AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Normally, a Fae would go to extreme lengths to hide her true nature from a random Normal human, but Siobhan was too badly injured to do more than stare blearily with one eye as the human reached for her. Her left eye was drowned in blood, her cheekbone crushed. Her left arm was smashed so badly it was hard to identify as an arm.
Lifting her in gentle hands, the human murmured apologies. He moved her carefully to a more comfortable position on the hood, straightening her damaged wing.
Liliana gasped as she recognized a much younger Pete. She twisted between her hands the cloth of one of her blouses hanging in her closet as she watched. That was certainly an unusual way for two life paths to cross.
“I’m so sorry. I couldn’t stop in time. You came out of nowhere,” Pete told the injured Fae. “Don’t worry. I know someone who can help. You’re going to be okay.” He pushed the shaggy mop of bright pink hair away from Siobhan’s bloody face.
The flower Fae’s one functional eye widened in horror.
“It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you,” Pete assured her.
“Behind you!” the sprite whispered and pointed with her uninjured hand.
Boggarts had followed her. Now, seeing a single wounded seelie Fae and a Normal alone in the dark, they moved in. They would not show themselves so openly to a human if they expected that human to live until morning.
Pete whirled around to face them, his back to the van with the wounded sprite laid out like a vivid hood ornament. He put his body between her and her attackers.
Their cruel laughter surrounded the injured sprite and her would-be rescuer. “Silly little fairy doesn’t know enough to stay out of the road.” “Bugs on the windshield can be so annoying.” “We may have to eat her with a squeegee, heh heh.” “We’ll use her blood to spice his meat.”
“I don’t think you want to do anything rash here, boys,” Pete warned them as his hand slipped under his jacket. He pulled a pistol as the unseelie Fae closed in.
A laughing boggart leapt at him.
As he sidestepped the hairy beast, Pete pulled the trigger on the handgun.
Bullets don’t usually affect the Fae like they do humans. Since most bullets are made of lead, not iron, the Fae tend to shake them off like stinging insects.
Just under Siobhan’s nose, the boggart smashed into the front of the van. A look of stunned surprise froze on its hairy face as it died.
Naturally, a Celtic wolf would have his weapon loaded with ammunition effective against unseelie Fae.
The dead body shifted to its equally unwashed and hairy human form once it hit the ground.
As the wicked, pointed smiles on the other three boggarts faded into confusion, Pete shifted to his larger demi-wolf form. He growled and showed them his teeth.
The boggarts vanished into the forest.
Pete waited a few moments to be certain they were gone before shifting back to human form. He turned to the wounded sprite, pistol still in his no-longer-furry hand.
“I want one of those,” Siobhan said, pointing to the gun.
Pete grinned and holstered the pistol under his arm. “I’ll see what I can do, but let’s get you taken care of first.”
Siobhan seemed about to answer, but her remaining eye rolled back in her head and she went limp on the sheet steel.
Liliana bit her lip. Siobhan’s injuries were terrible.
How had the little sprite not died?
Her fourth eyes refocused as she closed the closet door and walked back to her business space. She was so focused on her fourth eyes, she trailed a hand along the wall to guide herself, unwilling to give even a tiny bit of attention to her first eyes. She could have divided her attention a bit more to see her immediate surroundings, but she didn’t need any eyes at all to find her way around in her own house.
Pete pounded on a big carved wooden door until a familiar man wearing a white lab coat and fuzzy slippers answered it. In his human form, Doctor Nudd seemed to be made of long gangly elbows and knees. Liliana was not fooled by the grumpy, absent-minded air of the goblin. She had sparred too many times with the fiercer form hidden beneath.
Pete led the unseelie Fae doctor to the back of his van and opened the doors to reveal the badly injured sprite laid out on the couch.
“Absolutely not,” Doctor Nudd said, backing up from the van, hands up as if to ward off something dangerous. “If the Goblin King ever got word I healed a seelie Fae, he’d have me skinned alive and slow roasted.”
Liliana knew Doctor Nudd wasn’t speaking figuratively. The Goblin King generally ate anyone who displeased him, and he hated the seelie sunshine Fae.
