Shannon O'Reilly was bullied and everything his older sister wasn't. When his sister Sarah gives him a chance to change things through a single wish things don't go as planned.     I Wish: Book 5 Chapter 7 Onward By Amethyst

“Rebecca, do you know how to use a gun?” I asked as I tried to decide what we might need for our travels and looked over the holdout weapons that Annie had insisted each of us keep inside our porta-bunkers. They were for emergencies where we couldn’t use magick and I was pretty sure that the current situation qualified. It would be nice to have some sort of ranged option for self-defense since most of our abilities at the moment required us to get up close and personal in a fight.

“Only from what I’ve seen on T.V. I never wanted to hurt people that bad,” I heard her mumble behind me as she approached. From the corner of my eye, I could see Rebecca’s eyes widen as she took in the Remington pump-action shotgun and the Desert Eagle Mark XIX. “Holy shit, where the fuck did you get those? Are you some kind of secret gun nut?”

I shook my head and sighed. “Nope, but my sister’s Personal Assistant slash bodyguard is an ex-cop and a huge gun enthusiast. She thought that if we were all going to an unfamiliar Plane that we should have holdout weapons just in case something went pear-shaped. She made sure that we all knew proper gun safety and maintenance and had us all practice a bit with the weapons she picked for us during some of our trips to Tír na nÓg to sneak in some extra hours of training for Lisa and Michelle.”

“Tír na nÓg?” she asked, raising an eyebrow as she turned her gaze from the guns to look at me.

“It’s the Plane where the Faery live, though there aren’t many of them left. My cousin and her Mom are both Faery and so are Beth and her Mom, but they started out as human as you did. Beth became one when I accidentally made her my Familiar and her Mom had her dormant Faery blood awakened on purpose about a month ago. Sarah and I have some Faery blood too, though we don’t look like it. Anyway, time passes just over four times faster there than on our own world so a six-hour trip there let us get like a full day of training and a little downtime,” I explained.

Rebecca gave me an exasperated look. “Your life sounds fucking crazy; Faery relatives, fighting Demons, learning magick, visiting other worlds, and a modeling career on top of school and the other stuff, how the fuck do you manage to stay sane?”

“Well, I’ve kinda gotten used to things since my birthday, when all of this started. Family and friends help though, and being able to use magick and help keep people safe is cool. I don’t have magick right now though and the only way that we can protect ourselves is up close and personal. I’d really rather not have to fight another tuskreaper or something similar that way again though, so we might need these guns,” I admitted.

“I dunno,” she said uncertainly. “I’ve never used one before and I don’t want to risk doing something stupid and hurting one of us.”

“I’ll give you a quick lesson on gun safety and let you get some practice in before we pack up camp and get moving,” I promised before getting back to figuring out what we might need to have on hand for our trip.

There wasn’t really much that we needed to keep on us except for the weapons and with my backpack needing to be repaired, I couldn’t have carried much anyway. As long as I kept the extendable tent poles near the entrance of the bunker for easy reach, I figured that I could probably get away with just keeping the canvas cloth for the entrance of the bunker and a few other small items on me. If we needed food or drinks or anything else one of us could just hold the entrance up while the other went through to get them.

I was a bit worried about the cold though since the night before had been pretty chilly and we were going to be flying. So, after a dinner of some nice hot stew and some crackers and a can of Diet Coke each, I worked on trying to figure out what we could wear. My White Witch outfit would keep me comfortable in just about any weather but my wings would pose a problem with that. I would have to cut slits for them into the back of the dress and the cloak and corset could both be particularly problematic. I also might need the disguise later so I felt it better not to try to mess with it.

I started by keeping my navy bathing suit on. It was one of Giselle’s designs and the whole reason I was wearing it was that it was backless and tight enough up top would keep my chest from jiggling too much. It tied in place behind my neck and hugged my chest like a second skin until it connected to the bottom half with a two-inch gold metallic ring over my belly. The nice part though was that the bottom half had a snap so it could be disconnected from the ring which made it a lot easier to go to the bathroom. I guess that technically made it a two-piece bathing suit, but I didn’t care what it was called since it suited my purposes at the moment.

I put on some warm black fleece leggings, a pair of warm socks and my sneakers, and another one of Giselle’s designs that actually went with the leggings. It was a warm black fleece zip-up hoodie with hot pink accents and kitty ears on the top of the hood, It hugged my body almost all the way down to my thighs and had an adjustable mask inside the hood to cover the mouth and nose when it got cold that had a design of a kitty nose, whiskers, and mouth on it. The sleeves ended with built-in fingerless gloves and had these flip-up ‘paw’ covers that could be pulled over the gloves to make them into mittens. It even had a fuzzy tail attached to the back, just above my butt.

That outfit was so warm and cozy and I felt instantly horrible about cutting a pair of slits in the back where I guessed my wings would emerge before putting it on. I was totally going to buy another one when I got home. I also almost accidentally removed the kitty tail when I went into Succubus mode and my own tail punched a small hole in the back of both the leggings and hoodie. I guess I was right about where to put the wing slits though since there was no pain or ripping when those emerged.

Now that I was changed and knew that I wasn’t going to have to replace any clothes. I quickly added the holster belt for the Desert Eagle, placed the gun in the holster, and a bunch of those huge bullets in the ammo pouch before putting on one last thing. It was a simple-looking quartz pendant on black twine which I secured around my neck and slipped beneath all of my layers so that it was resting against my skin. I sighed in relief as I felt it’s magick, but I hoped that we wouldn’t need it.

For Rebecca, I found a pair of thick pale blue leggings to go with the dress, socks, and sneakers she was already wearing as well as a pair of gloves and a scarf in case she got cold up there. We added her hoodie after making sure to cut some slits in the back. She would also have the bandolier of shotgun shells and the shotgun after I gave her a basic firearms lesson.

“If you get cold up there, let me know and I’ll see if I can find some stuff for extra layers,” I told her once we were both dressed. Figuring that she might be uncomfortable being seen naked, or seeing me that way, I had allowed her to change in the privacy of the bunker while I did so outside.

She took one look at me and started laughing her ass off. I sighed and rolled my eyes as she giggled away and when she finally managed to speak it was interspersed with laughter. “Pfft! Omigod, Nerd-girl, you look like the fucking cat in the hat, all you need is that fucking striped hat!

“I thought I was Jockette,” I grumbled. I should have just worn the White Witch outfit.

“Nope, with all that fucking science stuff earlier and wearing that ridiculous outfit you are definitely a nerd, or maybe a geek.” Rebecca paused for a moment in thought before nodding. “Yup, definitely a geek, Geek-girl.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know this is really warm and comfortable! It’s cute too, I modeled this for Giselle Collette’s winter line,” I snapped.

“You actually let someone take pictures of you wearing that?!”

“You’re just jealous,” I muttered as I turned away and headed back outside. Oh well, at least it put a smile on her face.

“Nope. I’ll give you credit for guts though. That’s not an outfit I would wear, I would not wear it anywhere. I would not wear it in this lair. I would not, could not ever dare,” she managed to get out behind me between giggles.

Once we left the bunker and Rebecca had stopped laughing, I carefully untied the entrance cloth from the tent poles and placed them just inside the entrance before carefully folding up the cloth and putting it inside one of my hoodie’s inside zippered pockets. Then I taught Rebecca everything that Annie had drilled into our heads about gun safety and usage. Only when she had all of that down did I let her take a few practice shots to get used to firing a shotgun, the kick, and proper breathing when firing.

We used the tuskreaper’s head as a target and she managed to do okay with the five shots I let her fire. It took her a few shots to get used to the kick but once we were finished I was fairly sure that she wouldn’t shoot either of us by accident. I would have let her practice her aim more but I didn’t want us to risk using too much ammo that we might need later. Aiming wasn’t as big a deal for her as with the gun I would be using since she was using buckshot and she really just needed to keep the weapon pointed in the right general area.

After Rebecca managed to settle the bandolier and shotgun strap in place so that neither would interfere with her wings in flight, we took off in the direction where I sensed Ziralin. We needed to get some traveling done before the sun rose and I wanted to get away from there in case anything like a tuskreaper decided to investigate the sound of Rebecca’s target practice. Shotguns tend to make a lot of noise.

With the light of the two moons to guide us and our wings to carry us, we quickly ate up the miles, the black dunes passing beneath us in a blur. We stopped once during the night to give our wings a bit of a rest and to make a quick meal, but as soon as we felt ready we were on our way once again. We managed to get some good altitude and caught a wind current that was going in our general direction and rode that for a while to not strain our wings too much.

As we flew, we tried to keep our eyes open for anything unusual, dangerous, or possibly useful on the ground below. Personally, I thought that anything other than barren desert would have been wonderful. It was almost dawn when we saw something just ahead, there was some sort of light down there.

Rebecca was the first to see it and maneuvered closer to get my attention. ‘Hey! Shannon!”

Once I turned my head toward her she pointed downward in the direction and when I saw what she pointed at I could feel my eyes widening. “Let’s check it out!”

As we circled our way downward my heart was beating a mile a minute, especially when we got close enough to figure out that it was a campfire. There were also a pair of smaller lights that I thought might be lanterns. Could it be Sarah and Annie, or some of the others? I counted what looked like maybe four figures but it was hard to tell since I was using night vision at the moment and looking too hard at the lights as we got closer was killing my eyes. I pointed to a spot a good distance away from the apparent campsite and went in for a landing with Rebecca following behind.

We really needed to work on those landings. Okay, sure, we didn’t crash and we managed to stay on our feet but I wouldn’t exactly call us stumbling along the ground graceful, or any other remotely complimentary adjective. “That looked like some sort of a campsite,” Rebecca said, echoing my thoughts.

“Yeah, I thought I saw four shadows that could be living things, maybe even people, but they weren’t moving and that light made it difficult to see. I didn’t want to risk coming down too close in case they’re not friendly. We’ll sneak a bit closer and find a spot where we can watch long enough for our vision to adjust,” I replied.

Rebecca nodded in agreement as she muttered softly, “Night vision is awesome, but it takes way too long to adjust to normal or bright lighting again.”

We made our way carefully toward the light in the distance, our senses keyed to any sign of danger. I was nervous as hell and so was Rebecca so we kept conversation to a minimum. Finally, we crept to the top of a large dune overlooking the campsite and laid on our bellies to get a closer look. Once our eyes adjusted to the light enough to see details rather than blurry shadows Rebecca hissed, “That is not anyone that either of us knows. You’re the great magical extra-planar explorer, Geek-girl. So, what the fuck are those things?”

I shook my head in confusion. On all the other Planes I had been to or Demons I had fought I had never seen anything quite like what I was looking at right then. “I think they must be the locals.”