Darkness & Light (War of the Fae: Book 3) (13 page)

What the hell?

“Take that, you giant beast!
 
Eat my dust!”

It was Tim’s voice, but it had a definite manic quality to it.

“Tim!
 
Stop!
 
What the hell are you doing
?!
” I shouted, following Chase inside.
 
I was
so,
so worried that eating Tim’s dust was a very bad thing.

Chase was standing stock still in the center of the room.
 
I was afraid to move any closer because now I was far enough into the room to see that Tim was awake and very, very cranky.
 
His little tiny face was all flushed, and if my eyesight wasn’t fooling me from this distance, he looked like he could very possibly be insane.

“Jayne!” he yelled, desperately.

“Yeah, it’s me!
 
What’s wrong?”

“Someone took my wings,” he cried frantically.
 
“My wings!
 
I’m completely grounded!”

“It wasn’t Chase.
 
Don’t hurt him.
 
It was a Dark Fae named Ben.”

“Oh,” he said, in a much calmer voice, looking at Chase and then me.
 
“Well, that’s ... inconvenient.”
 
His head started to sink into his shoulders, making him look like a turtle trying to go into its shell.

“In what way?”
 
This seemed like a strange reaction to finding out your wings had been taken by the devil.
 
I could have thought of much better words to use than ‘inconvenient’ – very creative ones in fact, with a liberal sprinkling of cuss words to really set the tone.

“
Wellllll
, uh, I got a little panicked when I woke up and no one was here at first and then that big beefcake came in with such a serious look on his face, and me here without any wings,
sooooo
...”

“Chase always has that look on his face; you know that.”

Tim giggled nervously.
 
“Not anymore, he doesn’t.”

I got a really bad feeling.
 
“Chase, turn around.”

Chase turned to look at me and I suffered what felt like a tiny heart attack.
 
He had the biggest grin on his face he’d ever had – for as long as I’d known him, anyway.
 
It looked weird as hell.

“Chase,”
I whispered,
“what the fuck is wrong with you?”
 

“Nothing!” he burst out, smiling like a maniac.
 
“Everything is awesome!
 
Wow.
 
I had no idea how great these rooms are.
 
This is fabulous!
 
This room, the bed, the dresser ... it’s all real wood!
 
Did you notice that before?
 
I didn’t.”

He shoved past me out into the hallway, walking rapidly away.

“You know, he’s totally right,” said that daemon kid whose name I couldn’t remember at the moment.
 
“I’ve always thought the rooms were pretty nice.
 
It’s hard to get real wood furniture these days.”

“Not now, nut brain,” I said angrily. “Chase!” I yelled, going out after him.
 
“Where are you going?”

“I have to go outside,” he answered matter of factly.
 
“This place is too confining.”

I ran back into my room.
 
“Tim!
 
What the hell did you do to him?”

Tim turned around, sheepishly circling his foot out in front of him on top of the dresser, looking down and avoiding my eyes.

“Tell me now, Tim, or I’m gonna ... ”

“It’s too late,” he said softly.
 
“You can’t threaten to take my wings.
 
They’re already gone.
 
And it’s too late for Chase too.
 
I pixied him.”

“You ...
what
?!
”

Tim turned and looked up at me beseechingly.
 
“I thought he was gonna kill me!
 
I couldn’t fly away! ...
 
So I panicked a little.”

I shook my head.
 
“That’s not
a little
Tim.
 
That’s a lot.
 
You promised you wouldn’t do this to anyone.
 
And of all people ... Chase?
 
Hasn’t he suffered enough being my friend?”
 
First an arrow in the back, now this.

Tim put his head down again.
 
“I know.
 
I’m sorry.”

I looked at Tony.
 
“Stay here with Tim.
 
Don’t let him out of the room.”

I looked at the daemon goofball standing next to Tony.
 
“You stay here too.
 
Don’t let anyone near them.”

Last, I looked at Tim.
 
“Pixie anyone while I’m gone, and we’re through.
 
I’ll put you under a bell jar myself.
 
You understand me?”

Tim nodded, a tiny fart escaping in reply.

“Fuck me,”
was all I could think to say as I ran down the hallway in the direction Chase had just gone.

I caught up to Chase as he was leaving through the dining hall doors and into the never-ending corridor.
 
I had no idea how many doors there were off it or how big this compound actually was.
 
Every time I thought I did, I ended up going out another door I’d never seen before or walking a longer distance than I had in the past.
 
Normally this phenomenon was just a curiosity.
 
Tonight, it was a serious pain in my ass.

“Where are we going, Chase?” I asked, coming up behind him, totally out of breath.
 
The guy had long legs and was in a hurry.

“Gotta get outside.
 
Outside, outside,
outside!”
 
He did a little hop then – and of all the things Chase had done so far since getting pixied, that was the scariest.
 
Chase is the coolest guy I know – definitely the strong, silent type.
 
He would no sooner skip around, than I would stop swearing.
 
It was one of those ‘not in this lifetime’ kind of things.
 
But here he was doing it.
 
And
I’d been told by my very intelligent gray elf friend, Gregale,
that a pixie curse was nearly impossible to break – and that if you managed to break one, the affected person was never quite right in the head again.
 

Please, please, please let someone have a cure.
 
Sometimes Chase’s stoicism got on my nerves; but I’m pretty sure that this hyper happiness was going to be much, much worse.
 
I may end up having to kill him to put him out of
my
misery.

Chase reached a door I had never seen before.
 
It had a picture of a flower on it.
 
Most of these doors had some unique symbol on them, which made it easier for us Light Fae to picture them in our minds – handy since that’s how we made the door appear, both from inside this hallway and then again from outside the compound.
 
Otherwise, it was just a blank spot on the wall or another place out in the forest.

Chase opened the door and ran out.

“Chase, wait, you idiot!”

He didn’t go far.
 
We were in a meadow, similar to the one I’d been in before with Gregale, where he’d told me my sharp stick-looking weapon – given to me during the changeling test – was none other than the fang of The Dark of Blackthorn.
 
The Dark was a Dark Fae dragon, long slayed by some ancestor of mine.
 
When I was using it against someone, it burned the shit out
them
with
dragonfire
– usually awesome, but totally useless against this current problem, so it stayed strapped to my leg.

I stopped running and stood at the edge of the grassy open space that was bathed in moonlight.
 
I watched as Chase ran around in circles, spinning and laughing, smiling his damn fool head off.
 
I could see pretty well at night in the forest, even without the moon.
 
I think it had something to do with my connection to The Green.

I sat down in the grass.
 
Now what the hell am I supposed to do?
 
I ran through my options.
 
I could reach out to Spike and he’d probably find me.
 
As long as I was thinking sexy thoughts, he would likely pick up on them and show up so we could start making out.
 
I wondered how many times I could use that trick to get him to come before he’d stop responding anymore – we’d never actually sealed the deal after one of my come-hither invitations.
 
Every time I’d lured him in this way, I hadn’t wanted him for sexual reasons, so I was always putting his
x-rated
intentions on hold.
 

I could also use The Green to bring Finn to me.
 
All the green elves were hooked into my network that way.
 
It wasn’t as cool as the green elves’ ability to send complete telepathic messages with actual words, but it was good enough for my purposes.
 
The problem was, I didn’t know
who
I should call in the elf network.
 
Who could help us with this mess?
 
Probably the healers in the compound needed to be called – but
I’d already been warned by Dardennes
that being pixied was practically a death sentence, which is why they had nearly shit themselves when I’d let Tim out of the bell jar.
 
If I called them, Tim was going to get shipped out for sure.
 
Now everything Dardennes and Gregale had said about the dangers of pixies was coming back to haunt me.
 
And Chase.
 
I looked out at him delighting in his happy frenzy and sighed.
 
Maybe I could talk to him.

I got up and walked over to where he was jumping around, reaching out my hands to grab him and calm him down.

“Chase.
 
Hey.
 
Settle down for a second, would you?
 
Come talk to me.”

“I
am
talking to you, Jayne.
 
Dance with me!
 
Why are you just standing there?
 
Can’t you feel the vibrations?
 
It’s amazing.
 
I can’t stop moving.
 
It’s all through me!
 
Do you know how much I’ve missed feeling this alive?”

He continued to whirl around, his arms stretched out to the sky.
 
His face was beautiful; he had such a big smile.
 
It’s the first time I’d seen him look happy.
 
It seemed somehow wrong that I was going to work really hard to get him back to his quiet, unaffected self.
 
But I had to, because he wasn’t going to stop this.
 
He was going to keep blissing out until he dropped from exhaustion – and then when he got his energy back, he was going to get up and do it all over again.
 
This process would go on for the rest of his life; and he’s fae, so that’s about a thousand years, give or take.

I was so busy scheming over how I was going to de-bliss Chase, I didn’t see him coming up to me until it was too late.
 
He grabbed me in his arms and started twirling me around with him.
 
He lifted me right off my feet, spinning me and spinning me, around and around, until I started to feel sick.

“Chase, put me
down
you
fucknut
!”

He refused.
 
He just kept dancing and spinning.
 
My arms and ribs were hurting where he was squeezing me.
 

“Let me go!
 
You’re
hurting
me!”
 

But still, he continued.
 
I was starting to panic, squirming and trying to get away.
 
He didn’t realize or care that he was crushing me.
 
I tried to get my mind away from the pain and nausea so I could reach out to The Green.
 
As usual, its hum was just outside my mind, waiting to be invited in.
 
I felt its welcoming touch embrace my body.
 
The unpleasant sensations that Chase had created started to fade away and I began to calm down.
 

I sent out a message through my link with the forest that I needed Chase to be stopped, so I could get away.
 
Moments later a group of vines raced over the ground from the nearby tree line to tangle themselves around his legs.

Chase kept trying to move anyway, but soon the vines overwhelmed him.
 
I hadn’t really thought the whole process through, obviously; that old adage ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall’ took me by surprise.
 
And, well, when they’re as big as Chase, they fall pretty damn hard ... and when it’s
on
you, let’s just say it really sucks.