Fairy Bad Day(4)

“What’s wrong, slayer? Why are you looking so grumpy? We just wanted you to chill out a bit.” It smirked. “Get it. Ice cubes, chill out,” the small creature said as its wings fluttered in a blurry pattern in front of her eyes. This one was wearing cargo pants and a plaid shirt and looked like it had come from the pages of a Gap catalog.

“Emma, are you still there?” Loni asked, sounding alarmed.

“It’s the fairies.” Emma sighed and tried to swipe the creature with her hands, but it lazily flitted out of her way before the other two joined it, just out of her reach. “They’re mocking me.”

“Mocking you?” a second fairy, the one in the AC/DC T-shirt, protested as it once again swooped close to her face. “My brother Gilbert might’ve been tormenting you, but I can assure you he was most definitely not mocking you. Isn’t that right, Trevor?”

“That is correct, Rupert.” A third fairy, wearing a miniature green hoodie and some baggy jeans now appeared. “Because we only save the mocking for those who are a real threat, not some two-bit useless wannabe slayer-girl.”

“But don’t worry,” Emma continued to Loni in a tight voice as she once again tucked her cell phone under her ear and loaded up the tiny crossbow. “Because soon they’re all going to be dead.”

“Did you hear that? She thinks she’s going to kill us. With that thing!”

“Oooh, no. Please don’t hurt me. Last time you used that weapon, you only missed me by a mile.” Gilbert pretended to shake with fear before suddenly scratching his chin. “Or was it two miles?”

“See, definitely tormenting,” Rupert pointed out as he pretended to play some air guitar before darting right up to her face and wagging his tongue at her à la Gene Simmons. “Oh, and FYI, if you can’t even scare Gilbert, then you really are doing a bad job, because he’s the worrier of the group.”

“It’s true.” Gilbert proudly nodded in agreement as he smoothed down his neat plaid shirt. “I guess it’s an eldest fairy thing, because Rupert’s the rebel, Trevor’s the irresponsible one, and me? Well, I’m the worrier. I mean, the world’s a scary place. But at least I don’t have to worry about being shot by a pathetic slayer-girl.” He grinned and then turned and gave his two brothers another high five.

Emma gritted her teeth as she held up the tiny crossbow, but by the time she released the arrow, the fairies had casually flown out of the way before turning so they could all watch the blunt skewer go skittering harmlessly along the marble floor.

“Er.” Trevor gave a polite cough as he swooped down to where the skewer now lay. “I think you dropped something.” Then without another word they all darted off, laughing like a pack of demented hyenas.

Emma reluctantly retrieved the skewer. Not for the first time she wished that the rules weren’t quite so black and white about using lethal weapons when you were slaying elementals in public places.

Of course Emma could see the point of the ruling, since most sight-blind civilians tended to get freaked out when they saw a slayer with a sharp pointy weapon trying to fight what looked like, well... nothing.

It had actually long been a debate within the slaying community whether they should let the greater public know the truth about the elementals in order to make a slayer’s job easier, but since most people refused to believe something they couldn’t see, the idea had always been vetoed. Besides, most elementals stayed away from heavily populated areas, not by choice but because of the ever-increasing series of complex wards that slayers spent a lot of their time planting and maintaining in urban areas.

According to Loni, all elementals were filled with negative electrons and so the wards simply pulsed out positive electrons that shocked the creatures if they got too close. Apparently each elemental had a different shock point, so each ward was triggered to release a different voltage. While Emma didn’t exactly understand the science behind them, she knew that the tiny nickel-size devices worked like permanent invisible force fields.

But, for whatever reason, the fairies seemed oblivious to all the known wards and instead chose to spend 24/7 at the mall. It was less than ideal.

“Seriously, Emma, what’s going on? Did you kill any of them?” Loni demanded, yelling into the cell phone.

“No. How can such stupid things be so hard to kill?” she groaned in annoyance as she ran after the fairies, making sure not to let them out of her sight. They had an uncanny ability to blend into the background—not that she knew how, since between the bad miniature clothing and the glittery wings, they stood out like a sore thumb to anyone who had the sight. Yet the number of times she had lost track of them during her patrols didn’t bear thinking about.

“It’s just a matter of time,” Loni said in a positive voice.

“I’ve had five weeks,” Emma pointed out as the frustration came bubbling to the surface. “That’s five Saturday patrols, not to mention the extra field days that Professor Vanderbilt has taken me on, and not one kill. Even Tyler’s stopped taking bets on me killing one before Induction, and this is the guy who bets on cockroach races.”

“Maybe you could try using the subsonic blaster I just finished making? I used it today, and the low-level frequency knocked out two goblins before they could even unsheathe their claws. Let me tell you, it made killing them a lot easier. I didn’t even get covered in goblin slime this time.”