This story stands fully alone, so you'll be able to understand it even if you've never read the Guild Hunter series. All you need to know is that this is a world that includes angels and vampires as well as humans.
For GH series readers, this story is set after Archangel's Shadows and contains some spoilers for earlier books in the series.
A Small Fairy Tale
By Nalini Singh
Talu couldn't believe it when she saw the tiny metal fairy standing peering out of a small nook in the side wall of an old brownstone. She was wedged into a spot with a missing brick, as if someone had left her there for safekeeping... but there was no one around here and Talu saw no signs that anyone used this little space between two identical brownstones as a home.
The brownstones were both in a section of the street that had red "Demolition Zone" signs plastered on the houses as well as on the fence she'd climbed to get inside. The houses were all empty, with smashed windows and nothing of value left inside. She'd looked in each one, hopeful of finding a small forgotten something she could maybe sell to get food. But whoever had cleaned out those places had taken everything, even cables and wires from inside the walls and the lights from the ceilings.
Tired to the bone after her fruitless searching, she'd thought about squatting for the night in one of the brownstones but they didn't look very stable... and they were so empty, so broken.
She'd decided she'd rather be outside, had been about to crawl into this protected little space between the two brownstones when she saw the fairy. Again, she looked around to make sure it didn't belong to anyone. She wouldn't take it if someone needed it--but again, all she saw was emptiness.
Rubbish lay along the entire space--crushed cans, yellowing newspapers, long petrified and moldy orange peels--along with piles of dead leaves and debris the wind must've blown in off the street.
How could someone have abandoned the fairy? She was so beautiful.
Talu had heard of the fairy tree up on the High Line, but it had been empty by the time she made it to the park. All the fairies had flown away in people's hands, leaving only a tree with its dark branches stark against the snow. She'd gone back day after day, snuck in night after night, in the hope that someone would return a fairy, but no one had.
Winter had melted into a cool spring and finally, as the tree began to bud with green, she'd given up hope.
But...
Her hand trembled as she reached out to pick up the fairy stuck inside the brick. She gasped when the last rays of the fading sun caught on the fairy, revealing that she wasn't silver as Talu had assumed. No, she was brown. Like Talu. She even had masses of curly hair. And she was smiling with such a big mouth that her smile seemed to fill up her whole face.
It was as if the fairy had been modeled on Talu.
Crying, she used a clean part of her T-shirt, which she wore below a dirty camouflage jacket, to wipe away some dust that had become stuck to the fairy. "I'll keep you safe," she whispered and tucked the fairy inside her jacket, in a secret pocket where mostly no one thought to look when they tried to rob her and take her stuff.
And though she was so hungry her stomach felt as if it was gnawing on itself, she didn't go out onto the street to find someone who'd buy the fairy. It was a keep-thing, one of the very few that she had. The other was a photo of her with her mom before the cancer took her mom away. She also had a beaded necklace that had been her mom's, and a little diary in which she wrote her study notes.
Those were all the keep-things she had in the little backpack she carried. No one wanted the photo or the diary and she'd hidden her mom's necklace in a pocket she'd sewn into the bottom of the backpack weeks before she ran away from her aunt's house. She would've stayed if her aunt had just beat her, but her mother's sister took drugs then allowed male vampires to feed from her, so the vamps could get high. The men had started to grab at Talu, too. Talu had overheard a thin one who liked to strangle her aunt when he fed, offering her money if she'd let him feed on Talu.
Her aunt had agreed but asked for money upfront, which the vampire had gone to get. Talu had run out through the fire escape before he returned, even though she had nowhere to go. She had no one now that her mom was gone.
"We'll sleep here," she whispered to her fairy, then tucked herself in that little spot between the two houses that were to be demolished. There was a cold wind that night but, tired, Talu pulled her jacket around herself and curled up tight and she slept.
~
Waking at the first crack of dawn, she rubbed at her face before getting up and running as fast as she could to the public restrooms she knew would be open and where no one would chase her out. She did her business, washed her face in the basin and tried to clean up as much as she could. Her mom would be so disappointed to see her so dirty, but it was hard to stay clean when sleeping on the streets. At least she had a clean T-shirt to change into; she put her used one in a plastic bag to wash later, then stuffed it in her pack.
Body as clean as it could get and T-shirt on, she wet her knotted up hair and used the old hair ties she had around her wrists to pull it into a kind of a bun that at least looked neat.
Hoping she didn't smell, she triple checked that her fairy was still safely in her pocket, then ran all the way to the nearest junior high school. Her mom had always told her school was important. Even when she was working three jobs, Talu's mom had made sure Talu got to school and that she had a bagged lunch.
Talu rubbed at her eyes to wipe away tears. "I'm going to school, Mom," she promised.
She truly loved school, loved learning, but she couldn't go like the other students anymore. She didn't have papers and if she went and tried to enroll, they'd make her go back to her aunt--who could somehow fool everyone she was sober and a good guardian. Her meanness only came out on the drugs. Talu knew she was safer on the street.
But, she'd figured out that if she arrived at the school early enough, she could climb up into the ceiling through an opening the repair people must use to get at wires. You could hear everything the teachers said from up there and no one ever noticed her if she moved from class to class while the students were thundering through the hallways between lessons.
Finding her spot just in time, before the custodian did his morning rounds, she settled in to wait for lessons to begin. "Here." Safe, she took out the fairy and stood her on a beam beside herself. "You should have a name."
She thought about it, knew what it would be. "Sina," she whispered, her eyes stinging. "Your name is Sina."
Her mom had always said she'd watch over Talu from heaven. Having Sina with her would remind her of that every day. Swallowing her tears, she tried not to feel the hurt in her heart.
Her stomach hurt, too, but it didn't growl. It was easier being hungry after a while. The body kind of forgot and mostly she forgot, too, especially when she was learning.
She liked English and History, but Algebra wasn't too bad and Chemistry was amazing.
Listening hard to the teacher since she couldn't see the blackboard, she finally stopped writing when he stopped speaking to hand out a pop quiz. The other students moaned but Talu wished she could do the quiz, could be down there with them. Since she couldn't be, she decided she'd go to the library in the weekend.
She mostly couldn't go on school days because she had to wait until all the corridors were empty before she could sneak out, and by then, she had to hunt for food. She tried not to beg because her mom would be so sad about that, but when she couldn't find abandoned things in the dumpsters to sell, she sometimes had to. She still tried to give people something. She couldn't sing but she'd found a book in the library about magic tricks and learned a few that people liked--a woman in a suit had given her five dollars once!
/>
On the weekends, however, she didn't do her magic tricks or search the dumpsters. She tried to go to the library as much as possible. No one minded if she went inside, since she stayed quiet and just read textbooks.
One of the librarians was nice and had given Talu two T-shirts a month ago. "They're just extras from the recent charity drive," she'd said. "I thought I'd offer them to my favorite bookworm before anyone else."
"Thank you so much." Talu had meant every word.
The T-shirts weren't keep-things, things she'd fight to hold onto if attacked, but they were important because they let her have clean clothes. She'd wear the one she'd changed into this morning for two days. She could only wash in the weekends because she had to stay with her clothes while they dried.
She'd had more clothes when she first ran away, but back then, she hadn't known how much people stole when they had nothing--or when they'd become so hard by being on the street that they didn't know how to be a person anymore. A vampire had stolen her backpack the first night she'd been on the streets. She'd followed him for a week before he lowered his guard and she could steal it back. By then, he'd ripped apart most of her clothes.
He hadn't found the photo or the necklace, though.
Talu couldn't understand why there were vampires on the streets. Everyone knew if you signed up to be a vampire, you served your angel for a hundred years, then they gave you money to build a new life. Talu had thought about asking to become a vampire when she was old enough but she wanted to meet her mom again one day and vampires were nearly immortal.
But even though the ones on the street were at least a hundred years older than her, they weren't very smart. Maybe they'd been like her aunt and spent all their angel money on drugs. She'd seen street vampires gambling, too, then having their limbs broken when they couldn't pay up. She bet the vampires who worked in Archangel Tower weren't stupid.
As she walked through the darkening streets after getting out of the school, she tilted back her head and kept the Tower in her line of sight. Right now, it was glowing red-orange from the sunset, but soon, it would be a blaze of white light, a beacon slicing up into the sky. So pure, so bright.
Talu always tried to find a spot to sleep from where she could see the Tower, but she didn't always succeed. It depended who else was in the area. Some of the other street people weren't bad, and she could sleep around them, but a lot were dangerous. Talu didn't want to run drugs or walk the streets or shoplift--or do what her aunt did for the kind of vampires who wanted ugly things they had to pay for because even most vampire groupies wouldn't agree to it.
Talu just wanted to finish school and get a proper job.
The others on the street laughed at her when she said that, but she was determined.
Wings passed overhead, close enough that she could almost reach out and touch them. Gasping, she froze and watched the angel with wings of white tipped by brown sweep up and toward the Tower.
This was why Talu could never leave New York. There was magic here; even if you were on the street and didn't have anything, you could look up and see the most beautiful angels flying across the sky. Yesterday, she'd seen the pretty one with blue and silver wings and blue-tipped black hair. He'd flown so high.
A feather drifted to her feet at that instant. Snatching it up before anyone else could, she felt her eyes widen. It sparkled like each filament was coated with crushed mirrors... or diamonds. Talu had never seen a feather so stunning, though she'd caught glimpses of an angel who seemed to be made of shattered light. This must be his feather.
She wished desperately that she could keep it, but she knew people who paid for feathers and this one was a very rare one. She could sell it for enough money to eat for two weeks if she was careful.
Tucking the feather in the same secret inner pocket as Sina, she began to make her way toward Hell's Kitchen and the small restaurant run by the most avid collector she knew. A nice older homeless person had told her about the collector who always paid if he wanted a feather and who didn't cheat on price. In return, Talu gave the other street person food when she sold a feather to that collector. Fair was fair.
Full darkness descended an hour later, but the streets remained busy with New Yorkers talking to each other, yelling on their phones, or just going about their business. Happy to be surrounded by so much life, Talu wasn't paying as much attention as she should have--and when she was dragged off the street and into a narrow passage between two shops that housed their dumpsters, it was done so quickly that the people around her probably thought it was just two teens rough-housing.
"Let go!" she yelled... or tried to.
Throwing her against the opposite wall, her attacker knocked all the air out of her. Her cheek stung as if the flesh had been scraped off by the concrete and liquid dripped out of her nose. She tasted blood.
"Where's the feather?" asked the man who'd taken her, the sound of a switchblade flicking open loud in the night darkness. "I'll cut you if you scream. Give it to me."
Talu had long ago figured out what was important and what wasn't. The feather was precious, but she couldn't eat if she wasn't alive. And this man sounded strung out. He'd gut her without compunction if she so much as blinked wrong. "I'll get it for you." She kept her voice non-confrontational though she could feel blood continuing to drip out of her nose.
She hoped it wasn't fractured.
Raising her hands really slowly, so as not to set him off, she said, "I have to reach inside my jacket."
He jabbed at her hard enough that she felt the point of the blade penetrate her jacket and T-shirt to nick her back. "Don't try anything," he said, then pulled her backpack off and began to tear her jacket off her, his clawing hands hitting her hair and causing it to explode around her head.
Talu almost let it go... but without a jacket she'd freeze at night. Even then, it wasn't worth her life. But Sina was. "No!" She screamed as loud as she could and kicked backward like she'd seen one of the guild hunters do when the lethal woman had taken down a rogue vampire in the street.
She caught her attacker in the knee hard enough to push him off balance. Spinning around as the skinny man with pasty skin and dishwater brown hair staggered back, she went to run but he grabbed her jacket. "Help!" she yelled, even though she had no hope of that help ever arriving. People didn't like to get involved in fights between homeless junkies. That's what they'd think this was if they even bothered to look.
Just two junkies fighting over a hit.
"No!" she yelled again and twisting, tried to punch her attacker. A blast of wind pushed her jacket against her back at that instant, making her hair halo out at the same time.
The junkie attacking her uttered an ugly sound and raised the hand holding the knife, clearly intending to stab her. She went to grab his hand, stop him... but she was too late. A crossbow bolt went through the palm of his hand, the force of it spinning him around and to the ground. Screaming, he writhed there, saying, "Get it off! Get it off!"
Talu swallowed and turned very carefully to face the angel who stood at the mouth of the narrow passage. She couldn't see the angel's face with the lights from the street behind the other woman, but that didn't matter. She could see the black boots, the crossbow, the gleam of leather pants like those worn by hunters and some angelic fighters.
She raised her hands, palms up. "I didn't steal it," she said, because it seemed the safest thing to say.
"Come here, Curls."
Talu had taken her chances against a knife-wielding junkie but she wasn't about to take her chances against an angel with a crossbow. She made her way quickly to the woman... and immediately recognized that face with the silvery-gray eyes against skin of dark gold, the near-white hair that was pulled up into a tight ponytail.
Elena Deveraux, consort to the Archangel Raphael and the only angel in the Guild.
She gulped.
Elena gripped her chin, tilted her face to the light. Her eyes narrowed. "You have a spare cloth?"
/> Talu gestured to her backpack, lying just beyond the junkie.
"Come." Stalking over to the mewling junkie, Elena stepped on his wrist with one booted foot. Talu quickly got her bag and returned to where she'd been, while Elena strapped her crossbow to her thigh, then pulled out the crossbow bolt embedded in the junkie's hand.
Talu, her dirty T-shirt held to her nose to mop up the blood, winced as the junkie screamed.
"Be quiet. It's not a killing wound," Elena told the junkie before wiping the bolt clean on his pants. She slotted it away as she strode back to Talu. "How's the nose?"
"I think the bleeding's stopped." She pulled away the T-shirt, smiled in relief to see she was right.
"Good." Elena took out her phone.
As Talu listened, the guild hunter angel made a call to what seemed to be the cops.
"So," Elena said after hanging up, "while we wait for this piece of human waste to be collected, tell me what you didn't steal."
Wanting to cry because she'd have to give Sina up now, Talu shoved her ruined T-shirt into the pack, then reached inside her jacket and pulled out her two treasures. Lying seemed a very bad idea and she couldn't fight Elena and win. She couldn't run away either. She wasn't fast enough to evade an angel in the air.
The feather sparkled even in the dull light spilling over from the street but it was the fairy that captured Elena's attention.
Her smile lit up her whole face. "Look at that. I never saw her before."
"Her name's Sina," Talu said, holding out the feather but keeping Sina close.
"Pretty. It suits her." Elena angled her head as a siren neared. "That'll be this asshole's ride."
Two cops joined them seconds later and were soon hauling away the junkie. Elena nodded at Talu's treasures afterward. "Important enough to die for?"
"Sina is."
The guild hunter's startling eyes held hers, the rim of silver around her irises seeming to burn. "Name?"
"Talu."
"Mother? Father?"
Talu's hand tightened around Sina. "Dead."
"Thirteen?"
"Nearly fourteen," she said automatically before suddenly realizing what day it was. "No, I am fourteen. Today's my birthday."