Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,3
for it to fall down. As I suddenly sensed it would, and in just a few more seconds.
I’d let go of the old man to deal with the fairy that had landed on my head. I turned, looking for him, and found him on his knees with the twisted body of one tiny woman in his hand and a couple more crumpled in the grass around him. His ears dripped blood from cuts and scratches.
I realized the fairies had a system for hurting someone. First, they took his sight, and then they went after his hearing. The idea might have made me sick to my stomach, except that there wasn’t time.
I grabbed the old man and dragged him stumbling up the two concrete steps onto the stoop of the vacant house. The door didn’t have plywood nailed over it, but it was locked. I kicked it. The latch held.
The buzzing behind me got louder. I didn’t have to look to know there was nothing holding the fairies back anymore.
Bellowing, I booted the door again. It flew open and banged against the wall.
I lunged inside, jerked No Eyes in after me, slammed the door, and leaned against it. Since I’d broken it, I needed to brace it to keep it shut.
After a second, the fairies started pushing from the other side. Even with a bunch of them working together, they weren’t strong enough to shift the door and my weight, but in the long run, it probably wouldn’t matter. There was almost certainly a way for small creatures to slip inside such an old, dilapidated wooden building. They just had to hunt around and find it.
And I wouldn’t even see them coming. With the door shut, it was black inside.
I put my back to the door, then examined my bloody, throbbing hand by touch. The cuts weren’t deep. I guessed that was something.
“What are those things?” I asked.
“Brownwings,” panted the old man. Judging from the sound of his voice, he was still just a step or two away from me. “Lesser fey.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Well, there isn’t time to explain. We have to try to escape.”
“I’m all for that. How did you get away from them before?”
“I had a… well, call it a weapon. But it was like a gun with only one bullet.”
“And you can’t reload?”
A buzzing and pattering came from overhead. The brownwings were prowling around on the roof.
“No,” the old man said. “The imp only had to perform one service to earn its freedom. And without my eyes, it’s difficult to use my other talents.”
There was something funny about the way he was talking, and after a second, I figured out what it was. “You don’t sound very upset about losing your eyes just for their own sake.”
“They’ll grow back,” he said. “But not in time to help me here.”
“Mine won’t,” I said. “Not if the brownwings get me. That… thing that happened before and held them back. Can you make it happen again?”
“What ‘thing?’”
I realized that, since he hadn’t seen the fairies smack into the invisible wall, he thought we’d simply outrun them. And I didn’t know how to explain. But I figured I had to try.
“When my phone blew up—when you made it blow up—I felt like I was shaking inside. Then, when all the brownwings were about to catch up with us, I felt the same thing again. For a while after that, they couldn’t get at us. It was like there was something in their way.”
“A ward!” the old man said. “But none of the others would help me. We haven’t cut any deals. And you say you felt something?”
“Yes.”
“Hold still.”
After a second, something bumped my chin. Startled, I jerked back despite his warning. He made an impatient spitting sound, and then his hands fumbled their way around my face, like he was trying to figure out how I looked. Meanwhile, he snorted and snuffled. It all made my skin crawl—he felt as dirty as he looked and smelled—but I didn’t push him away.
Finally he said, “You’re one of us.”
“One of who?” I asked. The plywood covering a window creaked as the brownwings pried at it.
“One of the Old People,” he said. “Or at least you have a drop or two of our blood. And when I used your arms to aim my jinx, I sparked you.”
“I don’t know what any of that means.”
“I woke your gifts. Which you then used to hold the brownwings back.”