What Man Defies

by Clara Coulson

  The other redcaps roared in fury.

  A rifle roared behind me in response. The large-caliber round nailed a second redcap in the eye, and the back of his skull exploded into a rain of grayish-red gore. Mallory, not even stopping to celebrate her kill, swung her rifle around to take aim at another redcap. This time, however, the one she was gunning for skidded to a stop and slung his pike at her at the same time she pulled the trigger. The bullet sawed through his throat, blood spraying the air. The pike skimmed the top of Mallory’s right shoulder, shearing through her body armor, along with several layers of skin. She tumbled backward and landed so hard it knocked the breath out of her lungs.

  Nonlethal wounds, I told myself. She’ll be fine. Concentrate on the remaining enemies.

  I shoved my hand into my pocket and grabbed a couple of my Christmas ornaments. As Saoirse’s gun sounded off nearby, driving holes into two different redcaps, and Granger stepped up to the bat to back her up, I took aim at the redcaps leading the pack. One staggered sideways in response to a bullet biting into his thigh, and I flung an ornament at his face. When it was three feet away from him, I whispered the activation command. And the ornament exploded into a giant ball of blue fire.

  The redcap, unable to stop in time, met the fireball face first. When he broke through the other side, there was nothing left of his face but char and bone. He took two more uneven steps forward before he crumpled. His skull disintegrated into ash when it hit the ground.

  The other redcap at the front of the group, enraged by the loss of his buddy, set his sights on me and tried to leap the gap between us. I made to throw the second ornament at him, but a pike flew past me, skirting my arm and knocking the ornament out of my hand. It bounced off across the ground, too far to recover in time. I scrambled to raise my right arm and activate my second shield bracelet as the redcap careened toward me, his pike pointed down to skewer my neck.

  A blast of green energy shot up from behind me and slammed into the redcap’s chest. It might as well have been a train. The redcap hurtled up into the air like he had been blasted out of a cannon. He flew higher and higher and higher. Until he collided with the ceiling of the cavern with a crack that must’ve been heard for a mile in every direction. The redcap didn’t come back down.

  Stunned, I slowly peered over my shoulder.

  Odette stood off to the side behind me, her glowing fist still outstretched. “Don’t force me to do that again, Whelan,” she warned. “I don’t have but so much raw power.”

  I nodded several more times than were strictly necessary. “Whatever you say.”

  Another roar broke me out of my stupor, and I wheeled around to see one of the two remaining redcaps swinging his pike toward Saoirse and Granger. Saoirse deftly ducked beneath it, the edge of the weapon ruffling her curls, but Granger wasn’t so lucky. He attempted to dive out of the arc of the pike, only for the metal tip to catch his leg. It tore a thick chunk of flesh off the side of his thigh, and he went down screaming, blood gushing from the wound.

  Saoirse, not missing a beat, bounded back up in the same breath that she slid a new magazine into her gun. The redcap, who’d taken a gamble coming in so close to swing his pike, had nowhere to go to evade the bullets. Saoirse shot him four times in a row. The first two punched holes in his gut. The third blasted through his ribcage. And the last shot hit the base of his neck, destroying every major blood vessel and his trachea. He fell to his knees, clutching his neck as his own blood flooded his lungs. He was dead less than twenty seconds later.

  That left one redcap.

  Who was now running away, realizing he’d lost the battle.

  I bent down and recovered my ornament from where it had rolled to a stop, taking aim.

  “Let me,” a shaky voice said. Mallory. She was drenched in blood, her right shoulder a mess, but she was on her feet and still strong enough to hold her rifle. She hefted the gun back into position, directed at the retreating redcap’s back, and pulled the trigger without hesitation. The bullet hit the exact center of the redcap’s heart and blew it to pieces. The redcap collapsed four steps from the tree line, dead on arrival.

  “Good shot.” I tilted my chin up in deference. “You all right?”

  Mallory was breathing hard, but she bobbed her head anyway. “Just need a patch job, and maybe a few painkillers. It’s nothing I can’t work through. I’ve been shot in the leg before. Way worse than this.”

  “I have some gauze and tape. Give me a sec,” I said, a heaping helping of respect in my tone. I had to commend her. She was a mundane human running around in the Otherworld with only two paranormal escorts as protection. Yet despite nearly having a redcap’s pike impale her skull, she wasn’t even wavering on her dedication to continue the mission. Mallory was good people. And a great cop.

  I dug the medical supplies out of my coat pocket as she stripped off the damaged armor plate and tugged her shirtsleeve out of the way. The wound was raw and ragged, but it wasn’t dangerously deep. She’d have a short, wide scar to add to her collection when all was said and done, but it was nothing that would endanger her health or career in the long term. She was lucky, I thought as I mopped up the blood and secured some gauze over the laceration. Wish I could say the same for Granger.

  Granger was curled up on the ground, with Saoirse tending to his leg. There wasn’t a concerning amount of blood, but the pike had left a deep laceration across his thigh that jutted up toward the top ridge of his pelvis. It needed stitches, and I didn’t have a needle and thread handy. Worse, even if we did manage to stitch it closed, there was no way that Granger would be able to make the trek across the cavern. And we couldn’t carry him. If and when we got into another fight, he’d make whoever was holding him a sitting duck.

  “Odette.”

  “Hm?” She was unwrapping the hand she’d used to magically punch the redcap. Despite the layers of thick fabric cushioning her fingers, her knuckles were bright red.

  I jerked my head toward Granger. “Can you do anything about that?”

  “What,” she said softly, “like healing?”

  “Yeah.”

  She sighed. “Sorry, Whelan. No go. I didn’t bring the supplies for that, and even then, I’m honestly not much of a healer. Most of my spells are rudimentary stuff. Quick clotting. Pain reduction. Sterilization. I know one spell that can speed up healing, but it requires a special ointment that takes three hours to make.” She gave Granger a pitying smile. “There’s nothing I can do for him that’ll get him back in fighting shape anytime soon.”

  “So the guy’s a liability,” grumbled someone off to my left.

  I snapped my head toward Kennedy, who was clean as a whistle, not a smudge of dirt on him, not a single bead of sweat. He hadn’t done a goddamn thing during the fight, except nearly piss himself, I was sure. “Hey,” I hissed back, “you want to lodge a complaint, you need to participate. Deadweight doesn’t get a say in how this group operates.”

  Kennedy scowled. “One word from me, and Daly—”

  “One word from me, and you’ll be strung up in a tree until something with big teeth eats you alive.” I took a menacing step toward him, and he staggered back, automatically shielding his throat. “This isn’t Earth, pal. You don’t have a say in anything here unless I tell you otherwise. And considering the fact you did absolutely nothing to help anyone in that skirmish, it would be wise for you to shut the fuck up unless I specifically ask you a question.”

  I motioned to Granger, who was whimpering as Saoirse cleaned his wound. “If you had bothered to help Saoirse and Granger, that redcap could’ve been driven back before he got within swinging distance. But because you’re a damn coward, you stood there and let everyone else do the work. Now we have a team member down. And our chances of rescuing the prisoners just got that much slimmer.”

  Kennedy at least had the sense to look mildly ashamed of himself.

  “Furthermore,” I continued, digging his hole deeper and deeper, “bear in mind that wi
thout Granger, you’re going to be my only immediate backup. So if something passes me and goes after you, there won’t be anyone by your side to save you.” I pointed to the gun hanging loosely in his hand. “So if you’re a shit shot or a slowpoke? You’re dead.”

  A huge crack split his resolve to continue with this mission, and he glanced at the exit to the cave. I almost pushed him into leaving. I wanted to kick his ass off the team, so badly. But I knew if I sent him packing, there was a good chance he’d trip one of the grenades on the strenuous climb back up the slope. The result, besides his immediate vaporization, would be a cascading series of explosions that could destabilize the cavern wall and the ceiling. And if that happened, there could be a catastrophic cave-in.

  No point in rescuing all those people just for everyone to get crushed by falling rocks.

  As much as it pained me to admit, since Kennedy was already here, he was less of a risk to our success if he stayed in close proximity to the group. Also, I thought with more glee than I should’ve, if all else fails, we can use him as a decoy.

  Chapter Eleven

  We left Granger in the hollowed-out trunk of a gnarled and lifeless tree. Odette and I both laid veils on him, plus spells that would mask his scents, sounds, and everything else we could think of. He had two fully loaded guns, and four extra magazines, all we could spare, but my chest still tightened as I led the group away from him. He’d vomited two more times as Saoirse was bandaging his wound, and again when he realized he couldn’t walk. But even so, he hadn’t argued against staying behind, or demanded we waste valuable time climbing out of the cave to portal him home. In fact, he implored us to leave him. For the sake of the mission’s success.

  Weak as his stomach was, Granger was no coward.

  Please let him be alive when we get back, I prayed to no particular god.

  The group pressed on. We traveled along the winding path through the petrified forest, with roughly thirty feet between me at the head and Mallory at the distant tail. The minutes passed in stark silence, no conversation between us, no ambient noise around us. The lack of sound in the cavern confirmed a problem I’d suspected since Odette launched the redcap into the ceiling: Abarta’s crew had heard us coming, and they would be prepared for our arrival far in advance. We were going to have an upward battle on our hands.

  But first, the vault locks.

  The game board sat at the base of a short hill, a sprawling labyrinth of gray and white blocks carved into the ground. Twelve chimera statues dotted the board. Amy Newsome’s body was still speared in place by the centaur statue, and Orson Barnum was still hanging from the beak of the birdlike one. Kennedy let out a faint gasp as he stopped short behind me and took in the morbid sight. The rest of the group, save Mallory, fell in with us shortly after, and we all gave the dead a moment of silence.

  “Do you think the board is still active?” Odette asked.

  “Do you sense any magic?” I focused my own sense and hunted for any latent traces of energy, but came up blank. The board felt as dead as the rest of the cavern. “Because I don’t.”

  “Me either, but”—she bit her lip—“something about this doesn’t feel right.”

  “Nothing about this feels right,” Kennedy cut in. “Can’t we go around it?”

  “Not unless we want to saw through all those trees.” Odette gestured left and right, to the dense thickets of trees that lined each end of the board and extended all the way to the cavern walls. They were so tightly packed that you couldn’t walk between them, which was the point. It would take days to cut through them all, unless you used a virtual bomb to clear them.

  I drew my attention back to the game board, back to the statues. There was no guarantee those things couldn’t move off the board to attack anyone who tried to take an alternate route. “We’re going to have to cross the board. No other choice.”

  “What if the statues come to life?” Saoirse asked.

  “Then we run,” I said, “really, really fast.”

  “And if they pursue us onto the path?” she pressed.

  “I go for the nuclear option, and hope it’s enough.” I tugged my glamour necklace out from under my collar. Three of the charms were dead, glamours released. But three of the charms still glowed a faint blue. My base glamours.

  Releasing number four wouldn’t do too much harm on a social level. Odette and Saoirse already knew I was half sídhe, Mallory knew how to keep a secret, and I could curse Kennedy to keep his mouth shut, if need be. But my primal faerie magic was already beating at the confines of my soul, amped up from the fight with the redcaps. If I took my fourth glamour down, it would grow even more excited, harder to rein in. And if I released glamours five and six?

  Well, to put it nicely, I didn’t like the person I became when I removed all my “filters.”

  I dropped my necklace against my chest. “Let’s play it by ear,” I said to the group. “We can’t drum up much of a plan with so little information to go on.”

  “I wish we’d had time to figure out what the heck this vault is for,” Odette said. “What kind of object warrants this much security. I’m worried about what it can do if these crazy obstacles are what someone used to lock it away from grubby hands.”

  “Best pray we don’t find out,” I replied. “Because if we do, it’ll probably be when Abarta’s crew uses it to kill us.”

  “That’s a lovely thought.” Saoirse sighed. “Okay, let’s tackle this freaky board game thing before I lose any more of my nerve.”

  “Agreed.” Odette trudged over to the very edge of the board, gazing across the expanse, to the tiny opening of the path that picked up on the other side. “I’ll go first. That way, if anything comes after me, Whelan can protect you, Daly.” She glanced at Kennedy. “You can die, for all I care, but I suppose you can cower behind the faerie man too.”

  Kennedy opened his mouth to sputter out an offended response, but Odette moved first. She dashed across the board, taking a roundabout route that kept her as far away from all the statues as possible. She vaulted over the dais in the center, landed in a graceful tuck and roll on the other side, and jumped back onto her feet without losing momentum. And she had a lot of momentum. She was moving much faster than my top glamoured speed. I got the sense her coat hid an extremely athletic body.

  Yet even with her runner’s legs, she wasn’t quick enough.

  When she was thirty feet away from the continuation of the path, the ground beneath her began to quake. I was so focused on the statues, I didn’t notice the sign of impending doom until Mallory’s sharp whistle broke the air—a trap warning. Right as a massive portion of ashy dirt shifted hard to the left, leaving a fault-like crack in its wake and throwing Odette to the side. She landed in a tumble and came back up on one knee, eyes wide in confusion as the crack grew larger and larger, a deep rumble bellowing from within. She opened her mouth to say something, a call for help, or maybe a spell, but she didn’t get the chance.

  A creature burst forth from the crack with a mighty roar. It was over fifty feet in length, covered in red scales from head to tail. Two stubby arms adorned with sharp claws helped it climb free from the crack. Once it heaved itself onto the flat plain of the game board, it slithered forward like a snake. Fast. Too fast. A hypnotic blur of glittering crimson streaking across the ground. Odette barely had time to shriek in terror before the creature’s dragon-like head swooped down and snapped its jaws shut around her right leg.

  The creature—a lindworm, my brain supplied—hefted Odette into the air and made a U-turn back toward the hole it had emerged from. It was already diving headfirst into the darkness, Odette screaming all the way, when my legs decided it was time to move and I took off across the board. Saoirse yelled after me, and I heard her boots pad across the dirt behind me. I craned my neck to shoot her a look of warning and shouted, “Stay there! Don’t move. I’ll be back. Defend the others.”

  She halted, her expression uncertain. But she listened. “Be careful!”
she shouted back.

  “I’m always careful,” I lied.

  I reached the crack in the ground as the very end of the lindworm’s tail was disappearing inside. I wrenched a flashlight off my belt, flicked it on, stuck it between my teeth, and dropped off the rim of the crack. A crack that turned out to be an extremely deep tunnel. There was no way the creature had burrowed all this out in the short time since we’d arrived in the cavern, I thought, as I fell, and fell, and kept on falling.

  No, this was a trap laid before we got here, and it wasn’t laid by a native of Tír na nÓg. Lindworms are aligned with Scandinavian mythos. The svartálfar must’ve brought the creature along and set it loose beneath the board as a trap for anyone who tried to follow them through the vault.

  That explained why none of them had doubled back to attack us yet. They’d left a guard dog behind to butcher us instead.

  Finally, after what seemed like a full minute of falling, my flashlight illuminated a patch of solid ground. A flash of red scales caught the light before veering to the right, the lindworm moving off through another branch of the tunnel system it had dug beneath the board. With a muttered spell invocation, I drew the tunnel’s musty air currents around my body, slowing my descent enough to avoid breaking my legs on impact. Contact with the ground still hurt, tendons straining, kneecaps groaning, but I sprang up and raced into the adjoining tunnel without delay.

  Odette didn’t have enough time left for me to take a break.

  I pushed myself to my max unglamoured speed, zipping past most suburban speed limits. Dirt-tinged air stuck to my throat and coated my lungs, threatening a coughing fit. But I stifled it and pressed on. The tunnel inclined at one point, and I was disturbed to see the ceiling looked dangerously close to caving in, bits of earth raining from above. Then the tunnel sharply declined, and I was suddenly slip-sliding down a hill with no purchase. I almost spun out of control and rolled the rest of the way down, but somehow, I managed to stay upright.