Dear Diary,
There is a place near the
school that the fairies call home. It’s within a circle on the ground of
stones. I only know this because that’s where Robin Red Cap asked me to meet
him. Everyone I know is a monster. They’ve driven each other to kill, to hurt,
to destroy one another. It has to stop. I have to stop them. If they keep going
down these roads, then they’ll never come back. They’ll never be able to keep
their humanity alive.
I know that Vincent has warned
me repeatedly against Robin Red Cap. I saw the two of them get in a fight where
both ended up bleeding from each other. Last time, I had barely managed to pull
Vincent away. If he knew where was I headed, I knew he would stop me. They all
would. Israel had nothing good to say about Red Cap either. But all the
warnings and their fear or anger wasn’t as important as what they were doing
and becoming. So I met him where he asked.
He told me there would be a
price. And I said fine. I said whatever and agreed to whatever price he could
want for me. I would promise if he asked me, but I think he knew from the look
in my eyes that I was dead serious. There was little negotiation. Just enough
that I knew I was doing something wrong, but not enough to make me really stop
and consider.
Until we were suddenly in his
world. Beneath the earth, I
guess, is a place where things like Robin Red Cap live. He lead me to a door
with vines that grew all over it. He told me to open it. I tried to, and the
vines tore into my arms, and I guess they fed on the blood because they became more
lush and bloomed shortly after. But I got the door open.
Inside there was a cage with a
sickly version of Red Cap and a small iron maiden. They were all in cold iron.
I looked at Red Cap and he told me to free them. In exchange, he would give me
some fairy dust. He said if I blew it on a supernatural person, then they
wouldn’t be able to use their powers, and would pretty much be mortal. Like me.
Maybe I should’ve thought it
through more. Maybe I should’ve listened to the seed of doubt in my stomach. Or
the voice of Vincent and Israel and Chantel in my head, all saying what I was
doing was wrong. But then I thought of all the things that had happened. The
way Vincent would turn to Samael at the first sign of trouble. The way Israel
had changed, how he was going to hurt someone again and live to regret it
later. Of how messy our lives were.
I opened the cage and the tiny
little Red Cap began to weakly crawl towards the one standing behind me. Then
he said “The other one” and I turned and opened up the iron maiden. Something
vicious and slavering and disgusting came out, grabbed the weakling and smashed
both of them into the body of Red Cap.
Suddenly he looked different.
He looked alive in a way I hadn’t seen. Brighter, somehow. As though all of him
had been restored. A sinking feeling touched my stomach as he handed me the bag
of dust he had promised. It glittered slightly, but mostly just looked like
grey dust. I didn’t ask where it had come from or how he had gotten it. I
didn’t want to know if it was the ground up bones of some ancient fairy. I just
wanted to know it worked.
Then we were above ground and
he said thanks before he ran off, like a cat hunting in a jungle. I’ll never
forget that image. A reborn Red Cap stalking the night. I felt my teeth bite my
lip as a moment of fear washed over me before I turned and began to walk back
towards the road, hoping to hail a cab and find where my friends were, only to
see someone approaching.
The closer he got the more I
realized it was that kid from school, Caleb. I barely knew him. But now I knew
he was a werewolf. I slid my hand into the bag and readied my first try of this
dust. I needed to know it would work before I tried it on Vincent and Ardath.
The two spectrums of how I felt: love and hate.
Caleb and I talked briefly,
well, mostly I snarled things at him as I walked away. But he kept trying to
stop me. Kept trying to ask if I was okay, ask why I ran away. Shit that wasn’t
his business. So I turned and blew the dust on him. I could see the anger in
him, but I could also see all that raw animalistic energy he normally carried
start to fade away. I couldn’t help but smile. It had fucking worked.
Just as
he was about to turn and likely yell at me, hands grabbed me and pulled me into
an elevator. I saw a blink of Caleb before the doors slid shut. When I turned
to see what was going on, standing there with a concerned and fearful expression
was Vincent. I felt my hand slide into that bag once more.
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