Page 21 of Wild Moon

Chapter Eight

Dark Faeries

Unsure what the next few hours might bring, Tammy paced around the house.

Having somewhat resented the way Mom used to keep secrets from her—back before she could read minds—Tammy decided not to lie to Paxton. Besides, the kid adored faeries. It would be cruel not to let her hang out with Queen Maple while they waited for Allison to get here.

Of course, ‘Maple’ wasn’t really her name. Faerie names couldn’t really be spoken by humans or even comprehended. Annie decided to call her Maple due to the coloration of her hair and wings being similar to that of maple leaves. The faerie, who’d quite strongly taken a liking to the girl, embraced the name fully. It had been perhaps a risky thing to do, since faeries put much power in names. Especially dark faerie, who could steal a person’s whole being if they captured the name.

This magic, alas, fell outside the scope of what Tammy could do or even knew the inner workings of. As her modern sensibilities continued to merge with the experience of the bizarre dream-not-dream, she reached for yet another Star Wars reference. The ‘good’ faeries could also do the name-stealing thing. She compared it to ‘the force’ insofar as what made a faerie good or evil came entirely from how they used their magic. The ‘dark faerie’ were not a separate race of beings, merely jerks with wings who more or less ‘embraced the dark side’.

The dark ones had a nasty habit of trying to compensate for being tiny by summoning monstrous forms made of wood and earth, then inhabiting said forms. At first, it reminded her of one of the cartoons her brother liked where people climbed into giant robots to fight massive aliens, but the dark faerie couldn’t just ‘get out’ of whatever monstrosity they fused with. They’d essentially become the other creature. If she killed one, the faerie inside it may or may not survive.

According to Maple, any dark faerie they saw crawling out of the remains of a larger creature wouldn’t be a threat. They’d be too weakened and too afraid of being killed while weak to do anything other than flee. Maple didn’t seem particularly concerned over the idea of killing the dark ones. In fact, she kinda came off as wanting to go on a murder spree. It didn’t help they’d targeted Annie, which got her all sorts of fired up.

As far as the ‘why’ went, Tammy now understood the situation. She’d spent the past eight years or so learning about it… years that had been compressed into one long dream over one night in the real world. That part would never fully make sense, so she tried not to think about it.

The dark ones targeted Annie because of her power. Her proximity to the Red Rider during Mom’s confrontation with the ancient witch hunter resulted in the kid absorbing a little more than her fair share of magic in the resultant blast when the monster died. While the girl didn’t exactly possess planet-shattering levels of magic, she did have significantly more than almost any other mortal human.

This, of course, didn’t exactly saytoomuch since so few mortal humans had magic at all.

Still, the dark faeries were working to transform Annie into an abomination… a creature part human, part fey, and all evil. The process had a high likelihood of resulting in Annie’s death rather than being turned into a fiend. In that case, the dark ones would absorb her power and grow stronger. Maple feared if they succeeded, her realm would be destroyed. Obviously, the best possible result would be to stop the ritual before it went too far.

Tammy tried not to get too anxious. Waiting a few more minutes in the mortal world for Allison wouldn’t be noticeable on the other side.

She debated how to prepare, trying to decide between dressing up like a commando, keeping her ordinary t-shirt and jeans… or relying on a summoned garment of forest materials. For a few seconds, she started to consider bringing provisions—since this mission might effectively take several days. Within seconds of her starting to rummage the kitchen cabinets for canned goods, she remembered having magic.

Faeries sometimes made sweets like tiny cakes to eat for fun, but they didn’tneedto eat. However, both they as well as Tammy could use magic to cause fruits and vegetables to spontaneously grow whenever she got hungry. She’d been eating such fare for the entire time of her dream-not-dream.

That thought set off aseriouscraving for pizza. It felt like she hadn’t eaten pizza for a decade.

Heh,she thought to herself.I really haven’t.

No way would a pizza guy beat Allison here, so it would have to wait until they returned.

What’s wrong with me? I’m thinking about pizza when Annie’s fighting for her life?Tammy exhaled hard.Nerves. It’s gotta be nerves.

The doorbell rang without warning, startling a clipped yelp out of her.

“I got it!” called Paxton from the living room. The soft, rapid thuds of the girl running over carpet preceded the squeak of the door. “Oh, hi Allie.”

“Hey, kiddo,” said Allison, her voice stressed by the abrupt squeeze of a hug.

How does Mom deal with this stuff? These are only tiny dark faeries. Not like I’m taking on a giant demon.

Of course, her mother had two things going in her favor Tammy lacked. One: Mom happened to be an immortal, hence much more difficult to kill. Two: she had her kids to use as a mental focus as in: ‘If I don’t stop this (insert big evil problem here), my kids will suffer.’

Tammy had neither immortality nor children to protect. Going to help someone else’s daughter wasn’t quite the same as a mother fighting for her baby. Still, she had Maple and Allison on her side… assuming Allie went for the sales pitch and agreed to help.

Brave face time.

After a few breaths to psych herself up, Tammy left the kitchen, nearly bumping into Allison who’d already been heading that way. Paxton stayed close behind her, making no secret she planned to listen in on the conversation.

“Hey, Tam Tam,” said Allison, hugging her. “So what’s going on, kiddo? You said Annie is in trouble?”

Tammy explained the situation while Maple, hovering nearby, added various commentary along the lines of ‘exactly’ or ‘yeah, that.’ Of course, Allison couldn’t understand Maple.

“If I’m hearing you correctly, you want me to try to figure out a way into the dark faerie realm and find Annie?” Allison frowned.

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