Page 38 of Mud

“You scared, boys?” Erid said from the twins’ other side, wiping her own forehead with the back of her hand. She was scared, too, actually, even though she tried to sound amused. We all were.

“Pfft. A bunch of kittens need to do better than chop up some agents to scare me,” said who I assumed was Jim. His strained voice dripped with sarcasm.

Erid let out a short laugh. “Feel free to hide behind Erid. I’ll protect you, little ones.” The twins were older than her, but she liked to mess with them more often than not.

“Hey, Erid, you know why Rosabel is our favorite?” Jam said.

“Because wenever talkwhen we’re hanging out,” continued Jim without waiting for a reply.

I bit my tongue to keep that smile that crept up on me at bay. The twins were just messing with Erid, and I couldn’t see her face—too focused on my surroundings—but imagining it as she gasped all dramatically was indeed hilarious.

“You f?—”

“Erid,” Michael warned, cutting her off. “All of you, eyes ahead and mouths shut.”

“Yes, sir,” the twins muttered like they always did, just to get under his skin, but Michael was still trying to pretend he was immune.

“We’re approaching a small source of energy. Could be one of the other agents, but stay alert,” he said instead, and Erid and the twins had no reply to that.

Fuck, it was hot. I risked a quick glance at the brightafternoon sky, or what little of it I could see through the branches and the large leaves. The sound of the woods, animals running and birds chirping and leaves rustling, tried to calm me down, but my nerves were getting the best of me, which wasn’t usual. I was normally very calm when out on missions, but the lack of sleep was catching up to me.

And the fear.

The only bright side to this whole thing was that I knew beyond a doubt that Taland Tivoux wouldn’t come for me in a catfairie- and IDD agents-infested woods.

When we heard a twig snapping under someone’s foot, we all stopped in our tracks, still as the tree trunks surrounding us, eyes wide open and ears sharp. Insects buzzed and birds sang and the sound of water pouring somewhere nearby was in our ears. The heavy smell of wet soil was in our nostrils, so our senses were very limited to sight only.

Sight, and the fancy gadgets of the IDD that were supposed to tell us when something with significant magical energy was close—something they failed at spectacularly today.

The first catfairie landed on Michael’s right side from the branches above us, and slammed a huge paw onto the side of his face, taking him flying in the air before we’d had the chance to breathe in.

Then his friends joined us—another four of them, and they might not have been seven feet tall, but they were strong and they attacked us relentlessly.

There really was no time to even be pissed that that thing on Michael’s wrist hadn’t warned us, or that the catfairies had even figured out they should keep off the ground to remain undetected before they attacked.

There was no time for anything but to fight.

My instincts kicked in and my magic was at the ready, but the catfairies were fast. I’d seen a smaller one before in IDD’s jail, but these were very different. Their bodies were packed with muscle, their genital organs covered in silver fur, their eyes big and blue and perfectly alert. Claws on their paws that weren’t bigger than an inch, but they were curved and sharp.

And they hurt like hell. I found out just how much when one of them got me on the shoulder before I was able to pull my glove off with my teeth the way I usually did.

I fell against a tree trunk with a scream before I hit the ground. All the others were already fighting, too, and my ring heated up, my magic ready to be unleashed. It had become a reflex by then, so when I whispered the words of the spell and raised my hand at the catfairie, who had raised both paws over his head and was about to bring them down on my face, my magic burst out of my hand like wildfire and hit him straight in the chest. He flew a couple feet in the air and landed on the forest floor on his back with a loud thud. No flames burned his fur, even thoughmymagic looked like actual fire.

Redfires weren’t always the bright red my grandmother wished they would be (because hers was). Shades of orange and pink fell under the Redfire umbrella, and mine was a deep orange which looked like actual flames but wasn’t. It was cold—just magic—and the spell I cast on the catfairie worked exactly as it should.

Fighting spells were usually short and easy to memorize, a few Iridian words long each so we could use them effectively while fighting. The problem was that the shorter ones weren’t usually powerful enough to keep a five-foot-five catfairie with shoulders twice the size of mine downfor longer than a few seconds. So, by the time I made it to my feet, he was already struggling to get to his.

No big deal, though. That’s why bullets were my second-best friend.

I pulled the trigger as fast as my finger moved while another spell came alive from my other hand. Redfire magic and bullets rained upon the catfairie while he roared a strange, very cat-like sound and tried to get away, tried to hide behind a tree trunk. Three bullets and he fell to the ground again, the magic inside him weighing him down. It was a simple spell to slow his movements, to give me a moment to get close and personal so I could put a bullet between his eyes.

It worked. I pulled the trigger when I was still four feet away because I had a clear shot and the catfairie wasn’t moving anymore, even though his eyes were still half open, focused on me.

In that last moment before he died, I could have sworn he smiled.

I’d killed before—plenty of times, plenty of creatures, among them two Iridian criminals as well. I’d killed them all during missions, and I had no regrets. I’d cleansed the world from bad people, and this time was no different.

I turned to the others to find them already done with their own catfairies—except Erid, who was taunting hers, a five-foot tall creature with extra-large ears and a sneer on his unusual face that made goose bumps rise on my arms.

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