Void: Book Five of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

Something happened here. Quite a lot of something. And I missed it.

  I regarded Trixie’s ashes amid the smell of blood and electrical scorching.

  I don’t know what’s going on, but I am damn well going to find out, even if I have to rip someone’s brain out and run it through a strainer.

  I put the silver… coffin? Urn? Probably urn. I put it in my pocket. I went downstairs and out into the main part of the house. As I crossed toward the front door, I was shot.

  I glanced down at the place where the bullet hit me. It missed my vest and punched a neat hole in my shirt over my left pectoral, and would probably have taken the top off my left lung if not for my underwear. It’s flexible armor, though, so it still stung. I raised my glare to the shooter. He was a grey-garbed fellow, probably between twenty-five and thirty, holding a rifle with a folded bipod. His eyes, easily visible under his helmet, grew wide.

  What, I asked myself, is a German soldier doing in my house?

  My next inner question was, Did this son of a bitch just shoot me in my own damn house?

  Then I ripped his throat out, drank his blood, and consumed every spark of his essence. At that point, the answers to both questions were obvious and redundant, but I felt a little better.

  Two more troopers came through the doorway from the front hall, presumably to investigate the shot. I killed them quickly, before they could cause more gunfire. I didn’t bother drinking their blood. Anything that didn’t catch up to me I would walk over later. For the moment, at least, I only wanted to check the house for more vermin. I stalked through the halls, checking rooms, and reaching through the walls with tendrils.

  There were six Germans, counting the first three. They were in one of the front sitting rooms, covering the doors and looking out the windows, presumably having taken cover in the manor to avoid the faerie revel. One guy was guarding a bedroom next door to the sitting room. Several children were in it, either prisoners or hostages. I made sure the body wasn’t in their line of sight, shushed them, told them to lock the door and hide, and closed the door. They didn’t seem too upset about that. There’s a big difference between being locked in by a German soldier and being told to hide by the nice guy who owns the house.

  I didn’t send them anywhere because I didn’t know where would be safer than the room they were already in. Besides, it was more convenient to have them stay put. I wanted to question the German officer.

  He wasn’t in a mood to cooperate, even after I appeared out of the darkness and tore heads off the two soldiers guarding him. He swore at me in German, calling me a monster, shooting me twice with his sidearm, accusing me of being some sort of English terror, declaring no true German would ever give in to terror tactics, and so on.

  I replied in German. I speak German badly, but sucking the life out of a few native speakers in under two minutes helped a lot. I’m not fluent in many languages, but I know a dozen or more well enough to get by.

  “Friend, you’ve picked the wrong house. You have no idea.”

  “English dog!” He fired another two rounds into me. “Die! Die as you should!”

  I took the Luger away from him, almost taking a finger with it. I pinched the end of the barrel closed and handed it back to him. He snatched it back and stared at the barrel. At least it derailed his train of thought.

  “I want to know two things,” I told him. “First, why are you Nazi bastards in my house? Second, what the hell is going down on my lawn?”

  “You will get nothing from me, English!” He drew a knife. It was a nice knife. Had the SS logo on it and everything. Wicked-looking. Very cool. I took it away from him. I didn’t intend to break his arm, but I might have bent it a little farther than strictly necessary. Like, ninety degrees farther. Okay, maybe I did intend to break his arm.

  I plunked him down in a big chesterfield chair and held his wrists to the arms of it. He spat in my face.

  Ten points to House Nazi for stunning bravado. Minus several million for lack of good sense.

  I turned off my amulet’s nighttime disguise illusions. My vest rippled outward and upward like wings, like rents in the fabric of space. I showed off my teeth, extended my tongue, licked the spittle from my cheek and spat it back at him.

  He didn’t take it well. He started screaming and I wrapped one taloned hand around his throat to quiet him. With my other hand, I drew a talon across one cheekbone to draw a little blood.

  “Now, here’s what’s going to happen,” I said, leaning close and whispering with my cold breath tickling his ear. “You explain to me why a bunch of the Führer’s soldiers are bothering a private school. I want to understand. Make me. If you fail to do so, you won’t even taste your severed fingers when I stuff them down your throat. I will, of course, because I’ll bite them off for you. You may now speak.”

  I leaned back enough to look him in the eyes and relaxed my grip on his throat enough to let him breathe. It’s interesting to watch someone try to make eye contact when I don’t have irises and pupils. The blank, black orbs make it hard to tell where I’m looking. I think it adds to the creepy factor. Running the tip of my long, tentacle-like tongue along the cut on his cheek might have helped, too.

  He explained.

  German High Command noticed a pattern. On their map of the British Isles, their aerial reconnaissance flights overflew pretty much everything. Their latest jet-powered, Condor-class aircraft could circle the whole of the islands and stay above a Spitfire’s ceiling. They could see anything they pleased, albeit from high altitude. Except, of course, for one spot up in the lake district, around Keswick. When you put a pin in the map everywhere you lose an aircraft, it’s not hard to see the circle of death.

  These aircraft were lost without report, sometimes in mid-sentence. They flew at high altitudes, well above the expected engagement ceiling. Whatever was shooting them down, it was deadly. If the British could produce them in quantity, the German air superiority was, shall we say, shot down.

  The High Command therefore ordered this überweapon investigated and captured. German spies reported nothing unusual in the towns, but massive construction efforts were being made at a local manor. The owner was an American, or claimed to be, and admitted to being an electrical inventor. Two plus two plus two makes six, possibly eight or ten if we missed something. So a company of paratroops rained down on the “secret base.”

  When I growled “son of a bitch!” it was directed mostly at me. Fortunately, that doesn’t generally react with high magical background levels. If you tell a wizard to watch his language, it means to pick a language.

  “What did you do with the überwaffe? The one on the roof?”

  “We took it apart and bagged the components.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Over there.” He nodded toward a corner of the room. I nodded.

  “Fine. What’s your extraction?”

  “Extraction?”

  “You have a way off the island. You’re trying to take the thing home with you. How do you intend to leave?”

  “We were to commandeer a boat and meet with a naval group in the Atlantic. At least, that was the plan until they showed up.”

  “They? The faeries in the front yard?”

  “Yes. First it was just the one, the little one with the stinger. That horrible, atrocity-filled vermin killed Fritz, but it flew away after Klein hit it with the barrel of is weapon.”

  “I’m surprised you even saw her.”

  “Germans soldiers are more perceptive than lazy English.”

  “Maybe so. What happened after you hit her? After Klein hit her.”

  “Nothing. It escaped. It was several minutes later when there came an explosion without an explosion, then bright lights and horns.”

  “An explosion without an explosion?”

  “I do not know how to describe it. It was without sound, yet it was felt. It was like nothing I know.”

  “Fair enough. Then what happened?”

  “Most of my me
n were caught outside when the event happened. Terrible things befell them. Tall, shining figures cut them down with swords. Monsters surrounded them, overpowered them. Two were transformed into trees. Others became stones, rocks. I do not know what happened to them all.”

  “Well, I killed the six in the house.”

  “Six? There are only—”

  He was probably about to say he only had five soldiers in the house with him, but he didn’t have time.

  I straightened my clothes as my cloak shrank down, wrapped around, and resumed being a cloak.

  “What, not a vest?”

  It remained a cloak. I shrugged and headed out the front door, allowing any neglected blood to slither over to me.

  The faerie revel was in full swing, reminding me forcibly of an underground rave I once attended by accident. Magical lights flashed and sparkled. Strange afterimages followed many of the moving figures. Music seemed to come from everywhere, no matter how many or how few musicians were actively playing. Everyone danced—one leg, two legs, or some multiples, it didn’t matter. The party limited itself to the grassy areas rather than the driveway or under the portico.

  I hesitated, blinking against the chaotic lights and otherworldly din. I raised a hand to shield my eyes and half-turned away. That’s when I noticed Mister Gillespie sitting, leaning against the wall, beside the door. He held his hands to his chest, but couldn’t stop the blood. My presence only made it worse. At night, I shouldn’t be doing first aid for bleeding wounds.

  Nevertheless, I knelt next to him, fingers already moving through the gestures necessary for a quick-and-dirty bandage. If I closed the skin, the bleeding might not be so bad. At least if it was all internal, it could be directed back into his own veins. There were five holes—four went in, one came out.

  “Squire,” he muttered. “Bloody Huns shot me when—”

  “I see. Hush.”

  “Too late. Too old,” he continued. “Not comin’ back from this one.” He coughed blood and it soaked instantly through my sleeve, vanishing.

  I decided he might be right. His life was ending quickly. I was surprised he was still alive at all. Bullets in the chest generally don’t leave room for anything else. Still, the human body can be amazingly resilient. I searched inside him, found the bullets—four of them; one passed completely through—and realized he was absolutely right. He wasn’t going to survive. Maybe if I had him in Apocalyptica we could freeze him, clone some spare parts, and get an operating room ready, but out here on the lawn…

  “Fiona,” he muttered. “Fiona…”

  Fiona? Fiona Gillespie. Of course.

  I wrapped him in a cocoon of forces, drawing in magical power and pumping vitality into him. I might not save him, but I could keep him alive another five minutes come Hell, high water, or toxic waste.

  “I’ll get her,” I assured him. He nodded and lowered his grey-haired old head. I don’t think he heard me, but he understood.

  I thought of Mrs. Gillespie standing on the front step of the manor house, backed the thought with power, and released it in a pulse of magical energy. It’s the most primitive and power-intensive of spellcasting, but it’s quick and it’s hard to ignore. If she was anywhere within a thousand yards, she knew where she needed to be.

  As I finished conjuring, one of the fairy-folk scampered up. He was an ugly little fellow, scrawny and wrinkled and about the size of James. His head was disproportionately large and covered in wiry, wild grey hair. He stared at Mr. Gillespie with eyes wide and jaw slack for several seconds before throwing himself down beside the dying figure and gathering up one hand.

  “Oh, my little Angus! What’s become of ye? T’was but a moment past ye were skipping about the stones at home! How have ye come to this?”

  “You know Mr. Gillespie?” I asked.

  “Aye, so I do, ye doddering Dullahan, for he’s my Angus, who played about the castle ruins. Brave little Angus, who never knew to fear a thing, not man nor beast nor grumpy old spriggan!” He rubbed Mr. Gillespie’s hand between both of his and moaned in despair.

  The light around us grew brighter and the sounds of the revel began to fade. I looked around. The light was from the lanterns on a carriage, sitting there under the portico like it had been there all along. Somehow, a four-horse coach managed to sneak up on me. On me. At night. I suspected magic.

  The coach itself was black where it wasn’t made of bones. The lanterns were made of skulls, of course. The horses were almost skeletally thin, with black, sunken eyes and a wraithlike mist obscuring their hooves. The driver was headless, or almost. His head sat on the bench beside him. He held a whip or flail in his left hand. It seemed to be made out of an awful lot of human vertebrae and topped with another skull, this one unlit.

  I sensed this might be a significant moment in Angus Gillespie’s life. Probably his last.

  “Spriggan?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Go find his wife. Fiona. Bring her here right now.”

  “Ach, what use? He’ll be—”

  “Fine,” I snapped. “Be useless.”

  I stepped down from the entryway, pausing beside the left-rear horse. The beheaded coachman regarded me with narrowed eyes—a disconcerting effect if ever I saw one. The closest horse turned its head and regarded me. The other three followed suit. Then the first one lowered its head and nudged me with its nose, clearly asking me for a scratch. I sighed and obliged it. The coachman held up his head for a better look and stared, eyes wide.

  “What?” I asked, still skritching a forehead.

  He turned his attention to the entryway. His hand extended, holding the coach-whip of spine. He pointed at Mr. Gillespie and spoke in a voice both deep and dark, “Angus Gillespie!” as some power reached out from him.

  I leaped to the stairs and into the path between the coachman and Mr. Gillespie. Whatever the force reaching for Angus, it didn’t kill me. I think it tried to grab my soul and pull it out, but, at night, I’m not as mortal as most men. I can’t say I enjoyed the experience, but I took it a lot better than Mr. Gillespie would have, I’m sure.

  “Who are you to deny me?” demanded the coachman, still using the Voice of Doom.

  “Nobody,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t dream of denying you.”

  “Stand aside!”

  “I’m only asking you to wait two minutes. His wife is right there, rushing through the dancers.”

  “You may not command me.”

  Mrs. Gillespie finally staggered through the reveling throng and into the clear space beneath the portico. Quite a few of the faerie-kin took an interest in the events of under the portico and gathered around it. Mrs. Gillespie ran straight to Mr. Gillespie, but I didn’t pay much attention to their farewells. I was arguing with the death coachman.

  “I’m not commanding. I’m asking. And all I’m asking for is two minutes. No, make it one minute. Is one minute so much?” I asked, reasonably. “Now, we can fight about this if you want. Mind you, I don’t want to. If we fight, it’s going to be awful for someone, possibly both of us, and will last at least one minute. Or you can show something of the legendary patience of death, knowing you’re going to get what you want because it’s as inevitable as… well.”

  The coachman swung his whip of spine at me and I caught the skull in both hands, thumbs in the eyesockets. Whatever force it carried, it had no effect on a dead man. We matched stares along a stretched set of vertebrae. He seemed surprised. So was I. I could see he was something more powerful, more elemental, more primal than a human being. I expected worse and realized it might yet be.

  Yeah, this might be an ugly, ugly fight—and one I should avoid.

  “Please?” I asked, quietly. “Is death not known for the occasional mercy?”

  He relaxed a trifle. I released a little tension on the spine-whip. By stages, we dialed it down and he got his whip back. Behind us, I heard the Gillespies finishing their farewells. The coachman and I continued to regard each other. I sil
ently thanked the forces of chaos for not letting me sweat at night.

  “I grant you your minute,” he said, finally.

  I turned and knelt by the Gillespies. The spriggan knelt on the other side, rubbing Mr. Gillespie’s hand between both of his. Mr. Gillespie seemed asleep, but I knew better.

  “It’s his time to go, Mrs. Gillespie.”

  “Aye, and I know it. And I’ll be thanking you later for what you’ve dared and done.”

  “I doubt it. Spriggan?”

  “Aye, I’ve bid farewell to my Angus.”

  I took Angus by the hands and let them fall, still holding his ghostly hands. I lifted Angus from his body.

  “What—? What is…?”

  “It’s time to go, Mister Gillespie.” I ushered him toward the coach. The door of the coach opened by itself. The coachman kept his face forward, not looking at us.

  “I never thought I’d see it,” he murmured. “I never thought I’d ride the actual coach.”

  Angus climbed into the coach without hesitation. The coachman flicked his reins to get his horses’ attention and I stepped aside. A moment later, the whole thing, horses, coach, and all, galloped away in perfect silence and vanished within a hundred paces.

  I have got to learn that trick.

  As the coach vanished in the night, a small procession of tall figures came from the other direction—elves!

  And what elves! Tolkien wasn’t kidding around! These were not the elves of Karvalen, although that unearthly, inhuman grace and poise were present. The strange, non-human beauty, too. But the expressions on their faces were not cruel. Not kind, either. They were unreadable faces, formed in another age of the world, or another world entirely. Alien faces, for all they had the usual features. The things looking out of those faces were not human.

  The fairy or spriggan or whatever he was leaped to his feet, sprang down to the side of the driveway, and bowed. I stood my ground. The two in the middle wore fanciful circlets, almost crowns, and walked hand in hand. They kept their eyes on me as they approached. I presumed they wanted me for something, possibly a reprimand for interfering with the Order of Things. And, if not, their progress was stately enough that I felt I could jump out of the way if they didn’t halt at a conversational distance.