The Fox’s Tale

“Pulling it, with a little borrowed strength.” She stood up and spun around. “Everyone stop moving right now.” The players and coaches alike froze.

Some of them had wandered to the edge of where the bus ended, trying to get cell phone signals. Ellery motioned with her hands for them to move in closer to her and then pointed at the ground.

“I need everyone to stay huddled together, here.” She whispered to me, “get the humans in the center, Shifters on the outside. You are all more durable.”

“Hang on, I think I got a signal.” Coach Hendrix stepped out from behind the bus.

“No!” screamed Ellery, but she was too late. A whistling sound tore through the night and Coach Hendrix was down, an arrow embedded deep in his thigh.

“Dad!” Matt started to run towards his father, but Coach Murphy tackled him to the ground. Ellery pelted across the frozen ground and threw herself over Coach Hendrix.

Working as fast as she could without standing she pulled his tie off and then tied it around his thigh above the wound.

“Billy! Help me,” she cried.

Coach Murphy sprang from where he’d knocked Matt down to their side and a bullet tore through his shoulder. “Fucking fuck!” he bellowed, but managed to grab Coach Hendrix under the arms while Ellery grabbed his legs and then they both sprang behind the cover of the bus. They laid Coach Hendrix on his side.

“How badly are you both hurt?” Ellery asked Coach Murphy.

“I’ll live.” He sat down next to Coach Hendrix and examined the wound on his thigh. "This has got to come out though."

Ellery nodded and positioned herself on her knees next to Coach Hendrix. She examined the arrow. "The fletching has silver in it too. I will have to break it off."

Coach Murphy wrapped his arm around Coach Hendrix. “Sean, what she’s going to do is going to hurt like a bitch.”

“Like it doesn’t already?”

Coach Murphy gave a grim chuckle. "Try not to move."

Coach Hendrix gritted his teeth as Matt came and clutched his father’s hand. Ellery took a deep breath and broke the end of the arrow off.

“I’m sorry,” she said and then pushed the arrow through his thigh and out the other side.

Coach Hendrix let out a string of profanity that would have peeled the paint off a wall and then lapsed into silence, his breathing ragged. Ellery looked from his face to Matt’s and then at Coach Murphy. “Grant,” she called in a voice that quavered. “Come here please.”

Grant came over and crouched down beside her. “What is it, Ellery?” She grabbed both of his hands and he yelped. Then Ellery stood up and shucked off her coat.

“Lee,” she ordered, “keep Alexander from doing anything stupid.”

“What?” I cried as she got into a runner’s crouch. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting some Seelie dirt,” she snarled and then took off to shouts of alarm from the entire team.

“Holy shit, look at her go!” Everyone but our injured coaches and Matt inched towards a line of sight to see Ellery run across the open expanse from the bus to the tree line. Her legs were a blur as they churned across the frozen ground.

She skidded to a stop, dragging her hands through the ground under an oak tree and then she changed directions to come pelting the distance back to us.

“Move!” Lee ordered as she neared the relative safety of the bus’s cover. We all scuttled out of the way to make room. She finished her run with a tuck and roll and landed next to Coach Hendrix and Coach Murphy.

She grabbed hold of both of them and, with a scream like the one she had uttered when Levi had stabbed her, she sent a pulse out of her body and they were gone. Ellery collapsed, gasping for air.

“Oh, that hurt. That really fucking hurt.” She sat up, put her head between her knees, and whimpered.

“What just happened? Where is my father?” Matt was beside himself.

“I teleported him and Coach Murphy to my house,” Ellery managed to gasp out.

“You can do that?” asked Ryan. Before Ellery could answer a hail of shots tore into the bus making everyone scream and hit the ground.

“We know you’re back there, beasties!” a disembodied voice called from the murk.

“Come out and play!” taunted another.

“People are shooting at us!” yelped Sam. “Why are people shooting at us?”

“I should have listened to my mother and done indoor track instead of basketball,” cried Dylan. The other two humans were in a state of shocked silence but were borderline hyperventilating.

Ellery groaned as she stood up and walked over to them. She placed a hand on each of their faces, one by one, and they calmed down.

“They’re masking their scents, Elly, I can’t make out how many there are.” Scott stood back up and came over to where she was standing. I joined them.

“It doesn’t matter. We can’t possibly fight them, not when they’re armed and we’ve got humans to protect,” I pointed out. “Can you manage to teleport them like you did the coaches?”

“No, Alexander, not on this ground. It was a miracle it worked the first time, and I don't even know if I got them where I was aiming for. I think I did, but I'm not sure I had enough Seelie dirt to have achieved it. They might have ended up at the school, or in the front yard, or on the fucking roof.”

She looked up at me, pain and worry all over her face. “We’ve got to find another way to safety.”

“Why are people shooting at us?” repeated Sam.

“Yeah, I’d like to know too! What the fuck is going on?” asked Ryan.

Andy just shook his head. “You’ve got to tell them. I don’t know why they haven’t figured it out yet, but the penny is not dropping.”

“Everything supernatural that you’ve ever read about exists. Everything from fairytales, legends, folklore, you name it, it’s real. And those assholes out there?” I pointed in their general direction. “They want us dead because we aren’t human like they are.”