The Fae Book 3: Butcher and Raine

Chapter 17 (Butcher): What I've Done

"So what do we need to do to get rid of the red things? Chant some fucking spell or something? Burn some candles?" I asked Burr.

Burr looked at me, and normally the look he gave me would have resulted in his death, but I knew the little bastards protected him so shooting him in the face wouldn't work.

"You're still treating it like a damn joke after what you just saw?" He stalked back over to me. "You need to take this seriously, asshole. Some of my fairies' lights were extinguished tonight, they died, because you wouldn't help send the moon fae underground when you should have."

I just looked at him, that feeling of pressure in my chest again.

"Apologizing helps to relieve that guilt. Not completely, but it's a start."

Apologizing was something I'd never done in my life, and I wasn't about to start with the fairy king. If I was going to apologize...fuck it. Wasn't happening.

"Thanks for the advice, mom. Can we get to this? I have an MC to run."

"We have to do this when the moon's waning, after the final crescent. That's when the moon fae are at their weakest. So that gives us eight days to get our shit together."

"What shit do we have to get together?"

"Throw a bolt of lightning at the tree over there."

It was the same tree I'd hit before with lightning when Burr and I had been fighting, and in the time since, the tree had died. The leaves had fallen to the ground and the entire trunk and the branches were scorched black.

I threw a lightning bolt toward the tree, but it fell short. 

"OK, now actually try to hit it."

The fucker.

I drew my arm back and the bolt went into the ocean. I tried again and it went wide. How hard could this fucking be? I threw again and the bolt landed on the shore, nowhere near the tree. Keeping his eyes on me, Burr threw a bolt of lightning with a twist of his hand and hit the tree dead center with a shower of sparks.

It was worth saying again: the fucker.

"I need you to have the same control and accuracy that I do so that in eight days, we can send the moon fae underground. We have to work together on this. I can't do this on my own. Even though I hold the magic, I'm not the magic. I have gifts but on their own, they're not enough. I need your power joined with mine to send them underground."

"Using our lightning."

"Yeah, using our lightning. We have to work on our timing and accuracy. We have to practice for the next eight days until we can hit a penny at the same exact time together from two hundred yards."

"The tree's a helluva lot bigger than a penny."

"Are you always so fucking literal? If we can hit a small target, we can hit the tree. We can't miss and we have to hit at the same exact moment."

"What is the tree anyway? Why is it important?"

"It's the portal to the underground. We have to open it up and then drive them into it."

"Sounds easy enough."

"Talk to me after tomorrow. Meet me here in the morning at ten."

"Is this going to take long? I have shit to do."

"Plan on twelve hour days for the next eight days. Longer days, if you can't improve your aim quickly."

"I'll be fine."