Page 28 of The Fae Menagerie
I heard scratching at the door, and then a solid thwack of Doyle's paddle against it. "Oh no you don't," he hollered and stomped off to another room.
I must have dozed off. One moment, I swear I was staring at the door. The next, Doyle leaned against it, bent over his makeshift paddle, his sides heaving with each breath.
"I think I got them all."
Black blood and gore clung to the paddle. Either he'd killed more wasps than I thought were out there, or they were far bigger than the ones back home.
I slid from the bed, pulling the top blanket with me so I could wrap it around my waist. "I think I need to see these wasps."
Doyle's wings vibrated, and he stood at attention. "I'll come with you. I must have missed one."
The wasp on the floor one yard from the door looked more like a rat with wings, if rats had mandibles, stingers the size of anal plugs, and semitransparent wings like Doyle's. No. No way was I going anywhere near them.
Buzzing beneath the couch caught Doyle's attention. "I thought so." He grabbed the pigeon-sized wasp by its wing and dragged it into the light. One paddle chop on its narrow neck severed it from its thorax. Its wings gave a feeble twitch, and then it lay still.
"Okay. It's safe now," Doyle said. "I'm going to go take a shower."
"How did these things get in here?" I asked.
Doyle pointed at the star-filled sky above our heads. "They must have been imprisoned in an enclosure. They aren't native to this in-between realm." He sighed. "They attacked me because I'm anthousai, cousin to the common pixies." He looked sad for a moment, but then he squared his shoulders and met my gaze. "If that's the last of the surviving wasps from the Great Pixie War, I don't even care if I caused their extinction. Those fuckers deserved it. Only a handful of tiny flower pixies survived."
I patted his shoulder. "Thank you. I may not be allergic to wasps, but one sting from something that big would hurt like a motherfucker."
"Sting? You'd be dead." Doyle glanced up at the sky. "It's almost morning. I should clean up this mess before I shower."
"I can help!" I leaned down to pick up the one at our feet. The next thing I knew, I was on my back, staring up at the sky. My wrist throbbed something fierce and my entire arm burned with fire. Then, the world went black.
Chapter
Ten
DOYLE
Even dead,the wasps packed a punch. I knew this, and I let Parker touch one, anyway. He gripped the dead wasp's leg to pick it up, and the shifty corpse wrapped around his hand, stinging him before I could move or shout.
I watched in horror as he flopped onto his back, convulsing. Then, he opened his eyes for a second, flinched away from the pain in his arm, pulled free of the stinger, and lay still.
I kneeled beside him, certain he was dead. Too much wasp venom could stop a fae's heart. That was how my dad died. My dad, who had made me the paddle I used to whack the wasps out of the air. It had been regal once, a majestic tool. Without his magic, it looked like a human cobbled it together out of junk, but it still held my nostalgia, nestled beside my grief.
Parker lay unmoving on the floor. I wiped at my eyes and focused on his chest. It rose and fell with slow but shallow breaths. The dead wasp hadn't pumped a lethal dose of its poison into him, then. Thank fuck for that. Parker would live, if he survived the fever.
I slid my arms beneath his knees and cradled his head to my chest. Carefully, I side-stepped the offending wasp and carried Parker back to my bed.
He was already clammy. He needed to sweat out the poison. To help with that, I covered him in blankets and pillows.
I watched him for a moment to confirm movement beneath the pile. I didn't want to crush him.
Outside my bedroom, I was surprised to see Chani already working on the mess. Instead of thanking the gods for this gracious boon, I shoved them against the wall, my forearm pinning them to it by their delicate throat. "What do you know about this wasp attack?"
Chani squirmed against my arm and choked until I eased off a bit.
"They escaped their enclosure. That's all I know. Aidan woke me to clean the mess before viewing hours."
"Who else did they attack?"
"No one." Chani tried to free themselves from my grasp by grabbing my arm with their four hands. "You're anthousai, their greatest enemy."
"Pixies are their enemies."
