I'm one of those lucky few.
Kavanaugh, Teagan, Sullivan, Murdock, and Sloane. The first five psychic families of Ireland. Over the centuries we've become a secret society so big it spans the globe, gaining strength by breeding only within the five. This has virtually guaranteed powerful psychic gifts in our children. I'm the product of a Sloane and a Kavanaugh. Over thirty generations of contrived breeding(not inbreeding, thank you very much) has given me abilities which rank me as one of the top ten Extinguishers of all time.
I was trained from childhood to become what I am; an Extinguisher, a hunter of fairies, remover of the light of the Shining Ones. Childhood wasn't horrible for me but it was definitely not what most would consider to be normal. Bedtime stories were non-fiction accounts of Extinguisher heroism and instead of receiving platitudes that monsters weren't real, I was told most emphatically that they were and that when checking beneath my bed at night, I should always have an iron blade in hand. My only friends were children from other Extinguisher families and every game or toy had an ulterior motive behind it. Like the dolls my mother made me which showed what each type of fairy looked like... and had their weaknesses written on their backs in red ink.
Still, I was a child and I knew nothing else. Life seemed magical to me, not just in the way that life is magical to all children but in a literally magic way. I was taught to move objects with my mind, create fire in the palm of my hand, and make things materialize anywhere I wanted them to(that's called apportation in case you're curious, not teleportation which is a thing of science fiction). When I got older,
I was taught to fight and finally, to kill.
Despite all of that, I wasn't raised to hate fairies. Quite the contrary, I was taught to care for them and protect them if need be. The job of an Extinguisher exists first and foremost to protect the peace. We kill fairies only when they disrupt that peace and then we do it in the most efficient and merciful way possible... after we receive a warrant of execution approved by the Council. We are, essentially, peace keepers.
That changed for my family when my mother was torn to pieces by a pack of pukas. I know, it sounds funny, doesn't it? A pack of pukas. In reality a bunch of fairy dogs the size of ponies, with teeth sharper than a shark's, shredded the flesh from my mother, gobbled down every last bit of it, and then gnawed on her bones till they could suck out the marrow. That reality killed all the mercy in my father and a lot of the compassion in me as well.
We immersed ourselves in the job, taking every warrant issued for criminal fey we could get our hands on until the Head Extinguisher himself finally noticed and called us to heel. We were sent to a small territory where very little fey crime occurred and where we were supposed to get our shit together. Most humans would love to live where we do now and when I tell you where we were put, I'm sure you'll roll your eyes but let me assure you that this place becomes a slow death for an Extinguisher. Peace keepers need a certain amount of action to keep us sane and Hawaii has very little of that on the fey front.
Yes, I've been exiled to paradise and for someone with my fair Irish skin, Hawaii imitates Hell in so many ways. Sure beauty abounds and the people here embody that tropical temperament of almost Gaelic hospitality but when you're itching for a fight, you don't want to be scratching at your peeling, sunburned skin too. Plus, the only fey to be found, the little local variety called menehune, frolic about causing mischief but never mayhem. Yep, Hawaiian fairies exist. Does that shock you? It shouldn't, I've already mentioned how the Fairy Realm lies parallel to ours. Fairy Mounds connect more than merely Ireland to Fairyland, they form bridges between Fairy and places all over the world. The fairies who frequent these paths seem to be influenced by the culture they cross over into.