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“Take the fuckingwheel!"
I don't wait for his confirmation. I open the door and leap out onto the street.
The pavement hits me hard, and I tumble a few times before I get to my feet. My clothes shred, revealing me to be the monster that I am. The driver behind us has just a moment to register what happened, and I see the whites of his eyes widen as he guns it and aims right for me.
Good.
I charge them and leap through their open windshield, a hail of bullets around me. Their screams of triumph roll over into terror as I enter the car. My tentacles gouge eyes and snap fingers. I don’t need to see what I’m doing, Ifeeleverything in the car. I take their guns, grab the wheel and hit the gas pedal at the same time. I strangle the driver and crush the balls of the guy in the passenger seat.
I’m all over them, and they’re all screaming. Or trying to.
That's right fuckers. I'm a monster. I'm the thing your mothers warned you about when they put you to bed. I'm the reason you wake in the night covered in cold sweat.
And I’mnotin the mood for this.
The car veers off course. I take us right into a brick wall at 70 miles an hour. The driver flies out the front. He should have worn a seatbelt.
I don’t need a seatbelt because I’m holding ontothem. Heads are torn free, arms ripped from their sockets, ribcages tear open to spray me with blood.
But I don’t go flying out. I’ve got a really good grip.
I step out of the car, leaving the carnage behind me. Thankfully, the tentacles I walk on are thick and leathery. The little cubes of broken car glass all over the road still sting a little, so I tip-tentacle a bit gingerly.
I hear my car coming back. The engine sounds like a beast.
"Are you fuckingcrazy?!" Kyran screams. "Are you out of your fucking mind? Getin the car!"
I climb into my own passenger seat. We're all covered in blood. Soren looks pale and he's got a blood soaked rag pressed into his shoulder.
"You could’ve been killed. Your father is going to be furious."
“When is he not? Fuck him.”
Kyran guns it for the nearest Fae neighborhood, and he doesn't slow until the power lines overhead are covered with gossamer and elf shoes. Once we're deep enough in that goblins scurry into the sewer grates and succubus street walkers wink at us, we know we're outside the realm of police interference.
In my head, I can't help thinking of the Oleanders. They're a rival clan, more powerful in Faerie than we are, with a larger demesnes. And they've got more soldiers and more guns and more money than us in the human world by a factor of ten. Their wealth feeds their ambitions in Faerie, and their strength in Faerie feeds themhere. Here, where they're picking us off one by one.
All because they sell their Fae venom to addicts all over the city.
If I'd died tonight, it’d probably be over for my family. And in Fae wars, there's no quarter taken. They'll kill me, my father, all our soldiers who don't turn to their side -- and they won't -- and then they'll kill the seeds of our clan. Our children are rare. Our women can live hundreds or even thousands of years if their blood is strong enough, but they’ll birth only one or two children.
We have only a dozen or so children in the clan to make our next generation. True Nightshade children. Our soldiers and our subjects in Faerie have children of their own. Children who’ll grow to probably serve us one day like their parents. They’ll be a part of our family.
The Oleanders would kill them too.
"I have no choice," I tell Kyran softly. "I'm going to have to marry this human woman to keep us alive. If I don't, we'll watch the Oleanders destroy everything we care about."
"We can still fight them," Kyran says, fiercely.
And I appreciate it, but we both know it's a losing battle. Nerium Oleander has money to burn, guns and men to spare.
We drop Soren off at a safe clinic. One of the doctors we pay under the table to look after our wounded off the books. They don't have the resistance to it like human doctors do. Human doctors are shit scared of breaking human laws. Our doctors know who their people are.
Who theirsoldiersare.
They've all got family back in Faerie. And if we die, then their grandparents and cousins and the rest will owe tithe to the Oleanders. We're the ones who keep them at bay. It's only the humans who see us as criminals.
The doctor is a young looking harpy woman, maybe fifty years old.
