Fairy Metal Thunder (Songs of Magic, Book 1)
Page 60
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Flies crawled all over the ceiling of the dullahan’s basement, unnatural, ungainly dark things with big wings and fat stingers. They filled the room with a buzzing drone. Muscar squatted sideways on the wall, near the ceiling, close to the swarm he’d brought with him. He’d created the insects out of pure filth from a cesspit behind Sidhe City. He regarded Zinerva with his swollen dark fly-eyes.
Hogshead was there, with three long-tusked warthogs he’d leashed and muzzled. The angry, muscular animals snorted and pulled against their restraints, ready to attack, their beady eyes glaring. They each wore a spiked collar.
Rachnia stood on her eight legs, her arms crossed, keeping her distance from Hogshead and his smelly creations.
The dullahan sat near the front of the room, the candles burning on the rock wall behind her. She was mostly in human form, in her wheelchair, but she’d removed her head and placed it in its antique birdcage on the side of her chair. Keeping her head bandaged to her neck was necessary among the humans, but it could get quite itchy. She preferred to let her head swing free as much as possible.
“You muzzzt have heard zzzzomething,” Muscar said from his perch on the wall, “To zzzzummon uzzz all here again.”
“I have word from my contacts in Ireland,” Zinerva said. In the wheelchair, her hands gestured as she talked. “The four man-whelps have taken the instruments to Wallachia.”
“You mean Romania?” Hogshead asked.
“Whatever they’re calling it today.” Zinerva’s hand made a dismissive wave. “A fortress in the mountains, isolated. They’re making some sort of televised musical.”
“If they’re filming a musical, they won’t be alone,” Rachnia said. “There will be costume-makers and set painters and such.”
“But we have a means of chasing away the crowd.” Zinerva pointed toward the crawling carpet of winged insects overhead.
“Perhapzzz we zzzhould wait for a better chanzzze,” buzzed Muscar.
“No! Let’s move now!” Hogshead demanded. “What are we doing, again?”
“We are acting now because this fortress happens to be built on an old elven gate.” Zinerva said. “We can make it connect into the Queen’s labyrinth, and release our friends.”
“And unleash hordes of destruction!” Hogshead shouted. He waved a long blowgun over his head and snuffed impatiently.
“Wait,” Zinerva said. The dullahan watched her headless body open a dark oak chest engraved with fairy runes. From inside, she lifted out a tall, greenish glass bottle. She blew a thick layer of dust off it, revealing a swirling white mist inside. “I have something else for you. Ghosts-in-a-bottle. Some of them are screamers, too.”
Zinerva gave the bottle to Rachnia, who sniffed it and smiled, her fangs gleaming with poison.
“Are we moving now yet?” Hogshead stomped his boot and rattled the chain leashes, making his beasts growl.
“No.” Zinerva’s hand took a small, dark crystal ball from a compartment in her wheelchair and held it out in front of her face. The dullahan gazed into it. “We wait, and we watch. My agent in man-world has placed a crystal ball through which I can see all that unfolds at Prince Dracula’s castle.”
Through the ball, she watched the troupe of man-whelp musicians standing in the ruins of the castle. The fortress looked much worse than when Zinerva had last visited it, centuries ago during Prince Vlad’s reign. Almost nothing was left but a few walls and doorways.
The four man-whelps were gaping at a tall, stooped old man, while humans scurried to and fro in the background, setting up lights.