Fairy (Harbingers Book 15) Read online

Tomas said something to his mother, then Señora Rodriguez came toward me, pulling the edges of her housecoat together as she exclaimed over my wound. She made motherly clucking sounds, then left and returned a few moments later with a bowl of water and bandages.

  As she murmured soothing words and bandaged my thumb, I smiled, whispered “gracias” and tried to be attentive . . . while my thoughts centered on Daniel and Tank, who was still out in the woods fighting only-God-knew-what.

  Chapter 8

  It must have been a slow night in Coajomulco, the town nearest the Rodriguez farm, because they sent two ambulances in response to our call. Señor Rodriguez rode with the first one and went to pick up Daniel, but I urged the second to wait for Tank, who had not yet appeared at the farm. I told Tomas about Tank, and he kept trying to tell the medics that we needed help to find Tank. I wasn’t exactly sure what the medics were saying, but the gist seemed to be that they weren’t searchers, they were medical personnel. “But if Tank is in the woods,” I reminded Tomas, “he might have been attacked by the same creatures that attacked Daniel.”

  Tomas tried again to explain that we might need medical assistance, but with no success.

  As the second ambulance pulled away, I went outside and sat on a tree stump, surprised to find the sky brightening in the east. Sunrise. Blue skies and the touch of reality. A world where dark fairies did not watch through your windows.

  I lifted my gaze to that blue-pink sky and found myself yearning for Tank’s God. I knew Him too, of course, as HaShem, but Tank seemed to be on a first-name basis with the Deity, while I had always remained at arms’ length.

  “Master of the Universe,” I began—

  A huge bush rustled at my left and I tensed, afraid one of the creatures had come back for a last-minute lashing. But then the branches parted and Tank appeared—muddy, rumbled, bleeding, but most definitely alive.

  “Tank!” I leapt up and ran forward, throwing my arms around his thick neck. “Are you okay?”

  He grinned—apparently the bloodletting wasn’t all that serious. “I had quite an adventure,” he said. “I slid down a cliff, tangled with a few vampire bats, and nearly jumped out of my skin when I met a bobcat. But I’m here now. And apparently you were right about taking the road.” His mood veered to seriousness. “Is Daniel all right?”

  “He’s at the hospital and Brenda’s with him. Chad’s with Señor Rodriguez, and I’m here, obviously, waiting for you.”

  Bright red rushed up from his collar and flooded his face. “That was nice of ya.”

  “Well—” I shrugged, not wanting him to read too much into it—“we couldn’t go off and leave you out there with the vampire bats.”

  He slipped his arm around my shoulder as I led him toward the house. Señora Rodriguez saw us coming and started making clucking noises as she retreated to get her first-aid supplies.

  “She’s a sweetheart,” I said. “Let her fix you up, then we’ll go to the hospital to see Daniel. Brenda would probably appreciate seeing a few familiar faces about now.”

  “What’s this?” Tank took my hand and caressed my bandaged thumb. “What happened?”

  “Nasty little sucker tried to chew his way free when I was pulling him off Daniel,” I said, shrugging. “Whoever called those things fairies had a twisted sense of humor.”

  “You should probably get a shot,” Tank said, completely serious. “Rabies or tetanus, at least.”

  I blew out a breath. “I hate to admit it, but you’re probably right.”

  The nearest hospital, we learned, was about an hour from the Rodriguez’s farm, in a town called Morelos. We were halfway there when I remembered that our driver would go to the campsite to pick us up in a few hours, but we would no longer be at that spot. I found his number on my phone and was able to cancel our pickup. We weren’t going back to Mexico City until Daniel was fit to travel, no matter how long it took.

  We found Brenda and Daniel at a trauma center in the heart of the city. Daniel lay inside a curtained cubicle, awake and in such pain that tears streamed down his cheeks at a near-constant rate. His thin frame writhed on the mattress like a cut snake, and to make matters worse, the doctor insisted on keeping him flat on his stomach so they could have access to the stinger in his back.

  An X-ray, Brenda told me, her face the color of ashes, had shown that the stinger had worked its way into Daniel’s body, almost into the sheath around his spinal column. “I don’t know what that thing is,” she told me, steel in her voice, “but Daniel is in so much pain that I’m ready to strangle the next person who mentions fairies with my bare hands.”

  I slipped my arm around her shoulders and told her she should get some rest. “I can’t,” she said. “They have Daniel on a morphine drip, and even that isn’t easing his pain. And the doctors keep quizzing me—they’re driving me crazy.”

  “Quizzing you?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She looked at the ceiling and sighed, clearly exasperated. “They asked how a black woman came to have a white son. They asked why Daniel doesn’t talk much. They asked what stung him—I told them I didn’t know for sure, and I don’t. They asked what we were doing out in the woods, and why we were in Mexico in the first place. I tried to give them as little information as possible, but I’d tell them anything if it would help Daniel.”

  “I know.” I patted her shoulder again, then led her back to Daniel’s cubicle and sat next to her. A nurse was in the cubicle checking Daniel’s blood pressure, but she didn’t interrupt us. She only smiled and went about her work.

  Still, I lowered my voice when I spoke to Brenda. “I feel bad because we came all this way and went through all this, and for what? We still don’t know what that thing is.”

  “But we know it’s real,” she said. “And we know it’s dangerous.”

  “I didn’t even see the stinger at first. I was so fascinated by the face and the wings.”

  Brenda grabbed my hands. “Andi, what am I gonna do if he doesn’t get better?”

  Tears welled in her eyes, and I didn’t know what to do. So I hugged her, made a bunch of promises I couldn’t keep, and found myself wishing that Tank would come around the corner. Even though he hadn’t been able to heal Daniel, he was a calming influence, and we certainly could use one . . .

  When Brenda finally pulled away, I noticed that the nurse had gone. While Brenda blew her nose and swiped at her eyes, I stood and moved to Daniel’s bedside. His head was turned toward me, and I could see his eyes jumping beneath his paper-thin eyelids. The corner of his mouth twitched occasionally, and a muscle at his jaw kept tightening and relaxing, over and over . . .

  “Excuse me.” I looked up. The nurse had returned, this time without her clipboard. Instead she held a black book.

  “Do you have news from the doctor?” Brenda asked, alarmed.

  Tank and Chad chose that moment to join us, slipping into the cubicle behind the nurse. Tank nodded and smiled at her, but Chad narrowed his eyes. “Are you assigned to this case?” he asked, his voice curt. “If you’re here to read the last rites or something—”

  “Chad,” I said gently. “Nurses do not administer the last rights.” I looked at her. “Do you have news for us?”

  A blush crossed the young woman’s face. “Con permiso, I do not mean to bother you. But I have been overhearing things, and your words reminded me of this.” She lifted the book.

  “What’s that?” Chad asked, practically snatching the book from the woman’s grip. “La Biblia de Estudio,” he read. “What’s that?”

  “I think,” I said, “you should return the woman’s study Bible.”

  He flushed and returned the book. “Sorry.”

  The nurse smiled.

  “Go on,” Tank said. “What did their conversation remind you of?”

  I narrowed my gaze, wondering why he would encourage the nurse to take up our time with inane words from a centuries-old book, but Tank would listen to a toddler babble if he thought it would make the kid
happy. Resigned, I turned back to Daniel, pressing my hand to his forehead. The boy was burning hot.

  “Este,” the nurse said. I heard the rustle of pages, then she began to read:

  The fifth angel sounded his shofar; and I saw a star that had fallen out of heaven onto the earth, and he was given the key to the shaft leading down to the Abyss. He opened the shaft of the Abyss, and there went up smoke from the shaft like the smoke of a huge furnace; the sun was darkened, and the sky too, by the smoke from the shaft. Then out of the smoke onto the earth came locusts, and they were given power like the power scorpions have on earth. They were instructed not to harm the grass on the earth, any green plant or any tree, but only the people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. The locusts were not allowed to kill them, only to inflict pain on them for five months; and the pain they caused was like the pain of a scorpion sting. In those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.

  Now these locusts looked like horses outfitted for battle. On their heads were what looked like crowns of gold, and their faces were like human faces. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like those of lions. Their chests were like iron breastplates, and the sound their wings made was like the roar of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails like those of scorpions, with stings; and in their tails was their power to hurt people for five months. They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in our language, Destroyer.

  We had all been listening politely until we heard the words “tails like those of scorpions, with stings.” I turned at that point, and Brenda looked at me, her eyes wide. Tank’s mouth had fallen open, and though Chad seemed confused, he also seemed to understand that we had just stumbled over something important.

  “Thank you,” Tank said, placing one hand on the nurse’s shoulder and gently guiding her out of the cubicle. “Thank you so much.”

  When he returned, he pulled the curtain closed, then crossed his arms and looked at me. “Remember what Dr. Wu said? Prototype.”

  I frowned. “You mean—”

  “We know the Gate is doing genetic experiments, combining human DNA with strange DNA—maybe from aliens, maybe from other animals, who knows? But the two specimens in Prospero’s office were different—version A and version B. They are working up to Version C, the one that will have—what did it say?—chests like iron breastplates.”

  “They already have teeth like lions,” I pointed out, holding up my injured hand. “And when there are lots of them flying around, they could sound like chariots getting ready for battle.”

  “So they’re not fairies,” Chad said. “They’re locusts.”

  “Not designed to mow down crops,” Tank added. “But men.”

  Brenda looked at me. “Did you see more than the two at the camp?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I drew a deep breath. “While I was walking back to the farm, I saw a swarm of them coming from a spot at the edge of the woods. They took off when they saw me, and when I checked out the place where they were gathered, I saw a boulder with an opening in it.”

  “Like an abyss?” Tank lifted a brow.

  “More like a cave,” I said. “But I didn’t have a chance to look around.”

  Tank nodded. “No matter where they come from, they’re here. And that passage is from the book of Revelation. It’s a record of the vision John saw when the Lord let him witness events of the last days. Apparently—if we’re reading this right—the Gate is preparing something John saw more than two thousand years ago.”

  He leaned on the edge of Daniel’s bed as a frown settled between his brows. “I don’t get it, though. The plagues of the last days are part of God’s judgment on the earth, a punishment for sin. How can those creatures be the result of the Gate’s work if they are judgments from God? That’d be like terrorists making a bomb for New York City, but the United States stepping in and using it instead.”

  “You lost me a long time ago,” Brenda said, bringing her hands to the sides of her face. “I don’t get it and I never will.”

  “I get it,” I said, the picture coming into focus for the first time. “Don’t you see? It’s brilliant! It’s beautiful.”

  Tank’s frown deepened. “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “HaShem.” I nearly laughed aloud with the joy of discovery. “He is above all, right?”

  Tank nodded.

  “He is omnipotent—more powerful than any force, right?”

  Tank nodded again.

  “Then how like him to foil the machinations of evil people to suit his own purposes! You are exactly right, Tank—the Gate and whoever might make bombs and creatures and black-eyed children and flying spheres and malignant bacteria, but HaShem can and will thwart their purposes when He is ready. There’s no contradiction. Instead, I see evidence of His power and purpose.”

  Tank tilted his head as a slow smile spread across his face. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I get it.”

  “I don’t.” Chad sat next to Brenda, slouching as he buried his hands in his pockets. “Are you planning to tell our bosses that these creatures are harmless because God wins in the end? Sounds a little pat.”

  “They’re not harmless,” I said. “Look at Daniel—he’s proof that they’re not harmless. As long as the Gate’s people are testing prototypes, innocent people stand a good chance of being hurt. Just like the people who run into the black-eyed kids or who are infected by the deadly slime.”

  “The earth suffers, too,” Brenda said, her gaze fastened to Daniel’s face. “Remember the bird and fish kills? The dolphins that died from the green slime? The people we’re fighting against are set on destruction. That’s evil, pure and simple. And so is what they did to my boy.”

  “It is,” I told her. “But you’ve gotta see the big picture, too. People will get hurt in skirmishes, but evil is not going to win the war.”

  Chapter 9

  Two days later, the doctors at the trauma center said they were willing to discharge Daniel. They had extracted the stinger, sent it away to be tested at a lab (“I’d like to see those results,” Chad quipped), and given Brenda a prescription for extra-strength pain killers. “But you must wean your son off the pills as soon as you can,” the doctor warned. “You do not want to foster a dependency on drugs.”

  Brenda snorted. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Brenda was signing papers and preparing for Daniel’s discharge while I tried to keep track of our people, our luggage, and the proof we needed to submit to our bosses. Chad and Tank had called our driver and asked to go back to the campsite—to gather the video camera and anything else that might prove important.

  I didn’t think they’d find much. Maybe the desiccated body of the fairy that bit me and attacked Daniel, but I didn’t think the body would last long in the tropical humidity.

  While Brenda settled things with the hospital staff, I went to visit Daniel. The kid had been through so much in his life, it hardly seemed fair that he’d been the one to get stung. That fairy—that imp—had completely ignored me and Brenda and gone straight for Daniel. Did it want to torture a kid? Did it see Daniel as the most vulnerable, or did it sense that he had the ability to see into the spirit world and recognize them for the duchs they were . . .

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  Daniel was sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in new jeans and a new shirt. He grinned when I popped in, and slid off the mattress. “Can we go home now?”

  “You bet. Your mom is signing papers, and Tank and Chad will be with us soon.”

  I’d just finished speaking when Tank lumbered into the room and dropped a big red sombrero on Daniel’s head. “Gotcha souvenir,” he said, grinning. “And Chad is waiting outside, ready to take you to your mom. Ready?”

  “Ready!” Daniel ran outside to meet Chad. As Tank dropped into a chair, I listened to Daniel’s chatter as it faded away.

  I tur
ned to Tank, but his sunny disposition had evaporated. He was no longer smiling—unusual for him—and he was massaging the skin at the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He nodded, then slowly shook his head from left to right. “Yeah,” he finally said, opening his eyes, “and no. Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with me. But no, because I’m struggling.”

  “With what?”

  He blew out an explosive breath. “I know it’s a universal hang-up. I know lots of people can’t believe in God because of it. But I never thought I’d stumble over the same thing.”

  “Enough already.” I tapped his hand. “I can’t help if you won’t explain yourself.”

  He hesitated, then placed his hand on top of mine. “Why does God allow good people to suffer?”

  “Ohh.” I sat next to him. “That question has tripped up all kinds of people. Why should you be immune?”

  “Because I’m a believer. A strong believer, or so I thought. I know God’s in charge, and I’m usually happy to let him be in charge, you know?”

  I nodded. “So?”

  “So when I looked at my little buddy in that bed—” His voice broke. “Why couldn’t God have let that evil thing sting me?”

  “Or Chad?” I suggested.

  Tank barked a laugh. “Right. But . . . it didn’t hurt us, it hurt Daniel. The weakest of us. The one who has already suffered the most.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “And then when I tried to heal him—God gave me a gift, you know, so why didn’t it work when I tried to heal Daniel? If God could give me the power to bring a dog back to life, why couldn’t he allow me to stop Daniel’s pain?”

  I shook my head, caught up in the awful memory of when Abby had been dead on the beach, killed by some horrible alien thing . . . but Tank had brought her back. Or HaShem had.

  But I couldn’t explain why sometimes Tank’s gift failed any more than I could explain why sometimes I saw patterns and connections as clear as air and sometimes I only saw confusion . . . like now.