Winged Warriors

by Elle Casey

  Spike grabbed me in a hug, lifting me off my feet and swinging me around in a big circle. When he finally stopped and put me down, we stared at each other for a few seconds. I ran my hands up his chest and around to the back of his neck as I smiled up at him. "You're pretty hot, you know that?"

  "You are too. Especially when you're telling off a Fate who could've blown us both to smithereens."

  I shrugged with false modesty. "I can be pretty badass sometimes."

  "I noticed." He gestured with his head toward the compound. "You want a ride back home?"

  "I thought you'd never ask."

  He turned around and crouched down so I could jump onto his back. I wrapped my legs around his middle, locked my arms around his neck, and kissed his ear. "I'm ready whenever you are."

  "Hang on, baby, and get ready for the ride of your life." He took off running, and I screamed with delight as he raced through the forest like only a cube-eye can, headed back to the compound at top speed. For just a few moments, I felt free—free of the pressures and the stress of being responsible for the safety of the entire world. Free from that gloriously awful statement of Maggie's: that I was the reason why the Forsaken were coming and the reason why all the humans and fae were in danger. Free from the idea that I was going to bring Armageddon to our planet. As I raced through the forest wearing Spike's ring, I was just a kid…a girl in love with a guy, a simple teenager who hated world history class and didn't do so hot at math. It was fun to pretend I was that innocent person for just a little while, before the poo really hit the fan and forced me to face up to the fact that I wasn't really all that innocent after all…and that was a good thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  "WHAT DO YOU say we go do some research before we find out what everyone else is doing?" Spike suggested.

  "Good call. But let's get our buds in on this with us," I said.

  "You want to call them, or you want me to get them for you?"

  I thought about it for a couple of seconds before I responded. "It's probably better if you get them. I'm not sure I could call them and not pull in the others at the same time. My ability to focus on one individual isn't quite there yet." I could totally picture myself accidentally calling all the werewolves to the computer room, which would make it impossible for us to get anything done with all those hairy bodies in the way. When I summoned them, they never showed up all chilled out; they always assumed I needed some ass-kicking done, so they arrived in the process of changing from man to beast.

  Spike deposited me outside the computer room door and kissed me quick on the lips. "Don't fall in love with anyone else while I'm gone," he said, preparing to race off down the hall.

  I grabbed his arm and forced him to look at me. "Not gonna happen. Ever. You're stuck with me for life." I held up my hand and wiggled my fingers. "I have the ring to prove it."

  He hugged me tight and then disappeared before I could say anything else, like I love you, or I feel like the luckiest girl in the world, or I'm sorry in advance for any heartache I might cause you. My track history with Spike wasn't the greatest, but so far he'd managed to forgive all my mistakes. Hopefully, he'd continue to do that. I wasn't naïve enough to think that just because we were engaged, I'd suddenly become the perfect fiancée. Probably the best I'd ever get to would be moderately good fiancée, and I hoped that would be enough, even though he deserved better.

  I pushed open the door and entered the room, surprised to find Becky already there. "Hey, what're you doing in here, li'l water sprite?" I asked, feeling cheerful about my ring and my man and my plan to end all evil in the world.

  She quickly shut off her computer screen and spun around in the seat to face me. "Uh, hi, Jayne. What're you doing here?"

  I sat down to her right and faced her. "Research. Spike just left to go find you and the others so you could help us."

  She faced the computer and nervously clicked the mouse, quickly exiting out of what she'd been looking at before the screen could become bright enough to actually read. "Sure, what do you want me to look up?"

  "What were you just doing? Checking emails?" I was pretty sure I'd seen a Gmail account on the screen right before she'd shut it off, which was weird because most of us had abandoned all connections with the outside world. All I ever got in my inbox were penis enlargement emails anyway, so it wasn't like I was missing anything. Especially now that Tony was gone. My cheer disappeared in a flash when I realized that I'd never get another email from him again, and he wouldn't be joining us to do research on the Forsakens' possible targets. What would the gray elves do without their best planner? And what would I do without my best friend?

  "Checking emails? Me? Heh-heh. No. Yeah. Maybe." Becky's evasive answer pulled me out of my melancholy thoughts.

  "Beck." I waited for her to look at me before I continued. "You don't have to hide anything from me. I won't say anything to anyone." If she wanted to keep tabs on her human life, that was her business. I didn't get why she'd want to, but whatever. It was her deal, not mine.

  She went from nervous to cranky in the blink of an eye. "I'm not hiding anything from anyone. It's just…none of your business."

  I lifted my brows and wheeled my chair back a bit. "Okay. Fine. Forget I said anything." I turned to the other computer and woke it up by jiggling the mouse.

  She huffed out a breath next to me, but didn't say anything. I kept my mouth shut too. Becky would come around one way or another, and I had a feeling my best bet was to just wait for it.

  I whistled as I pulled up the search engine and started typing:

  Large gathering. Multiple cities. Coordinated attack. I thought about it for a few seconds and then made an adjustment to my search terms: Large gathering. Multiple cities. Coordinated program. I hit the enter key and then waited for the results to populate the screen.

  "What are you doing?" Becky asked, her tone subdued.

  I was tempted to tell her it was none of her business, but that would have been petty and mean. Becky was entitled to her secrets, and I sure didn't want to do this by myself. "Just trying to figure out where the Forsaken are going to strike. Spike and I just talked to Maggie. We have some good intel to work with now."

  "But you're here and not with the Council?"

  "I'll tell them what I've found once I find it. I'm not keeping it a secret." That wasn't meant as a burn on Becky, but she took it that way, apparently.

  "Jayne, I'm not trying to be rude by not telling you what I'm doing in here."

  "I know that." I didn't look at her. I didn't want her to feel the pressure of my eyes glaring at her. I wouldn't have been glaring, but she probably expected it of me, so she'd imagine it was happening even when it wasn't. "I'm fine with you having secrets."

  She sighed heavily. "You said Spike was going looking for me?"

  "Yeah. You and Scrum and Finn and Jared and Tim and the twins…you know…everyone who I give a hoot about."

  "And I'm on that list, aren't I?" she asked. She sounded like she was about to cry.

  I stopped what I was doing and looked at her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her face looked puffy and sad. "What's going on? Was Finn mean to you?" I could feel my temper rising. All I needed was that redneck doofus pissing off this sensitive water sprite, right before the world was about to end. We did not have time for teenage romance drama.

  She shook her head as tears fell from her eyes.

  I got out of my seat and leaned down to hug her. She stood and threw her arms around me, blubbering like a big baby. "I don't want to keep secrets from anyone, but I can't tell you about this one because you'll think so badly of me, and I never want you to feel that way because I love you all so much…and if Finn ever found out, he'd never want to look at me again, and if he did that, I'd just die. I'd literally die, Jayne."

  I patted her back and rubbed it, trying to calm her down with some good old-fashioned shushing, but it wasn't doing much good. She kept on crying, her tiny, skinny body trembling with emotio
n. "It's going to be fine," I said. "There's nothing you could do that would make him not want to be with you. He's a lifer, Beck, you know that. Team Water Sprite, all the way."

  She shook her head against my shoulder. "No, he would hate me."

  I pulled back and wiped her tears off. "Come on. How bad could it be? Seriously. It's not like you killed puppies or anything. And shit, he hunts animals and eats them, so I'm not sure he'd be all that worried about puppies." That wasn't exactly true; Finn had a heart of gold and would probably bawl like a baby if he found out Becky was a puppy-killer, but I was pretty sure we weren't talking about anything that bad.

  "Jayne…I killed someone," she said in a whisper.

  Or maybe we are.

  I took a deep breath in and let it out. "Tell me. And hurry up, before everyone gets here."

  She let out a long sigh and flopped down into her chair. Her arms fell to her sides like they were on a dead person. She stared at the floor as she spoke. "I grew up in some foster homes. The last one was the dead worst. There were three other kids in there with me, and one of them was almost eighteen." She looked up at me. "Do you know what that means?"

  I shook my head. "He can vote?"

  "Yes, he could vote when he turned eighteen. But the bad news is, he would no longer be a part of the system. The State kicks you out."

  "And you felt bad for him?" So you killed him? This wasn't making any sense yet, but I tried like hell to find patience I didn't normally have.

  "No. Not him. With most kids I would, but not him. He was pure evil." Her voice dropped. "He did things. To other kids. And animals."

  My skin crawled. Now we were seriously talking about a puppy-killer. I wanted to run away and not hear the rest of the story, but she was my friend and I had a commitment to that friendship. For better or for worse, I had a feeling that I was about to hear a story that would become a regular showing on my nightmare reel. "That's awful," I said.

  "You have no idea. The foster system tells parents to be careful of family pets, because there are some kids who can get really angry and upset and they sometimes take their emotions out on people and animals and property…but with this guy, you just would never suspect it. He looked like a nice person. And he could fake it really well."

  "A demon, basically."

  She nodded. "A real demon. And one day I caught him with our little foster sister. He was…hurting her."

  I was instantly sick to my stomach. "Oh geez," was all I could say.

  "I warned him, but he didn't listen. I warned him more than once, but he just laughed in my face and did what he wanted."

  "Did you tell the parents?"

  "Of course I did. But he always convinced them that I was the problem."

  "How could anyone think even for a single second that you were the problem?" I laughed at the idea.

  "Jayne, you met the better version of me in Miami, and you've known only the best version of me as a fae. When I lived in the system, I wasn't the same person. I was hard. I was rude."

  "You were a survivor. Don't act like there was anything wrong with how you were. I'm proud of you."

  "Don't be." Her voice dropped to a tortured whisper. "I took a human life. I killed him. I literally killed him with my bare hands."

  "Tell me the story. I think you'll feel better." I looked at her computer. "And what does this have to do with your emails?"

  She glanced at the dark screen before coming back to me. "One day, he was in his bedroom with the door locked. And Binkley was crying in there. I could hear him."

  "And Binkley is…"

  "Binkley was the family dog. A terrier mix."

  The nausea I was feeling ratcheted up another several notches. "Okay."

  "I knocked on the door and told him to let me in. I knew he was doing something bad in there, but he refused to open the door. So I got the little lock popper thing our foster parents would use to force open the lock, and I forced his door open."

  I could feel myself getting dizzy as I imagined what was coming.

  "And when I got in there, I found the dog on the floor breathing really hard and D.J. just standing over him smiling. It was the most evil expression I have ever seen in my life, and I've seen live demons now, Jayne. Live ones. And none that ever looked like this guy did in that moment. He was happy." Her face twisted up into one of pure misery.

  I swallowed with difficulty, my throat totally dry. "So, what did you do?"

  "I wanted to kill him, but I was more worried about Binkley, so I grabbed the little guy and ran out of the room with him."

  "Oh my god." I could totally see her doing that too. Becky to the rescuuue!

  "Yeah. But of course D.J. was worried I was going to rat him out, which I absolutely was going to do, so he chased after me. He tripped me just as I got to the top of the stairs."

  "Holy shit, Becky!" My heart was pounding and my flesh was crawling.

  "I know!" She was crying again and so was I.

  "What did you do?"

  "Well, I fell down those dang stairs first. And poor Binkley went right with me. We went all the way to the bottom. By the time we got there, he wasn't breathing anymore and I had a broken wrist."

  "That is…just…ridiculously, terribly awful." I wiped at the tears on both our faces.

  "D.J. came running down after us, yelling the whole time that I'd killed the dog."

  "Jesus, what a piece of shit he is," I said.

  "Was. Was, Jayne."

  I stopped breathing for a few seconds. "Was?"

  "Our parents were out in the backyard. They didn't hear him at first, so he went running towards the back of the house to tell them. I chased after him, and I guess as we ran through the kitchen, I grabbed a knife that was on the counter."

  My hand went to my heart and I could feel it beating like it was trying to escape my chest. "What happened then?" I asked in a near whisper.

  "I wish I could say that I forgot, but I didn't forget. I'll never forget it for as long as I live. I ran up behind him as he tried to work the back door—it always got stuck—and I stabbed him right in the back."

  "Oh damn."

  "Yeah. Damn. I'm damned. I sunk that thing to the hilt and then I took it out and stabbed him again. And again."

  My jaw fell open. I couldn't speak.

  "I thought about Binkley. Did I mention that I called him The Binkster? Mister Binkle Buns? Binkley Dinkley? Did I mention that?" Her voice was going shrill. "He was the coolest dog ever. Part poodle, part shitzu, part terrier, and all heart. He was the world's worst pest control. He never caught a single mouse or rat or whatever those dogs are supposed to do. He just loved. That's all he ever did was love and love and love." Her voice was raw with anger and sadness. "And his last moments on earth were spent being tortured by that piece of demon slime!"

  I reached out and placed my hand on the side of her face, gently wiping angry tears from her cheek with my thumb. "No, sweetie. His last moments on earth were in your arms, as you raced him away from evil to protect him."

  Her face crumpled as she stared at me. "He couldn't have known. He was so out of it."

  I shook my head. "No. He knew. He felt your arms around him, and he could smell you. Dogs can sense love, even if they can't see it. He went to the Overworld in your arms, and I know he was grateful to you for saving him. I know he loved you. How could he not?"

  "Because I'm a murderer," she whispered, and then she started retching.

  I flipped around in my chair and grabbed a nearby trashcan, putting it under her face just in time to catch her vomit. I patted her back and held her hair up until she finished.

  "Becky, you are not a murderer," I said, my voice firm again and my emotions clear. "You are a savior. Imagine how many lives you saved by sending that demon back to the Underworld where he belongs."

  "That's what Amber says."

  "Amber?"

  "My little sister. My foster sister who I saw him hurting." Becky glanced at the computer.

&n
bsp; "See? She knows. She was right there with you."

  Becky sat up and wiped her face with a tissue she pulled from the waistband of her tights. She turned to look at the computer. "That's who I was emailing. We have secret accounts that we haven't shared with anyone. She's the only one I keep in contact with."

  "What happened. I mean…after?" After you stabbed the shit out of that evil asshole? I couldn't say the words out loud. I would have never pegged my scaredy cat water sprite friend as a murderer.

  She sighed and tilted her head, clearly lost in the memories. "Well…I was arrested, of course. And then they let me out on bail, and I skedaddled, as Finn would say."

  "You ran from the law? You're like…a fugitive?" I thought her story couldn't get crazier…but then it just did.

  "Well, I was, but not really anymore. I mean, I'm not going to show up in my hometown and say, 'Hi, guys, here I am,' or anything. But I don't think I'd go to prison if they caught me."

  "Explain. And hurry. I can sense wolf-stink getting closer." I hadn't told Spike to get Aidan, but he was coming for sure. I'd know his scent anywhere.

  "I was tried in absentia, meaning they had a murder trial even though they couldn't find me."

  "Is that even legal?" It sure didn't sound like it to me.

  "D.J.'s real father was a man with a lot of influence in our county."

  "His real father? If he had a real father running around, what was he doing in foster care?"

  "Nobody wanted him; not even his own parents. He was removed from their home after he burned it down."

  "Jesus. Talk about a problem child." I rubbed my belly, wondering if I had any of that sweet awesomeness to look forward to.