There were bodies on the battlefield, a lot of bodies, but there were more of us breathing than not. And that was the best outcome you could hope for when dealing with vampires.
Orlagh took a moment to catch her breath as the adrenaline of battle drained from her veins, leaving her mind weary and her bones tired. Then she turned to observe what was left of Kinsale’s enemy number one, the remains of what had been a vampire lord, an ancient creature of the night, a vicious beast crawling beneath the skin of a handsome body, the worst kind of predator.
Vianu was a statue made of ice. He stood frozen in the moment where he’d tried to kill me, the stake still clutched in his hand. His lips, now painted blue, were peeled back into a sneer, but his fangs had cracked from the force of the freeze spell and broken off, ruining the effect of the threatening expression. Similarly, his red-ringed eyes were now frosted over, milky white, and it rendered impotent his once prodigious ability to instill fear with nothing but a glance.
Orlagh looked to me, questioning, and I gave her a weak nod to indicate she could do whatever she wanted. So she walked up to the statue, stared it down for a long moment, then raised her hand and jabbed the statue’s forehead with a single finger.
The great Lord Vianu tipped over backward and shattered on the ground.
“By the blood of Queen Mab, Whelan,” Orlagh murmured as she slowly carried her gaze across the park and surrounding streets, focusing not on her allies this time but what remained of her enemies, “that was one hell of a spell.”
In a five-block radius of the war-torn park that once housed Kinsale’s center of commerce, sixty-four vampires had been rendered blocks of ice. All in one fell swoop by the quick freeze spell I’d spent every day of the last six months practicing until my soul felt raw.
I had only ever intended to use it on small groups, but in that moment where my rage had run colder than even the winter queen’s infamous fury, I’d pushed the limits of the spell until it had grasped every vampire in sight and drained them of all heat. And I’d done it using the strange power source that even now was refilling my emptied soul with energy.
All power had a limit. That I knew for certain.
But whatever my new power source was, its well was deep.
Assuming I didn’t die in the next twenty-four hours trying to stop the Hunt, I would one day test that depth. For now, however, I had more relevant questions to answer.
Orlagh helped me up, and together, we shuffled around the battlefield, collecting everyone who could walk and talk. After my mouth started working again, I ordered most of the Watchdogs to scour the park and surrounding blocks for those in need of immediate medical attention.
Once they all jogged off, leaving behind the usual suspects, I steered us toward the evac point for the rescued hostages. Odette, Indira, Boyle, and the rest of the sídhe soldiers dragged themselves along behind Orlagh and me. None of us dared to speak as we hobbled down the street, because we couldn’t think of anything to say that would make this situation less shitty.
The silence was eventually broken, however, by the sound of hurried footsteps. I craned my neck to find Mallory sprinting up from behind us, her hefty sniper rifle slung over one shoulder. She staggered to a stop beside me and doubled over, gulping in air. “Lieutenant,” she said between gasps, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t get him.”
“Didn’t get who?” I asked, before I realized the obvious answer and dropped my hand to my bloody abdomen. “The sniper?”
She nodded morosely. “After he shot you, I followed the bullet’s trajectory back to an office building on Mountbatten and spotted him set up in a window on the second floor. I fired two rounds at him, but they both bounced off a shield. And once he realized I had eyes on him, he fled. I only had a view of one of the building’s exits from my perch, so I wasn’t able to stop him.” Her gaze fell to my ragged gut wound. “I’m sorry I let him get away.”
“You have no reason to be sorry,” I replied. “You did your best, and you may very well have saved someone’s life.”
Orlagh added, gesturing to her fellow soldiers, “If you hadn’t scared the sniper off, he could have shot any one of us, or any of the numerous half-fae on the battlefield. You deserve a commendation, in my opinion, not criticism.”
Mallory gawked at Orlagh for a long moment, shocked a sídhe had given a mundane human such a warm compliment. When she finally broke out of her stupor, she said, “Thanks for the reassurance. But I still wish I’d been able to shoot him, or at least identify him.”
“Was he wearing a mask?” Odette said.
“Of course.” Mallory scuffed her boot against the asphalt, kicking up debris. “A balaclava, plus a pair of tinted goggles. I only know he was male because of his size and build. Over six feet tall, broad chest, buff arms.”
“We’ll find him,” Boyle said resolutely, tossing his bloodstained cloth aside to reveal a nasty half-healed wound on his close-shaven head. It looked like someone had tried to scalp him. They probably had. “We can’t have someone running around the city shooting iron-tipped bullets at the fae.”
“You’re assuming he won’t flee the city.” Indira wiped a streak of blood off her chin, and succeeded at wiping off most of her hopelessly smeared lipstick as well. “Most of the dullahan aren’t guarding the boundary line right now. Anyone who wants out can get out. That includes all the members of the vampire ‘distraction crew,’ who now have no leader.”
“You think they’ll cut and run?” Orlagh asked no one in particular.
“They have explicit instructions to flee to Pettigrew in the event of Vianu’s death,” said a new voice.
We all turned to find Drake emerging from the lingering haze. He’d acquired a few cuts and bruises since I’d last seen him but was otherwise unscathed. Unsurprising, since I’d tasked him with using his necromancy skills from afar to delay any vampires who attempted to chase the rescued hostages or any injured fighters being hauled off the battlefield.
What was surprising was that he wasn’t alone. A stream of people tailed him, including Granger, three full emergency defense teams carrying a hoard of first-aid gear, and…Saoirse.
Saoirse wasn’t in great shape, but someone had dressed her open wounds and secured her broken right arm in a sling. Her steps were slow and unsteady, but her eyes were much clearer than they’d been before. I suspected she’d been seen to by one of our precious few field healers, who’d fixed her up just enough to keep her on her feet. As she came to a halt, she motioned for the defense teams to continue on to the park, and everyone except Granger dashed off to find all our injured and patch them up.
Orlagh acknowledged Saoirse with a bowed head. “Captain Daly, it’s good to see you well.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m ‘well’ exactly, but I’ve been worse off.” Saoirse sounded like she hadn’t slept in weeks, and it pained me to think she wouldn’t get a chance to rest anytime in the near future. “So, what’s the situation?”
“We’re fucked,” Odette said, pointing at the torn sky.
Saoirse looked to me.
I looked away. “She’s right. We failed to stop Vianu from calling the Wild Hunt to Earth. The Hunt is a powerful, ancient force of pure destruction. It can’t be reasoned with, can’t be dissuaded, can’t be scared off. So once it gets here, it’ll ride across the entire planet until it runs out of steam, and it will kill anything and everything it touches.”
Saoirse let out a pained breath. “Is there anything we can do?”
“We could evacuate the city,” Orlagh said, “but the Hunt will gradually make its way to other cities as well.”
“We could attempt an evacuation to Tír na nÓg,” Boyle threw in, “but there’s no safe place to house so many humans there, and it will take us a great deal of time to transport the entire population across the veil. Some people will inevitably get left behind.”
“Can the sídhe not defend the city against this Hunt?” Saoirse asked.
“The only defense
s that can withstand the Hunt’s strength,” Orlagh answered, “are the ancient barriers protecting the major cities of the fae. The ones shielding your cities are not nearly as strong, and we cannot bolster them enough in the time that remains before the Hunt’s arrival.”
“Well, we can’t just stand here and do nothing,” Saoirse snapped. “How long do we have before the Hunt gets here?”
“In Tír na nÓg, the Hunt rides at bygone dusk, the time of day the sun set before the faerie courts divided the land between eternal night and day.” Orlagh peered up at the lightening sky. “Assuming dusk in the destination realm is what triggers the ride, that gives us about ten and a half hours.”
“Then we’ll spend the next ten and a half hours searching for a solution,” Saoirse said firmly.
The sídhe soldiers all exchanged skeptical looks.
“And if we don’t find one?” Boyle said.
“We go down fighting to protect innocent civilians.” Saoirse met his eyes with a resolute gaze, defying her exhaustion, defying her pain, defying her mortality. “At least I will. Because that’s my job. And I’ll do it to the bitter end.”
Her words stirred the winds of the storm that had begun to settle inside me, cowed by the sight of the hole in the sky and the defeat it represented. But is it really a defeat if the true end of the fight hasn’t yet arrived? I thought. Is an end really unchangeable if you still have time to change it?
I stared at the dark storm churning on the other side of the tear in the veil between worlds. If there was a way to summon the Hunt to Earth, surely there must have been a way to boot it back to Tír na nÓg. Some other ritual. Some kind of spell. Something.
“In all the history of Tír na nÓg that you learned growing up,” I asked the sídhe, “did you ever hear about someone stopping, repelling, or redirecting the Hunt in any way?”
All of them thought hard on the question for a minute, before Orlagh responded, “I learned of no such thing in a formal setting, but…”
“But what?” Saoirse prompted.
“There are stories you hear as children,” Boyle said, “fragments of old legends and the like.”
“A few of those do include a person who ‘commanded’ the Hunt to do their bidding,” Orlagh finished. “But there’s no real substance to those kinds of narratives, no way to confirm if they are what they seem or just twisted versions of less impressive truths.”
“But stories in that vein do exist?” I said.
“Yes.” Orlagh furrowed her brows. “Why?”
“Because one, legends are usually based on some kernel of truth.” I abruptly backtracked several steps down the street, until I reached the mouth of a narrow alley that would allow me to cut through to the street on which I lived. “And two, throughout the entire history of civilization, from the moment written language was created, people have sought to transcribe their experiences for the sake of progeny, so those truths can be remembered, even in the vaguest ways, even if they’re eventually rendered nothing but childhood fairy tales.”
“Where are you going with this?” Odette said.
Drake snapped his fingers. “I got it. Wikipedia guy!”
In response to all the baffled looks, I continued, “It just so happens that we have at our disposal someone in possession of every single piece of written information that existed in Tír na nÓg eight months ago. Every textbook. Every encyclopedia. Every atlas. Every communiqué between the faerie courts. Every personal letter. Every diary from people living and dead. Every source of writing you can imagine and more. He knows all of it. And if we manage to ask this man the right question, he might just be able to give us the answer we need to stop the Hunt before it rides on Earth.”
Distant thunder rumbled from a place beyond this realm, and I met its echo with defiance, raising my voice. “We get that answer, we defeat what remains of Vianu’s legacy. We get that answer, we defeat Abarta of the Tuatha Dé Danann. We get that answer, we defeat a force that no one believes can be defeated. We get that answer, we save the world.”
A hush fell across the group as tiny seeds of hope began to sprout.
Then Odette Chao shouted, “Well what the hell are we waiting for? Let’s go fucking get it!”
We all took off toward my house, as fast as our battered bodies could go. Each step we made, each breath we took, was like the ticking of a clock.
Ten and a half hours to save the world from absolute destruction, I thought as I charged toward my front door and the prize that lay behind it. And the countdown starts now. Ready…Set…
I yanked my house key from my pocket, and whispered so only I could hear:
“Go.”
To Be Continued
IN WHAT DUSK DIVIDES!
Coming Soon!
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Books by Clara Coulson
CITY OF CROWS
Soul Breaker
Shade Chaser
Wraith Hunter
Doom Sayer
Day Killer
Spell Caster
Dawn Slayer
Novellas
Dream Snatcher
THE FROST ARCANA
What Fate Portends
What Man Defies
What Gods Incite
What Dawn Demands
What Dusk Divides
What Night Conceals
About Clara Coulson
Clara Coulson was born and raised in backwoods Virginia, USA. Currently in her mid-twenties, Clara holds a degree in English and Finance from the College of William & Mary and recently retired from the hustle and bustle of Washington, DC to return to the homeland and pick up the quiet writing life.
Clara spends most of her time (when she's not writing) dreaming up new story ideas, studying Japanese, and slowly reading through the several-hundred-book backlog in her budding home library. If she's not occupied with any of those things, then you can probably find her playing with her two cats or lurking in the shadows of various social media websites.
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What Dawn Demands Page 30