Ink & Sigil

by Kevin Hearne

  [We are. As soon as you’re back and munch a couple of marshmallows.]

  “Boff Bogdump’s bollocks, I’m going to be worn out before we get started.”

  I wanted to ask who Boff Bogdump was—probably some infamous figure from hobgoblin lore—but Buck might be counting on that very thing to stall me, so I said, [Can’t be helped. I’ll get something to replenish you. Off you go.]

  “Fine. But where’s the cage, old man?”

  I opened my ink library and fetched it, telling the barghest he could come back out and rejoin us in the office. Buck popped away with the cage, and I told the barghest to wait while I went out for a few minutes. There was a convenience store around the block, which didn’t have chocolate-covered marshmallows but had the two items separately, and I decided that was close enough.

  A quarter hour later we were all reconvened in my office, the swing shift was coming in to do the night’s press run, and we were ready to go. I sent Nadia and Buck down to the parking lot off George Street ahead of me so I could speak aloud to the barghest without worrying about my curse.

  “Begin your search now. Remember to stay a hundred meters away from the target, and once ye find her, wait for us to catch up. We’re going to follow on roads using that tracker.”

  “Whuff,” the barghest said, though I don’t know how much of that he understood.

  “Good boy. Find the pixie. Let’s go.”

  He faced north and his substance melted away, becoming a ghost dog as he pursued the target scent we’d given him. I made sure to take my cane along and walked downstairs to join Nadia and Buck in the parking lot. Nadia was telling Buck about the rules, which all boiled down to him not messing up her ride or stealing anything from it. I joined them as Buck was giving her assurances.

  “I swear on my maw’s sacred lamb stew,” he said, “I’ll be a model passenger. I’ll break nothing, steal nothing. I’ll just be honored to ride in yer gallus wizard van.”

  “No pranks of any kind?” Nadia said, pointing a finger at him.

  “None.”

  “Awright. Ye wanna pray to Lhurnog with me?”

  “Of course!”

  “Good.” She hauled open the back door of the van. “Hop in.”

  “Fuck yeah!” Buck launched himself inside and immediately sat on the love seat facing the altar, placing his sack next to it. Nadia turned to me.

  “Want tae join us? Won’t take a minute.”

  [Might be crowded. I’ll get in the passenger seat. The dug’s on his way.]

  “Okay, we’ll be quick.”

  Before I moved to the front, I saw her pull down a bottle of The Macallan and hand it to Buck. “You pour the whisky, I’ll melt the cheese.”

  I didn’t participate in the ritual for the very good reason that, with enough worshippers, Lhurnog might collect enough psychic energy to manifest, and then I’d have to quickly write a contract that forced him to stay off earth. The last thing we needed was a god running around eating men and inspiring wizards to ride lizards. Or maybe we did need that; we might be better off, I don’t know. But for the sake of convenience I vastly preferred Lhurnog to be a vague idea in the ether, with only one place of worship—the van—and one holy relic honoring him thus far. I was doing my best to keep Nadia so busy that she never thought to produce a work of scripture that hallowed the Unhallowed.

  I got into the passenger seat and did my best not to pay attention to the bloody prayers happening in the back. Flipping on the GPS receiver mounted on the dash, I waited for the signal to ping and give me a location. It took a few seconds, but a glowing red dot showed up heading north in the general direction of Stirling. That would be easy enough to get to, once we escaped the city traffic.

  When the prayers finished, Nadia got into the driver’s seat and got us on the road. The sun was crawling orange into the west when Buck spoke up from the back.

  “Okay, the cheese is melted!”

  “Good,” Nadia called back. “Now you carefully eat it with that bag of crackers I gave you. Don’t spill any!”

  “This is the best,” Buck said over the crackle and rustle of a plastic bag. “Only thing that could make it better would be a shot of salsa.”

  [Don’t ever give him salsa,] I told Nadia. [He gets high off it.]

  “He does? That’s no fair.”

  [Eli said the same thing.]

  The red dot on the GPS display stopped a few miles west of Stirling, near a wee village called Gargunnock.

  I looked it up on my phone just to make sure there wasn’t a convenient article describing a secretive research lab located there, but no such luck. It had an inn, a general store, and an old church. It was surrounded by sheep pastures, hayfields, and rural charm. There was also a table of rock that rose above it on the southern side, which someone had thought made a nice defensible position in the old days. There was supposed to be an old Bronze Age wall spread out along the base of it.

  It was twilight when we hit the town. We had to go through it to reach the red dot; there was a road somewhere past the church that led uphill to the table, though it petered out before it reached the top. The tracker was near there.

  The rock retaining walls lining the streets were capped with green carpets of moss and lichen, the soft furry kind one can pet. A few of the locals stared in shock and disapproval at Nadia’s wizard van, and she smiled and waved at them.

  “I love how ye can tell after ye pass someone in this van that they’re gonnay turn tae their friend and shake their head and say, Kids these days! or sumhin like that.”

  [Or get the polis. You’re suspicious and up to something.]

  “Aye, that’s happened, unfortunately.”

  Nadia had an official ID like mine in her glove compartment, which she kept for such occasions, telling the constables in question to simply let her go. It wouldn’t do to have them search the van and find open whisky bottles in the back.

  We turned off the paved road and onto a dirt one that wound upward into the hills. A couple of sheep in a rolling pasture quivered and shot us anxious looks, transfixed by the sight of Lhurnog and the wizard lizard.

  Houses were quickly left behind, and it became clear that the road was intended only for access to upper pastures. When it curved around to the right, away from the red dot on the GPS, I told Nadia we’d better park and walk the rest of the way.

  “Gah. I hope we don’t get stuck,” she said, as the turf to the side was rather soft and muddy. I didn’t know how much traffic the road got, but parking in the middle of it would be rude. We got out, squelched in the mud a bit, and Nadia fetched her sword from the back and inspected the rear of the van for any obvious signs of hobgoblin misbehavior. Buck grinned at her and shouldered his pack.

  “Absolutely zero damage! I bet ye wish all yer passengers were so gentle on yer ride. Shall we be about it?”

  Nadia had him fetch a torch out from under the altar before he got down into the mud. We’d probably need it if we were to spend any time at this, since the sun had set and we were walking under a lavender sky edging toward violet.

  We found the barghest a hundred meters nearly straight uphill from the van. He was facing a copse of trees deliberately left standing to serve as a windbreak between pastures, as well as a habitat for various birds and other creatures.

  I asked Nadia and Buck to hang back a bit so I could walk up and talk to the barghest without worrying about my curse.

  “The pixie’s in the trees, eh?” I asked him.

  “Whuff,” he said.

  “Lead me to her, please, but slowly.”

  He walked on, and I waved at Nadia and Buck to catch up. The wall of trees grew before us, and I wondered how we’d actually find her in the darkness beneath the canopy. Pixies would have plenty of places to hide in a wooded grove like this. But the barghest stopped before the
first tree directly in front of us and whuffed softly, his chin pointed up at one of the branches. I couldn’t see anything, so I got out my phone.

  [Buck. Call to her please, see if she’s willing to talk.]

  “Oi! Pixie!” he shouted. “I was the hobgoblin in the cage next tae yers in that shite flat of Gordie’s. Can we talk? Are ye awright? We want tae help if we can.”

  A tiny voice responded from about halfway up the tree, though I still couldn’t see anything. She had an Irish rather than Scottish accent, and I awarded myself some fleeting congratulations for tracking her down when neither Hatcher nor Clíodhna had been cooperative.

  “Wee pink man. I remember seeing ye unconscious. Did ye escape somehow?”

  “Aye, even so. I’m bound in legal service now tae the sigil agent Al MacBharrais. And Gordie’s dead, so that’s a joy and a justice tae the world.”

  “I don’t think there’ll be any joy or justice for me, hob. What’s your name, by the by? We never got to talk.”

  “I’m Buck Foi. This here’s Nadia, and the old man there is Al MacBharrais himself.”

  “Pleased to meet ye all. Or kind of afraid, really. I’m Cowslip. Are ye gonna kill me now?”

  Buck and Nadia both turned to me, and so did the pixie. The torch revealed her position, perched on a branch perhaps three feet above our heads. While Buck could probably reach her before she flew away, there was no way that Nadia or I ever could. Not that I was anxious to dole out death.

  She wasn’t quite a full foot tall. More like nine inches. She had some gossamer wings that shed pixie dust like a minor snow flurry, which sounded like pure magic until ye remembered that dust was simply flakes of dead skin, so if it was magical, then it was magical wing dandruff. She had on some nondescript grey clothing that camouflaged her against the bark of the trees, along with some very wee grey boots, but it only served to highlight her extraordinary pallor. A patch of dark hair—in a pixie cut, of course—was tousled around her scalp. Her eyes looked puffy and red from crying.

  I typed a response to her question and held up my phone in hopes that she would be able to hear it.

  [The treaty’s been violated, but it’s not necessarily your fault. I have broad discretion in terms of enforcement. So let’s just talk for now. I’m not itching for a fight.]

  “You’re going to get one, though. Not from me, sir—from the rest of them.”

  [Are the rest of them nearby?]

  “Sure they are. The lab’s just over there against the rocks, behind the wall.” She pointed past me, and peripherally I saw that Nadia and Buck turned to look, but I kept my eyes on her in case it was a trick. This whole thing might be a trap. She could be bait. We might be presenting ourselves as a fine, still target for a sniper.

  [And why aren’t you with them right now? Out here to distract us? Set an ambush, perhaps?]

  “No,” she said, sounding offended. “I’m out here because I don’t like them. I’m not like them. They slobber and drool and drink wine and eat people.”

  [They eat people?]

  Cowslip nodded. “Men they killed in other countries. They bring back an arm or a leg and roast it and take their time nibbling at it. They even ate one man’s arse, and I said are ye barmy, why would ye ever want to eat an arse, and they said it was spicy. Can ye believe it? Spicy!”

  [Ugh!]

  “That’s exactly what I says, sir, I says to them, ‘Ugh!’ and I contented myself with a nice flower salad, which is a salad with…flowers in it.”

  [Tell me three times, Cowslip: Are you here to ambush us or to let us be ambushed?]

  “No, sir. I tell ye three times. I am here by my lonesome because I want to be alone.”

  [Fine. What have they done to you, and who are they?]

  “They’re not Irish or Scots. One of them said they are Americans, I think. Some group called See Hi Hey or something.”

  [CIA. Okay. And what did they do when they got you here?]

  “They poked me with needles, but not steel ones. Made of something else. Special needles, they said. They injected stuff into me and it hurt. I had sweats and fevers and I shat my wee bed more than once. They said not to worry, that was normal, and I said no, ye bastards, ye can speak for yerselves if ye want, but it’s not normal for me to shite the bed, so feck all yer poxy holes with a raw donkey cock. And after they were done, I looked rougher and older but iron wouldn’t kill me. Plus I’m angry all the time.”

  Fresh tears coursed down her cheeks, and her tiny hands clenched into fists.

  [I’m sorry, Cowslip. What hold do they have on you? Why don’t you go home?]

  “Oh, aye, why don’t I just go home? Feckin’ easy for ye to say, but ye don’t know, do ye?”

  [No, I don’t. That’s why I asked.]

  “It’s an addiction, sir. A bloody addiction. I have to keep getting their injections and do what they want or I’ll die.”

  [How do you know you’ll die?]

  “I refused the shots for a while and I got so sick. It hurt so much. More than anything. And when they gave me a new shot, the pain went away. So I am well and truly bollixed. I have to do what they say.”

  [And what do they ask you to do?]

  “Go places with the others. Find men and kill them. Take whatever papers we can find and then burn it down, leave no evidence. Don’t let anyone see us or take a picture with their phones like ye have there.”

  “Tch. What a waste,” Buck muttered while I typed my next question. “Think of the heists ye could pull off with a crew like that! And they’re playing spy games.”

  [Have you personally, Cowslip, killed anyone?]

  “No.”

  [Are you sure?]

  “I tell ye three times, sir. They mostly send me in from above to disable their cameras.”

  [But the others have killed humans?]

  “Oh, aye. They’ve developed a taste for ye, and the clurichaun brings a hatchet, a carving knife, some crackers, and a little jar of aioli with him on jobs now. It’s just mayonnaise with some shite mixed in but he thinks it’s super fancy, never shuts up about how good his bloody aioli is. But I like one bite of those vegetarian burgers—ye know, the new ones that don’t taste like sawdust? Fills me right up.”

  [Fascinating. So where is this lab?]

  She pointed behind me again, but I kept my focus on her. “Head that way and you’ll see a wall of rock before ye get to the top of the table. A natural wall of rock in the hill, not the old man-made wall. It’s like a wee cliffside. And there’s a door in it now, hidden away. The lab facility is in there, built into the earth. That’s where they hide.”

  [Who are they?]

  “The rest of them. The fir darrig, who’s a dirty bastard. The clurichaun and the leprechaun room together, drunk on Irish whiskey and wine. The undine has her own subterranean lake, and she’s scary. And there are humans.”

  [How many?]

  “I don’t know for sure. I can’t tell them apart. They all look stupid to me, like you. Except you have a fun hat and mustache.”

  Buck sniggered and Nadia grunted in disapproval.

  [How do we get in?]

  “I don’t think ye do.”

  I looked around to make sure there wasn’t an ambush coming at that moment. Nadia spoke what I was thinking.

  “Look, Cowslip, if ye want Al tae overlook your violation of the treaty between the Fae and humanity, ye’re gonnay have tae get us in there.”

  “I can’t. I can get myself in but not you. There’s all these security measures and defenses built in. You’re on camera, by the way. This is the bound tree we use to shift to Tír na nÓg, so they have it under surveillance. They know you’re here.”

  They didn’t know anything for sure except that they were blind out here at the moment. The Sigil of Swallowed Light on my hat took care of
that. If the CIA wanted intel on me or to train a weapon on my person, they’d need to do it with their actual eyeballs. I wasn’t going to let a drone or a satellite take me out.

  [Will you let me use a Sigil of Reckoning Truth on you?]

  “No, sir, I’ve heard that leaves some damage behind, but I’ve not told a lie yet. I tell ye three times. And I’ll answer any question ye have. I can’t make them pay for what they did to me, so I need ye to do it for me.”

  She had been forthcoming so far and showed no signs that she planned to shift away, so I knelt down next to the barghest, removed the GPS tracker, thanked him for his service, and dismissed him before I continued. He didn’t bark so much as borked a soft farewell before melting into the air.

  [Do the humans have guns?] I asked Cowslip.

  “Aye, sir.”

  [Are there more than ten of them?]

  “Between five and ten is my best guess.”

  [So we’re facing four Fae immune to iron and between five and ten humans with guns in a fortified bunker.]

  “Right.”

  [Is there another entrance?]

  “Maybe? I only know of that one in the rock wall.”

  [And this is where they have kept you since you left Gordie’s apartment?]

  “Aye.”

  [Were you lured to this plane by a promise of service from Clíodhna or one of the bean sídhe?]

  She sniffled before answering and wiped at her nose. “Clíodhna herself.”

  I shook my head, suddenly sad. The poor wee thing was so unhappy. Clíodhna had preyed upon her hopes, and then Hatcher’s people had preyed on her some more. Tricked, trafficked, and then trapped into forced labor, using the same methods that humans used on their own kind to press people into various services with little or no hope of escape.

  “I’m sorry that happened to ye, Cowslip,” Buck said. “I got fooled the same way. I’d be in there with the rest of them now, hating my life, if Gordie hadn’t choked on a raisin scone.”

  I was looking down at my phone to type out another question when Nadia abruptly tackled me to the ground and shouted, “Sniper!”