What Dawn Demands

by Clara Coulson

  The violently churning water didn’t do much more than bruise him, but it was enough of a distraction to cause him to lose his hold on the wave’s form. The swelling vortex unraveled, and two feet of water gushed across the entire valley, crashed into the hillsides like an angry sea, slung spray high into the air.

  Manannán sank to the ground as his water throne dispersed and stumbled to a stop in front of me. Shaking his damp, curly hair out of his eyes, he shot me a glare that could melt steel and spit out, “I bet you think you’re so clever, Whelan.”

  “I know exactly how clever I am,” I countered, “and exactly how clever you’re not.”

  He sneered. “You got the drop on me last time we met, but you’re not in a position to play tricks this time, and you don’t have the strength to overpower me. All I have to do is throw my weight around, and I can crush you.”

  “Then you should’ve done that already, instead of showing off your surfing skills. Because if you had, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do this.” I thrust my foot through knee-deep water and stomped hard on the half-frozen earth beneath, discharging an unformed burst of energy at a forty-degree downward angle in Manannán’s direction.

  Manannán opened his mouth, probably to ask me what the hell I was prattling on about. But he didn’t get the chance to speak—because the ground dropped out from under him, and he fell into a sinkhole roughly eighty feet deep. A sinkhole that he had inadvertently created by sucking all the water out of the valley’s aquifer and leaving behind a large cave with dry, brittle walls that needed only a little push to entirely collapse.

  As he fell, Manannán tried to drive his hand into the wall of the sinkhole and stop his descent. But the water that had filled the valley rushed in to occupy the newfound space, and the strong current dragged him back just far enough for his fingers to miss the dirt. He tumbled off into the deep darkness, cursing all the way down, and splashed to a stop somewhere far out of sight. But it wasn’t far enough, I knew, to stop him from using his immense strength to simply jump back to the surface.

  Which was why I braced my heels against the wet ground, raised my arms to chest height, and made a circular motion with my hands that directed a thousand crisscrossing strings of energy to encompass the circumference of the sinkhole. Then, with a mighty groan of effort, I pulled the strings inward with all my magic strength. The walls of the sinkhole fractured all the way to the bottom and fell inward, burying Manannán mac Lir in a thousand tons of earth and water.

  A great cloud of dirt roiled upward and washed across the valley. As it cleared, it revealed the sinkhole was filled to the brim with thick, sticky mud. So heavy and dense that even a god couldn’t easily dig his way out of it. Nothing Manannán could do to escape would allow him to return to the battlefield in less than five minutes, and five minutes was all I needed to stop Abarta and save my city.

  I spun toward the stone formation, where Abarta was still hard at work on his…

  What the hell?

  In the span of less than ninety seconds, the six humans seated outside the summoning circle had somehow dwindled to only two, with a third on the butcher block being cut to shreds by Abarta. As I looked closer, puzzled, Abarta appeared to move so fast that he created an afterimage, blurs of color dominated by the red spatter of fresh blood, topped with the gleam of his sharp knife’s blade as it swung to and fro, rending flesh and breaking bone.

  The poor man’s screams were off key and oddly short, and his kicking legs were moving just as fast as Abarta’s dancing arm. At the circle’s edge, the forms of the fidgeting redcap guards blurred in my sight as well, along with the shaking shoulders of the two remaining people doomed to die.

  It took me ten seconds too long to figure out what I was witnessing: time dilation.

  To make sure I couldn’t interfere with the ritual, Abarta had sped up the complicated sacrifice process by literally altering the flow of time inside his shield. I had such a poor grasp of the fundamental concepts of temporospatial magic that there was no way I could decode the underlying construction of the spell fast enough to cast a counter before he finished his last few sacrifices and invoked the summoning.

  Okay, Whelan. Think logically. I tapped my boot on the wet grass in a quick cadence. If he’s splitting off the area inside the shield from the rest of Maige Itha’s defined dimensional space, then the shield itself must be the barrier that’s preventing the natural flow of time from bleeding back into the dilation field. So if I pierce the shield, it might disrupt the construction of the time flow manipulation spell enough to slow Abarta down and give me an extra few seconds to wreck the circle and stall out the summoning process.

  The brute-force approach wasn’t my favorite, but it would have to do.

  I marched up to the shield, hunting for obvious weaknesses in its structure. Unlike Manannán, however, Abarta wasn’t centuries out of practice. His casting was as close to perfect as an imperfect being could achieve.

  The shield consisted of seven different layers of interwoven energy bands, with each layer compressed so tightly against the next that it was extremely difficult to pick out which band belonged to which layer and thus which layers were the primary structural supports and which were the secondary feeders that kept the energy distribution across the whole shield even and consistent. Finding the singular yet critical links between each layer was also a monumental task, the act of hunting for a long needle in a stack of slightly shorter needles.

  Abarta, moving like a film on fast-forward, grabbed the soul of his latest victim and forced it into its designated place inside the summoning configuration. As he spun away from the ill-fated soul, he shot me a sly look and winked. Then he plodded back over to the edge of the circle, did a quick game of “eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” and hauled up one of the last two prisoners, a woman pushing sixty, by her neck. She let out a cry of terror before Abarta’s hand tightened and cut off her air flow, after which she resorted to vainly kicking and clawing at the Tuatha god while he carried her back to the bloody altar and laid her out like a slab of meat.

  You’re running out of time, Whelan. Pick a spot and attack it with everything you have.

  My eyes darted back and forth, up and down, again and again. Until I stumbled, accidentally, upon one of the aforementioned layer links. The link between the outermost layer and the innermost layer. A link that, if broken, could very well bring down the whole shield. A link that, if shattered abruptly, could backfire its ample energy into Abarta, or me, or both of us. A link that was guaranteed to be a great deal harder to break than any other, because it was so critical a support for the overall construction of the shield. A link that I wasn’t sure I had enough power to destroy.

  But it was the only link I saw in the protracted time between Abarta picking up the woman and picking up his knife. So I had to give this my best shot. And I had to do it now.

  I came to stand in front of the link, reeled back my arm, charged it with so much energy it felt ready to explode—and rammed my fist into the shield.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The shield hit back.

  Bone-charring heat surged up my arm, setting my nerves on fire. Force blasts like drum beats pelted my hand, trying to drive it away. White steam erupted from beneath my fingers as ice and fire fought for dominance.

  I funneled my energy to a small point and drilled it into the shield as hard as I could, while Abarta’s own magic took potshots at the weak points in my attack, small arcs of electricity biting my knuckles and searing off strips of skin.

  The pain was unreal. The burns were so brutal my nerves started dying, the force blows so intense every bone in my hand shook apart. But I didn’t let up. Not for a second. Didn’t yell. Didn’t cry. Didn’t breathe. Just pushed and pushed and pushed—until my magic drill bit poked a tiny hole in the outermost layer of the shield.

  The only opening I needed.

  Upon sensing the flaw in its structure, the shield redoubled its efforts to repel me. Set
my entire arm on fire from wrist to shoulder. Burned away my clothes, my skin, and charred the muscle underneath. The unbearable agony almost cost me the battle, but I bit my tongue until it bled, commanded myself to keep fighting, even if my goddamn arm crumbled into ash.

  A scream barreled up my throat, rebounded off my clenched teeth. I used its fury as my fuel, dug my boots into the soil, and dredged so much energy from my soul that I felt like a hollow shell. I fired it like a laser, tight and concentrated, at the most delicate part of the golden link, the center point, where it twisted like a helix to accommodate for the shifting pattern of the multilayered spell structure.

  The beam of energy struck the crux of the link, froze it brittle, and broke it in half.

  Abarta’s magnificent shield unraveled. The severed ends of the link sprang away in opposite directions, breaking the tension that was holding the shield upright. The bands of each layer grew slack, piling on top one another, until the weight of the malformed energy became too much for the overall structure to bear. The shield bowed out on one side, deforming the cylindrical shape, and from there, the shield rapidly lost what little integrity it had left. The loosened bands sank toward the malformation and bunched together, pooling too much energy in one place and creating a feedback loop between multiple bands that triggered a massive internal backfire.

  The shield suffered a catastrophic structural failure, and exploded.

  The shockwave rammed me like a speeding train, flung me off my feet and sent me flying. I couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down, my eyes blinded by the golden flash of the blast. Shrill wind whistled past my ears on the cusp of a deafening boom that tore holes in my eardrums and rendered me deaf beyond the sharp ringing of phantom bells. I tumbled over and over and over, totally disoriented, until I sensed too late the oncoming ground and met it the way that a body met pavement when a sad soul jumped from a high roof.

  Bones broke. Skin tore. Muscles snapped. Organs burst.

  But none of that stopped me from getting back up as soon as I bounced to a stop.

  Blinking away the bright stars in my vision, I located the stone formation, now a hundred yards away, clambered to my feet, and staggered back toward it. As I’d predicted, Abarta’s time dilation field had collapsed along with the shield, and he was moving at normal speed again. But the destruction of his shield hadn’t touched him inside the summoning circle, all the explosive force directed outward into the valley. So in the second I’d been soaring like a thrown ragdoll, he’d shoved the soul of the crying woman into place in the circle and grabbed the last sacrifice.

  To his merit, the human man fought with everything he had, even going so far as to bite Abarta’s arm and rip out a chunk of flesh. Abarta simply backhanded him, knocking the poor man senseless, and tossed him onto the altar, which was now drenched in blood so thick that you couldn’t even discern its ornately carved designs. Abarta went to work with the knife before the man could regain his senses, and the final round of horrid screams echoed through the hills.

  I forced my trembling legs to run, and as I picked up speed, I scraped the bottom of the magic barrel for more energy. And kept scraping. And kept scraping. Until I clawed away the membrane that separated my magic from my life force and let that more-vital energy flood out of my soul and into my battered body.

  I ignored my scorched right arm—it was too damaged to heal in time to use, blackened muscle leaking blood and fluid—and pumped the energy into my legs, into my good arm, into my back just to keep me upright long enough to come within attack distance of the summoning circle. Eighty yards. Fifty. Thirty. Ten.

  The redcaps, no longer on guard duty, left their positions at the edge of the circle and rushed me. One of them lobbed his long pike at my chest. I caught it, spun it around, and hurled it back so fast that its entire length tore straight through him and kept on trucking at Abarta. Until the Tuatha rogue spotted it in the corner of his eye and knocked it aside with a quick mental push. The redcap, now with a hole in his heart, staggered a few steps closer to me and then collapsed into the mud.

  The other four redcaps roared in fury at the sight of their fallen friend and hefted their own pikes. But I wasn’t in the mood to brawl with them. I lashed out with a powerful force blast that bowled them all over, shattered their pikes along with their bones, and killed the closest one by fracturing his skull in so many places that he bled out brain matter through his ears. I hopped over his twitching corpse and hurried onward without giving the fallen redcaps another glance.

  I had a limited amount of life force, far more limited than my magic, and I knew the meter was running down. Fast. Too fast.

  Destroy the circle, Whelan! screamed both sides of my soul, human and faerie in perfect agreement for the first time in my life. Destroy it now!

  Abarta glanced my way, his earlier smugness decaying into anger. He quickened his gruesome task, carving up the dying man’s flesh as fast as he could without messing up the ritual requirements. One stroke of the knife. Three strokes. Five. Ten.

  He reached the final stroke, the slitting of the throat, just as I reached the outer edge of the stone formation, energy consuming my left arm in a cloud of snow, trails of frost at my heels, cold winds buffeting me forward.

  I lunged at the circle and brought down my fist in the same instant, down to the millisecond, that Abarta threw the man’s soul into the final slot in the circle while shouting out a rapid-fire invocation. My magic hit a section of the circle, and ice scorched across its lines and shapes like a wildfire, destroying everything it touched.

  But Abarta finished his casting all the same. His magic flared across the rest of the circle, swallowed up each sacrificial soul inside their small, barred prisons, ripped them to shreds as they cried out in terror, and formed with their remains twenty-four perfect spheres of spiritual energy.

  The spheres shot up high into the air. When they were mere feet from the ceiling of the cavern, they stopped, hovered for a moment, and then abruptly changed shape, melding together to form a large golden ring. The ring started to vibrate, faster and faster, louder and louder, until the entirety of Maige Itha trembled beneath its might.

  And like a pulsar ejecting from a neutron star, a pillar of blinding light shot out from both ends of the ring. The top half of the pillar burrowed straight through the ceiling of the cavern, vaporizing the rock, while the bottom half engulfed the summoning circle, energizing its elements to new heights…all except the section I’d damaged, which had fallen inert.

  The bottom half of the pillar began to narrow, until it surrounded only the Tuatha rogue who’d situated himself in the center of the circle. Abarta raised his hands, as if accepting some divine gift—only to be knocked onto his ass when the half-pillar suddenly splintered into a million glittering shards of golden light that pelted his body and seared long, streaming burns across his skin. He rolled over onto his knees, cursing and clutching his injured face and neck.

  Above him, the top half of the pillar remained intact. It clawed its way through the earth until it reached the surface of Tír na nÓg. Then it tightened into a narrow beam of white light that rocketed into the sky.

  Through the hole made by the pillar, I watched in stunned silence as the beam rose and rose. When it reached the upper atmosphere, it struck an invisible dome, the very fabric of the realm. The beam split like a plugged shotgun barrel, and great arcs of energy rippled across the atmosphere for miles. Until at last, the beam dissolved into a downpour of golden sparks.

  Silence enveloped Maige Itha, and the world beyond.

  Seconds passed. A minute. A minute and a half. And that was when it started.

  In the place where the beam had hit the edge of reality arose a dark storm cloud. The gathering of the “hollowfiends.” The awakening of the Wild Hunt.

  “Fuck,” I coughed out as I fell to my knees, my body totally spent. I’d done enough damage to the circle to stop something from happening—perhaps some boon Abarta was supposed to
get as the summoner—but the Hunt was still coming. I had ninety minutes, max, to return to Kinsale, rally my diminished troops, and overcome a vampire army before Vianu completed the second stage and directed that gathering cloud of unstoppable chaos to Earth.

  Ninety minutes. How was I going to—?

  The ground violently shifted beneath me, and I turned my head in time to see a hand burst out of the muddy ground ten feet to my right. The hand was followed by an arm, then a shoulder, then a head. That head belonged to a sea god with a furious sneer and dark-green eyes churning with all the power of a stormy sea.

  Those eyes found me immediately, and energy amassed around Manannán’s dirt-streaked body as he mouthed the words to launch a killing spell I was far too tired to evade. He arced his hand back, the loose energy morphing into a tight, swirling ball of power, and made to launch it—

  Seven zombies tackled Manannán’s half-exposed body, and his spell discharged harmlessly into the air with the roar of a crashing wave and the strong aftertaste of brine. Manannán yelped as the neamh-mairbh bit into him, yanked his other hand free from the mud, and began grappling with the moving corpses. Just as he knocked three of them away with one swing of his powerful fist, a fast-moving figure zipped past him and slid to a stop on their knees beside me.

  Drake. With Kennedy slung over his shoulder.

  The portal talisman on his belt was already glowing.

  “Think it’s time we scram,” he said, pointing over my head.

  I followed his finger to find Abarta had gotten to his feet and was now scowling at me with red-tinged teeth. His face was in bloody tatters, and his eye patch had been cut free, revealing the hollow socket where his eye used to be. Somehow, as both a low hiss and a loud shout, he said my name. As if it was a word that needed to be erased from all of time and space with no impunity, no mercy, and no remorse.