by Karen Chance
And then, all over the battlefield, formerly empty vessels started to stir. Massive hands twitched against the ground; huge heads rose out of the dirt; eyes that had formerly been dark and lifeless suddenly lit up like candles were behind them. Make that high beams, I thought, as they suddenly leapt up off the ground, picked up fallen weapons, and waded into the fray, now under new management.
I saw my human body give a massive sigh of relief, and abruptly sit down. There were still more of the enemy than of us—a lot more—but at least it was now a fight. And we fought hard. Part of the fey stayed to protect the mages; more went after the creatures stalking Mircea; and the rest of us started driving the battle toward the line.
I fought side by side for a moment with an exquisite manlikan with sapphire spikes for hair and emerald eyes. I wasn’t sure if it was Caedmon, as I didn’t have time to chat, but it jumped and leapt and slashed its way across the field as if it was made of flesh instead of thousands of tons of rock. It was almost balletic.
The rest of the fey were pretty impressive, too. One had occupied a manlikan with a green agate head and another with long, mossy dreadlocks and obsidian eyes. They had taken up guard over the mages, with double swords in their hands, slicing and dicing anything that got near them.
A bunch of the smaller, more generic looking creations had also stirred to life, but what they lacked in size they made up for in determination. Together they were pushing back the Ancient Horrors, surrounding and then falling on them, all at once. It was an elegant savagery, although one that caused almost as many casualties among the fey as among their prey.
But then, they simply jumped to new rides and continued the fight.
My own fighting style wasn’t so pretty, but it didn’t need to be. With the momentum that those massive arms could command, every blow was like a pile driver. I didn’t bother trying to push anything anywhere; I just picked things up and threw them. Only to have the gryphons that Caedmon’s men had been riding, which had taken off to avoid the carnage on the ground, catch them and rip them apart midair.
Yet it still wasn’t enough.
The Corps finally waded into the fray, having realized that they didn’t need to shield right now, and started lobbing spells. They did a lot better with those than they had with elemental magic, and saved me from being swamped by a squad of the sculpted type of manlikans, who were trying to break through our ranks. They were smaller than the mountainous variety, but there were more of them—a lot more. But the Corps’ volley drove them back into Caleb, who further savaged them by the simple expedient of kicking them over.
And then stomping on them as they tried to get back up.
His fighting style wasn’t pretty, either, but it was brutally effective. But while we were holding our own, that was all we were doing. And we weren’t going to be doing that for long, I realized, looking up.
Because the other side’s reinforcements had arrived.
Rank after rank of the carved manlikans descended on us, following their advanced scouting party, and required everyone to work together just to hold the line. And then we weren’t even doing that. Instead of us pushing them back, they were doing it to us, overwhelming us with sheer numbers.
I saw Caleb’s ride go down with at least ten soldiers savagely hacking at it. Saw Caedmon have to somersault over a line of several dozen more in order to avoid the same fate. Saw Pritkin’s Green Man get driven back, despite making them pay for every foot.
And then I was falling over onto my back, a dozen soldiers pushing me over and then following me down, trying to take me apart.
It didn’t work because I shifted them to the far side of the battlefield and rolled back to my feet—only to be hit by a wave of dizziness that almost sent me back down again. And, suddenly, I could feel it, as I hadn’t up until now: exhaustion. It weighed down my limbs and made me work for every movement. And I knew without asking what that meant.
I should; I’d felt it often enough with the Pythian power. We were reaching the end of the energy that the trine had created. It had been massive, but we’d been pulling on it like crazy, all three of us. This battle was coming to an end, one way or the other really soon.
No ex machina, after all, I thought, as a new line of soldiers grabbed for me.
And then Pritkin proved me wrong.
“Fight, you bastards!” he yelled—out loud. He was projecting his voice magically, and it echoed across the battlefield. “Get to the line! Reinforcements are almost here! We have to protect them until they land and get shields up!”
I stared at him, not understanding what he was talking about.
And then I did, when a little ingenuity did what brute force couldn’t. And almost the entire damned battlefield headed off to intercept an army that wasn’t coming. I just stood there, an Ancient Horror in each hand, squeezing what might have been a neck or possibly a foot for all I knew, and staring.
This was never going to work. This couldn’t possibly work. It couldn’t be that easy.
It was that easy.
A couple of seconds after they reached the area of the ley line, the sky tore open with what looked like the force of a thousand suns. A line of vivid, eye-searing yellow erupted like a volcano in midair, raining fire and death down on everything below. And just like that, and an entire army went up in smoke.
Epilogue
The beach looked a lot like the one I’d visited with Gertie. It was colder, though, with a breeze that cut right through you. I wrapped the thick old blanket I’d found in an upstairs closet tighter around me, but it didn’t help much.
It had been warmer in the daytime, when Pritkin and I had gone clamming, our feet bare and sand covered, our trouser legs rolled up, and I’d showed him the long, weird looking ones that Gertie had said made good chowder. She’d been right; we’d had some for dinner. But now it was nightfall, with just the last gleams of sunlight flirting with the horizon, as if reluctant to leave.
“Ready?” Pritkin asked, coming up behind me.
I nodded.
He walked over to a large pile of wood that he’d spent more than an hour building into just the right shape. It had been kind of him; I knew that. But I almost didn’t want him to light it.
Samhain was here, and at its heart, it wasn’t about carnivals and candy and face painting. It’s why we had returned to our time but not to the hotel, where my court had been informed that I was taking a small break. The truth was, I didn’t want to see laughing kid’s faces tonight, or cutesy costumes, or overly sugared tykes running rings around their minders. I’d thought I wanted this, the real meaning of the holiday, which originally had been about honoring those who had passed throughout the year.
But now that I was here . . .
“Wait,” I told Pritkin hoarsely, the sea spray wet on my face. “I just . . . wait, okay?”
He nodded and came back over. He wrapped his arms around me, the unlit taper in front of us, the sea roaring in our ears. We just stood like that for a long time, while the sun finished setting and the stars came out.
It was beautiful, but I wasn’t seeing it. I was seeing the search for Billy, which had taken half a day. A small group of corpsmen and fey had volunteered after the battle, once they’d understood what he’d done for them—for all of us. But they hadn’t found anything for hours, leading me to hope that maybe they never would. That he’d fallen out of the band of Faerie’s energy, that he’d had shifted back to his ghost form again before hitting down, that he’d landed somewhere but was only hurt, that . . . that something.
Then I’d seen them coming, as the late afternoon light spread over the hillside, four of them carrying something wrapped in a sheet. And it had been like seeing him go over that cliff all over again. My world had cracked and shattered, and it wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay. I didn’t know how anything was supposed to be okay ever again.
We’d buried him in Ireland, near his family home, two days ago. I didn’t know if I should have or not. “
You’re my family.” It felt like a betrayal; it felt wrong.
Everything was wrong and dark and we’d won and I hated it, because the price—
Had been too high.
“The ancient Celts believed that this was a special night,” Pritkin said. “The one night of the year when the veil between worlds was thinnest, and the living could communicate with the dead.”
“And yet I can’t,” I said harshly, and tried to push him away.
He held on, his touch firm but gentle. “You don’t have to do this,” he told me. “But you haven’t cried. You haven’t grieved.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m here for you, when you need me,” he finally said.
“I know.” My throat was tight, but my eyes were dry. I nodded at the pile. “Go ahead. Light it.”
The bonfire burned tall and bright, scattering sparks off to the left, because the wind had come up. It was beautiful, the orange red flames against the blue-black night. I turned into Pritkin’s chest and he just held me for a while.
It didn’t help. Nothing helped. My best friend was gone, and nothing would change that.
We went to bed.
The little house was a rental, on a beach somewhere in Wales. I hadn’t asked where; didn’t care. It was pretty, and I could hear the waves from here. Pritkin was “breathing loudly” next to me within minutes, but I couldn’t sleep.
After half an hour or so, I got up and went to the living room. It had a bow window overlooking the sea. The bonfire was still guttering, blowing streamers of sparks into the night sky, and the moonlight was dancing on the water. It looked magical, or it should have.
But there was no magic in the world for me.
“How’d it go?”
My head had been resting on my arms, which had been crossed over back of the couch, and my eyes had been closed. But now I opened them to see a glimmering, transparent cowboy, sitting on the seat beside me. He was rolling a cigarette, and could swear I smelled the smoke.
It was a dream; I knew it was.
I’d take it.
“We won,” I told him.
“Knew you would.”
“But Aeslinn got away.”
“Son of a bitch. How?”
“He wasn’t there to begin with,” I said, pushing hair out of my eyes. “After Jonathan warned him that we were coming, he left, along with some of his senior nobles. A glamouried servant remained behind in his place. Mircea found out after he cut the servant’s head off and the magic dissolved.”
“Damn,” Billy said, and let out a smoky breath.
“Yeah. Everyone’s looking for him, but he could be anywhere. Probably wherever Tony is holed up, because he and the rest weren’t there, either.”
“So, it was all for nothing?”
“No. Jonathan is dead and Aeslinn’s power is largely broken, with his lands temporarily under Caedmon’s control. His ability to help the gods—or anybody else—is severely weakened. It was a big victory.”
I looked at him. “It wasn’t worth it.”
“Don’t.”
“Billy, I—”
“Tell me about this thing with Pritkin,” he said, cutting me off. “What the hell is up with his demon half, anyway?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s tuned in to power, like all demons, so maybe it figured a few things out after Mircea and I combined forces. It did some math, realized that the three of us might be able to do something extraordinary, and that we might need to. So . . . it decided to help out.”
“By attacking you?”
I nodded. “Twice.”
“Twice? When was—”
“The first time was at Gertie’s. I thought it was Jonathan, partnering up with some incubus at first. And later, I thought that Jonathan had brought it back in time, to assault me. But I don’t think so now.”
“Why? Because its power came in handy? That don’t mean it was trying to help you!”
“No, but it expended a lot of the power at Gertie’s. I think it made a room of old artifacts come alive, trying to talk to me. And it did—it told me that there had to be three, I just didn’t understand what it meant.”
Billy looked skeptical. “Then how’d it get back there, if Jonathan didn’t take it?”
“I think it used the conduit I had with Mircea. His power worked there, even in the past, and the link we had was based on incubus energy. But I wasn’t in Lover’s Knot with Pritkin at the time, so his demon needed a power boost to talk to me.”
“It could have just talked to you here.”
I shook my head. “Pritkin had it on lockdown. Something happened in Hong Kong and he’s been even more paranoid about it than usual. I think the only way it could contact me was when he was somewhere else. Or somewhen.”
“So that’s why it, uh, took matters into its own hands at HQ?”
I nodded. “It knew we needed power, and couldn’t wait for another opportunity that it might not get.”
Billy thought about that. “How did Pritkin take it when you told him?”
“Um . . .”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“I will. I mean, he knows about the second attack anyway—”
“Cass!”
“But I’ll do it. I just have to pick the right moment.”
“Uh huh.”
“I will,” I insisted. “He has to know. Especially now.”
“Why now?”
“After what happened, all that power we shared, his demon half is probably stronger than ever. It keeps part of the energy we generate, you know?”
“That’s what I know. So, you are going to tell him.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Soon. I promise!”
Billy rolled his eyes. “I guess I can give you a break. You’ve been through a lot.”
“Not . . . not as much as you. Billy—”
“What about the third member of the triumvirate?” he asked, cutting me off again. “Has Mircea found his lady love?”
“No. Caedmon said he has some ideas; I didn’t get a lot of details. But I think he’s going to help him out. But, yeah, that’s what Mircea was doing in Romania when we all ended up there. Looking for clues—”
“In the eighteenth century?”
I shook my head. “That was Jonathan’s doing. He’d guessed what might happen if the three of us combined power, and wanted us out of the way—at least until the battle was over. So, he talked Aeslinn into releasing this creature they’d had in their dungeon for a while. It . . . I still don’t know what it was, but it helped Dorina when she was just a baby—”
“And it was still alive?”
“The Svarestri captured it shortly after Mircea and I saw it in Romania, and took it back to their realm. And you know time runs differently there. Plus, it’s fey, and they live longer.”
Billy frowned through a haze of smoke. “But how did Jonathan even know about this thing, much less that Mircea would go chasing it?”
“He’d made a mental connection with Mircea during questioning—or one of his creatures had—and realized that he was obsessed. Jonathan managed to plant the idea that the creature had all the answers Mircea needed, if he only shifted back to see him—”
“And the mad mage was waiting when he did.”
I nodded.
“But he didn’t kill him? Cause he could’ve removed the risk from your threesome—”
“Don’t call it that.”
He grinned, unrepentant. “—right there. Yet he left him alive?”
I shrugged. “I’m Pythia. Jonathan knew I’d have to chase down a time-traveling vampire, as long as said vampire stayed alive. And, of course, he wanted to capture me.”
“Huh.” Billy looked thoughtful. “Then Jonathon’s own obsession with you saved Mircea’s life.”
“No, you saved Mircea’s life. You saved all of us—”
“Cass—"
“Damn it, Billy! You know what I
’m going to say!”
“And you know what I am. We already had this conversation—”
“I could help you!”
“And risk screwing everything else up in the process. You won, Cass. We won. You can’t throw that away for me.”
“I could.” And, finally, the tears that wouldn’t come were flowing, and I couldn’t seem to make them stop. “I would—”
“I know.” He took my hand, and his was cold, cold in a way that it had never been for me. For the first time, he felt like a ghost. “But this . . . it’s nice here. Nicer than I ever thought. I had a sister—well, I had five. But one little one who I hated to leave. She grew up, after I left. Had eleven kids—can you believe it? She named her eldest after me. She missed me, so much, and I never knew. But we’re together now—”
I was sobbing now, I couldn’t help it, and he pulled me in and hugged me. He was solid; so solid, and I clung to him while I could. He stroked my back.
“Don’t do this to yourself. It isn’t the end for you and me, you know that, right?”
“I-It isn’t?” I drew back to look at him.
“I’ll visit you, every Samhain. Watch you grow. And you can tell me all about that crazy mage, and the creepy vampire—”
“He isn’t creepy!”
Billy laughed. “Okay. You can tell me about whatever you want.”
“And you’ll be here?”
“I’ll always be here for you, Cass. You know that. But I have to go now, all right?”
I nodded.
Billy tipped his hat back and put out his cigarette. “Be good,” he told me. “Or at least, don’t get caught.”
“I won’t,” I promised, my cheeks wet, and he slowly faded out.
I sat there for a long time in the moonlight, watching the bonfire gutter through the window. And my eyes glow brighter and brighter in the reflection, until they rivalled the moonlight outside. Because Pritkin’s incubus wasn’t the only one who had gotten a little boost from our union.