I reached to take the old guy by the arm, then hesitated. Even though my brain insisted he couldn’t really have zapped me, my hand didn’t want to touch him.
Footsteps thumped the uneven sidewalk. Sweaty, rumpled, and scowling, Pablo jogged out of the dark.
By that time, I felt more annoyed than sorry for the old man. So I don’t know why I didn’t just take off. Stubbornness, maybe. I’d made up my mind I was going to help him, and that was that.
“It’s stupid to run,” Pablo said, huffing and puffing a little. “It only makes it worse.”
“Can we do this later?” I answered. “Look at this guy. He needs to go to the hospital.”
Pablo’s eyes flicked to the old man, then back to me. “Not my problem.”
“Come on. Act like a human being for once in your life. Get out your phone and call 911. I’ll wait with him.”
“You should worry about 911 for yourself. Have you got Mrs. Sullivan’s money?”
I sighed. “I ran from you, genius. What do you think?”
Pablo glared. “I think you act stupid and talk stupid. I’m not somebody you want to piss off.”
The guy with no eyes sniffed and pivoted back and forth. “They
Pablo took a second look at him, and then, a little curious despite himself, asked, “Is he nuts?”
“It seems like it,” I said.
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know. He was like this when I found-”
“Where is there a house?” the old man asked. “You need to get me inside.”
“Jesus Christ,” Pablo said. “I can’t believe you stopped to help… well, him. But that’s your tough luck.”
“Look,” I said, “I’m going to get the money.”
“You definitely are,” Pablo said. “Because I’m going to give you some motivation.” He unzipped the gym bag.
I rushed him. No point waiting for him to get the tire iron in his hand.
But I didn’t make it that far. Take the shivering note of a gong. Mix it with the throbbing you get in your chest when you stand right in front of the speakers at a rock concert. That’s the way I suddenly felt inside. It started in my arms and shoulders, where the old man’s zap had stabbed through me, and vibrated through my whole body. It made me dizzy, and I fell on my face.
By the time the dizziness passed, Pablo was standing over me with the tire iron raised. I gathered myself to lunge at his legs and tackle him.
His voice shrill, the old man wailed, “They’re here! Look and you’ll see!”
Pablo and I didn’t look. We were intent on one another. But we didn’t have to. Something swooped right between us.
It was a woman as tall as my hand is long, with the wings of an insect. But not cute like Tinkerbell. Black eyes bulged from a long, narrow head that reminded me of an Afghan hound. The toes and fingers looked like talons, and the whirring wings were the color of filth, like a roach’s.
Pablo yelped and jumped back, which probably saved me from a dented skull. I flinched, too. Another little flying woman thrummed past me on the right. When I jerked around in her direction, I saw that there were at least four of them, all whirling around Pablo, No Eyes, and me. Then they shot off into the dark.
We were all quiet for a second. Until, his voice an octave higher than before, Pablo said, “Moths.”
Hoping it would keep me from sounding as spooked as he did, I took a deep breath. “Whatever they were, they’re gone.”
“No!” the old man said. “Idiots! Why aren’t you listening to me? Those were scouts. Now that they’ve found me, they’ll bring the others.” He was right. I heard “the others” buzzing. Flying in a swarm, they sounded like a hive of angry wasps.
“Screw this,” Pablo said. Abandoning his gym bag where he’d dropped it on the ground, he turned around and ran.
I wanted to run right after him. Instead, I grabbed the old man and hauled him toward an abandoned house, with graffiti-covered plywood nailed across the windows. It was closer than the house with the TV glowing through the window, and I didn’t think we had a lot of time.
I was right. The buzzing grew louder, and then something bumped down on top of my head, not quite hard enough to hurt. I felt a tug as the fairy grabbed a handful of my hair. Then a little clawed hand reached down over my forehead for my right eye.
I snatched and yanked the fairy off my head, losing a few strands of hair in the process. She was upside down in my hand, but that didn’t stop her from ripping gashes in my skin. Bending her legs in a way no human could, she managed to use her feet as well as her hands.
Yelling, I simultaneously squeezed her and shook her like a dog shakes a rat. She went limp.
As I dropped her, a dozen of her sisters hurtled at me. Behind them droned fifty or a hundred more.
They were too close, and there were too many. There was nothing I could do to stop them from rat-packing the old guy and me. But I needed to. Needed it like I’d never needed anything before.
I felt another vibration ringing through my insides. But this time, it didn’t make me dazed or dizzy. Instead, I felt it shoot out of me, at the creatures I was frantic to push away.
The two or three fairies in the lead smashed into something I couldn’t see, like bugs splashing against a windshield. Their sisters stopped short and flitted back and forth. They seemed to be looking for a hole in the invisible wall.
Or waiting for it to fall down. As I suddenly sensed it would, and in just a few more seconds.
I’d let go of the old man to deal with the fairy that had landed on my head. I turned, looking for him, and found him on his knees with the twisted body of one tiny woman in his hand and a couple more crumpled in the grass around him. His ears dripped blood from cuts and scratches.
I realized the fairies had a system for hurting someone. First, they took his sight, and then they went after his hearing. The idea might have made me sick to my stomach, except that there wasn’t time.
I grabbed the old man and dragged him stumbling up the two concrete steps onto the stoop of the vacant house. The door didn’t have plywood nailed over it, but it was locked. I kicked it. The latch held.
The buzzing behind me got louder. I didn’t have to look to know there was nothing holding the fairies back anymore.
Bellowing, I booted the door again. It flew open and banged against the wall.
I lunged inside, jerked No Eyes in after me, slammed the door, and leaned against it. Since I’d broken it, I needed to brace it to keep it shut.
After a second, the fairies started pushing from the other side. Even with a bunch of them working together, they weren’t strong enough to shift the door and my weight, but in the long run, it probably wouldn’t matter. There was almost certainly a way for small creatures to slip inside such an old, dilapidated wooden building. They just had to hunt around and find it.
And I wouldn’t even see them coming. With the door shut, it was black inside.
I put my back to the door, then examined my bloody, throbbing hand by touch. The cuts weren’t deep. I guessed that was something.
“What are those things?” I asked.
“Brownwings,” panted the old man. Judging from the sound of his voice, he was still just a step or two away from me. “Lesser fey.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Well, there isn’t time to explain. We have to try to escape.”
“I’m all for that. How did you get away from them before?”
“I had a… well, call it a weapon. But it was like a gun with only one bullet.”
“And you can’t reload?”
A buzzing and pattering came from overhead. The brownwings were prowling around on the roof.
“No,” the old man said. “The imp only had to perform one service to earn its freedom. And without my eyes, it’s difficult to use my other talents.”
There was something funny about the way he was talking, and after a second, I figured out what it was. “You don’t sound very upset about losing your eyes just for their own sake.”
