Grand Pete's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Scorpio was right. Three nights later, the sky over the mansion turned red. Grand Pete stepped onto the porch and felt the heat before he saw them. The two shapes he had defeated came back, and this time they brought a crew. A dozen demon-fairies of hellfire, all horns and claws, all hungry. They had come to eat Grand Pete and his children. "They smell like burnt rock," said Vaniciea. She stood at his knee, her hellfire tail curling. She was three, taken in one second after birth, the demon-fairy child of this whole trouble. Her birth parents hovered at the front of the crew, grinning. Grand Pete put his hand on her small shoulder. "Stay behind me," he said. But she shook her head. "No," she said. "They want to eat us. I can help." Grand Pete looked back at the house. Then he called out, loud, down every hall. "Children. Come down." They came. Aria swept in on wings that hummed before the wind arrived. Key Love flared pink and gold, her braids snapping. Ella Love walked last, calm, holding the fifth element like warm water in her hands. The crew charged. The battle lit the whole clearing. Aria raised a wall of spinning air and knocked three demons off their feet. Key Love poured color into the grey like a wave, and the hellfire creatures flinched from it. Vaniciea opened her hands and turned her poison into light that burned the attackers without touching her siblings. Each child used the full reach of their power. It was loud and bright and beautiful. But the crew did not fall. They rose again, snarling, closing in. Grand Pete lifted his slender wisp-light staff, the one he had grown for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, crowned with its single fruit and flower. Behind him, the old blueberry tree began to hum. "Grand Blue," Pete called. "Fill them." The hum rolled out, deep and wordless. It pressed into the demons' hollow, hungry places. Ella Love touched Pete's staff and spoke. "Find their center," she said. "That's where they're empty." Grand Pete felt the staff answer. He did not know he could do this. The light bent, soft and sure, and poured into each demon's core. The crew dropped. They did not die. As each one fell, the staff's light wrapped around it and changed it. Where a demon landed, a piece of glowing lightfood lay in the grass, warm and sweet. The birth parents fell last and became the brightest food of all. The children stood still, breathing hard. Then Vaniciea bent and picked up a glowing piece. "It's warm," she said. "Like a biscuit." Grand Pete smiled. "Eat," he said. "All of you." They feasted. Every child who had spent their power ate the light and felt their strength come back, full and whole. The threat that came to eat them had become the meal that fed them. When the last piece was gone, Grand Pete looked at his tired, glowing children and knew the roads would send more. But tonight, they were full.