After the Fall Read online

  "Well, I'm not your momma, and you're not supposed to be here." I followed Spike, trying to make Willy's ride as comfortable as possible. I was so distracted, I didn't notice how upset he was until the wailing began.

  "Waaaahhh ... I want my mommaaaa!!"

  I lifted him up to eye-level as I walked. "Stop crying, Willy, there's nothing I can do."

  "You're mean! I want my mommmaaaaa! I want my papaaaa!"

  I stopped.

  Spike realized I wasn't following anymore and stopped too. "What's up?"

  "The pixie is hungry," I said, staring at his red face and the tears coursing down his cheeks.

  "Yeah! Da pixie is hungry!" screeched Willy, glaring at me.

  "He looks pissed," said Spike staring down at him.

  "Pissed!" yelled Willy.

  I rolled my eyes. "Don't give him any more ammo like that. We'll all end up getting our mouths washed out with ladybug pee."

  Spike laughed and then stopped when he realized I wasn't laughing with him. "Are you serious?"

  "Apparently it's the pixie version of soap."

  "Daaamn. That pixie lady is serious."

  "You're telling me." I turned my attention back to the unhappy baby in my hand. "Okay, Willy. Tell me what you like to eat, and I'll try to find some."

  "Fruit!" he said, brightening up immediately.

  I held my hand up higher so he could see around us. "Do you see any fruit here?"

  Willy looked around, falling down twice in his efforts before finally facing me again. "No," he said, ready to start crying again.

  "Me neither. But if I see any, I'll get it for you, okay?"

  He nodded, absently sticking his finger up his nose.

  "Listen, little dude ... you can't pick your nose when you're with me."

  "How come?" he asked, his finger not moving.

  "Because it's gross."

  "Why?"

  "Because it is."

  "Why?"

  I sighed heavily, looking over at Spike. "This is going to be a long friggin trip."

  He smiled. "Yeah. I got that."

  I nudged his arm. "Come on. And keep your eyes out for fruit."

  "Fruit?" he asked, sounding like he wasn't sure he'd heard right.

  "Yeah, fruit. The kid is hungry, and that's what he eats."

  "Okaaaay, then," said Spike.

  I knew exactly what he was thinking. Where in the hell are we going to find fruit in the Overworld?

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE TREES BEGAN TO THIN, and eventually we reached a spot where we could see sky again between some of their branches. It was still full of gorgeous colors and not the normal blue like at home, but there weren't any of the angels flying around in the clouds that I could see.

  "Why are we stopping?" I asked.

  Spike stood in place, surveying the area around us. "I don't know. I'm just not sure where to go at this point, and I don't know how much farther we should go without some sort of plan."

  "Did you bring any food or water with you?" I asked, kicking myself in the butt mentally for not even considering my most basic needs. How could I have been so stupid? I really needed to start thinking a little bit more before acting. Aidan had probably put that stuff in his bag, but his brilliance was doing nothing for me right now.

  "Yeah, I've got water and a few snacks, but they're not going to last long," he said, unzipping his bag and pulling out a canteen.

  "Hey! Like a real camping canteen," I said, for some reason delighted over the fact that we looked like pioneers or something.

  "Yeah," he said smiling like a little kid. "My brownie kicks butt."

  I took a small sip and offered a few drops to Willy out of the cap. Spike took a drink too and then put it back in his bag.

  I looked around the area where we were and the place ahead of us that looked a lot lighter - as if the trees were spaced farther apart. I urged Spike forward with a lift of my chin. "Let's go over there and see what that is."

  Spike nodded, taking my hand and moving in that direction. I held baby bee up in front of me so he could watch where we were going. My hand stayed in a fist, and he sat in the hole in the very top of it, using my curled forefinger and thumb to support most of his body with his tiny hands.

  "Wow, this place is pretty-pretty-pretty. Where are we going? Where's Momma and Papa?"

  "This is the Overworld, Willy, and we're going to find a dragon or some fae who can bring you home where Momma and Papa are probably waiting for you with an army of rescue fae called in to find your tiny butt."

  He turned to look at me, frowning. "Am I gonna be in trouble?"

  "Uh, yeah. Probably."

  "Momma's gonna probably let Papa spank me, huh?"

  "I hope so."

  He slapped my finger. "Dat's not nice, Lellamental! Don't say dat!"

  I shrugged. "Sorry, little dude, but you kind of deserve it. Do you have any idea how worried your parents must be right now?"

  "Uh, Jayne, are you sure that's the best conversation to be having with him right now?" cautioned Spike.

  "What? Why?"

  The wailing started again before Spike could answer.

  "Waaaahhaaahaaahaaaa!! I want my mommaaaaa!!"

  I growled at my own stupidity. "Grrrr - come on! Shit. I'm sorry, Willy. Listen ... your momma's not going to spank you and neither is your papa. They're going to be so happy to see you in one piece they'll just cover you in kisses."

  "And honey?" he asked, his crying stopping immediately.

  "Sounds kind of kinky to me, but if you say so," I said, laughing a little.

  "What's kinky mean?" Willy asked.

  I rolled my eyes. "Never mind. Just ... think about all the polly balls your momma will give you when you get home."

  "Okay." He paused for a second and then said, "Lellamental?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I'm hungry."

  "Yeah, I know you're hungry."

  "It's kinky to be hungry."

  "No, it's not kinky to be hungry. Stop saying that word."

  "Kinky, kinky, kinky," he said, his finger up his nose again.

  Spike snickered. "I think the first thing we have to do is find the little dude some food."

  "I second that motion," I said, moving towards the opening in the trees again. "The sooner the better. And maybe some earplugs, too. Either for him or us, I don't care."

  We arrived at our destination a few minutes later, most of our journey made to the sound of Willy's new song, most aptly titled, "Kinky Bee Honey Bee." A light breeze was blowing through the trees, pushing the clouds overhead faster than the ones we'd seen over the meadow. A buzzing came to my ears from a distance but soon got louder and louder, reminding me of Tim.

  "Papa!" yelled Willy. He struggled to get free of my fist. "Papa's here!"

  "No, you're not going anywhere, troublemaker. Stay with me. That's not your papa." I knew his buzzing frequency, and this wasn't it. Lord knows I'd heard it in my ear often enough.

  Spike moved closer, putting his arm around me to pull me to his side. "Just hang tight. We don't know what this thing might be or what it wants."

  A second after he said that, I saw something coming straight for us from between some trees. It was like a pixie, only ... brighter.

  Whatever it was, it zoomed up to us and started circling our heads, round and round and round, weaving a trail of sparkling light that floated around us like filaments made of diamonds or crystalline snow. They slowly dropped lower and lower until they surrounded our bodies like tiny lassos. The bright pixie hovered in place for a few seconds before buzzing away, quickly disappearing into the trees behind us.

  "Whoooaaaa, dat's soooo prettyyyyy," said Willy, ceasing his struggles and staring in rapture at the light show. He reached out to touch one of the filaments, but pulled his hand back quickly once he made contact. "Owie! Pricks! Mean!"

  I reached out tentatively to touch one, but it disintegrated before our eyes. I felt nothing. I looked over at Spike and
watched as he did the same; only when he made contact, he jerked his hand back too.

  "Youch! Damn, that hurts like a mother fuu .... dger." He shook his hand out as he glanced at Willy, being careful not to touch the other filaments that still surrounded him.

  I took a deep, calming breath and slowly reached out again to touch the ones still floating around me, wondering if I'd just gotten lucky the first time and was about to get the crap shocked out of me too. But as soon as my finger made contact with the strings, they all just fell away; and I felt nothing at all in the process. "Why don't they hurt me?" I asked, looking at my finger to see if there was any evidence of pain maybe I'd missed there.

  "I don't know," said Spike, frowning. "Come over here and try mine."

  I stepped closer to the filaments surrounding Spike and touched them. Each disappeared as soon as my finger intersected with their light.

  "Did it hurt? Like a prick or a spark or anything?" Spike asked.

  "Nope. Nothing at all."

  "Huh," he said, looking down at his finger.

  "Is there a mark on your hand?"

  He shook his head. "Just a little red spot, maybe." He held up his finger for my inspection and confirmation. Sure enough, there was something there. It looked like a welt or a burn mark.

  "Willy, do you have a boo-boo on your hand where you touched the bad light?" I asked.

  He had the finger in his mouth and just shook his head no.

  "Can I see?" I asked.

  He shook his head no again.

  I sighed. This kid stuff was not easy. I didn't have the patience for it, and was quickly gaining a lot of respect for Abby that I probably should have had for her all along. "Please?" I asked in the sweetest voice I was capable of using at that point.

  He popped his finger out of his mouth and held it up for my inspection, saying nothing but looking as forlorn as a baby pixie could.

  I squinted as hard as possible, but try as I might, it was impossible for me to see something that tiny. "I can't see it. Your finger's too little."

  He examined it himself, saying, "It's red and it hurts and I don't like dat mean pixie lady," before sticking it back in his mouth.

  I turned to follow the flight path of the now absent prickly-light-spinner. "Well, she's gone, at least for now. And for the record, I don't like her either."

  "Make that three thumbs down for the wench with the light-web coming out of her tail." Spike tugged on my sleeve. "Come on. Let's keep moving."

  "Where are we going?" I asked.

  "In the direction she came from."

  "Why there?" It seemed like asking for trouble to me.

  Spike shrugged. "My logic probably sucks, but since she's now on my bad-guy list, and she came from there in a hurry, maybe it means her enemies are that way."

  "But what if she was leaving her house? Or her compound? And it's full of web-spinners?" I asked, freaking out about the possibility of more than one of them coming after us. I wasn't sure if my light cutting skills were permanent or just a fluke.

  "Then we're screwed." Spike stopped walking. "Do you have any other ideas?"

  "No. But I'd like to talk about why I was able to make those things disappear and you were hurt by them."

  "You're an elemental," Spike offered, shrugging, as if that explained everything.

  I laughed. "That's it? That's the reason? Why does that make a difference?"

  "How am I supposed to know? I'm just a simple incubus. But it's my theory, and I'm sticking to it."

  I put my arm through his and began dragging him in the direction he'd suggested. "I love that you're not a man of science." I was grinning like a fool.

  "Why?" he asked, joining me in my happy-fest with a smile of his own.

  "Because, I already have one of those in my life. Tony."

  "And now you have me in your life too, is that what you're saying?"

  I squeezed his arm harder, not looking at him. "Hells yeah, I do. Assuming you still want to be in it."

  He leaned in and gave me a quick, chaste kiss on the cheek. "There's no place I'd rather be."

  Willy started pumping his little body up and down in my fist, doing some sort of nutty pixie dance. "Hells yeah! Hells yeah! Hells yeah!"

  I laughed. "You do realize we just taught the little turd another bad word, right?"

  "We're probably going to make it out of here only to get pixelated by his parents when we get home," said Spike.

  "Probably," I agreed, looking down to make sure I didn't trip and add squished pixie baby to my list of infractions.

  My next thought was interrupted by the sound of an angry man grunting and yelling, and the distinct swishing and crunching that I knew to be someone running through the leaves and grasses in our direction.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MY MIND WENT BLANK, AND I turned to look at Spike in a panic, hoping he'd have a plan.

  "Quick!" he said. "Hide!" He grabbed my free hand, looking left and right.

  "Where?!" I asked, desperately searching for some cover and only seeing trees too narrow to disguise all of us together.

  "You go there," he said, pointing to a nearby tree before he took off running to another, bigger one about ten feet away.

  I jumped to follow his command, whispering to Willy as I went. "Be quiet, Willy! Don't say anything!"

  "Why?" he said, sounding like he was going to cry again.

  "Because I'll have to put you in my backpack again if you do."

  "I'll tell my momma on you."

  "Go for it," I whispered hoarsely. "And I'll tell her you went in there when you weren't supposed to, and you'll get that ladybug pee treatment for sure."

  "Huh-uh," he said, "you only get ladybug pee for bad words. You get stink flowers for doing bad-boy stuff."

  I shook my head, my imagination cooking up all kinds of images at that explanation; but we didn't have time for my pixie discipline education right now. "Fine. I'll give you the stink flower if you don't shush right now!" I glanced down at him to make sure he knew how serious I was.

  Willy stuck his tongue out at me, but didn't say anything else, thank goodness, because just as he finished arguing with me, a super pissed-off dwarf stopped next to our tree with a big friggin axe in his hand, held out like he was about to chop off some kneecaps any second.

  I tried not to breathe too loudly, forcing myself to control my pulse and shaking body. Last thing I needed to do was freak this baby pixie out with my panic and send him into a flightpath of death. I was barely hanging onto him as it was - for some reason he had ants in his pants - and his struggling was going to be successful at winning his freedom if he kept it up. I couldn't move my other hand over to get a better hold on him and not call attention to myself with the noise.

  The heavily-armed dwarf stopped not five feet from my tree and looked around with narrowed eyes, making me desperately want to move around the trunk some more before he saw me; but it was too late to do that now. If I tried to take even a single step, he'd hear me.

  He sniffed the air, drawing his head left and right slowly, lifting his chin as his gaze was nearly to the spot where we were hiding. "Who is there?!" he growled in some sort of Irish- or Scottish-sounding brogue. He turned quickly the rest of the way to face me, catching my eye before I could pull my head back out of sight.

  I gave up with the weak-ass hiding crap and lifted my hand in a lame gesture of greeting. "Uh, hi. It's just me." I stepped out farther so he could see I was without any serious weapons, or at least anything that looked like one. I was pretty sure my dragon fang would be no better than a stick here, just like it had been in the Underworld, so hopefully he wouldn't see it as a threat. "I don't mean you any harm, I'm just ... uh ... passing through."

  "Who's that?" asked Willy. "Is dat Niles? Dat looks like Niles. Hi, Niles! Hi, Niles! I see you, Niles! Can you see me, Niles?"

  I so badly wanted to shush the little punk, but I was afraid to call attention to him in front of this guy. Maybe he'd turn o
ut to be a pixie hater, and then we'd be sunk.

  "And who would you be, then, lass?" he demanded, throwing his axe casually from his left hand to his right without even looking at it.

  "I would be Jayne, from ... uhhh ... Florida in the Here and Now. Just here in the Overworld for a little while to find some friends and then leave."

  He seemed stumped by that, his eyes so narrowed at this point they were nearly closed. "Does me hearing fail me just now or did ya say yer from the Here and Now, and ya be expecting to go back there?"

  "Uh, yeah. I'm just here on a ... field trip. You know. Hang out. See the sights a little. Then go back."

  He laughed once. Then once again. And soon was in the throes of a complete happy-seizure, bending in half as he held his stomach.

  I wasn't sure why, but I found it kind of annoying. He was making me feel really stupid. I put my hands on my hips, poor Willy riding all the way down in my left fist. "I don't see what's so funny about any of that, but whatever. Can you tell me where the dragons hang out please?"

  "Whoa! Lellamental! That's fun," yelled a way-too-excited Willy from down at my waist. "Do it again! Up! Up!"

  I flapped my arms up and down a few times to keep him happy, never taking my eyes off the dwarf. Willy giggled his little butt off, even shrieking occasionally with joy. I tried not to smile at it because I wasn't sure the dwarf would appreciate the fact that I was currently acting as an amusement park ride, while at the same time trying to be a serious diplomat or ambassador from another realm or whatever. I probably looked like a lunatic chicken, but I much preferred a happy, entertained baby pixie to a cranky bored one.

  The dwarf stopped laughing and stared at me with his mouth hanging open, an errant couple of chuckles bubbling up once in a while. He ignored them in favor of examining my face. "Are ye jokin' then?" He frowned at my arms going up and down then and said, "Ya don't have any proper wings, so ya can stop the flappin' nonsense. Ya be as tied to the ground as I."

  "No, I'm not joking." I stepped out completely from behind the tree, ceasing my crazy chicken act. "I'm not trying to fly either. I'm just passing through, and I don't know this area very well, so I'd appreciate some directions."