What Dawn Demands

by Clara Coulson

  I regularly passed all the intel gained by the Network up the chain. It went first to Connolly’s office in our twice weekly status meetings, and from there was shipped by either word of mouth in warded rooms or by heavily coded messages to Mab’s high councilors in the Unseelie Court.

  I had a status meeting scheduled for tonight, the last task to check off on my to-do list. But the meeting wasn’t for another hour, which meant I had time to stop by Flannigan’s for my nightly ritual of beer and spy games with O’Shea. The bartender had the uncanny ability to collect actionable intelligence from people who knew nothing of the Watchdogs and who weren’t good candidates for inclusion in our informant network, due to loose lips, unaccountable behaviors, unsavory connections, or all of the above.

  So I would stop by on a nightly basis, under the guise of grabbing a mug of my favorite beer, and O’Shea would discreetly hand over any information he’d managed to procure since my last visit. Some of it he could have sent over the Network—we’d given him one of the charmed transmission wristbands for exactly that reason—but O’Shea preferred to do some digging of his own before passing intel on, and that usually involved the collection of physical materials he couldn’t simply magic over to HQ.

  Also, personal meetings gave me a great excuse to nab a drink.

  Odette and Tori practically jogged all the way to the bar, whining about the cold the entire time, with me bringing up the rear at a cautious power walk. Being immune to human foibles like frostbite and hypothermia, I was less concerned about the weather itself and more about the perpetual gloom created by the dark clouds rolling overhead.

  For the last several days, dawn had seemed to arrive much later and dusk much sooner, and it gave off the impression that the night was slowly consuming the day. Vampires thrived in the night, so the longer it lasted, the longer the streets remained at peak danger, and the longer the people on those streets remained at peak vulnerability.

  It was only half past five right now, and there was hardly a scrap of daylight left—

  A shrill scream split the air, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whipped around to face an intersection and found where the scream had originated from: an angry ghost hovering in front of a fire-damaged building. The mundane humans on the street were already taking cover, as the frequent appearances of the Sluagh in the months since the zombie invasion had instilled in them much better survival instincts. But a couple people, a tall white man and a much shorter black woman, ran toward the ghost instead of ducking into the nearest building or alleyway.

  For a moment, I stood poised on the edge of the sidewalk, ready to intervene if necessary. But I needn’t have worried. The man and the woman were a pair of practitioners. The former quickly lassoed the ghost with an imprisonment spell, while the latter crafted a quick but efficient banishment spell. The furious ghost banged at the walls of the magic cage to no effect, and could only wail in misery as he was dragged off to his designated afterlife.

  Ghost handled. Case closed. No casualties. No injuries. Just a couple minutes of inconvenience.

  It both amazed and saddened me how quickly people had gotten used to dealing with disturbances like the Sluagh. Amazed because of how well they’d adapted to such disturbances. Saddened because of how apathetic they’d grown whenever such dangers appeared. The people who’d taken cover were already spilling back onto the street to resume their evening agendas, as if nothing had happened.

  Someone whistled ahead of me. I turned to find Odette and Tori waiting at the next street corner. Tori said, “Come on, slowpoke! It’s cold out here.”

  The rest of the trip to Flannigan’s was uneventful, and after scouring the bar for obvious threats under the guise of wiping our shoes on the doormat, we took our usual spot in the back corner booth.

  Upon spotting us, O’Shea poured all our drinks and brought them over himself. As he was setting each glass in front of the corresponding drinker, he gave me a look that meant trouble, and when he got to my beer mug, he slipped an extra napkin underneath it.

  I accepted the beer with a muttered, “Thanks.” Then I read the coded message on the second napkin.

  Group of vampires spotted in Coley Park by regular an hour ago. Vianu with them. Were doing something to ground. Possibly magic.

  As I sipped on my beer, I pretended to wipe a drip of condensation off my pants leg with the napkin, which I then passed to Odette. We all fell into a fake casual mode we’d gotten used to displaying in public places on the chance a vampire, or one of their informants, was watching.

  We discussed such thrilling topics as the reopening of one of the high schools that had been damaged during the zombie attack, a decent play a new acting troupe had put on last week at an old theater that was now being restored, and the recent announcement that a small publishing company had finally cropped up and was in the process of getting some plundered book printers back in working order.

  Once Odette and Tori both had a chance to read the note, Tori ripped up the napkin and Odette gave me a nod to indicate we should check it out before they dropped me off at City Hall for my meeting.

  The park in question was only a slight detour from our usual route to City Hall, and it was small enough, with so few trees and shrubs, that it presented only a minimal risk as a possible ambush location. We could cut through the park in two minutes flat, see what there was to see, pop out the other side, and continue on to City Hall as if nothing was amiss.

  Vianu’s spies would undoubtedly note our presence there, but I couldn’t do anything about that. Trying to evade detection by vampires was more trouble than it was worth in all but the most critical situations. So we would just pass through the park as if we were taking a casual stroll.

  Vianu could make of that whatever he liked.

  Let the bastard be as paranoid as me. He deserves the fear more than anyone else.

  Chapter Ten

  Coley Park wasn’t large, but the lack of light made it feel like the void between worlds. As the three of us passed from the sidewalk and onto the concrete path that diagonally bisected the park, the residual glow from the sparse indoor lighting cast through the windows overlooking the streets faded to nothing, and our long shadows melded with the encompassing darkness.

  My unglamoured faerie eyes could make out the shapes of the trees and bushes, the outlines of the disused streetlamps and weatherworn benches, even the individual blades of dead grass swaying in the rising wind. But I kept catching movement in my peripheral vision, only to see nothing when I turned my head, and I had the distinct sense of being watched by creatures of the night.

  “How about a light?” Odette mumbled beside me. She tugged her phone out of her coat pocket and tapped on the flashlight option, pointing the thin yellow beam ahead of us to highlight the pathway. “Wouldn’t want to trip over our own two feet and hurt ourselves, now would we?”

  Tori, crowding close to Odette, added in a faint whisper, “Wouldn’t want to put ourselves in a position to be hurt by something else either.”

  I decided not to point out that when it came to vampires, we were always in a position to be hurt. “I seriously doubt anything truly monstrous would decide to attack us in a park this close to City Hall,” I said, deliberately loud, “unless that monstrous creature was also monumentally stupid.”

  The faint snap of a twig caught my ear—someone was hiding among the cluster of trees thirty feet to our right—but no footsteps followed, either toward or away from us. Everyone knew that the sídhe contingent was bunking in a hotel a block west of City Hall, and they’d be here in seconds if they caught wind of a vampire attack so close to the local faerie government’s seat of power.

  Vianu’s fledgling minions might’ve been new to the vampire game, but the first thing any smart vamp leader did was teach their new coven members who to fear and who to intimidate. Humans and half-fae fell into the latter category. The sídhe sat at the top of the former.

  Whoever was watching wouldn’t move on us u
nless we attacked them first. And I wasn’t stupid enough to attack a vampire unprovoked because I had a fondness for keeping my neck free of fang marks. So my friends and I, guarded and nervous, proceeded through the park unmolested, while the vampire crouched in the shadows and merely observed us doing nothing of note.

  Joke was on them though.

  Under the guise of small talk, gaze lingering on my friends, I managed to locate in the corner of my eye an area of interest tucked among a loose collection of skinny trees and scraggly bushes. The brown grass in the clearing had been stripped away, and a patch of freshly churned dirt contrasted with the smooth, damp earth around it.

  Inside this dirt patch, someone had drawn a complex magic circle about twenty feet in diameter. The bulk of the circle’s elements had been destroyed by a foot, prominent shoeprints pressed into the dirt. But the person had clearly been in a hurry because they’d left enough pieces behind for me to glean a vague concept of the overall construction.

  I memorized all the visible elements and drew a mental picture of the incomplete circle. It was hard to tell with so much missing, but parts of the construction suggested…a summoning?

  Odd, I thought. I’m not picking up any traces of magic in the park. If they’d actually summoned something from the Otherworld, there’d be a dense magic fog hanging in the air. Those types of spells require a lot of energy.

  Had the vampires been interrupted by someone while they were prepping the spell? Or had they drawn the circle with no intention of following through on the summoning in the first place? If option one was the answer, then who had spooked the vampires enough to make them stop what could’ve only been an important part of Vianu’s designs for asserting dominance over Kinsale? If option two was the answer, then what was the point of drawing the circle? Had it been practice? Maybe some kind of dry run?

  Once again, I had too many questions and not enough intel on Vianu’s operations to make an educated guess. I needed to pass news of this development on to the informant network and see what everyone could dig up on the matter. Hopefully, I had enough time to do so before Vianu kicked whatever he was plotting into full gear and the dominoes started to fall. Or else—

  Odette let out a loud, throaty cough, and I yanked myself out of my thoughts just in time to avoid running face-first into a light pole. I swerved around the pole and hastily rejoined Odette and Tori, who I hadn’t noticed I’d been drifting away from as the pathway veered to the left.

  Chiding myself for losing focus on my surroundings—that kind of mistake could get me killed nowadays—I allowed Odette to make a jab at me for being an idiot and pretended to be embarrassed at my gaff, hanging my head and rubbing the back of my neck.

  I didn’t know what the nosy vampire made of my behavior, and I didn’t care.

  We emerged from the park unscathed and crossed the street, heading down the main thoroughfare that led to the roundabout in front of City Hall. This neighborhood had been among the first to be repaired after the zombie incursion, so most of the buildings had clean brick façades, shiny new windows, and polished stoop railings. This stretch of road also had electricity—a benefit of its proximity to the host of nearby municipal buildings that required power so the government could function properly—though few lights shone through the windows.

  The steps outside City Hall were now patrolled by two dullahan around the clock. Today’s duo recognized me as I passed the fountain in the middle of the roundabout, and the female dullahan nudged her horse out of my path without question.

  My decision to permanently drop my fourth glamour had garnered me a strange amount of respect from the lesser fae, many of whom had once poked fun at me over my preference to blend in with humans in a world no longer ruled by humanity. I’d wondered on occasion if Connolly’s entourage had gossiped about the way I’d taken charge of the fae government’s response to the zombie attack, and that had bolstered my image as some kind of half-sídhe hotshot, or if the lesser fae in general just so greatly disliked the obfuscation to the fae hierarchy caused by appearance glamours that they were relieved I’d finally let go of my reservations.

  Whatever the case, it was nice to be treated like a VIP by someone. Especially considering the full-blooded sídhe were about to walk all over me.

  At the base of the steps, I said my goodbyes to Odette and Tori, and they walked off together hand in hand, heading to their shared home on Applebaum. I continued up the steps, and when I was halfway to the top, the wards on the entrance to City Hall flickered out.

  A glance at the top floor revealed the familiar silhouette of Aileen standing in front of the drawn curtain of the picture window of the primary conference room. She was Connolly’s head of security, and before the sídhe contingent had literally blown into town on the front of a blizzard, she’d also been his defense strategy councilor. Now she’d been relegated to a background role managing only the security of City Hall itself, while Colonel Odhran McCullough of the Unseelie Army had become the top dog on all matters related to citywide defense.

  Inside, Aileen met me at the top of the main staircase, mirroring our encounter the day of the zombie attack. She looked, for lack of a better word, frazzled. Hair unkempt. Clothing wrinkled. Nervous eyes darting every which way.

  Before I could ask her what was wrong, she grabbed my arm and practically dragged me across the hall to an empty office, quietly shutting the door behind us. She then cast a soundproofing ward that encompassed all the walls, the ceiling, the door, and the floor. Which indicated she was about to tell me something that could land her in hot water if the sídhe found out about the indiscretion.

  Wouldn’t be the first time. She’d become my sorta-kinda spy inside Connolly’s office.

  “McCullough’s in a tizzy over the new raid plan Saoirse sent over, isn’t he?” I said.

  Aileen grimaced. “He’s…less than enthusiastic about the prospect of your people assailing so many vampire-controlled locations at one time. The number of dullahan required to set effective perimeters at all those locations would leave the barrier guard stretched thin. And since we know that the vampires have been using much smaller security holes to pass correspondence through the barrier, the risk of worsening the issue has Colonel McCullough on edge.”

  “And by ‘on edge,’ you mean he’s ready to ream me out for being a half-blooded fool with no tactical sense. Again.” I leaned back against the heavy oak desk in the center of the room and ran my gloved finger through a thick layer of dust on its surface. There were twice as many offices in this building as government employees. “Despite the fact that all my recent operations to thwart Vianu’s plans have been at least modestly successful, and that none have been total failures. Unlike McCullough’s own attempt to smoke Vianu himself out of that office building on Patterson Road. Which cost a dullahan his life and earned one of the sídhe a nasty iron scar.”

  An attempt McCullough had neglected to inform me about beforehand, and whose fallout had been so thoroughly covered up that the only reason even I knew what really happened was because Aileen had told me.

  Most people thought the office building had collapsed due to structural weaknesses caused by fire damage during the zombie invasion, and that the five humans who’d been casualties of the collapse were just unlucky bystanders, people in the wrong place at the wrong time. But they were far more than that. They were collateral damage. McCullough had intentionally neglected to clear the area of civilians before his ill-fated raid because he hadn’t wanted to tip off Vianu.

  God, I hate that man. I gritted my teeth. He doesn’t care about human lives any more than the fucking vampires.

  McCullough had struck me as the worst kind of sídhe the first time I met him: an arrogant, callous social climber obsessed with obtaining an esteemed position in the court.

  Everything he did was done to impress Mab and the upper echelons of the sídhe nobility. Every move he made was committed to strengthen his image as a cunning officer of the Unseelie Army and d
ownplay all of his (many) faults, the worst of which was his total lack of sociability. All creatures other than the sídhe, including the lesser fae, were nothing but bugs in his mind, and he didn’t give a shit how many of them he had to crush underfoot to get his way.

  The man might’ve been an immortal powerhouse who could take Vianu in a one-on-one fight, a trump card we could use when all else failed to oust the vampire lord. But McCullough cared so little for the fragile balances required to properly conduct urban warfare, and so little for the damage incurred to the human populace during his quest to defeat the bloodsuckers and restore the honor of faerie rule over the Earth, that he was basically a public menace. Yet every significant action the Watchdogs took against the vampires had to be run by him first, because he was the “big man in charge.”

  Sometimes, I honest to god felt like I was talking to a child.

  Aileen paced back and forth across the room, pensive. “True as your statements may be, Colonel McCullough has the writ of our queen to support his authority over law enforcement in this city. If he orders you to limit the scope of your raid plan—”

  “Then I’ll go behind his back and assail all the locations anyway,” I said bluntly. “Any prisoners we don’t rescue in one sweep will be moved to new, unidentified locations long before we have a chance to swing back around for another run. And I can’t let that happen. Not only because dooming dozens of human beings to preventable slaughter is immoral, but also because those groups of humans being ‘stored’ in those makeshift prisons are likely meant to be used as ‘blood caches’ to feed the vampires during an upcoming offensive. Leaving them undisturbed means further empowering Vianu to enact whatever he’s currently plotting.”