Page 82 of Faerie Fate
Even Mike’s voice was strained, exhausted.“You’re the all-powerful witch with the sight. One of the greatest seers in history. Why don’t you use your powers to find all the bullets?”
The peach-colored sky behind the castle darkened suddenly, dark clouds like spectral entities reaching out to grab the sun and extinguish it.
The storm arrived without warning and battered the sand city.
Tiny green buds were stripped off the nearest tree people under the ferocious howl of the wind. It ripped down the street and scattered particles of sand, eating away at the walls until they crumbled into nothingness.
The humanoids screamed. The taller trees bent low over the smaller ones and hustled them along but there was no safety, not when the rain began. Driving needles washed away streets and dunes and buildings.
No! This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. These poor creatures, whatever they were, didn’t deserve the storm or the devastation. Their entire kingdom was ruined by the harsh rain and the tree people sank beneath the surface. Their limbs reached up for a salvation that never came.
I grabbed the nearest tree person, cold water pushing hungrily against the crook of my knees. The cold seeped through my skin as my fingers latched with the limb.
Come on, you have to fight! I clenched my jaw and pulled.
“It’s just a little bit of blood.”Poppy.“You’re telling me a wolf like you is worried about blood?”
“First of all, it’s not a little bit. It’s a gushing river of absolutely putrid blood and guts that smell like I’ve just stepped into a vat of chemical waste.”Bronwen.
“Maybe if you’d cut it open a little bit more, we wouldn’t be forced to—”Mike.
“What?”Poppy’s voice, daring him to finish the sentence.
“I’m just saying, if we’re going to search the innards to find the bullets, the least you could do is open it up more and make it easier on us.”
“Burrendigger hide is notoriously thick. It’s what makes them so dangerous. I’m lucky to have killed this thing. My magic alone isn’t going to slice and dice it into neat fillets for you.”
When the tree people got wet, their weight doubled. I locked my knees and tugged with all my strength but I couldn’t pull the creature out from underneath the waves. I couldn’t help it when it sank low, its grip slowly loosening. A circle of bubbles released from its open mouth before even those disappeared.
My heart sank. Goddess, what had I done?
I reached for another tree person, its arms waving furiously and ineffectively. The weight of its sodden roots dragged it to the depths of those hungry waves.
No one was spared. There was just me.
Alone.
Untouched.
Crying.
“I think I’ve got the last one.”
“You’ve certainly dug the deepest. You’re up to your elbows. A natural.”
“I’m no stranger to shifting through innards, I guess. Is that what you want to hear me say?”
Their conversation sounded flippant and unimportant, though, with the floodwaters raging. Didn’t they know thesehumanoids needed our help? Didn’t my friends hear them all dying?
I stood alone in the water, steadily rising, taking everyone but me away. The cold seeped deeper inside of me. Why wasn’t I taken? Why spare me?
Why bring me here if only to leave me helpless?
I drew a breath, sparing a look toward the space where sand spires had speared into the sky. There was nothing now.
Something cracked in my chest and warmth flooded through me instead. A sense of rightness I hadn’t felt in some time. Squeezing my eyes closed, I let the flood fade away. I let the dream disintegrate and followed the voices calling me home.
Mike swiped the hair off my forehead. “She’s awake.”
