by Holly Evans
Felix parked in the last parking space in the area and we all piled out, glad to be able to stand and breathe again. That feeling quickly passed when Iona gasped and we saw why. Raif wrapped his arm around her shoulders; she turned and buried her head in Raif’s shoulder. The two lycans snarled and pulled out their phones. I was dumbstruck for a moment before I began pacing a small circle.
The bodies of hunters had been strung up from the old-fashioned streetlamps around the square. Their heads lolled, old blood stained their faces and hands. Their eyes were glassy from death. People paused for a few moments, their expressions somewhere between confusion and revulsion. They eventually moved on, no doubt thinking them the latest odd art installation. We knew differently. I recognised the faces of four of them; two of them looked to still be in their teens.
“The bodies will be removed and given proper burials,” Felix growled. “Come. We have a meeting to attend,” he continued.
“It had better be a meeting on how best to kill the witches,” I said.
“They will pay, Evelyn. Rest assured, their deaths will be painful,” Felix’s second said.
“And not a second too soon,” I said.
Kadrix’s workshop had been stripped bare. It was completely different without the alchemical things stuffed into every space. I stood at the entrance and just looked; it must have been big enough for over one hundred people to stand comfortably.
“We have things to do, Evelyn,” Kadrix said.
“Did you know there are hunters strung up outside?” I snapped back.
All colour left his face. Everyone turned to face me. There was quite a group of people gathered, Sidhe, pixies, elves, and a witch. They were accompanied by Elise and Bryn; someone or something was behind the group. They’d clearly gotten started without us.
“No. We didn’t know,” Quin said quietly.
“I have called the clean-up guys. The bodies will be given good burials,” Felix said.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but we have bigger things to discuss,” a female elf with golden blonde hair said.
I approached the group with Lysander at my side; Raif and Iona were behind me. Felix strode across the space with his second in command, clearly comfortable with the situation. I didn’t take my eyes of the witch, she stood there as bold as brass in her black robes.
“We have gathered here this morning to discuss the war that is breaking out within the city,” the female elf said.
My heart stuttered. Calling it a war made it all too real; of course, I had known it was edging that way, but saying it out loud was something else entirely.
“The city has been torn in two. Those who are with the witch and have hopes of becoming gods, and those of us here who stand against her,” the elf said.
I stared at the witch.
“Petra came to us to try and help,” Elise said firmly.
The group split down the middle and peeled back to reveal what they had been hiding. Four bodies were strapped down to chairs. They were all crumpled and heavily beaten. One looked like it had started as a pixie, another had witch’s robes on; I couldn’t be sure about the other two other than they were fae. The faces were too swollen and bloody for me to identify features.
“They were traitors. We had to be… determined in our quest for information,” the male pixie said.
Azfin emerged from the back room. “Welcome, Evelyn. We have finally made some progress on the location of the witch that is leading the rebellion. We are gathering our forces now and will attack this afternoon,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow.
“I’m so glad to see that I got a say in that,” I said.
Of course I was glad to have something finally happening, but it felt like a slap in the face to drag me there only to tell me what I would be doing next.
“Evie, we’ve been here all night. We thought it would be best if you got rest where you could,” Quin said.
I kept my mouth shut. It still hurt to be excluded, but there were bigger things at stake.
“How did they get the bodies hung up there without anyone here knowing?” I asked.
“We’ve been rather busy.” Quin said
I nodded more to myself than anything. Lysander kissed my temple.
“Alright. Tell me what I need to know,” I said.
The witch, Petra, stepped forward.
“I understand your feelings towards me, Evelyn, however I come here as an ally. The witch, Nikita, has gone too far. There are many covens who stand with us against her. We were happy with the balance that had been struck between–”
“Can we get to the point?” I interrupted.
She dipped her chin.
“Nikita and her coven live in Hradčanská. I have the address here. We are currently working to take down her magical defences. Once that has been done, we will attack in force and kill everyone present,” she said.
I took a deep breath and calmed myself.
“And then this will be over?” I asked.
“We can’t be sure, Evie. She’s pushing very hard to get onto the fae plane, and we suspect that she’s already gathered the other ingredients on the list. It’s been difficult to track everything, we’ve all been pushed to our limits the past few days,” Elise said.
“Either way, the city will be better with fewer witches in it,” I said.
The building was a simple white-walled traditional affair with grey slate roof and simple metal railing around the perimeter. It didn’t stand out at all within the neighbourhood, which was likely the point. It was within walking distance of the castle and cathedral, which Elise and Petra had explained was because it was such a powerful magical location within the city. It gave the coven something of a kick, which had made it difficult for the fae to break down their magical defences. Still, they’d done it. Now it was my turn.
We were done with subtlety. A large group of us walked up through the front gate, which Felix’s second had very kindly torn off its hinges. Some of the fae were weaving a glamour over the area as a whole to keep humans out and make it look as though everything were normal. We didn’t need more innocents being killed; there had already been far too many.
The witches obviously knew we were coming, but we’d expected that. I pulled my blades, took a breath, and got to work.
Lysander embraced his fire and became a walking inferno. The witches screamed battle-cries and charged at us. More of their number appeared in the windows on the upper floors. They soon began throwing curses at our group. It quickly descended into absolute bedlam. The air was filled with a strobe-light effect from the sheer amount of magic that was flying around. I ducked and rolled away from a large green curse that had been aimed at my head. An elf politely explained that it would have seared my skin and drained my life-force had it have connected. The witches weren’t fucking around.
Robes scattered the ground where we had killed the witches with brutal efficiency, but it wasn’t enough. I stumbled over a fallen pixie; he was already beginning to turn into gloop where his life-force had returned to the fae plane. It was difficult to see or think clearly with everything going on around me. The air was thick with smoke and something noxious the witches were throwing at us. I choked and spluttered. A knife sliced through my thigh. Another glanced off my ribs as I side-stepped away from my attacker.
The witch’s face was twisted with rage, her lips were pulled back revealing perfect white teeth. She’d put on a full face of make-up, complete with smoky eyes that I would have been envious of on another occasion. It looked absurd as she danced around me, her blades spinning and constantly moving so they were almost a blur. I kept trying to lunge and move around her to sink my own blades into her, but she was too good.
Her blood-red lips spread into a victorious grin when her eyes flicked over my shoulder. I ducked and kicked out behind me hoping I hadn’t misread her action. My foot collided with something solid, someone groaned and cried out behind me. I rolled away when the original smoky-e
yed witch tried to stab me through the back. Her sister had stumbled forward and tried to use her momentum to drive her long knife into my stomach. Lysander grabbed her by the collar and set her on fire before he broke her neck and discarded her.
I took advantage of the distraction and dove forward to gut the original witch. We were finally making some progress, but we hadn’t made it inside yet. How big was that coven? We must have killed over thirty witches, and there were still more to go. I’d been told that covens were small and exclusive affairs, no more than twenty-five per coven.
Felix and his second paired up to kick down the front door. The wood splintered and broke beneath their kicks. We made a big drive forward, killing the remaining few witches between us and the house. It was a tight squeeze in the main hallway; we moved down into the living room and found… nothing.
The entire house was bare. No furniture. No witches. Lysander and I turned and ran up the stairs to where the witches had been throwing curses at us. Nothing. There was no sign that they’d ever been there.
Lysander snarled and sniffed the air. “I smell magic, but no people.”
The magic was a bizarre haze that I had shrugged off as more of the smoke that had filled the air outside. I frowned and looked a little closer. It wasn’t smoke, it was a very loosely woven tapestry of tiny little silver and grey threads. A pixie came into the room panting for breath.
“We’ve killed all the witches. The rest was an illusion. They’re attacking the priestesses in Florenc,” he shouted.
“Fuck,” I growled.
The pixie crumpled to his knees and began crying and shaking. I approached him slowly; that seemed like a dramatic reaction to the news.
“She’s broken into the fae plane,” he sobbed.
“Double fuck,” I shouted.
The fae had to be cared for for some twenty minutes while they recovered from the shock in their magical network. I’d knelt next to the poor pixie and stroked down his back trying to ease his pain while Lysander held a Sidhe. I hadn’t realised how tightly connected to their network they were. It was a core part of their life force and being. Apparently the witch had hacked a chunk out of it to allow herself access to the fae plane. Once they had recovered, Azfin and the others spat curses in quite the range of languages. Traitors, their own people, had helped her create that hole.
Felix and his second had taken a number of lycans over to Florenc to help defend the priestesses and stop the problem getting worse. There was no denying the fact that the city was at war, and it didn’t look like we were on the winning side.
Once the fae had fully recovered, we headed outside to be greeted by an entirely different street to the one that had been present when we arrived.
“Another illusion?” I asked.
“No,” a Sidhe I didn’t recognise said. “The veil is weakened, the fae plane is having an impact on this one,” she continued.
“And what does that mean?” Lysander asked.
“Magic will be unpredictable and the city will be… different,” a pixie said.
“Different how?” Lysander snarled.
“We don’t know. This has never happened before,” the pixie snapped back.
Tempers were fraying, and having the city in who knew what state wasn’t helping anything.
We cautiously proceeded down the street, unsure what to expect. Some of the alleys and roads changed before our eyes, morphing and twisting to other parts of the city.
“It will continue as long as she is in the fae plane,” Kadrix said.
“She is holding the hole open. Once she returns here, the city will bounce back,” a female elf said.
On one hand, I wanted the city back to normal; on the other, having her back meant she had everything she needed for that recipe. It meant that full war would break out.
“So now what?” I asked.
“We try and find the hole and kill her when she emerges,” Kadrix said.
The other fae murmured in agreement.
“Can’t you feel the hole and track it?” I asked.
Kadrix gave me a positively vicious look.
“No, Evelyn. We can’t. The city is moving too much, there’s too much magic. It is a ‘needle in a haystack,’ as you say,” he said.
And so we walked.
There wasn’t much of a chance to get bored. The landscape kept shifting around us, trees morphed into cracked and warped shells that whispered promises of great things. It was the bizarre creatures, which the fae informed me were native to the fae plane, that soon proceeded to try and eat us that really took away the boredom though. The air shimmered and shivered for a moment before one popped into existence. One of the fae groaned; the rest went into attack positions. Just once, I wanted a nice easy day.
The creatures had thick hides covered in fluffy caramel-coloured fur, large curved horns that protruded from the sides of their heads, and mouths full of sharp blue teeth. They just happened to be the size of small horses, particularly heavily muscled horses. Just to make things more fun, their temperament was worse than a rabid wolverine.
“Another of your experiments?” I asked Kadrix.
He bared his teeth at me and spat a curse in elvish that I was pretty sure could be translated to ‘fuck you, Evelyn.’
By some stroke of luck, there were only two of them and far more of us. We were getting tired, and the fae still weren’t in the best condition. That didn’t stop them from giving their all. We split into two groups, taking on one of the beasts per group. Lysander and I moved around the front end of ours trying to keep it distracted while the fae attacked its stomach and back legs to reduce its movement. The fae were clearly slower and less agile than usual. There were fewer spinning kicks and ballet-style leaps. That didn’t stop them from being vicious and deadly. They moved as a well-oiled machine, each darting in to slice while the others moved around. Constantly attacking and moving. A car careened around the corner when I was about to plunge my blade into its eye. The driver was gripping the steering wheel for dear life; he sped up when he saw the creature and slammed straight into its side. The fae barely had the chance to dive out of the way before the creature was slammed into the ground and vanished, along with the car.
I didn’t want to think about what had happened to that poor human. The other group dispatched their beast before Lysander and I could do anything meaningful. I was a little disappointed; it felt good taking my frustrations out on something fae. Injuries had been sustained, but nothing life-threatening. We were all battered, bruised, and bleeding, but we continued on. We had no choice.
We had killed a small herd of what looked suspiciously like unicorns and walked past the same group of houses no fewer than five times when the city suddenly changed around us. The sun had long since set, so it was a little difficult to make out the full details hidden in the shadows.
The fae whimpered and whined for a minute before Kadrix snarled, “She has returned.”
“We must gather our forces and prepare for war,” Azfin said.
I sighed, seeing no other option. We had ended up down by the river not far from Café Savoy.
“Gather your essentials tonight, and return to my workshop first thing tomorrow,” Kadrix said to the group assembled.
“That will be our base of operations. We will reclaim the city,” Azfin said.
A muted cheer passed through the group. We’d been through too much, lost too many, how could we be happy about that outcome? Lysander wrapped his arm around my waist and led me to the tram stop.
“Let us go home and have a shower, Evelyn. We must take what peace we can,” he said.
“I wasn’t made for war,” I said softly.
He kissed my temple.
“I will guide you, Evelyn,” he whispered.
Quin came and joined us. “Kadrix is going to the workshop to help the others convert it into our war-room.”
He looked ashy, bags hung under his eyes, and his movements were verging on sluggish. I hugged hi
m tight.
“I’m sorry for being stubborn and closed-minded about the magic,” I said.
He hugged me back.
“It’s ok, Evie. I understand,” he whispered.
I wasn’t ready to go to war. I wasn’t ready to lose those I loved. I couldn’t lose my beloved city.
We’d barely slept that night, plagued by ‘what-ifs’ and concerns about the city as a whole. As soon as the sun had begun to rise, we gathered up everything we might need and headed over to Kadrix’s workshop. We walked down the passageway and were confronted by a full-blown tactical hub. Large tables were covered in maps and books. People, most of whom I didn’t recognise, swarmed the room. The walls had more maps and notices with symbols I had no idea about. Weapons were strewn everywhere. They ranged from blades to alchemical things I’d seen Quin playing with. It was too much to take in.
Elise was in a long white tunic affair with her blue lipstick and pale blue jeans; it was halfway between her priestess garb and her casual clothing. It only added to the sensation of being lost and out of my depth. She pulled me into a tight hug.
“Oh, Evie, I can’t believe it’s come to this,” she said.
I hugged her back, taking solace in her presence. She looked to be back in full health; we’d need her.
“I feel as though I should have done more sooner,” I said.
“We did all we could,” Elise said firmly.
She took my hand and led me between the tables and chairs to a quiet corner with three stiff-backed armchairs and a small table between them. I knew that no matter where Elise settled, she would make sure there was a quiet corner to enjoy tea. Lysander sat and pulled me into his lap, his grip on my hips firm and protective. I ran my fingers over the back of his hand and kept my focus on Elise. I could feel the flickers of memories of previous wars he’d been in down the bond.