Nuada explained the plan to me in Elvish as we traversed the seemingly endless winding tunnels beneath Manhattan. He told me that first we had to make our way to a derelict subway station because Wink was too large to fit through any of the exits that manholes provided. Wink would enter through a service door in the back of the building—the building the royal crown was being put on auction like some lowly piece of primitive art—and take out whatever pathetic excuse for security the humans had organized there. He'd meet Nuada and me upstairs, where we would both be after scaling the side of the building, and deliver the second war crate after we'd procured the crown. After that, the faeries would be released and…those humans wouldn't be in any state to further harm the earth.

It sounded like a good plan to me, but I decided to add my own little personal touch. I knew if there were lights on in the building—and there were bound to be—the tooth faeries would be slightly more inclined to stay in their crowded crates than rush out in a ravenous swarm, so…

"Quickly," Nuada said to me in a hushed voice as I stood before the black box set into the brick wall. Downtown Manhattan was humming, as always, with human activity, and it stank of garbage and car exhaust. Rain was coming down in a depressing drizzle from the night sky—which was impossibly black because the city's lights chased away all of the stars.

"Just a minute…" I whispered back to him before fitting my tongue between my teeth and using a little demon telekinesis to work open the box. It swung open after barely two seconds—a new personal record—and I looked over to where I'd heard the once-prince's voice. "I'm going to—" The words died in my throat as I saw through the darkness that the elf no longer stood where he once did.

I craned my neck upwards and saw a man in a suit standing halfway in the rain, looking about with a confused expression on his face. Shrugging, he turned to go back inside, and with my inhuman hearing I heard him gasp—and then there was the smell of blood.

"There goes the lucky one," I mumbled to myself as I peered at the multicolored wires coiled around one another inside the black power box. After a minute I chose one at random and sliced it with a swiftly grown claw. The terrified gasps filtered through the open balcony door, making me smile. "Got it!"

After that I scampered up the wall as fast as I could, anxious that I might miss the big show. I suspected Nuada wouldn't simply take the crown and let the faeries loose without a few noble words for the cause, and I was desperate to see the looks on all those human faces when Mister Wink made his entrance.

Lucky for me, I was a little early.

I carefully stepped over the body of the man, who was very nearly decapitated, closed the balcony doors behind me, and padded across the fine carpet toward a doorway that opened into the main auctioning room. There was a bald man in wire-rimmed glasses standing behind a tall podium surrounded by monitors filled only with salt-and-pepper static, trying in a professional manner to calm his panicking buyers.

"…auction will restart shortly," he was saying. "I'm sure this is just a temporary loss of power."

He stepped out from behind his podium and gestured to a small wooden box on a cart in front of it. I could see in the dim light cast by the buzzing monitors the glistening gold crownpiece sitting atop a plush blue pillow like some kind of trophy. It made me scowl.

"And now," the auctioneer announced, "for the first time at auction, a piece of the royal Crown of Bethmora—coming to us from a long lost culture."

"Lost? Not at all." Nuada's voice rang out across the room, making the gaudily dressed humans jump and gasp, which in turn made me laugh, which in turn made the humans twist in their seats and gasp yet again.

I stepped into the middle of the doorway and gave everyone a jaunty little wave and a friendly grin, letting just a little of the glamour fall from my teeth so they appeared as fangs. A flash of lightning brought on the desired effect, which was just a little more panic than was going on a few seconds ago. Nuada went on speaking as though I hadn't appeared, stalking toward the man and his podium, "Forgotten by you, perhaps, but still very, very much alive."

I strolled past the back rows of confused buyers, trailing my claws across the backs of their seats so that they leaned forward with little startled cries when I came near. Walking up the wide, carpeted isle between the two seating sections, I positively relished the feeling of frightened eyes all staring at me—staring as if I would bound into their ranks and maul them or something. It made me feel very important and very dangerous.

The auctioneer was looking back and forth between Nuada and myself, his forehead developing upset furrows as he demanded furiously of us both, "Who are you people!? Sir, please identify yourself! You two can't just—"

"I am Prince Nuada Silverlance," the once-prince interrupted, heavily setting down the war crate he'd been carrying over his shoulder. "And I am here, sir, to reclaim what is rightfully mine."

He stood a little taller as he announced his title, and I suddenly thought of him from the human's point of view: An oddly-dressed man whose flesh resembled white marble and had hair that mimicked the color of moonlight. The monitors cast their fizzing light in a way that made the faint scars on the once-prince's face appear deeper and more grotesque than they were, lending him a sinister look. I wondered if I looked half as terrifying as the once-prince and his gleaming golden eyes.

"And I am Jinx, the demon," I introduced myself, trying to proudly draw myself up as Nuada had. "I'm just hired help, but I will rip your head off if you try to stop us—just thought I might warn you." That wasn't exactly the foreboding introduction I'd been going for at first, but I suppose I at least finished it off nicely.

The auctioneer, to my annoyance, didn't seem impressed. "Security!" he barked, looking around himself with the beginnings of fear in his eyes, "Call security!"

And, of course, security came flying through the doors right on cue. That is, literally flying through the doors.

The humans began to vacate their seats—eyes wide, mouths twisted in horrified cries as the two security guards hit the floor and rolled almost all the way up the isle. Among the shattered glass—all that remained of the doors—was a giant metal hand, clenched into a deadly fist, with a thick chain attacked to the wrist. The screaming reached a higher level as the hand promptly picked itself up and scuttled across the floor like some manner of crab or spider, following the chain back to the hulking silhouette in the broken doorway.

Mister Wink reeled in the appendage after it'd reached his cloven hooves and took a few steps forward into the flickering monitor lights, the second war crate hefted over his shoulder by his flesh hand. Humans backpedaled to avoid him, only to remember that the pale man and sharp-toothed woman were what they were headed toward. They were trapped, and they wouldn't stop screaming.

Wink looked very nearly abashed for a moment, shying his head away from their horrified gazes, but then he thrust his face forward and roared, "QUIET!"

Of course, the humans neither understood nor obeyed.

The auctioneer, a sheen of sweat building on his bald head, looked at both Nuada and me again, his voice quavering as he demanded, "What do you think you're doing? This's outrageous!"

I couldn't help but laugh at the false bravery he was trying to conceal his cowardice behind, and I teased him a bit, "Outrageous! Such tough language for such a small, frightened man! Hahaha!"

He hastily corrected himself, taking a half-step back away from me and instead speaking directly to Nuada, which ticked me off just a little bit. "Uh, take what you want, please," he begged. "Please, anything! Take anything!"

I watched interestedly as Nuada slid his hand into a leather pouch at his waist, withdrawing it with something round clutched gently within his grasp. The auctioneer looked at it, dumbstruck and at a loss for words, as the quivering thing began to uncurl itself. Before he even knew what was happening, the gulpher leapt out and attached itself to his face, spreading its oozy dark green tentacles across his entire head to keep its grip. After a moment it opened a single, large, yellow eye and blinked at me before the man dropped to the ground, dead. The gulpher proceeded to engulf the man's entire head with its body, and soon enough the human would have no head at all and would be only a corpse in a tux with several gulpher young growing inside of his stomach.

Only Nuada, I thought to myself, would think to kill by actually giving a creature life.

I looked to the humans to observe their reaction, and it was wonderful! A man in the front row stared with his mouth gaping at Nuada, while shielding the eyes of his fluffy pomeranian lapdog with a hand as if it were a child witnessing something profane. Everyone was screaming, scattering seats about in their futile hurry to find an escape that was not there, but it seemed Nuada had had enough.

"Sit! Down!" He ordered over the din, and with a multitude of whimpers the humans obeyed.

I turned back to look at him and saw that he had the crown piece clutched in his left hand, and his eyes were both sad and angry as he spat out the words as if they were foul on his tongue. "Proud, empty, hollow…things that you are—let this remind you…why you once feared the dark."

And with that, he took the handle on the lid of his war crate and pulled it slowly open. Small, startled blue faces with eyes like those of black beetles looked around cautiously before the faeries' pinhole nostrils scented all of the frightened food around them and, upper lips withdrawing beyond their foreheads, they flew into the crowd in a screeching blue cloud. Not a second after, Wink released his own faeries; and even though I didn't think much of their entire species, I winced in something like sympathy for the humans that were being eaten alive.

"What a nasty way to go," I said more to myself than Nuada, directing my telekinesis with my hands to keep away any faeries who thought they could take a bite out of me. I saw that a few of them had landed on Mister Wink, but the troll's tough hide was proving a mite too tough for their taste, and soon enough the faeries found some still-struggling prey to feed upon instead.

"It's what they deserve," he answered indifferently. Raising the crownpiece, he told me, "And now that I have this, we need to get the final two pieces."

I raised my eyebrows, the question teetering on my lips, but the once-prince answered before I could even ask.

"You may come," he said. "You proved…useful, and I may need you again. What prompted you to get rid of the lights?"

I shrugged and gave him a smile as I returned the glamour to my teeth. "I just know my merchandise," was all I said, and he accepted that answer with a small nod.

"Come, we must go."

--

A/N

Yeah, just shellin 'em out here…and I only have one review…sigh…

I made up all that junk about the "gulpher" by the way. I've no idea what it's really called, or why it feels the need to attach to the face of the poor, scared bald man. I just think its big eyeball is super adorable!

Eh…Not much to say here. Jinx got to be pretty scary in this chapter, yes? I think Nuada looks horrible in this scene—not in terms of makeup or anything, but he looks really scary in that lighting.

Course, if I were at that auction I would be like "oh my gosh, you're finally here! Do you even KNOW how many auctions are held in downtown Manhattan!? A lot!" and then I would rush up to hug him and he would probably, I dunno…stab me or something.

Maybe he'd tell me there's candy in the war crate and to stick my hand in to get it. That'd be funny.

Reviews, please?