The ground under her crumbled slightly, and a wave of bugs crawled over her, swarming like flies on carrion. Needle-like stabs pricked her all over. More crawled onto her face. More stabs, and the creatures clung like ticks. The bloodsuckers kept coming and fastening on, some crawling inside her mouth as she inhaled and tried to get her bearings.
Mal sucked in a breath, feeling bugs crawling into her airway. That set off her coughing again. She couldn’t see. Her eyelids were thick with the parasitical creatures, and she couldn’t even lift them anymore. Her ears filled so that all she could hear were muffled rushing sounds. She’d closed her mouth almost completely and breathed through a narrow slit, since they already clogged her nose. Critters wriggled their legs and tried to force their way through, then fastened on where they were.
As the critters dined on her blood, they swelled, their many little legs wiggling happily. Or spasmodically. Hard to say.
Mal was certain she ought to be entirely disgusted and probably freaking out, but she found the entire situation as ridiculous as the pixies no doubt thought it was. She didn’t know if the little bastards would get full and jump off before or after she suffocated, if at all; if they’d get full before or after she ran out of blood; if they were depositing masses of eggs under her skin with every passing moment; or giving her some kind of bizarre disease like clown fever or monkey-butt flu.
She decided not to wait to find out. She summoned energy, snapping together pieces of a spell with unconscious ease. It was a sort of a combination electrical, poison, and cold spell. She pushed it out so it covered her like a second skin and activated it.
A quiver ran through the mass of bugs. Simultaneously, they hardened into frozen little rocks. Mal squirmed and shook herself. The creatures broke off and tumbled away. She rubbed them from her hands and her face, scraping them off her eyes and blowing them from her nose. Her skin prickled with frozen little flesh-piercing straws. Who knew what scientists would call them and who cared?
Mal spit them out of her mouth and wrinkled her nose at her red and purple blotched skin. Around every little straw or hole where one used to be was a tiny white ring surrounded by varying shades of mottling. She could only imagine what her face looked like. She ran her fingers through her hair and found it knotting up around the little creatures. Nowthatpissed her off. Crap. She was going to look like hell at the wedding, and she’d been planning to dress to the nines and rock Law’s world. Now she’d be better off putting a paper bag over her head.
She picked the things out of her ears and climbed to her feet, staggering as her head spun. How much blood had those little vampire bastards stolen?
She didn’t know and at that moment, she didn’t care. She was done letting these overgrown children throw tantrums around each other. It all smacked just a little too much of squabbling on the playground because Billy and Julie were kissing behind the science building and Bryan and Melissa were jealous and so now there was going to be a big West Side Story fight between their two groups of friends. Pretty soon someone would start playing sappy music about being pretty in a pink dress, or candles on a cake, or having breakfast at some club or some fire at Elmo’s.
The fastest way to handle this by herself was scorched earth. That wouldn’t really deal with the pixies and would probably end up killing the groom, which, while giving Mal a great deal of satisfaction, wouldn’t make LeeAnne or Law happy.
From what she could tell, the fighting had resumed full force. They must’ve put her fires out. Well then. Time to get more creative.
Since dead wasn’t a good option, Mal opted for sleep. She drew deep on her own magic and pulled what she could from around her. Surprisingly, or maybe it shouldn’t have been after what Tazho had said about her having a foot in that world, the wildwood magic leaped at her call, flowing swiftly into her.
She converted the magic into a sleepy spell and pushed it out in a bubble. She wanted everybody to feel the urge to sleep but not make it instant, so the pixies had a chance to land before they passed out and dropped from the sky like rocks.
Mal flung her net wide around the battlefield then created a lure for the flying pixies and dragons. Unable to resist, they flew into her trap and pretty soon all the combatants lolled sleepily or snored where they’d fallen. The glitter bomb progeny succumbed as well.
Mal wandered over to an overturned bench, righted it, and sat, exhaustion turning her limp. She scratched at her arms. The prickly little straws itched something fierce and the white circles had turned to hard little bumps that both itched and hurt.
Pixies, dragons, and giants lay piled on one another all across the former gardens. The treehouses had been stripped of limbs to use as clubs, while several others burned merrily. A little russet-colored dragon just a few feet away struggled to stand upright but clearly couldn’t manage to stay awake and collapsed again.
“Mal! Where are you?”
Law dodged in and out and around the clumps of giants and pixies, head turning as he searched for her.
“Over here.” She raised her hand and waved then dropped it back down and scratched her arm again. It was worse than having poison ivy.
“Christ! Are you okay? What happened to you?” He squatted down in front of her, pulling her hands into his and examining her.
“Glitter bomb bugs,” she explained. “I think there might still be one in my nose.” She did sound a little nasal. Plus the inside of her nose itched fiercely. She wondered if she could find a little bottle brush to scratch it with. Maybe a mascara brush would do the trick.
“How bad are you hurt? You need to see a doctor.”
“Witch doctor, maybe,” she said. “I itch. And I look like crap. Other than that, and the critter still lodged in my nose and maybe one in my ear, I’m fine. Well, there are a bunch tangled in my hair. They should all be dead, though.”
He picked one off her shoulder and held it up. Ew. It was sort of muddy red and about the size of a marble, with little jointed grasshopper legs sticking out in every direction and no discernible head. A little spot of blood indicated where its drinking straw/syringe-needle mouth used to be attached to it.
“I hope it didn’t give me malaria or rabies or something,” Mal said. She glanced past his shoulder and stiffened, her eyes practically popping out of her head cartoon style.
“What the actual fuck?”
Law spun around and stood in one graceful swirling move, magic crackling around him. He stared around, searching for a threat, then followed Mal’s gaze down to the ground where the little dragon was finishing morphing into a small woman. No, a small giant.
Mal stared, repeating that to herself.
Nope, still didn’t compute. And yet there could be no doubt. She had the same shaven sides of the head, the same topknot—brown—the same blunt features and broad face, the same zaftig body as the big female giants, just… smaller.
And seconds ago she’d been a dragon.
