Fairy Bad Day (11 page)

Argh?

For a moment Emma blinked before realizing the creature had stiffened and raised its giant, corded hands up to its ears. Then she caught sight of Loni standing directly behind it with the subsonic blaster she’d just spent the last six months building. Tyler was next to her, clutching the thin rapier that he preferred, ready for action. As the darkhel continued to clutch at its ears, obviously trying to cut out the low-frequency noise that Loni’s invention was emitting, Emma had all the time she needed to roll away and flip back up to her feet just as the creature turned and raised a giant arm at the unsuspecting Loni.

“Run!”
Emma screamed as she realized her friends didn’t have a clue about where the darkhel was attacking from. At the same time she reached down and grabbed her sword before thrusting it deep into the creature’s hamstring. The impact almost sent her reeling again, but she balanced herself and pulled the sword out. The darkhel seemed to sag as it spun back around to face her, its eyes blazing.

“You know,” it said in a low, guttural voice, “you really are your mother’s daughter.”

Emma, who had just been about to plunge her sword into its arm, felt her weapon drop away as a sense of disbelief washed over her. “Wh-what did you just say?”

The beast needed only that one second of hesitation to get to its feet, and before Emma could even open her mouth, it had spread out its gigantic wings and lifted off the ground into the air.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Y
our mother?” Loni shot Emma a blank look half an hour later as she handed her another ice pack. “Are you definitely sure that’s what it said?” Loni asked as she stood up and started to pace the cramped space in her dorm room.

“Absolutely, one hundred percent positive. It said I am my mother’s daughter.” Emma put the pack on her aching arm and tried not to groan out loud from the pain. She and Loni and Tyler had decided to go back to Loni’s room in case anyone had seen Emma’s one-sided fight and told Kessler about it. Of course, if they had, it wouldn’t take long for him to find her. All he needed to do was follow the blood trail. At least they had managed to clean up the cut on her head, but it still throbbed in protest.

“Okay, so we’ve got a creature that no one has ever heard of and no one can see except you,” Tyler said from over by the window as he ticked off the words with his fingers.

“You forgot to add that it fights like a ninja. Honestly, you guys, I feel like my arm is going to fall off. The darkhel’s skin is thicker than a dragon’s. How is that even possible?” Emma asked.

“How is any of this possible?” Loni rubbed her forehead in bewilderment. “I mean, you have no idea how weird it was that I could see you fighting and talking to something but there was nothing there. I don’t know how sight-blind people deal with it.”

“They don’t have to deal with it, because for the most part they don’t even know it’s out there,” Tyler reminded her. “So don’t be feeling sorry for civilians, feel sorry for us. I mean, we know how dangerous elementals are, yet there was nothing we could do to help.”

“Trust me, you helped. And besides, you definitely don’t want to see the darkhel. I’ve fought brentton demons that are better-looking than this thing.” Emma put down the ice pack and rubbed her sore eye. “The problem is that I have no idea where to go from here.”

“I’ll tell you where we go, straight to Kessler.” Loni finally stopped her pacing and sat down on the bed. Emma instantly shook her head (remembering too late that head shaking, along with everything else, hurt).

“I hate to say it, Em, but Miss Zodiac’s right,” Tyler agreed.

“I can’t go to Kessler,” she told her two friends. “I’ve tried that already and managed to get myself stuck with detention. I think I’ve become the girl who cried wolf. Or in this case, the girl who cried invisible fairy. I can’t risk being expelled.”

“Yes, but Emma, I think you’re forgetting something here,” Tyler said.

“What?”

“That thing tried to kill you.” Loni took over, and Emma realized that her two friends were so busy agreeing with each other that they were forgetting to bicker. “I mean, granted I couldn’t see it happening, but I certainly saw you being flung around the quad like you were a rag doll.”

“Yeah, I’ve never seen you have your butt whipped like that since . . .
well, never.
I mean even when you had to take on that mammoth Department guy who came to teach us some hand-to-hand combat techniques last year, you totally beat him. I actually made a lot of money on that fight,” Tyler reminisced for a second before Loni jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. “Which is entirely beside the point.” He coughed. “The point is that thing was totally taking you down.”

“I know.” Emma rubbed her bruised arm. “And the worst thing is that so far I have no idea where the kill spot is.”

“Did you try the neck?” Tyler asked, instantly curious, since like dragons, the huge salamanders that he fought were fire elementals and so they shared the same kill spot (not to mention the same love of roasting their victims in flames).

“Neck, heart, and spinal cord, and I swear each time I got a clear strike.” Emma paused to rub her still-aching shoulder. “Yet it just looked at me like I was some sort of annoying mosquito. I have no idea what’s going to happen the next time I have to fight it.”

“Next time?” Loni’s voice started to turn high-pitched. “You think there’s going to be a next time? Because that’s even more reason why we should go to Kessler.”

“I promise, if I thought there was any chance Kessler would listen to me, I would go and see him, but aside from all of my aches and pains, we have no proof—”

“Wait.” Tyler cut her off and suddenly darted over to Loni’s laptop and started to tap away at the keyboard. “That’s it!”

“What’s it?” Loni demanded.

“We get proof that you were fighting the darkhel and then Kessler will have to believe you,” he said as his fingers continued to fly across the keyboard.

“How?” Loni demanded.

“Okay, so this is completely off the record, but I might happen to know how to get into Burtonwood’s security system. They put out an EMR pulse every two minutes to make sure all the wards are working and that no elementals enter the grounds.”

Loni widened her eyes. “Tyler Owens, how exactly do you have the security clearance to get into that system?”

He grinned. “Let’s just say I know someone who was dumb enough to bet against Ruby the cockroach, and then when they couldn’t pay what they owed me, they offered me the code in lieu of cash.”

“You know how to hack into the surveillance system because of a bet you made on an insect?” Emma double-checked to make sure she was hearing right.

“That’s correct. I mean, it’s not my fault if people continue to underestimate the speed of a five-legged cockroach.” He gave an unrepentant shrug. “Anyway, the thing is that Emma was fighting the darkhel for at least ten minutes, which means there should be some sort of image, and maybe we can get some clues from the thermal resonance.
Of course it would help if I knew what I was looking for
,” he added with a frown.

“You get us in and I can do the rest,” Loni assured him as she leaned over his shoulder. “And Tyler, I’m going to be wanting these codes. I still can’t believe you held out on me like this.”

“Most girls want flowers and chocolate, but you want a security code,” Tyler quipped as he continued to tap away at the keyboard, pausing only to wince as Loni hit him on the arm. “Ouch. Anyway, Miss Zodiac, here’s your EMR. Make of it what you will.”

“So what does it say, Lon?” Emma watched as her friend intently studied the computer screen.

“It says . . . oh.” Loni frowned as she nudged Tyler out of the way so she could sit down and start tapping something on the keyboard. Then she softly swore under her breath. “According to this, there was no elemental activity at all.” She scrolled down the page. “And this is going back until ten yesterday morning when you first saw it. Okay, that idea is officially a bust. So how did it get through the wards and through an EMR scan undetected?”

“And more to the point, why can Emma see it?” Tyler added as the frown lines continued to gather on his face like a storm. “You know, this is one bet that I wouldn’t back.”

“I know. It makes no sense.” Loni continued to stare at the screen.

“Preaching to the choir,” Emma assured them as she gingerly got to her feet and walked over to the window. “Problem is, that thing is out there. Somewhere. And we don’t know anything about it. What if it’s hunting right now?”

“All the more reason to tell Kessler,” Loni persisted.

“Can’t. Expelled, remember?”

“I don’t like it.” Loni shook her head so hard that her silver hoops started to jangle. “In fact, sometimes I think you’re the Taurus and not me because you have one hell of a stubborn streak.”

“Not stubborn, I just don’t want to get kicked out of Burtonwood. Especially since right now all I want to do is find out how this thing knew my mom. I think we should go to the library and see if we can . . . what?” Emma paused as she realized her friend was looking at her like she had just suggested they both fly to Paris and jump off the Eiffel Tower together.
“Just because I’m not a fan of studying doesn’t mean I can’t do it when I need to.”

“It’s not that.” Loni reached over and picked up a hand mirror that had been sitting on a pile of astrology books. “But you might want to have a look at yourself before you think of going out.”

Emma held up the small mirror and flinched as she realized what her friend meant. Her bottom lip was puffed up like Angelina Jolie’s, while the rest of her face was a picture of cuts and bruises. Not that it was uncommon for Burtonwood students to walk around sporting worse injuries, but right now, after everything that had happened, she didn’t really want to draw too much attention to herself.

“Look,” Loni said in a diplomatic voice. “How about Tyler and I head over to the library and see what we can find on darkhels while you have an early night and try and stop looking like you’ve just gone ten rounds with some unknown elemental. Deal?”

Emma wanted to say no, but she recognized the determined gleam in Loni’s eyes. Besides, normally after a fight, she either felt exhilarated or despondent, depending on the outcome, but right now all she felt was numb. So maybe, she decided, having some time to herself would help her process what had just happened.

An hour later she was back in her own room and she had extracted a promise from Loni and Tyler that they would call if they found anything.
“And I mean anything,”
she had repeated to ensure that her friends understood how important it was. After they left, Emma sat down and started to methodically clean her sword. It wasn’t her favorite part of being a slayer, but there was something strangely soothing about falling into a routine that her mom had first taught her almost seven years ago.

She carefully put some oil on a soft cloth and ran it along the smooth surface, determined to remove all of the dark black blood that was smeared along on it. As she cleaned she tried to figure out what was going on.

What was the darkhel?

How did it know who she was?

How did it know who her mom was?

And finally, what did it want?

However, the more she thought about it, the more it felt like she was doing one of Professor Edwards’s pop quizzes, where the questions all swirled into one and there was more chance of her growing horns and a tail than there was of figuring out the answers.

She finished with her sword and carefully slipped it back into its sheath; then she went through and checked that all her other weapons were in order. Finally, after sending both Loni and Tyler yet another text to see if they’d found anything (
no
and
no
were the synchronized replies), Emma reluctantly got ready for bed and turned off the light.

She half expected to have problems keeping her eyes shut, after everything that had happened, but instead, the minute her head touched the pillow, she fell asleep.

Unfortunately, with sleep did not come peace, and her dreams were dotted with visions of her mom. Her long brown hair, so like Emma’s own, was dragged away from her forehead, while her lips were pursed in concentration as she showed Emma the best way to hamstring a dragon. Emma’s own attempts were clumsy and ineffective, and she was just about to ask her mom to show her again, but before she could, the injured dragon suddenly morphed into a darkhel.

In her sleep Emma jumped at the sight of the dark, vile creature, and she turned to her mom for help. But instead of fighting it, her mom just shrugged her shoulders and put down her sword so she could walk over to where the creature was standing.

What are you doing?
Emma screamed.
Get away from it!

It’s fine, darling. I just need to talk to it for a moment. If it hurts me, then you can just kill it.

What? But I don’t know how to kill it. Where’s the kill spot? Why do you need to talk to it? Mom, what’s going on?

But her mom didn’t answer. Instead she stretched out her hand toward the darkhel, and Emma watched in horror as the creature opened its hideous misshapen mouth to reveal its sharp white teeth. Emma tried to race toward them, but she suddenly felt like the weight of a hundred bricks was pressing down on her limbs and her chest, pushing her deep into the bed and—

But whatever was about to happen next suddenly dissolved in her mind like the tide washing away a sandcastle as the sound of the alarm rang in her ear. For a moment she just lay there in a tangle of sheets and sweat. The alarm rang again and this time she jumped out of bed, eager to push away any remnants of the dream. The dream where her mom seemed to be hiding something from her. She quickly got dressed so that she could join Loni and Tyler and see if they’d had success in finding answers to the question that had been going around in her mind like a carousel. What exactly was a darkhel?