Issie’s mouth drops open. I guess seeing a half-zombie, giant-sized woman from a distance isn’t as traumatizing as it is being up close and personal with one. Issie stutters, but stretches out a hand. “You must be Hel. It-it’s good to meet you. I’m Issie.”
“I am delighted to meet you, Isabelle.” Hel shakes Issie’s hand and smiles. To her credit, Issie’s shudder of revulsion is really barely noticeable. Hel greets the others as well and then turns to me. “It is time for you all to go back.”
I nod. Something inside me twinges. Strangely enough, it feels so safe here. And I think I’m going to actually miss her.
“If you would not mind giving us provisions,” Astley says, “we would greatly appreciate it. Your land is cold and we have humans.”
Hel smiles and motions for us to follow her. She leads us back into the long room of mirrors and windows and gathers us all around a stained-glass window that depicts her reaching up beyond a frozen land and into the warm earth above it.
“Hold one another’s hands,” she commands.
I grab one of Astley’s and one of Nick’s because they are on either side of me and for a second I feel awkward and strange. But it passes because the world shimmers and shakes and then it’s as if all of my atoms have exploded and then slammed back into each other again.
Nick swears. Astley holds on tighter. Everything is white, terrifically blinding white light. And then it flashes out. I resist the urge to rub at my eyes and keep holding on to their hands as the world comes into focus again.
Nick curses under his breath and lets go of my hand and Issie’s. He twists around looking for threats.
“Wait. We’re uh …,” Issie starts.
We’re back in Iceland, right by our cottage. The air freezes against us and I am suddenly very tired and confused and energized by what just happened.
“We teleported,” Issie finishes. “Like in Star Trek or Harry Potter, sort of. No! Like in Dr. Who in that episode with the Sontarans and the brilliant human boy, or really any Dr. Who ever if you think of the Tardis! Holy canola! That is just the coolest thing ever! Wowie, wow, wow!”
She starts jumping in place, excited beyond belief, I think. I laugh at her and she rushes to me and hugs me and says again, “This is the coolest thing ever!”
Nick smiles because he’s obviously no longer on high alert. “The world may end, but at least Issie got to teleport.”
“Wait till I tell Devyn! He’s going to be super-jealous! Then he’ll start explaining how the laws of physics work and blah, blah, blah, make teleportation absolutely impossible, but he’ll still be soooo super-jealous,” she says, letting go of me and still smiling. “I wish he got to do it too.”
“He does get to fly, Is,” I say. “And shape shift. You know those are pretty impossible things.”
“True. True. I’ll tell him that the next time he goes into his ‘time travel is impossible’ lecture mode.”
I adjust her hat, which has gone all lopsided, and announce to everyone, “Let’s get back to the airport. It’s time to go home.”
On the ride to the airport, I tell them all what happened with Hel, how she said magic and the army were important, how she said we had to be proactive and not reactive with Frank’s pixies, which means that we have to attack first.
“But how do we do that?” Issie asks.
“We could use bait,” I explain. “We get them to gather in one place because they think they’ll get something they want, something unprotected. Then we attack them.”
“What if that is what they want us to do?” Astley asks. He shifts around in the seat, lifts the seat belt away from his chest, reaches into his back pocket for a cell phone, and then settles back in.
“Well …” I obviously haven’t thought this completely through and I’m okay with that. “If we have a battle, we can eliminate Frank’s pixies, get Bedford safe once and for all, and then focus more on this whole end-of-the-world thing.”
Nick snorts. “And what is the bait?”
“Me.”
“Hell no!” he says. “Hell no.”
Astley says more calmly, “I do not believe that is a good idea.”
“How are you even bait anymore?” Amelie asks. “You are human now.”
I explain that Frank will still want me. He will try to turn me again, make me his queen instead of Astley’s. He won’t care if I die in the process. He just wants to try.
We argue and argue about it for the entire ride back to the airport. The sky is dark against the car but it’s warm inside from all our body heat and words. After a while I lean back and close my eyes and let the rest of them hash it out. I know my plan is right. I know my plan is dangerous, too, but it doesn’t matter. I move the sleeve of my parka enough so I can touch my father’s watch. It gives me hope and strength, and when I look around the car, I see my friends. I listen to them argue, and even though it’s cheesy I feel all full of love for them. No matter what happens, it’s worth it. It’s worth it to save them. I know it beyond a doubt.
The moment we drive into an area that has cell reception again, I call Betty.
“For crap’s sake,” she swears above the sound of the ambulance siren. She must be on an ambulance call. “Where the hell have you been? What’s happening?”
I breathe out and breathe in, snuggle my shoulder closer to Issie’s. “Well, to start with, I’m human again.”
“Very, very human,” Issie says, planting a kiss on my cheek, but sort of missing and getting my hair.
I repeat it. “Very, very human.”
And then I tell her the rest of the story. When I finally finish, we’re halfway back to the city and Betty says in a quiet, steady way, “So, we attack them first.”
“Yes.” I look around the car at my friends. They already look tired, their faces are lined and battle weary, stress has thinned out Issie’s cheeks, hardened Nick’s mouth, made circles beneath Astley’s eyes, and caused Amelie to start pulling on her dreads.
“Well,” Betty says. “I guess we’ll really have to give the teenagers some more weapons.”
After we hang up, we all settle into a nice sort of silence. One of Astley’s men has been driving the whole time and he seems competent despite his suit and porn mustache. There’s a tattoo across the back of his neck. It’s some language I don’t know.
I stare across the seats at Nick and Astley. Nick is sitting in front with the driver and Astley is positioned directly behind him, sitting with Amelie. Issie and I are in the last row of seats and Issie’s fallen asleep, her hand clutching her cell phone. My gaze returns to Astley. I could reach out and touch him if I wanted, tug on the fabric of his winter hat, get his attention, ask him what he thinks about me now that I am human again, what he thinks about our chances of surviving all this.
It’s now or never really. The clock is running out, and there’s no way I can turn around and head back to the old Zara life—a life without snow or death or imminent world destruction, a life without pixies and shape-shifting humans and gods. Somehow, I have to stop the end of everything. I will.
I tuck my hair behind my ears, fix my own wool hat, and sort of sigh. The landscape is open out here, and we’ve been going through it for a while. Stretching my fingers out wide, I look at my human skin. It’s pale. It’s weak. How can I stop the end if I have no magic? The thought unsettles me. Doubt creeps into my stomach, making a pit. Just then, Astley turns around.
“You okay?” he whispers.
I shrug, which is the best non-answer I can think of at the moment. Astley rubs at the bottom of his stubbly jawline, and his eyes shift away from me, out the back window.
“We are being followed.”
I turn to look.
“Do not turn!” he says urgently, but it’s too late. I already have. He leans forward and tells the driver, but there’s nothing we can do. We’re on a long stretch of road through plains. There are no exits. Nowhere to turn off.
“They might not be following u
s,” I offer. “That’s sort of a worst-case scenario. I mean, why would they even need to follow us?”
“Intimidation,” Amelie says through gritted teeth. She opens her mouth a bit more to keep talking. “Or perhaps they know that we went to Hel, that we have more information on how to stop them.”
“Hardly enough,” says Nick, waking up thanks to Astley’s shoulder-shaking efforts. He growls a little bit beneath his breath. “Hardly enough information.”
“Or he wishes to turn you back,” Astley says, eyes narrowing, “now, while we are weaker, away from our comrades.”
“Where are we?” I ask as the driver tenses his eyes in the rearview mirror.
“They are speeding up,” he tells us.
We speed up too.
“They are maintaining distance,” he says.
We speed up more.
“Still maintaining distance,” he says.
Astley pulls out his phone. He punches in numbers.
“Who are you calling?” Amelie asks.
“The law-enforcement authorities. I shall report an erratic driver. Hopefully, they will respond,” he says, and I’m assuming this is what he does, because he stops speaking English. After a minute he clicks off the phone. “They will respond.”
“Soon?” Amelie asks. She’s holding up a mirror and angling it to see the dark car behind us. It’s an SUV and pretty solid looking. “Because they are—”
The car jolts forward and swerves. My seat belt presses hard against me. People swear. Issie wakes up, mumbling and confused. I try to calm her down and tell her what’s going on, but before I can, the car jerks forward again and zigzags as the driver tries to maintain control.
“I hate freaking pixies, and I hate the freaking apocalypse, and I hate freaking Iceland,” Nick growls, pivoting. “Does anyone have a gun?”
Nobody does.
“How can nobody have a gun?” he asks, his voice getting hysterical. “We’re on a mission to save the world and nobody has a gun.”
His voice takes on a new edge.
“He’s changing!” I warn. “Crud. Crud. Crud!”
The car slams into us again. The back end is now much, much closer to where Issie and I are sitting. The glass in the window is shattering. I unbuckle Issie’s seat belt, urging her to move to the next row of seats.
She clicks into place. A wolf snarls in the passenger’s seat. He pivots and glares at Amelie and Astley.
“Not them!” I scream. “Not them. Good guys, Nick. Good guys!”
His growl deepens and he swings his head to look at the driver. The driver’s pulling over? He’s pulling over and smiling and I suddenly understand that he’s a part of it, a plant or something.
“Get him!” I shout. “Get him! The bad one is right there! Get him!”
SCANNER TRAFFIC, BEDFORD POLICE DEPARTMENT
Control to 14: We have a report of a blue man running down Water Street with a disembodied head in his hands. Again. We have a report of a blue-skinned man with a head in hands on Water Street. 10-3. 14: En route.
Nick lunges after the driver, knocking him out of the car. They both tumble onto the road, a twisting mass of teeth and claws. It barely has time to register but Amelie’s already bolted out after them, diving over into the driver’s seat and out the now busted open door. She slams it behind her.
Astley takes the time to say, “Stay here,” before he’s out his door too, and I suppose I should appreciate that, but instead, I’m mad. There is no way that I’m staying in here when they are outside fighting. They could get hurt. They could—
I’ve got my hand on the door handle when Issie pulls me back. “Zara!”
“What?”
“You can’t go.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have no weapons. You’re human.” Her voice is both urgent and apologetic.
And for a second, I think she’s right, that I can’t go, that being human makes me weak, and it does compared to being pixie, but what really makes me weak is not being brave. Sure, I don’t have a weapon, but I can still do something, somehow, right? I shrug Issie off. “I can’t not help.”
“Sometimes not helping is helping,” she pleads.
“Not this time.” I’m out the door before she can make me doubt myself anymore. It’s freezing. The wind makes part of the car’s back bumper rattle against the ground and whips up snow. Close to me, Amelie is fighting off two pixies. Nick has taken another one down. I look away from that because it’s gross and violent and bloody, and even with all the fighting I’ve done, I still don’t like it. Farther down the road, close to the back of the second car, Astley’s battling two more. He’s doing a good job too. His fist connects to a stomach. He back-kicks the other behind the knee, dropping him.
The one still standing sees me and yells, “She’s out of the car.”
Oops. Maybe I was the target.
My knees bend and I grab at the bumper. It’s not too hard to rip off because it’s already damaged. One of the pixies leaps at me, springing like a cat, claws outstretched. Wielding the bumper like a baseball bat, I smash it across his head. Flesh burns.
“Nasty,” I mumble. He twitches and stays still, sprawled out, eyes closed. I adjust my hold on the bumper, plant my feet. “Who is next? Huh?”
One that Amelie had been fighting raises his eyebrows and takes a step forward. My heart beats faster.
“I said, ‘Who is next?’ If there’s no takers then y’all need to leave,” I announce, and I have to admit I’m pretty proud of how brave my voice sounds. You can even hear it over the sound of fighting wolf and cursing Amelie.
The pixie that Astley had dropped starts to get back up. I rush toward him, bumper ready, but something knocks me down from behind. My face smashes into snow. I turn it sideways just in time to keep from breaking my nose. Claws wrap around my head.
“Damn it, queen!” Amelie roars, yanking the pixie off of me.
“I’m not a queen anymore.” I hustle back up and belt the pixie over the head with the bumper as Astley dispatches another one. Nick’s taken care of Amelie’s second enemy. For a second all is calm, and groaning or dead pixies lie around us. It’s horrible and disgusting, all this loss of life. Something sobs inside of me.
Astley notices.
“Come on. Let’s get home.” He drapes an arm around my shoulders, and even though he’s gross and bloody, it feels good.
“It looks as if someone doesn’t want us to get back,” Amelie says as she gets in the driver’s seat. We all have rushed back into the car, which seems safer than outside.
“Or wants us dead. Or just wants us.” I grab a bag, throw Nick some clothes, and then dig into my own bag for the first-aid kit we brought with us. I start working on everyone’s wounds, crawling over everyone because it is awkward and crowded.
While I’m cleaning a cut on Astley’s hairline, he touches the inside of my wrist gently. His eyes meet mine, and I feel almost as connected to him as I did when I was his queen. He pulls his lips in like he’s wetting them and then whispers, “You did well with that bumper.”
“Assorted car parts. Weapons of choice,” I quip, taping a gauze pad down.
Before he can answer, I move toward the back of the car and the now-dressed Nick, checking for any wounds that his were blood hasn’t already healed. He shakes his head, telling me he’s okay, and I start toward Amelie.
“Driving!” she says. “No patching up while I am driving.”
I sit next to Issie and grab her hand. She squeezes. We move on toward the airport, silent.
PROBABLY NOT SANE BLOG
Latest Post:
Dude. They are outing themselves—these crazy-ass blue things with shark teeth. I freaking swear. Some are good. Some are evil. It’s très confusing, but they say there’s some sort of apocalypse coming and the only way to stop it is to fight it. Pixies. Human sized. Ka-bing. Some are hot too. I don’t know. I don’t know. But they don’t want us to blab about it, which is wh
y I am, you know, blabbing about it. Color me a rebel.
For the next two days, we don’t stop moving. We use locked groups on social-networking sites, plan on chat rooms, do everything we can to get everyone in Bedford on the same page. Issie and I are in charge of this part of the effort. At first, older people don’t quite believe, but Betty handles those. Because of all the lives she’s saved, and legs she’s splinted, and spaghetti suppers she’s volunteered at, she’s respected by the people of Bedford. Plus, she doesn’t give the impression of being crazy. And for those who still doubt, we have Amelie or Becca change in front of them. When people see attractive women morph into blue-skinned, razor-toothed pixies, it tends to convince them.
We worry about it going viral, about someone telling the rest of the world, but the stakes are too high to get obsessed over it, and the one guy who narks on all of us via his blog is quickly berated by the rest of the blog-i-verse, or the equivalent, which is like thirteen anonymous users.
Nick finds it amusing. At night he reads the blog comments to Betty and me before Betty falls asleep in the armchair. We’re hanging on the couch in a very happy and very non-boyfriend/girlfriend way. He’s got a laptop perched on his knees. Betty’s snoring and I’ve thrown a blanket over her. She snarls and snaps at you if you try to wake her up and get her to go to bed. Believe me, I know. So we leave her there.
“Listen to this one.” Nick laughs and then puts on this fake surfer voice. “‘Dude, if they are hot and the end is coming just bang one.’”
I roll my eyes and he laughs some more. I swear, it’s nice being friends with him again. Then he turns and looks at me, closing the laptop.
“We can do this, Zara,” he says. “Try not to worry too much.”
I swallow hard. “People will die, Nick.”
I want to say, like you did. But I don’t.
He nods, puts the laptop on the coffee table, and says, “It will not be your fault if they do.”
“It feels like it is.”
“It isn’t. You didn’t start this, Zara. Astley’s cracked-out relatives did. You didn’t make Hel or Loki or any of that real.”