“Did she land on her arm? Maybe it’s broken. How fun.” The woman giggles. “We could torture her.”
“Falling from the sky as her wolf was taken from her wasn’t torture enough?” he asks.
“She imprisoned us. Nothing is enough,” the woman hisses.
He turns back to me. His eyes flash. “True.”
He opens his mouth and leans forward. His hands come to both sides of my head. The drawstring from his hoodie dangles down, hits my cheek. He jerks my head back to expose my neck. “Maybe vampire style?”
For a second I don’t react. For a second I think, “Maybe it’ll be better this way. Maybe it’ll just be better to give up.” And yeah, maybe it would be. But not like this. I do not want this. My fingers tighten around the poker.
The pixie leans in. The woman leaps forward. She lands beside me and moans, obviously too injured for fast movement. Good.
“Just take her,” she orders. “Hurry if you’re going to go first.”
“Shut up,” he hisses back. His hands tighten on my face. His teeth come closer.
That’s my cue. I buck my hips up. My legs kick and my arm whips out from behind my back. The poker smashes into his head. His eyes bulge and close. I roll away and spring up. The female pixie laughs. Rage fills me.
“Nice surprise, little princess.” She spits out the word. “It will be so good to taste you.”
“Right.” Not a good comeback. I am beyond good comebacks. I am beyond pretty much anything. Nick’s name echoes inside of me and that is all I hear right now, all I feel. I am on automatic.
A quick glance assures me that pixie man isn’t moving. Pixie woman follows my gaze. “He’s not dead, see? His chest rises. You’re weak like your father. You don’t have enough strength in you to kill us, do you? Just trap us, let us slowly go insane with need because you don’t have the guts to do what you have to do. Do you know how many times I wanted to kill your father with his endless worries? But I couldn’t—oh no—I couldn’t because he was our king.”
She would be beautiful if she weren’t so pixie. Her long black hair flows out with the wind.
“I trapped you because you’re monsters.” I force out the words. “My father is a monster.”
“Monsters? Why? Because we admit to the pain we cause? Admit we like it? Instead of pretending we’re some sort of warrior hero like your wolf.” She sneers. Her posture tightens. She’s going to jump me.
“He is a hero. He protects people from things like you.”
“And you.” She sniffs. She smiles. “I can smell the pixie in you.”
“I’m not like you,” I growl.
“No. You’re not. You cloak your evil, your violence, in the mask of good. I am just evil.” She leaps.
I shift the poker so that the barb faces out and thrust it as hard as I can. It hits her in the chest. There’s this sick sucking sound as it goes through skin. Her mouth forms an O. Her face smiles and then grimaces. Her hands reach for my neck. Long claws scrape toward me. I yank the poker out and step back. She falls.
We all fall today.
She doesn’t breathe. I have killed something. I have killed. Moving in slow motion, I check out the other pixie—the man. He rolls over. His eyes aren’t quite focused yet, but he’ll be fine if I just leave him, just walk away. Instead, I raise the poker.
“This is for Nick.” I jab it in, rip it out. Do it again. “And this is for me.”
Pixie Tip
Pixies have this fear of metal. Metallophobia.
There is blood on my hands, blood on the wrap around my wrist, blood on my jeans. There is probably blood on my face. I don’t care. I leave the blood smears there to rot and crust and cake on. I climb back on the snowmobile. I drive to the road, get to Nick’s MINI. His key fob. It is always in his pocket.
“God!” I sob the word into my hands and it’s not a swear, it’s a plea, a real plea and then I lose it. I just lose it. I shut off the sled and sob and sob and sob on the silly snowmobile. I don’t know how much time passes. I don’t know anything. I just know that Nick is gone like my dad.
I’m alone.
The world is still. There’s no sound of cars or wind or animals. Even the trees are still and lonely. I’m murmuring words softly to myself—or to this self that is me but not me, me without Nick.
Without Nick.
Without.
Nick.
I’m murmuring words to myself, to God, to Nick, but I don’t think anyone hears.
“I can’t do this,” I whimper. I wipe at my face with my good hand, try to get rid of the tears. “I can’t—I can’t do this.”
“Of course you can.”
My head lifts up and I move my body just enough to see him. He stands there, snow billowing down all around him. His leather jacket isn’t ripped or torn. His jeans aren’t dirty. There are no wounds. He wasn’t at the house at all. Flakes land in his hair and stick, morphing the blond to white. He tilts his head as we stare at each other, then he reaches out his hand. “Zara.”
“I’m not coming to you.”
He keeps his hand raised. “I didn’t do this, Zara. You did. All this power trapped and contained, ready to be exploited. It had to explode.”
He’s right. Of course he’s right but I can’t bring myself to say anything to him. What’s the point, really? I’m not even making my silence into something. I’m done looking for meaning, done worrying about what’s going to happen to me, because the worst has happened already. People keep dying on me. First my step-dad, now . . .
The air stills. Far away in the distance something screams. I breathe in. Cold air pushes its way into my lungs. I breathe in again. My hand moves up to wipe at my face. The tears are icy against my cheeks. I breathe out.
Astley watches all this. His eyes glint with the reflection of snow. His nostrils flare.
“I can smell another king on you—not your father.” He sounds like some sort of emotion. Worried? Yeah, I think that’s it.
“He was there.” I sway. “He hurt my father. He k-k-killed Nick. And that stupid Valkyrie took him.”
I start to lose my balance. The world dizzies around me. Astley moves forward so fast that I barely notice and he catches me against him. The leather crinkles smooth against my face. It has no texture. It’s just sleek and smells like dead cows.