Night Fae by Meg Xuemei X.
Chapter 17
The majority of the scattered contestants closed in on me, vicious determination on their faces. What the Fury had promised them was enough to motivate them. They thought they had it in them and that they could bring me down with pure numbers.
People loved to lie to themselves.
“Wait!” Richie shouted from where he was tending to Tania, pressing strips of fabric to her bleeding eye. “What the fuck? Are you just going to murder my girlfriend?”
“We’re hunters,” said the goatee dude. He looked confident again with a broad knife in his hand, probably taken from someone smaller than him. “That’s what we came here to do. Your girlfriend isn’t even human.” He spat. “She’s just like them, and they hurt us. So we kill one of them and go back to our lives, best deal ever. If you get in my way, you’ll get a blade in your solar plexus.”
“Wow, you can talk fancy, Goatee,” I said in a bored tone before addressing the rest of the fighters. “I won’t say it again, but you all need to be smart. You can’t take me down. I’m superior to you all. I don’t want to kill you, but if you attack me, I will snuff out your life mercilessly. I’m more of a killer than any of you.”
Pixie-cut smirked. “We have the numbers, Evie.”
I arched an eyebrow. “So you want to die along with them?”
“I haven’t decided,” she said, her smirk not dropping. “I’m a bit torn here.”
“What’s to decide?” yelled Hawaiian shirt guy. I’d disarmed him, and now he was weaponless. I could see that he was holding a grudge. “Let’s just kill the Fae bitch, or she-demon, or whatever she is, and get it over with.”
“She’s less of a bitch than all of us here,” Pixie-cut said, brandishing a katana in front of her. It seemed she was also trained with a sword. “Fae aren’t all beautiful monsters, right, Evie? And this girl, a sentient being just like us, happened to study in New York, my hometown. So I’m not going to rush her and try to off her just because some assholes ordered us to. I have better sense than that. I want to hear her sales pitch and then decide for myself if I like it. Anyone attacks her before that, and I’ll draw first blood from that person.”
The other contestants glared at her, but they put a wide berth between her katana and them.
“I second that,” Richie said tersely. “I won’t let you hurt my girlfriend. We’ll figure out another way out of this instead of killing each other.” He moved Tania’s hand to hold the fabric pressed to her eye to stop the bleeding. “Hold it, Tania. I need to go to Evie.”
I eyed him, and he held my gaze. I hadn’t expected him to stand up for me. He might be a cheater, but he still had human decency. For that, I’d protect him in this game.
“Richie, where are you going?” Tania sobbed. “Just let them kill her. Why can’t you see it? If it wasn’t for your ex-slut, we wouldn’t be in this hell!”
Shouldn’t she pick my evil sister to hate instead of me, since Brigantia was the one who was putting her through all this? This girl had also admitted that she’d been involved with my ex-boyfriend and enjoyed the hell out of the adventure of cheating with him.
Some people’s minds were just warped.
“Pick a side,” I said coolly. “Come attack me and see how it works out for you. And one last piece of truth: Brigantia and the Furies lied to you. Even if you have all the luck in the world and kill me, you won’t be allowed out of the hunt alive to tell the tale. The usurper queen already unleashed the plague, Pestilence, on California, and it’s been spreading fast. She wants to kill most of the humans and enslave the rest. Your best chance of getting out of the hunt is to stick with me. And know this: I don’t need you. You’re a liability to me, and you’ll slow me down. But I promised to protect the mortal realm for my human family. So, this is my last offer: If and when I get out of the Wild Hunt, you’ll leave with me, but if you force my hand by assaulting me in anyway, you’ll surely die.”
“Just shut up, Fae bitch, and prepare to die!” the goatee dude yelled.
“You’re rude, dick.” I jerked a thumb at him. “Stand aside before I fucking make you. I’m not offering you anything. Instead, we’ll engage in combat soon. Who else wants to join him?”
A girl with long brown bangs and a pair of expensive-looking golden-rimmed glasses raised her hand. “I just want to know one thing. They say Fae can’t lie, right?”
I smiled. “Brigantia can lie with her black teeth and blacker soul. She’s actually a part of the demon race. Also, all the powerful high Fae can lie to your face. As for the low Fae, they’re skilled at finding loopholes and bypassing the truth.”
“If Queen Brigantia is part demon and you claim to be her sister, what does that make you, then?” Hawaiian Shirt sneered with a smug smile on his face, pleased with his deduction.
Brigantia tortured them, and they still wanted to be her pawns.
“I’m Lucifer’s daughter,” I said with a sweet smile, knowing the humans would never believe such a bold claim. From their dismissive looks, I’d say that the joke was on them. “Now, I don’t have all day to answer everyone’s stupid questions. Feel free to join the goatee dude over there and be ready to fight me. I don’t need pussies like you on my team.”
Hawaiian Shirt spat on the ground and moved to stand with Goatee. Seven more contestants joined their side, which left four, including Richie and Pixie-cut, to throw in their lots with me.
“What’s your name?” I asked Pixie-cut.
“Megan Kat,” she said. “Usually, I’m not the sidekick type, but I’ll take that role this time.”
The glasses girl raised her hand again. “I’m in, too, if you’ll have me. I can be unexpectedly useful sometimes. I’m Jill S.”
The last one was Charlie. He looked about Emmett’s age, with a tangled mane and big, innocent eyes that hadn’t seen much of the bad in the world. But he’d been hurt. Judging from his thin build, I could guess he’d probably been starved in Brigantia’s dungeon.
I flipped open my jacket, drew out a dagger, and tossed it at Hawaiian Shirt’s feet.
“Take it,” I told him. “So you’ll have a weapon to fight me with. All I ask is that you give your best.”
The contestants’ eyes widened as they spotted the layers of weaponry I carried inside my jacket.
Megan whistled in delight. “I chose wisely.”
“For this round, you will all stand by,” I told my team.
“I’ll fight with you, Evie,” Richie said.
“I appreciate it, Richie,” I said. “But I’ll take care of it. Let me earn some confidence for my team first.”
“Are you sure?” Jill asked. “It’s nine against one.”
I smiled. “Numbers are just numbers.”
“I can totally help if you want,” Megan said, as she cracked her knuckles and rolled her neck for show. “I’m a karate black belt.”
“Sure, watch my back when the second wave of hunters arrives,” I said.
Jill pushed her glasses up the ridge of her small nose, her eyes widening. “What do you mean by second wave of hunters?”
Before I could answer, the nine contestants—seven dudes, one mink-haired girl, and one blonde ponytailed girl—rushed me and raised their weapons, ready to cut me down. Tania would have joined their ranks if she could, but she just sat under the spruce tree, looking on with hatred in her one good eye.
People were weird.
The gang thrust their weapons toward me from all directions, intent on impaling me and overwhelming me with their numbers. I could easily just shoot them with my guns, but I didn’t want to waste bullets on them. I could be cheap sometimes.
I brandished Netherbane and a saber, slamming my blades into theirs and shoving theirs aside. Three guys yelped at the impact, their eyes going wide in surprise. They’d thought I was bluffing when I told them I was superior to them in every way. Now they were going to learn it the hard way.
They staggered back, trying to find their balance. I could take them right away and put a few holes in their bodies, but I wanted to show off just a little. I graciously gave them a moment of recovery time, but before they could completely regroup and stab me, I leapt and delivered an amazing roundhouse kick. Drake could take the credit for teaching me the moves.
My blades flashed before my opponents’ faces. I could behead a few smoothly, but I still wanted to give them a chance to quit.
I rammed my foot into heads and temples, and two guys dropped to the ground, their bones cracking. They’d live if they were smart and quit now. When I swung a punch, the same move that I could never hit Baron with, I dropped the blonde ponytailed girl.
That left three guys and the mink-haired girl standing. They gaped at me, then instantly moved toward me at the same time, hacking their machetes and knives at me frantically. I ducked with a cold smile, faster than they could blink.
My Fae saber hit their weapons hard, and the humans dropped them, unable to handle the impact. A dude who had bad punk rocker hair dove for his machete on the ground, not giving up, and I booted him in the face, sending him flying backward nine yards, where he crashed into the hard dirt.
“Ouch,” I said.
Megan called in appreciation, “That’s amazing, Evie girl! I’m proud of you.”
I beamed at her, ego boosted. “I practiced a lot with the Fae knights.” Then I tilted my head and regarded my opponents. “Who wants more?”
“You cheated!” Hawaiian Shirt accused.
Jill rolled her eyes through her glasses. “Just man up and admit that you were beaten by a girl.”
“I demand a hand-to-hand battle,” Goatee said. “If you win, we’ll let you go.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Let me go? You still think you can do that?”
He was working on an angle by requesting non-weapon combat since I’d disarmed all of them. Some people always shamelessly took advantage of others and never knew when to back off.
It’d end up badly for those people.
“Didn’t you claim to be a badass?” Hawaiian Shirt sneered. “Are you afraid of a true duel?”
“As you wish,” I said, sheathing my blades. “What can I say? You’re very persuasive.”
Goatee and Hawaiian Shirt traded a look, as if they had some kind of guy code. I knew they’d coordinate and stab me in the back when they had an opening. They were the cheaters, and karma was coming for them.
“Charge her!” Goatee barked as soon as I was weaponless.
The rest of the gang threw their punches at me. A couple of them tried to show more style by adding kicks into the mix. One of them tried to mimic me and deliver an amateur roundhouse kick and failed. The mink-haired girl and the punk dude stood by, waiting to drag me down by my foot if I ever leapt.
I ducked my head and let a dude’s heavy punch slide by, and another guy drove his fist toward my ribs from my blind side. He made it, which knocked the wind out of me.
Anger erupted within me, and I wheeled around and kicked him in the chest, sending him crashing into a pine tree. He yelped in pain.
“Fun’s over, jerks,” I announced.
A heavy arm came toward me as the guy tried to grab my wrist. I pushed toward him, seizing his fingers and bending them backward. He screamed like a little boy, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt them now. I backhanded the punk dude and broke his jaw.
Punk stumbled back in a stupor and cried out in pain. I’d once criticized the Fae kings for their fondness of breaking things. It seemed that I’d just developed the same taste. Their brutal nature had started rubbing off on me, and I blamed these douches in front of me.
I swept my leg under a douche’s feet and dropped him.
“Sorry, ape. You won’t be getting that great opportunity you’ve been waiting for to sneak up on me and hit the back of my head,” I told him.
I couldn’t drop a Fae knight easily, but this bunch of untrained humans was a joke.
While I punched and dropped them, showing mercy, this gang still didn’t seem to get it or know when to quit. But then, they were just desperate.
Two guys and the mink-haired girl thrust their swords and knives toward me while I was speaking. None of them had the word “honor” in their vocabulary. They’d coordinated this betrayal of trust after they talked me into a hand-to-hand duel.
My team shouted out warnings, and Richie cursed angrily as he tried to run toward me. I darted between two guys to avoid their blades before they could catch up with me. One guy was unable to stop his momentum, and he lurched forward and buried his blade into the mink-haired girl’s middle as she tried to charge me with a machete, intent on cutting off my limb.
The girl’s eyes bulged in shock before she registered pain and terror, then she grabbed her stomach, fell to the ground in a fetal position, and screamed—though not before her machete sliced across the attacking guy’s thigh, which was also an accident.
Goatee threw a dagger at my throat while I was distracted by the grotesque sight of the sudden spurt of blood. I didn’t bother to duck. Instead, I caught the flying dagger three inches from my face. Goatee’s jaw dropped.
“How about I return the favor?” I asked nicely, then without waiting for a firm answer, I tossed his dagger right back, faster than he could sidestep. The dagger went through his throat. He’d missed, and I hadn’t.
Everyone was shouting, and Hawaiian Shirt screamed, “You killed him, Fae bitch! You killed him!”
I drew Netherbane from an elaborate scabbard that Baron had made for me. “You’re next,” I said good-naturedly. “I tolerated you long enough, Hawaiian Shirt, but you just forfeited your chance to live. I’m setting an example, starting with you.” I scanned my defeated opponents as they pulled farther away from me.
“You’re my prey, all of you,” I said, channeling the dark part of me that had awoken after the archangel’s power blossomed in my veins. It reveled in maiming, killing, and destroying. “I warned you what would happen if you assaulted me. But you were still hellbent on murdering me to save yourselves. I would have shown you mercy if you hadn’t turned the knife on me after we’d settled the hand-combat rule. I’m done with bad apples. So, now you die.”
He picked up two swords from the ground and lunged toward me. I moved behind him in a blur and sliced his throat with Netherbane. He gagged as blood splashed out of his neck and fell facedown.
“She-demon!” cursed another unremarkable guy whom I’d kicked to the ground.
They still hadn’t seen enough of my brutal side to discourage them from further fighting and meaningless death. These weak human brutes couldn’t wrap their minds around the fact that a woman was stronger than them.
I cocked my head. “She-demon means succubus, but I don’t belong to the category of a sex demon. Seriously.” I drew the Glock 19. “And you don’t insult a true queen and get to live.”
Bang. I shot the dude between the eyes.
Everyone was so shocked at me killing a few dudes without effort or mercy, they appeared speechless. I’d told them that every decision and action had consequences, but people never listened. That dude hadn’t believed that I’d shoot him even after I’d killed two of his pals.
“Never pick a fight you can’t win,” I said with a tight smile. “When you can’t help your stupid self but insist on picking a fight, expect a surprise. Now, who else wants a hot bullet from this psycho bitch?”
I looked around to see who volunteered this time. None. Surprise.
No one called me names again, either. They slunk away. No one made eye contact with me either. Rude.
“All right, then,” I said, glancing at my team. Richie looked especially pale. He hadn’t seen this side of me in college, and I didn’t blame him. “Let’s get going before the next hunters arrive. Brigantia won’t be sending a bunch of untrained humans again. The new hunters won’t just be hunting me. They’ll kill everything and everyone in their path, and you’re disposable in my evil sister’s scheme.”
“I’m considering joining you and your team,” said the girl with the blonde ponytail haughtily. “My family is rich and powerful.”
“Wow, I’m flattered,” I said, pressing my hand to my heart. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll have to pass.”
She blinked in disbelief and anger. The chick had always gotten what she wanted, but today wasn’t her day.
“All of you who stood against me don’t get a second chance,” I said. “I’ve already shown you mercy by letting you live. Come after me again, and it’ll be your last day on Earth.”
I started running, and my team followed. We left the rest of the group to their fates.
Richie caught up with me. “What about Tania? We can’t just leave her behind.”
“You’re welcome to stay with her if you want, Richie,” I said. “No one’s stopping you.”
He kept running beside me, even as Tania wailed.
I didn’t care. They’d made their beds. Call me callous, but only my team’s and my survival mattered. Richie was smart enough to know that if he stayed, he’d die with her.
“Move faster!”I barked. “We must find a shelter before the hunters get here.”
Those mean fools I’d left behind and let live had wasted enough of my time. I should have just put a bullet in each of their heads and moved on quickly, but something—a last ounce of humanity—had held me back. Thanks to my human family.
A sound pierced my ears, and the hunting horn blared across the arena.
The next wave of hunters had entered the game.
