Awakening

7. Fairies

Grace clamped her hands over her ears and ran back to the bush, screaming to herself through the cacophony.

Dull pulses started sound off, almost muffled compared to the screeching. She poked her head above the bush to look out.

Fairies. Almost as tall as regular humans swarmed around Jordan, floating in the air with teeth and nails bared, their mouths dripped with black sludge as they tried to claw at his clothes and skin.

He was calm as they swarmed around him, his rifle raised and stalking in tight circles, shooting and reloading.

With every shot that found its mark, a flash of purple and strange fibres erupted from the wound, wrapping around the fairy and bringing it to the ground. The fibres tightened until the fairy disappeared with a dull pulse of noise.

"Are you okay?" A soft voice came from behind her. Grace turned to see a boy, a few years younger than her and uncomfortably handsome.

She squinted at him, unsure of what to say but feeling some sympathy for him having been caught up in the activity much like herself. "Are you okay?" She asked "you shouldn't be here."

"Come with me, where it's really safe." He said, resting a smooth hand on her arm. His fingers gripped into her skin and she began to follow. The screeching was growing louder, Grace cringed against the sound, covering her ears. The boy lead her around the corner of a nearby building and toward a park. "Come on!" He whispered pulling more urgently.

A bullet shot past Grace's cheek and directly into the boy's back, Grace watched horrified as the purple fibres burst from the bullet wound and wrapped around the boy. His eyes bulged and his skin turned purple and he disappeared.

Grace turned on her heel to see Elle standing on top of a building. She nodded at Grace and ran off again. Grace hurried to get back to her bush, was the boy really a fairy? Her heart was pounding and her ears ringing, she couldn't set the thoughts in her head straight. When she got back to the courtyard Stefan and the others were working together to take down all the fairies.

"Get down!" Stefan snapped when he saw Grace run up. She immediately dropped back into her original hiding place and tried to keep more focused. She would not be lead away again.

A fairy broke away from the others and started to scramble towards Grace, a girl with blonde hair and pale skin, her teeth were huge in her mouth. Grace fumbled with the gun she'd forgotten she was holding. This girl had none of the soothing effect the boy fairy had.

Grace continued to struggle with the gun as the fairy got closer. Her sweaty hands slipped on the hammer and the gun shook in her hand. The fairy was nearly at her, with sharp nails bared and eyes bloodshot, screaming and clicking, adding to the deafening sound of the others. Grace locked her elbows, closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

When She opened her eyes the girl had disappeared. Grace shuffled closer into the hiding spot, part of her hated herself for cowering. Grace crouched in the bush with her hands over her ears for what felt like ages, she didn't look up until she felt a hand on her shoulder, gently guiding her to stand.

"You got one, good job." Aiden smiled and patted her shoulder. "Elle and Stefan are just doing a final sweep. We should be done here soon." He was incredibly tall and thin, Grace looked up at him and nodded weakly.

"Come here, let's go back to the car." Jordan called to Grace. "Are you alright?"

"What was that?" Grace asked, her voice quavering from the shock. "What just happened?"

"I think there was some kind of party on campus, Fairies like to kidnap during parties. It looks like there was a huge revel of them." Jordan said casually as they made their way back to the car.

"Revel?" Grace asked.

"A group. They call them revels because it's like a party, they trash everything and join in the craziest of parties, and then end the night by kidnapping people... dragging them to the underworld" Jordan answered.

"Oh." Grace said, trying to hide the fact that she still didn't fully understand. "Elle is really good at this?"

"Wait till you see her in action... if you ever do." Jordan mumbled, He opened the car door for Grace and she got in.

"Yeah, Well I saw her in action at my apartment and she missed. But I guess she shot that fairy that tried to take me away..." She mumbled.

"A fairy tried to take you away?" Jordan snapped.

"I think he was a fairy..." Grace said.

"I told you to stay put! Are you alright?" Jordan's voice was raising into a frantic shout.

"What are you squeaking about?" Sofia asked, as she approached the car.

"Grace! She-" Jordan shouted. "Never mind. We are not bringing her again."

"No one wanted to bring her." Sofia said in a low voice. She made eye contact with Grace and raised an eyebrow. "Well, One of us did. And we can't afford to get on her bad side."

"What do you mean by that?" Grace asked, leaning between the two middle seats. She tried her best to not feel hurt by the rejection even though she wished she hadn't been here either.

Sofia smiled and shook her head before turning to watch Stefan join the group.

"Is everyone here?" He barked.

"Not yet." Aiden said as he came from another direction.

"How many did you get?" Stefan asked. Every one shrugged before checking the ammunition of their weapons. They sounded out numbers until they came to the approximate count of 30. Just as they concluded the counting Elle sauntered up to the car. She pulled empty magazines out of her guns and they came to a new total of 45.

"How many people did they take?" Aiden asked.

Jordan pulled out a tablet and typed for a moment. "From the energy readings, maybe one or two."

"Not bad." Sofia shrugged with a grimace.

They all got back in the car with Jordan and Stefan in the front seats, Sofia and Aiden in the middle and Grace and Elle in the back again.

"Elle, You got almost half of them." Grace whispered in awe.

"Shut up." Sofia hissed over her shoulder. Elle shrugged to Grace and nodded to Sofia.

"So, Grace. I haven't heard much about you. You're in trouble, I assume?" Aiden asked. He turned around in his seat and smiled at her.

"She's apparently Morgana Huntswolf with amnesia." Sofia snorted.

"Well, they think I am." Grace sighed.

"Are you?" Aiden asked with a straight face.

"I don't know." Grace answered.

"Do you remember growing up? Do you have any memories from your childhood?" Aiden asked.

"Yeah, I have all my memories, no major blank spots in time." Grace said after a moment of consideration.

"Those might be false memories." Stefan said.

Grace hadn't considered that. "I don't think they're false, If I can just call my parents..."

"If you tell them where they are you'll endanger them, if they even are your real parents." Stefan said, his voice cold.

"Go easy on her." Jordan said quietly.

Grace stared down at her hands, her stomach in knots with conflicting emotions. Her fingers seemed to quiver, or was that a wateriness in her eyes. She turned to Elle who was staring out the window with her usual blank expression.