Krekrehen was the oldest fairy I'd ever seen. The blue plumage that grew from her neck was cultivated into a great mane that swept up over her head and down her back. From her wrists the plumage formed manches that trailed on the table. Like all high-caste fairies, she was not naked. Her tunic was seamless, skin-colored, and infinitely close fitting, but one could see the skirt that ended above her knees like a web of flesh. And as proof of her age, she flashed color seldom and subtly. So subtly, I could only barely notice the difference between her flashing skin and the unchanging color of her tunic. In contrast, the younger females around the table flashed like threatened mollusks as they chatted with one another. Hues of blue, green, pink, purple, and yellow flickered on their bodies as though fireworks were going off inside them. The most excited ones--the ones who talked the most (their language sounded like burbling streams)--flashed more rapidly than the tamer ones.
I knew well that fairies never cried, laughed, or otherwise emoted like we did unless they were emulating us for our comfort. Amongst themselves, they only flashed colors. It was like blushing, but intricate. The outer layer of their skin, which normally appeared charnel-white or gray (and occasionally other colors), was comprised of multifaceted cells that acted like millions of mirrors. Emotional states triggered the cells to turn and expand to reflect a specific color. One color flashing in a certain pattern on a certain body part communicated one particular emotion. I knew many of the basic flashes, as well as a few of the obscure ones humans weren't expected to know--and indeed, rarely did know. For example, I had a strong hunch, presently, that the young fairies around the table were talking about me because they flashed curiosity. Some of them occasionally showed the characteristically jilted pattern of humor. They were telling jokes about the boorish human who ate with a fork. They hadn't a clue how closely I was reading them. No fairies I met knew how familiar I was with them, because no fairies I met survived an encounter with me. That was my job: to take care of fairies.
Krekrehen flashed colors like a sunset sky, evenly and slowly, changing so slightly an average man would miss it. To the untrained eye, she held her basic color impeccably steady in the high-caste manner of obfuscation, almost perfectly matching her tunic. She began the evening a neutral, foggy-gray color--her basic skin color--but during our initial exchanges in the lobby, she acquired the uniform yellow tint of pride. Later, in the hall, we spoke of the Queen's commitment to her kingdom despite turmoil and terror. Naturally, her face and hands retained the yellow hue while the rest of her body returned to neutral: the flash of responsibility, loyalty, or stress. I saw her grow blue with irritation when I twice refused to let a servant girl take my coat and briefcase. When she insisted on behalf of the Queen's honor, and I still politely refused, the blue concentrated at her forehead: she was vexed. I'm sure Krekrehen had no idea her carefully controlled flashing was telegraphing me so much. But as the night progressed, and we met with other high-castes in a party chamber (the Queen still not having graced us with her presence), Krekrehen began flashing something that perplexed me.
Thankfully, I saw only female fairies in the chamber. A few of them totted shark-tooth sub-machine-guns, but that didn't worry me. Males on leashes would mean security was highly active. Everyone was milling about and socializing both in her own secret language, and in human English when addressing me. Although the fairies could have easily hovered in the room like humming birds, out of respect for me, they stood firmly on the floor with both legs. They nursed glasses of cowmilk, a beverage they cherished for its mysterious ability to inebriate them, and coveted for its rarity, for only humans raised cows. The milk dilated their skin cells. The naked fairies, those not high enough in status to merit clothes, shimmered bright white on their torsos, an effect usually reserved for rage or horror, but also elicited by drunkenness, especially when arrhythmic.
As many female fairies as I'd seen in my life, their bodies were still a source of wonder and intrigue for me. They resembled humans closely in shape, but, lacking a hard skeleton, they were lighter and more round. They were filled with a kind of vital jelly, a bath of complex, semi-solid liquids, which suspended nutrients and channeled electro-chemical messages. There were no distensions of bone in their joints, no protrusions under the skin like knuckles, ribs or even muscle. Tougher flesh formed the dome of their heads, but they had no cheekbones, or jaws, or eye-ridges. Their feet hadn't evolved for walking, so they seemed atavistic, like unformed appendages. Female fairies looked like washed out images of humans, ghost-impressions of the human form on the retina. However beautiful, they weren’t quite real. At least, that's how I thought of them when the time came to get rid of them. My conscience was puny, but it nevertheless demanded I relegate fairies to almost-real. With regard to male fairies, however, my imagination didn't have to work very hard in order to see them as monstrously inhuman, and thus requiring the full brunt of my aggression.
I kept to myself, drifting from one huddle to the next. I acted interested in the diatribes of the politically impassioned fairies and showed sympathy for their dozens of fellow kin lost to human assassins such as myself. I kept a firm grasp on my briefcase. Eventually, I closed in on a high-caste madame going on about the males of their race. She was drunk--her plumage was in disarray; her tunic partially concealed the white glow of the cowmilk intoxicating her. This one said she cursed the liberals who wanted to elevate male fairies from their current status of subordination. Males are unstable beasts, she professed, useful only as berserkers and for reproduction. I was about to suggest, needlessly, that the conditioning male fairies receive from birth by the Matriarch categorically insists they be bestial and unreasoning, like attack-dogs--but, suddenly, Krekrehen was beside me; I think she floated there. She wasn't drunk.
"You're not drinking?" she asked. She had begun to exhibit that perplexing flash. Waves of green pulsed slowly from her forehead down her body. At first, I almost didn't notice it. It was as minute and subtle as a heart beat visible on the surface of a human throat--just a tiny, regular, downward travel of the slightest shade of green. I wasn't sure whether I'd ever seen something like it before.
It caught me off guard. I cleared my throat. "No. No, sorry. I'm . . . I'm lactose intolerant. It's a condition. I have trouble digesting cowmilk."
"I didn't know humans suffered such a thing."
"Some of us are unfortunate enough."
Krekrehen considered our chatting neighbors for a moment, shifting her deep eye-orbs away from me briefly. That odd green flash crept down and down her skin like sheets of sand sweeping over the desert in a wind. I started feeling uneasy; I might have seen this flash before, maybe on several occasions, but I had never attributed it to any emotion.
She looked at me again. "The Queen is tired. As you
know, she leaves for
"I have total confidence in her."
"Mmm, yes. She may not appear at supper, but you are still welcome to eat with some of the girls and me. I will take you to the throne room after supper."
"I'm indebted."
"Be that as it may." Krekrehen peered appraisingly at me as she spoke: "Ten
fairies died in an ambush in
I sighed as I listened. "I'm ashamed of my own kind. We have such trouble shedding our violent past."
The green waves traveling down her surged in speed and intensity. I couldn't help trying to decipher her facial features for a clue, but, of course, they didn't change. She inched toward me, gliding an inch above the ground. As the Queen's heir, Krekrehen felt herself too important to walk like a human. "Yes. Why don't you let us relieve you of your burden?"
She meant my briefcase. That was the fourth time she'd asked to confiscate it under the pretense of etiquette. I hesitated. The strange green flash she exhibited was no longer subtle, and I finally recognized it. I had encountered the same flash from other fairies who had seemed smarter, more cautious, and observant. These fairies had never let me stray from their sights, though their peers trusted me. The green, downward-traveling flash was probably akin to suspicion. Krekrehen did not trust me. Krekrehen was suspicious. And I couldn't kill her yet, not in the crowded chamber--unless I took everyone else out as well.
Which was possible. I could empty the whole room. It would be a slaughter, but somebody in the Maison would hear the commotion and take the Queen away. I couldn't afford to let the Queen escape. I needed Krekrehen and the Queen together, and it had to happen tonight. Whatever the cost, both fairies had to die tonight.
I offered the briefcase to Krekrehen. "Come to think of it, I am getting a little tired of carrying this thing around."
She was motionless, but the pink flash of surprise or fear overlaid her suspicion.
I continued, "In any case, I'm sure the Queen doesn't
need any extra documents to read, with her trip to
Krekrehen called for a servant girl in her burbly language. This girl hadn't had any cowmilk. She trotted clumsily to us, obviously not well practiced in human walking. Her plumage and manches were short and pixy-like; her naked body flashed shyness or anxiety. Krekrehen commanded her. The girl took my briefcase (she was surprised at how heavy it was) and reached for my coat with her free hand. I started defensively. Krekrehen splayed her hands in an apologetic gesture. "You must be weary of your coat. Let us relieve you of it. You're among friends."
As naturally as possible, I shrugged off the coat and gave it to the servant girl. She briefly genuflected her knees--it looked like a curtsy--then trotted away. In the briefcase she carried, the one so heavy she was bent sideways trying to keep it above the floor, nested my wild-card, my power-play. In that briefcase nested my key out of any deadly situation I got myself into. It had saved my life before, but I would have to do without it now.
Krekrehen's skin had cleared back to her neutral, foggy-gray. She had no further reason to suspect me. I was a lone man in a Maison full of fairies; a palace guarded by sentries with automatic weapons, and only a few feet below me lay a basement full of male berserkers ready to eat aggressors alive. I was here by myself, and I had no weapons.
Well, no weapons other than the dual, laser-sighted,
silenced JA Tactical pistols holstered under my shoulder blades, beneath my
shirt, along with six clips of
I smiled pleasantly. "Thank you. It's warm in here anyway."
Uncharacteristic of fairies, Krekrehen nodded. Then she did something that almost ended my mission--and her life--in one instant: Perhaps out of the desire to make me feel at ease after having grilled me, she reached out to put her strange, boneless hand on my back.
I pivoted and intercepted her hand with my shoulder. She squeezed my shoulder. "We welcome your presence, human. You represent our hope that the Mundane can coexist with us."
"That, I do," was the first thing I could think to reply.
So, now we sat around a marble table--Krekrehen, her fellow girls, and I--dining on floating food and fruit. And she watched me with those smooth eye-orbs, the green flash absent from her skin. One of the girls timidly asked me what I was wearing around my neck. Krekrehen protested, but I didn’t mind. In fact, it was a welcomed distraction.
"It's a tie," I said. "Part of my attire."
Her English was poor, and she had a strong accent. "You are Mundane important?"
I took hold of my tie, chuckling. The sound must have been odd to her ears, like obstructed breathing. "You could say that. I'm fairly important. But that's not why I wear a tie. It's just decoration. Like a tunic. Although red really isn't my color.
"Red?"
"Red . . . well, when you wear red, as a human, it tends to mean . . . passion, aggression. That sort of thing."
The girls looked confused (but not as confused as those who couldn't understand English). Krekrehen spoke up. "Human blood is red."
I nodded. "That's right. When we feel embarrassed, or threatened, or angry . . . or aroused, our blood rises close to our skin and makes us turn a little red. It's like flashing, but it helps us be more active and defensive. And when we are wounded or we kill animals, we can see the red of the blood."
Krekrehen continued: "Over millions of years, red came to mean all those things that blood means. Red is like white for fairies."
I blinked curiously at her, wondering how she learned human psychology so well. Her training in politics and diplomacy must have been thorough. She fell silent, and none of the girls extended the conversation, whether they had understood or not.
Later, she rose and addressed the girls in fairy language. Their rapid-fire flashing, which reminded me so much of mollusk color shifting, sobered into a bright yellow loyalty. Then, she said to me: "The Queen will see you now."
Krekrehen led me into the Queen's pedestal room. Four female guards with automatic weapons joined us on the way, gliding over the ground. There were more suspended in the air along the walls. Strings of shark-teeth dangled from the ammunition feeders of their firearms. The guards bore grenades of glass-splinters on their thick tunics. I wore no Kevlar armor in order to avert the scrutiny of Maison security, but a shoot-out wouldn’t necessarily be lethal, as long as I dispatched my targets and extracted myself from the situation quickly. If not, things would become very painful for everyone.
The ceiling here was supported by a small forest of marble columns. In the center of the room, a staircase--wide at its base but narrowing with every step up--climbed towards the top of the pedestal, above which the Queen hovered like a wingless, slate-gray hummingbird. Her legs were tucked beneath her. Her eye-orbs were covered over. The plumage from her neck, shoulders, and wrists hung down and piled on the pedestal. The Queen was far older than Krekrehen. She was the Arch-Matriarch of the fairies; their Mother in spirit and heart. As we approached, she opened her eyes and looked down at us from the pedestal.
Krekrehen stopped beside the staircase and looked at me. I stopped before the stairs. The guards who accompanied us were in a square formation behind me. Krekrehen announced our arrival in fairy language. She introduced me. In English, she said: "Now tell our Queen your business."
"Your Majesty, Queen Mother of
the
The Queen said nothing. She simply hovered. I put my hands
in my back-pockets and took a couple steps up the stairs. I was fully aware of
how rude my behavior must have appeared, but I gambled that the fairies would
blame my crude Mundane upbringing for the breach of
manners. "I realize what tremendous time pressures your Majesty constantly
wrestles, so I will be concise. Have I your Majesty as an audience?" Still, no response; not the slightest flash of color.
"As you know, newly rekindled violence is flaring up all over the world.
Tragically, no country is innocent. Some of the most daring and destructive
triggermen, who have claimed so many fairy lives, have unfortunately turned out
to be American outlaws." I ventured higher up the stairs. Krekrehen turned to watch me. "The
A servant girl, flashing the agitated, bright pink of surprise or fear, burst into the room, carrying my briefcase. It was so heavy for her she couldn't fly. She dragged it directly towards the staircase, burbling Krekrehen's name loudly. I could understand the syllables of the name even though I didn't know the language--the consonants were soft and subtle. Krekrehen and I spun around. She also went pink, but not as drastically. More profound were the rings of suspicion sweeping down her body when she saw my briefcase. Somebody had been snooping. Somebody had discovered what was inside it. And the stupid servant girl had brought it all the way here. I was going to require its services very soon.
Due to the present confusion, I had a few moments to spare. I bounded up the last steps of the staircase just as Krekrehen was ignoring me to open the briefcase. My hands were still in my back-pockets. I slipped them out and un-tucked the back of my shirt from my pants. The stairs did not go all the way to the pedestal: a gap of about two yards separated them, and between them was a free-fall to the floor. I reached the final step.
Below me, the guards were distracted by the commotion over the briefcase. Krekrehen dropped it on the floor after seeing its contents. Papers spilled out, and it toppled to its side and snapped shut. Her skin cells expanded to their capacity, and in a heartbeat she was glowing white all over. Her plumage stiffened. She looked up at me and yelled a signal fairy syllable to the guards, but it was too late.
My hands behind my back, I reached under my shirt and grasped the pistol-grips of my two silenced JA Tactical handguns. A sharp tug freed them from the holsters. I withdrew them, cocking the hammers and flicking on the laser-sights with my thumbs in mid-draw. The lasers were trained on the Queen’s forehead before the guards around us had a chance to lift their weapons, and the old gray woman didn't have time to flash anything at all. In hindsight, I think she was expecting this day. Two red dots of death steadied on her forehead, but she wasn't going to move. She knew as well as the Mundane that the fairy race was doomed.
I squeezed the triggers: one, two. It sounded like two chirps of a bird.
The spiraling forty-five caliber bullets corkscrewed into her soft dome. No skull slowed or reflected them--they went right through to the other side, their torque completely exploding her head. The deluge of fluid, fragments, and plumage rained down, some of it striking me even at my distance. She was rocked backwards. A split-second later she started to fall.
All fairies in the room flashed angry white and dropped all Mundane pretenses. Those on the ground shot into the air, except Krekrehen, who probably knew she wouldn't survive, and the servant girl, who was petrified. These creatures were as bright as beacons, angelic in their rage. I heard shrieking. I spun and crouched to face my most immediate threats: the four guards who had been standing at the bottom of the staircase behind me. Now they were flying at my level in the air, still in a general square formation. I held my pistols akimbo and fired both. Each bullet passed through two guards.
At the base of the pedestal, the Queen landed on marble tiles. She spilled out creamy fluids from her open cavity like a toppled wine bottle. The former Queen was dead. Long live the new Queen.
I angled my pistols down at Krekrehen, the only heir of the kingdom, and fired. One round severed her neck, the other blasted through an eye-orb as her head separated. She hit the ground at the same time as the four guards. By now, the remaining guards, and there were plenty, came swarming over me. Their sub-machineguns hissed to life, and rows of lightning fast shark-teeth bounced all over the stairs. Some bit into my skin. I took two more guards out of the air just as I dropped off the edge of the stairs, landing between the underside of the staircase and the pedestal. The structures created a sort of marble lean-to. Here, I had a few moments of cover to brace against the pain of the fall. In five seconds I'd shot eight rounds and eight fairies were dead.
Not far from me, staring at me in white-hot terror, was the servant girl. My briefcase lay at her feet. I put a single round between her tiny breasts, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn't let one fairy in the entire Maison survive to bear testament. The high-velocity bullet holed out her chest and blew everything out her back.
Guards descended to get a clear shot at me under the staircase. I fired both pistols alternately, truncating a gun-wielding arm, decapitating, and detrunking. I counted my rounds. Searing pain dug into my back. The guards behind me had let loose a flurry of shark-teeth. Dozens lodged into me as I shielded my face with one hand, turned sideways to show less target area, pointed the other pistol behind me, and emptied the clip--the last ten rounds. Three bodies lay on the ground, caved in and limbless. The others had ducked to either side behind the pedestal and staircase. The spent clip slipped out of the pistol-grip to the floor.
Determined to keep the advantage, I rushed out where the guards had been. They were unprepared, waiting to spring around the corners en masse and finish me off. I plugged the three of them, but barely had enough time to cover my head and aim as a fourth guard floating above me went fully automatic. She had enough time to squeeze off about ten shark-teeth into my arm, hand, and skull before disintegrating into a cloud of blue and white offal that coated my suit. My bones kept the shark-teeth from going in more than halfway deep, but I bled profusely. I ducked back between the pedestal and staircase.
I ran out the other side directly for my briefcase lying on the floor, but a stream of shark-teeth intercepted me. I diverted my coarse and slammed my back against a marble column. The teeth already stuck in me plunged further. Teeth ricocheting off the column sprinkled around me. Whoever was shooting was out of her senses. She fired her entire ammunition string, and as soon as the hissing of her weapon stopped, and I heard its mechanism make rapid, empty clicks, I walked out into the open. She was floating a few yards away from me; she dropped her weapon and grabbed a glass-splinter grenade. I set the laser-sight of my only loaded pistol on her chest and blew her back against the wall. She bounced off and dropped. I caught movement on the other side of the room, fluttering plumage. I emptied the clip in that direction as I ran for the briefcase. The shed clip bounced on the tiles. A guard leaned out from behind a column and lobbed a grenade at me.
Without slowing, I kicked the briefcase as hard as I could toward my favorite cover: the pedestal and staircase. I covered my eyes with a wrist. The grenade struck a column and changed trajectory, which probably saved my life. I heard it explode far away, but it was packed so densely, thin shards of glass still found me. White splinters entered the right side of my body. When I reached my cover to reload, my suit was dark with blood. I crouched, set down the pistols, and ripped two more clips off the small of my back. I held the clips in one hand, and the pistols, side-by-side, in the other--I shoved both clips in at once. Outside the Queen's pedestal room came the burbling sounds of fairy shouts and the bestial, throaty roars of fairy males. Reinforcements were approaching. I pulled back both pistol slides to chamber the first rounds.
The briefcase had settled beside the stairs. I wanted it badly, but I couldn't let the guards throw too many more grenades. If I lost my eyes from shrapnel, even fairies could end my career. I sprang from my cover and zigzagged from one column to the next, hiding behind every one. The two last guards hovered in a corner, firing whenever they saw me. One of them swooped around like a dive-bomber, shooting shark-teeth like a maniac. I covered my face, fired with the free pistol, and heard her screech. She landed in front of me, one of her legs missing above the knee. One more round hollowed her out.
The remaining guard waited for me to show myself, but I didn't. She threw her grenade. It rolled past my column. My back flat against the column, I slid around to the other side. The grenade exploded, filling every inch of the marble I had been resting against a second ago with glass splinters. Now facing the guard, I brought up both pistols and took out her mid-section. She erupted like a plum. The reinforcements swept into the room through the main entrance.
I ran sideways down an alley of columns. The newcomers were archers who traveled with the Queen and trained her males. They had white tunics on, a symbol of death, and shaved their bodies of plumage. They spread out into the room, searching for the army that had splattered the whole room with bodies and fairy gore. As I retraced my steps toward the pedestal and stairs, I saw about a half dozen male berserkers enter.
Males were taught to walk on all four limbs. Some of them crawled like dogs, others crab-walked on their backs. They moved very quickly, like spiders. Of the two fairy sexes, only males had anything as hard as bone on their bodies: sharp ridges that could cut like blades lined the inside of their mouths, and their thumbs were sharp tusks. Everything else about them was tough and leathery. I knew from experience not to let them get close, so I opened fire on one of the dog-crawlers before any of them had spotted me. It took five bullets to get his attention, five to slow down his full-galloping advance, and five more to dismantle his head. His legs collapsed and his momentum carried him sliding past me. I used him as a stepping stool to jump over. I tried heading for my briefcase, but three arrows carved from animal bone slammed into the floor near me. They snapped on the marble tiles; in me, they would have sunk deep. I kneeled behind a column.
Pacing males roared with hatred, wondering where I went. I heard one huff through his nostrils a few feet away from me. Flying archers circled the room, now well aware of my location. I encouraged them to seek shelter with the remainder of both clips emptied at anything that moved. Hoping I had at least five seconds of peace, I dropped the pistols, ripped fresh clips from my back, and reloaded. One archer high on the ceiling had not been scared into hiding. She took aim at me before I had chambered my rounds. The others emerged with their bows raised. I braced to feel the first bone arrow enter my body, but three male berserkers came skidding around the column into her line of sight. One male pounced on me; the other two climbed over him to reach me. Together, they absorbed every arrow intended to kill me.
I was under a dog pile of berserkers. The male directly on top of me was a crab-walker, which allowed him to either look over his chest and skitter forwards, or drop his head, look at the world upside-down, and skitter backwards—as he had been doing before he attacked me. His upside-down mouth opened wide to bite a chunk of my face off. His breath smelled like carrion. (I remembered hearing that weak males were fed to the stronger ones.) The males atop him fought to have a clear swipe at me with their bony tusks.
I jammed the barrels of both pistols into his ridged maw and pulled the triggers to the limits of semi-automatic. Thirty bullets traversed lengthwise through his body, filleting his viscera and striking the males who were clambering over him. They all collapsed around me and bled out. The archers darted between columns, vying for an angle to shoot me. Their arrows stuck in the lifeless bodies of the males. I peeked past the crab-walker who’d almost bitten off my nose, wincing through fairy blood. I aimed at the archers. My rounds blasted out the dead male’s throat and sent two archers diving into the floor. I fired until the pistol slides locked open. The acute stench of burnt fairy flesh and powder created a pungent mélange. When I pulled the guns out of his destroyed mouth, they were plastered with slime. Smoke curled out of the barrels and the open chamber. I tossed the pistols aside.
I clawed my way out from under the males and dived for my briefcase near the stairs. An arrow grazed my calf, slitting it open. I grabbed the briefcase and held it up as a shield as I hurried between the pedestal and staircase again, deflecting needles of bone that streaked through the air. The briefcase had no lock; I quickly opened it and brushed aside the papers used to conceal what was beneath--a weapon that would have avoided all the needless pain I was feeling: a custom JA Tanaka automatic rifle. It was a boxy, untraditional bullpup design, with the trigger under the front end of the barrel, and a horizontal fifty round magazine of ninety caliber, cross-tipped slugs loaded along the top. This was a masterpiece of Japanese engineering. This was an armored-car stopper.
This was a veritable fairy depopulator.
It was already loaded. I tore it from the Velcro latches that secured it to the briefcase and held it in one hand. I flicked on the laser-sight with my thumb. I snapped shut the briefcase and took it with me for the extra magazines contained inside it.
The gash in my calf made walking slow, but I could take my sweet time, now. I emerged from cover in fearless stride; I was the picture of human relentlessness and imperviousness. I was the avatar of the Mundane world rolling over the fairy society.
The last two male berserkers scrambled toward me on all fours. They leaped into the air like wolf-spiders, tusks thrust out to impale me. I went fully automatic for two seconds, letting the recoil of the Tanaka push the barrel up to follow the males. The kickback almost ripped the rifle out of my fist, and the noise was concussive enough to rupture fairy ears. The males flipped in midair, landed, and slid to a stop in front of me, their bodies hammered through with rounds. The exit wounds were gaping excavations. Each slug had split into quadrants on its way out.
Archers fled high in the room. I dropped the briefcase to grip the Tanaka in both hands, leveled up to the first archer and exploded her against the ceiling. An arrow whined past my ear. I pivoted around and sent chains of bullets across the room. The yellow muzzle-flash sprouted like a five-pointed star from the barrel of the rifle. Marble fractured and popped into chunks and dust. Rows of bullet holes made beelines along the walls and columns. One archer caught in the hail spun like a ballerina and spurted fluid as she fell.
Another tried to escape out the main entrance during the ensuing silence, but I squeezed off a burst of fire that sent her crashing into a tapestry. They offered no more resistance. The archers—last line of defense for the dead Queen—cowered behind columns, the top of their bald heads pressed against the ceiling. A few abandoned their bows. I paced around, sweeping the laser-sight in every corner. I shot until every last archer fell to the ground, opened up like pummeled fruit.
I loaded a fresh magazine from the briefcase in total peace, bracing my senses as pain ebbed in to replace the new vacuum of adrenaline, testosterone, and all the other hormones. The Maison was quiet throughout. Over the floor, across the chipped marble surfaces, on the stairs: the Queen’s pedestal room was smeared with the spilled fluid of fairies. Leaves of plumage were plastered in the wet mess. The pedestal itself was spattered with the brains of the headless Queen herself. Fairy corpses sprawled out in varying states of mayhem, the white flash of rage still fading from their gradually contracting skin cells.
Krekrehen’s head, lying on its side, was brightest of all: one eye-orb stared wide in pure condemnation at the vilest Mundane traitor in the history of the “fairy troubles”—at the most destructive triggerman to snake his way into the secret world of the beautiful, ghost-like fairies.
My ears rang. I walked out with my Tanaka and briefcase, limping from the gash in my calf, clenching my teeth against the countless foreign objects imbedded in my skin. The Maison was deserted. All the girls had fled. When I passed a window case displaying artwork in the hall, I saw my reflection. I was black with my blood and glistening with fairy gore. I looked as though I’d been attacked by a school of sharks that had all left their teeth in me. The right side of my body was a glass cactus.
As I exited the double doors of the Maison into the cool night, I foresaw the demise of the fairy kingdom. A movie of it played in my mind. There would be legislature, tanks, battering rams, prison camps. The Mundane would rise like a tsunami and stomp out the fairy species. The whole thing was unfortunate. If only the fragile creatures had been less optimistic, less naïve. If only they’d never trusted human representatives. If only they’d never revealed their existence at all, and left us thinking we were alone on the planet. With the Queen and Krekrehen dead, The Mundane wouldn’t need my services anymore. The biggest trigger job of the century was done, and now all the thugs and skull-crushers could fight over the rest.
My tie flapped over my shoulder. It was red like blood, red like violence and hostility. But to be even more appropriate, I should have worn a white tie for the spilled pearly guts and fiery rage I’d induced.
I stashed the Tanaka in some bushes and disappeared into the streets.