Keys and Curses (Shadow Book 2) (23 page)

Nikifor cringed every bit as hard as Flower at the use of the title for Shazza. It just wasn’t right.

“I did it,” Pumpkinhead said.

“You? A likely story.” The mask swung back to the cage and the Moon Trooper yanked on the door.

Pumpkinhead hung on tight. His bumpy chin jutted in obstinate determination. The Moon Trooper’s brute strength got him nowhere.

Pumpkinhead let go. The door smacked into the Moon Trooper’s face and knocked him back a full step. An ugly snarl came from behind the mask.

Pumpkinhead raised his fists and jumped up and down, making the cage rock. “Yeah, come on, weirdo maskhead silver face! You’ll have to fight me to get to the Lord of the Gourd!”

Fitz groaned. The other Moon Troopers came marching down to see what was happening.

The pile of blankets trembled and slid aside. The Lord of the Gourd shot to her feet with an agility entirely unexpected for her age and yelled out in a voice that split the entire street. “Bloomin Fairies attack!”

As if they’d been fired from a cannon, the fairies dropped from under the wagons, swarmed up the sides, then ran straight for the Moon Troopers and leaped onto their backs, six fairies to each trooper.

“Well,” Fitz said. “So much for doing this quietly.”

Nikifor seized the axe from its brace and strode around the wagon. A shrill whistle split the street. He knew that sound well. Somewhere nearby was a Moon Trooper with a long, thin silver whistle calling for backup. He’d run from that sound too many times.

The first Moon Trooper he found had one black glove around Pumpkinhead’s neck. The fairy’s little legs kicked in mid-air. His red hair stood on end, crackling in the electricity of the lightning rod brandished in his face.

Nikifor buried his axe in the creature’s neck. Blood sprayed over all three of them. Pumpkinhead wriggled out of the Moon Trooper’s grasp, spat blood everywhere and kicked the falling oppressor in the chin. “Bloomin Fairies forever!” he yelled, and charged back into the fray.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Frozen.

Nikifor shoved knots of Moon Troopers aside with his axe, his fists, even his head, raw violence in action, speed, strength, instinct.

Flower was frozen.

Fitz caved a Moon Trooper’s rib cage with one blow from his right hoof. He fought with the grim power and assurance of a man who had spent decades at war, always driving the enemy back, but never for long. Soon he would be overwhelmed.

She didn’t know why she couldn’t move. She could fight. She’d spent decades holding back vampires at the Bitter Tower, battling them for Bloody Fairy territory, fighting for her king and for Shadow, blood, teeth, fists, iron, whatever it took.

A Moon Trooper raised a lightning rod high over his head and arced it down towards Carrots, who clung to the edge of a wagon, eyes wide, jaw dropped. Ten Bloomin Fairies dived at the creature’s legs and brought him crashing to the ground.

For one crazy moment Flower fell back into the Vampire Wars. Darkness thick as mountain fog. Night teeming with fear. A roar, a wave of sound, blood in the air, blood that could shake the earth, the battle cry of the vampire king, a sound that terrified even the warlike, tireless Bloody Fairies.

She took a firm grip on herself. This was not the time for flashbacks. These weren’t vampires, they were Moon Troopers, and the brawling Bloomin Fairies were nowhere near the disciplined, savage fighting force their cousins the Bloody Fairies had been.

Flower ran to the prison cage, dragged the Lord of the Gourd, who snoozed on undisturbed, from under the blankets and tucked her securely under one arm.

The Lord of the Gourd sputtered awake. “What are you doing you now great big giant freakin dead muse!”

“Moon Troopers everywhere.” Flower dodged a Moon Trooper sent her way by Fitz’s hoof. “We need a diversion so we can get away.”

A small hand tugged on her elbow. Flower stopped, ready to spit woodchips until she saw it was Mudface.

Mudface grabbed the Lord of the Gourd’s ear and whispered into it.

The Lord of the Gourd grunted. “Alright then.” She raised her head and her voice boomed through the night. “Bloomin Fairies! Streets aren’t very shiny!”

“What?” Exasperated, Flower was about to give both fairies a few sharp words about taking battles seriously when every Bloomin Fairy there gathered into a tight group and rushed the wagons.

Flower almost choked on her own words. Nikifor was engaged in beating the living daylights out of five Moon Troopers at once right on the other side of those wagons. “Nikifor move!” she screamed.

“I’m busy!” he roared.

The fairies hit the wagons with so much force the wood splintered and the whole structure tipped.

“Move now!”

Nikifor leaped three feet into the air, kicked a Moon Trooper out of his path and bolted away from the wagons.

Joints and hinges cracked and squealed. The wagons rocked precariously and crashed onto their sides in slow motion, then exploded into splinters of flying wood, sending a swirling, acrid tide of silver surging into the streets. The swell knocked the Moon Troopers off their feet and slammed them into the tenement walls. Their uniforms sizzled. A mask melted. The quicksilver ate holes into the stone wall, but the Moon Troopers stiffened, a tumbled, graceless mass of statues melted together for eternity.

Flower pushed down the wave of horror that rose at the sight. Someone had to keep their head. She caught sight of Shazza watching the whole thing with wide eyes. “Sharon run, now!” she yelled. “You know where we’re going!”

Shazza didn’t wait to be told twice. She ran.

“Follow her!” Flower grabbed the nearest fairies by the topknots and shoved them after Shazza. She herded more and more until they all got the idea and stampeded after the false muse. Then she yanked Fitz out of a last ditch punch-up with a surviving Moon Trooper and ran after them, Moon Troopers in hot pursuit. Nikifor’s long strides propelled him to the rear of the group.

The Bloomin Fairies surged into the city centre hot on Shazza’s heels, their topknots bobbing and their little legs pumping impossibly hard. With the Lord of the Gourd under one arm yelling insults back at the Moon Troopers and shaking a shrivelled fist, it was all Flower could do to keep up with Fitz thundering beside her. The regular jar and crack of Nikifor’s axe breaking Moon Trooper bones right behind her was all that kept that precious distance between them and their pursuers.

They rounded a corner into a narrow, dark alley. For one terrifying moment Flower thought Shazza had betrayed them after all and led them down a dead end. Then they burst into Shadow Piazza, a huge, central public space where shops and stores had once crowded the edges of a massive stone-paved square with a bubbling fountain in the centre. Once, this space had been beautiful both day and night, always crowded with visitors and locals shopping and exploring Shadow’s most famous city.

Now it was empty and broken, a gilded skeleton of its former glory. The quaint old shops were boarded over and locked up with padlocks the size of her fist. A huge sign bolted to a boarded-up window bore the words
Fairies, Pixies and Fire Elves must register with the Guild
.

In the now sluggish fountain, a ten foot high statue of a Moon Trooper glowered over the entire street. Down one side of the square sprawled the offices of the Moon Troopers. Utilitarian gas flares blazed at every door and window. Tall, masked streaks of terror teemed inside.

Flower groaned under her breath. They had to come this way to get to the press. A whistle shrilled for backup even as their hunters streamed into the Piazza; an answering whistle pierced the night from the precinct. Sirens wailed like doom.

“Faster!” she yelled.

Fitz grabbed two straggling fairies by the topknot and lifted them into the air. Nikifor’s axe hit bone with a sickening thud.

Then they were there. Shadow Press towered like a crooked mushroom just off the piazza, sandwiched between a broken down cottage and a watchtower still under construction.

Shazza ran up the stairs ahead of them all and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Seconds later the door opened and the fairies streamed in.

“We have to go in that one!” Fitz gestured at the cottage with one of the fairies in his hands.

“No time.” Flower prodded him up the stairs after the fairies. She stopped in the narrow, crowded hall. “Nikifor!”

Caught up in a scuffle on the steps, Nikifor balled a fist and launched it into a Moon Trooper’s face. The Moon Trooper dodged and came back with a flying backfist that sent Nikifor stumbling into Flower and the Lord of the Gourd.

Shazza slammed the door closed, shot all five bolts home and leaned against it. It shuddered. She grinned at Flower. “That felt good, eh?”

“If you say so.” Flower tried to catch her breath. The door shook again. “Fitz, we have to get these fairies through. Now.”

Fitz gently deposited the two fairies into the crowd. He tugged on his beard. His wrinkles deepened. “We have to go through next door. If we go through here we’ll end up close to where we need to be, but we risk being seen. You don’t know the dangers.”

“I know the dangers out there!” Flower jabbed a finger at the door. “These fairies are not taking a stroll next door, it has to be from here!”

“Nobody’s going anywhere until I get that book on the press,” Shazza said.

“Where’s the press?” Flower asked.

“Upstairs.”

“Fine. Let’s get moving.” Flower strode forward, her movements hampered until the fairies got into the momentum, surged up the stairs and streamed through the door at the top. When she was quite sure they were all through, Flower checked behind them in time to see the front door splinter and crack. She slammed the second door behind her. Fitz shot the bolt home and dragged a heavy desk in front of it.

They were in a large room, where more heavy desks lined two of the walls. In the far corner lurked a giant black machine. For a dizzying moment Flower thought it might be Nikifor’s nightmare machine, until she realised it was just the press. Her pounding heart slowed. The thing was twice as tall as her and filled a whole wall. Pitted and bent from years of use, a row of eight-spoked silver wheels ran from one end to the other, and a giant, fluted chimney connected to the roof.

Back before things went wrong, the press had printed novels written in both Shadow and Dream, classics and trash alike. It had always been a point of pride that creativity had free rein. She’d spent a decade or two running a program to encourage literacy in all the tribes, about a hundred years ago. She’d given out free copies of every book from
Tom Sawyer
to
Caterpillars on Mars
. The worlds had shared a rich literary heritage then. For the last ten or fifteen years, however, all the press had churned out was pamphlets about new Guild laws and trashy novellas that turned her stomach about heroic Moon Troopers and unwashed fairies.

Mudface pushed her way through the crowd, her book clutched to her chest, wide eyes fixed on the machine. She barely breathed.

Flower deposited the Lord of the Gourd on the ground, ignored the old woman’s protests and pushed her way after Mudface.

Mudface met Shazza in front of the machine, her face pale against the black of her clothes. She looked up at the false muse with both fear and desperate hope.

“Mudface,” Flower said, but she was too far away to be heard. She pushed forward. A deep sense of foreboding made her very skin prickle.

“Give it to me.” Shazza reached out for the book.

Heavy footsteps ran up the stairs outside the room. The door shuddered.

Mudface clutched the book tighter. “You promise lots of people will read it?”

“Chicky everyone in Shadow will know your name. Give me the book.” Shazza took hold of the corners.

Mudface surrendered it reluctantly.

“Mudface no! Wait!” Flower still struggled to get through the tangle of fairies around her knees.

Shazza took the book to one end of the press and disappeared behind it.

Flower said a bad word under her breath and changed direction. When she got closer, Shazza’s back was to her and she was bent over the book.

The door shuddered under the sound of Fitz trying to make himself heard over the fairy hubbub.

“Sharon,” Flower said. “What are you doing?”

Shazza’s eyes gleamed and her smile was thin. She placed the book into a chute and pulled down a huge black lever. The machine ground and shook. Lights flashed along the wheels and a puff of steam escaped from a vent under its chimney.

Mudface, watching from nearby, emitted a squeak and jumped up and down.

The rest of the fairies stopped yelling and stared at the noise.

“Finally,” Fitz said. “Listen to me, all of you. I’m going to cut a door into Dream now, and you need to go through as quietly as possible, then stay together and follow me. It’s very important. Do you understand?”

But the fairies weren’t even listening; they continued to stare hypnotised at the machine. The grinding noises turned to cracking and then a steady rumble. Mudface was so pale and tense she seemed about to fall over.