Ink & Sigil

by Hearne, Kevin

  Nadia sighed. “I do no like killing people who are trapped in a hierarchy, but you are different. Ye’re a fucking bastard. Remember that I gave ye a chance and ye said no, and I’m very sorry about the others.”

  She switched off and handed the phone to me. I immediately launched my text-to-speech app and typed, [Activate your minions, Buck. Do whatever you had planned.]

  The hobgoblin nodded once and then stretched out his right hand toward the facility, chanting some words in Old Irish.

  “There. That should do it.”

  “Do what?” Nadia asked.

  “Since it worked so well with the troll, I commanded them tae seek out the humans inside and gouge out their eyes. How they do that is up tae them. I assume they’re going tae have tae climb up, and that’s why it’s good they’re made of metal. The humans will slap them away, but they can fall down and just keep coming.”

  Nadia’s jaw dropped. “That’s bloody terrifying.”

  [Uh. Buck? Does that mean if Nadia and I go in there, your little minions will go for our eyes too?]

  The hobgoblin blinked. “Shite. I didn’t think that one through.”

  Nadia caught my gaze and shook her head, hooking her thumb at Buck. “I’m no gonnay be blinded by this wee man’s wee men. Can we no just use another sigil tae blow the place up?”

  Panicked screaming and gunfire alerted us that the miniatures had found some targets inside.

  “Christ! Get ’em off me! Get ’em off!” a man screamed faintly. “Augggh!”

  The hollering continued and intensified, and when one said, “My eye!” we knew that they had been at least partially successful.

  “Awright, new plan,” Buck said. “I’ll go in there now that they’re busy and get the guns. I’ll have the wee folk stand down, then ye can follow.”

  The bean sídhe continued to screech out someone’s garbled name, and I told him to be careful.

  “Ye told me bein’ in yer service would be dangerous, MacBharrais, but ye didnae say I’d be walkin’ intae a hole full of guns. I want proper chocolate-covered marshmallows after this.”

  He crouched down and crept into the facility, conserving his strength, heading toward the gunfire and shouts. It wasn’t a minute later that he popped into view next to us with a gun in his hand and dropped it at my feet.

  “That’s one,” he said, and popped away again. He repeated the process twice more but brought phones back with him too, including Nadia’s. He said, “That’s all of them, I think, on the top floor. One of the humans is deid—fell down some stairs and broke his neck, but I couldnae tell if it was the doctor or not because I didnae go down tae check. I suppose there could be more people hiding downstairs. The other two I found are half blind—lost one eye but not the other—and they’re trying tae call in backup and discovering that nothing works because that sigil of yours knocked out the power. I took their mobile phones tae be sure they couldn’t make any calls that way. The wee men are comin’ out, and they’re gonnay get back on their stands and go tae sleep. Ye can come in now, but it’s darker than a king snake’s arsehole.”

  I picked up the guns and stashed them in my coat; I didn’t want to leave them behind, in case someone else came along to investigate.

  [Want to come with us?] I asked Cowslip.

  “If ye don’t mind,” she said. “I don’t wanna stay out here with the bean sídhe.”

  That was a good point. There was no telling what they might try once I was out of sight; best not give them an opportunity.

  The fighting sigils faded away and my muscles and joints complained, but I doubted I’d need the boosts now. I offered Nadia a Sigil of Feline Vision and she took it.

  [Need to renew the other ones?] I asked.

  “I think I’ll be fine without them. No drunk people inside, right?”

  We followed Buck and Cowslip into the facility, Nadia using the torch she’d had Buck take out of her van earlier. It would reveal our position to anyone lurking in the dark, but we also didn’t want to fall down a flight of stairs or feel our way by touch. The halls of the facility were the sort a fantasy author might say was hewn from the living rock, since they actually had been. The wailing of the bean sídhe continued outside, but they didn’t follow us in.

  Instead, we heard some cursing ahead.

  “There’s a room full of computers and that ahead on the left,” Buck said, pointing. “That’s where they are.”

  “Right. I’ll get them sorted,” Nadia said in a low tone, and she crept ahead, pulling a couple of zip ties out of her back pocket. There was no need to do anything but restrain them, and she had them bound and cursing us in a couple of minutes.

  [Was the doctor in there?] I asked.

  “Naw. My bet is that he’s downstairs.”

  There was nothing to learn from the computers, since they were all powerless, so it left us with a single goal.

  Buck exhaled slowly. “So. The undine.”

  [Where is she, Cowslip?]

  “Down those stairs that Buck mentioned. It goes down for a while. There’s a lake. Or a pond, maybe. She’s in there, and she’s scary. I don’t wanna go.”

  [Okay. Stay here with Buck and guard the humans. Buck, please search them for ID and take it.]

  “Got it.”

  Nadia and I went down the hall in search of the staircase. When we found it, the human that Buck had mentioned was sprawled motionless on the first landing, neck twisted unnaturally out of shape, and it was the doctor, doubtless on his way down to warn the undine of our approach or else to set up some kind of ambush. One of his eyes was missing, but the torch he’d been carrying still rested on the landing. Perhaps his depth perception had been thrown off and he slipped. Or perhaps he’d had one of Buck’s little elves or goblins on him when he tried to take the steps and tumbled down in his panic.

  I knelt down next to him with my creaky knees and fished in his lab coat until I pulled out an ID. His name had been Dr. Alex Larned, and I was grateful that the stairs had ended him. If he’d been alive, the treaty would have required me to hand him over to the Fae for punishment. They would have drawn out his death for a very long time. I pocketed the ID and left the torch where it lay.

  The stairs kept descending for several flights down a chimney of rock. The two of us went down slowly, Nadia taking the lead, listening for anyone approaching.

  The air grew colder and damper as we went, and soon the torch was the only light penetrating an absolute darkness, and I began to regret leaving Dr. Larned’s torch behind.

  “What do undines look like, Al?” Nadia whispered at the third landing. We still had several flights to go from what we could tell by the cone of the torchlight.

  The light of my phone joined the torch as I typed a reply. [They’re like naiads.]

  “What’s that?”

  [They’re like dryads, but moist.]

  “Less of yer cheek, Al. What am I facing? Because this is not a negotiation for surrender, right? She’s a pure monster, a people-eater?”

  [If Cowslip is to be believed, aye. I had no trouble believing that the others had eaten people. The leprechaun told me he was going to snack on my liver.]

  “Aye, and the clurichaun said I looked delicious. So what can an undine do?”

  [I’m not sure, really. I haven’t had this problem before. But I wouldn’t go in the water.]

  “Thanks for yer expert advice.”

  [Sorry.]

  “Gimme one of those agility sigils at least. I cannae see fuck-all even with this enhanced vision, and I might need to move fast.”

  I gave her one and she absorbed it with her eyes before rocketing down the stairs, leaving me behind with only my phone for light. I followed at a much slower pace but soon heard her call up, “I cannae tell how big this pond is. And there’s no anything much here at the bottom of the steps. A tiny beach and then it’s a spooky Gollum grotto, in’t it? If undines turn out tae be lamp-eyed motherfuckers eating raw fish and talking about their
Precious, I want another raise.”

  I didn’t answer, concentrating instead on not falling down the steps. But I did wonder what we could do if the undine didn’t show herself. We didn’t have any harpoons or tridents or even so much as a fishing pole. There was just Nadia’s sword and my cane, and while I did have some confiscated guns with an unknown number of rounds in them, firing blindly into a rocky space was probably unwise.

  My manager was right: There was hardly anything at the bottom of the steps. Just three or four feet of rocky sand and then black still waters stretching into more darkness. It was silent except for our breathing and the creak of Nadia’s leather. I remained on the bottom step because otherwise I’d be crowding her.

  “What do I do?” she asked.

  [Stand there and smell tasty. You’re bait.]

  “What, she’s gonnay come out o’ there like an alligator or sumhin?”

  [Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.]

  “How do I speed things along? Give her a whiff?” She had the torch in her left hand and held her sword in the right, and she waved her hands forward as if to waft her personal aroma over the waters.

  [Aye, if there was an undine fishing show on the telly, I’m sure that’s how’d they do it.]

  “Well, I suppose this beats crouching over my desk doing the quarterly profit-and-loss statement.”

  I let the comment go unanswered for a while, and silence settled in. It occurred to me that if we were dragged into that water, no one would ever find our bodies. [Spooky as fuck, though,] I finally observed.

  “Aye, I was just about tae say. Ye can meditate down here or go mad, and there’s no much in between. But it’s good. When I get home and Dhanya asks me how was work today, I can say it was all the weird shite ye promised me back in Tchai Ovna and then some, because I got stabbed by a faery whose veins probably contained more cabernet than blood, then watched a bunch of painted miniatures come tae life and hunt down secret agents in the dark, and now I’m undine fishing with my boss and might die. This is so much better than invoicing. So much.” She chuckled. “I think this is ma favorite day of work ever. Thanks, Al.”

  I heard a swirl of water somewhere ahead and perhaps some light bubbles popping; in an area of water and rock walls, sound carried fantastically well.

  “Whoa, hold on now . . .” Nadia said. She played the light over the waters in front of her, and I saw some swirls on the surface where it had been perfectly calm and glassy before.

  “Duck low!” Nadia shouted, and I crouched down as deeply as I could even as she did, because her warnings were not to be taken lightly. There was a whoosh of sound like a tide hitting shore, and something took off the top of my hat and sheared straight through the steel handrails of the staircase.

  “What the fuck?” I said aloud, for it was a spontaneous thing I wasn’t going to type into my phone, and I stayed down in case whatever that was struck again. I had no idea what kind of weapon had done that, but I was wet now with water from the pond.

  “My hair!” Nadia cried, and something inhuman screamed in response and launched itself out of the pond, half-seen in the light of her torch. Mostly I saw a gush of water and teeth, with some pale, gaunt arms ending in clawed hands stretching out for Nadia’s throat. She fell away from it onto her back and bunched her legs up to her chest, successfully denying the attack by extending her legs and tossing the shrieking undine over her heid.

  Said undine landed right on top of my heid, and I slammed painfully into the edges of the stairs, dropping my phone but not my cane. I instinctively slipped the cane in front of my throat to protect it and grabbed the other side with my left hand as the undine twisted and writhed until she faced me. Nadia swerved her torch around in search of her quarry and illuminated the creature from the side, a visage marred by pain and madness and teeth like scissor blades flashing at me. I pushed the cane away from me like a bench press, thinking it would prevent her from opening up my carotid and that I’d surely be able to fend off such a slight creature, which weighed no more than ninety pounds.

  The undine objected.

  Instead of trying to get past my outstretched arms and cane, she simply switched targets, grabbed my left arm, and bit into it. Those knifelike teeth tore through the cashmere of my topcoat and sank into my flesh, and fire lanced through my nerves as my grip loosened on the cane. My defense fell away and my neck was exposed, which is what she wanted. She tore herself from my arm, her teeth coated in my blood, and snarled prior to lunging in for the kill.

  But a shucking sound and a jerk to her torso made her gasp and gurgle, and I was abruptly forgotten. Nadia had plunged her sword up under the undine’s ribs and pierced at least half a dozen vital organs. The undine may have been immune to iron poisoning, but she wasn’t immune to sharp pointy weapons. Nadia twisted the blade, which caused another tremor and moan, and then the undine’s head slumped down and her expression went slack.

  Nadia pulled the creature off and shone her torch on me. “Awright, Al? Sorry about that.”

  I confined myself to a tight nod, since I didn’t have my phone, and searched in my pockets for a Sigil of Knit Flesh to use on my wound. The blood was flowing pretty well, and I imagined I’d have a hell of a dry-cleaning bill.

  “Ach, she got ye a good one, I see. Well, she got me too.” She swung the torch around to point at her heid. “Took off the top of ma mohawk. Wild stuff. That was a blade made of water, just shaped out of magic and whipped through the air before she came at us like an alligator after all.”

  It had taken the top off my hat as well. My sigil was probably ruined, but that was no matter. Had Nadia not warned me, or had I not ducked low enough, I wouldn’t have made it.

  “Now I know why the pixie thought the undine was scary,” she said.

  Once I’d given my arm some time to heal and Nadia found my phone, I explained that we needed to haul the body up to the surface. That was an awkward drag, especially over the body of Dr. Larned on the first landing, where I paused to pick up that extra torch, but we managed it and reunited with Buck and Cowslip in the control room. Their prisoners looked a little tousled and the worse for wear, what with an eye missing and blood streaming down their faces, but Buck proudly handed over their IDs. One was the middle-aged man with the loosened tie we’d spoken to briefly over the chat, and the other was a younger white woman with short dark hair and a square jaw.

  [Excellent. Peek outside, won’t you? See if the bean sídhe are still there.]

  “Right.” The hobgoblin and pixie exited together, chatting amiably like old friends.

  I gave Nadia a Sigil of Muscular Brawn.

  “What’s this for?”

  [I need these two agents dragged outside and dropped by the door. Then I need the undine and the three other Fae bodies piled up some distance away but nowhere near the trees.] Like the troll at the bottom of Hatcher’s pool, they hadn’t disintegrated to ash like most Fae did upon their death. The experimental treatments had fundamentally altered them, so we’d have to turn them to ash the old-fashioned way.

  “Cleanup time, eh?”

  I nodded.

  “Do ye think that drone the doctor was talking about will get here?”

  [If it was coming, it would have struck by now. I think he was talking out his arse.] I took her torch, because I needed to search the other rooms of this place before we left it.

  There was a galley and several bunk rooms along with some lavatories and what looked like a medical lab, judging by the equipment inside, but there were no other occupants. The entire facility—especially its data and medical marvels—had to be destroyed. There was nothing I could do about data stored on a remote server somewhere, and Clíodhna knew precisely how to get the whole thing going again in the future, but wiping out this node, together with Hatcher’s neutralization, should solve my problems for now. Happily, Brighid was a goddess of fire and had created the perfect sigil when one absolutely, positively had to burn it all down: the Sigil of Cleansing Fire. I
had brought plenty of them for just that purpose, even though it exhausted my supply of ink for it and I’d have to get fire-salamander hearts to make more. There was a delay built into the activation so one could open the sigil in a room and have about ten seconds to get to a safe distance. I opened the first one on top of Dr. Larned’s body in the stairwell, then climbed up and left a sigil in every room. I noted that the clurichaun’s bunk room had a refrigerator stocked with bags of human fingers and labeled jars of aioli. That definitely needed to burn. The sigils ignited and filled the spaces with flames, and my back was uncomfortably toasty by the time I walked out of there. I wished I could say I exited in slow motion with sunglasses on as the entire facility exploded behind me, but it was just a building on fire with oxygen provided by the blasted door and whatever ventilation they had built into the mountain; no doubt there were camouflaged vents on top of the plateau.

  The two half-blind agents started yapping at me when I emerged. Nadia had deposited them somewhat near the no-longer-secret entrance and informed them that I was the one in charge, and they had things to say to me. I ignored them and walked out to the neatly stacked pile of corrupted Fae, noting with pleasure that the bean sídhe were all gone and they hadn’t been wailing a dirge for Buck Foi after all. They’d been singing the unknown name of the undine. I opened a Sigil of Cleansing Fire on top of the Fae and walked back to the agents.

  I really wished I had those sunglasses, but the effect was no less cool in the dark. Or perhaps it was chilling. Seeing the bodies suddenly consumed by a pillar of fire as I strode toward them, the agents quickly ran out of threats and promises of vengeance.

  Fire is our friend.

  [Straight razor, please?] I asked Nadia.

  “Sure.” She dug it out of her pocket and handed it to me.

  [Thanks. I need everyone out of sight in the van. I’ll be there in a moment.]

  Buck shouldered up his bag of miniature terrors and told Cowslip she was in for a treat. I waited until they and Nadia were in the van before I put away my phone.

  “Now we can talk,” I said. “I’m sorry about yer eyes. That’s not what I was expecting to happen, and I really was hoping ye would all just walk away. But that mad scientist of yours wouldnae let it go. I just needed ye out of there because I had a monster to kill. But ye’re the ones that made the monsters, are ye no?”