by M. D. Massey
“Why not just kill water hag?” Guts asked. “Just cut head off and toss in bag.”
Crowley shook his head and crossed his arms. “Believe me, I would’ve already done so if I thought it was possible. Unfortunately, she’s quite powerful in her own demesne.”
Hemi finished tying my shoes, and I stood up and brushed myself off. “Now hang on there just a minute, Crowley. If this bitch is such a nuisance, how’d you ever sneak past her when you were a kid?”
“Simple, I didn’t. Peg allowed me to traverse her lands in exchange for service in trade.”
I ran my uninjured hand through my hair. “Do I even want to know what ‘service’ you rendered to her?”
“Well, of course it wasn’t anything terrible…” Crowley’s voice raised in pitch as he continued. “Wait a minute. You don’t think I—slept with her, do you?”
Guts, Hemi, and I all looked at each other, and we nodded simultaneously.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what we were thinking,” I said.
Crowley waved his hands back and forth in protest. “What? I would never—no, that’s simply revolting—I mean, just wait until you see her.” He shivered in disgust.
I frowned with skepticism and shrugged, milking the situation for all it was worth. “Hey, I’m not here to judge you or anything. I mean, every guy has an ex they regret.” I looked back and forth at Hemi and Guts. “Am I right, fellas?”
“Oh yeah, for sure,” Hemi agreed.
“Guts regrets Wart-Eyed Tina. Never met a she-troll meaner.”
“I didn’t sleep with Peg Powler!” Crowley shouted.
It took a superhuman effort to avoid cracking a smile. “Sure thing, man. Judgement-free zone here. Whatever you say.”
“You—never mind!” the wizard spat as he stormed off.
I waited until he was out of earshot, then looked at Guts and Hemi. “So, how long do you think we should bust his chops over this?”
Hemi’s face grew serious. “Oh, for the rest of the trip, definitely.”
Guts scratched at the corner of his still-healing eye and sighed. “Tribe say ‘once you go hag, you never go back.’” He looked at Hemi and me, waving his hands back and forth. “But of course, Guts know nothing about that.”
The closer we got to the mountain pass, the more I didn’t like the look of things. The sky drew darker and the “daylight” receded as we ascended the switchbacks. Smoky trails of mist floated about, tricking the eye and obscuring potential ambush sites from view.
“Keep your heads on a swivel, guys,” I said as we neared the pass. The trail ahead wound around a large boulder, and above and beyond that, it led to a barren saddle between two low peaks. Nothing was visible but mist over the crest of the saddle and beyond the peaks.
If we were going to be ambushed, this was the place.
“We should pause to prepare,” Crowley whispered.
“Agreed,” Hemi said. He stopped and began a toned-down haka, which I assumed was just enough to trigger the wards in his tattoos.
Not relishing the thought of traversing the winter lands barefoot, I removed my shoes and placed them in the Bag with the rest of my clothing. The cold mountain winds made me shiver, at least until I shifted. Thankfully, Fomorian skin was thick and hairy. It wasn’t attractive in the slightest, but definitely warmer than bare human skin by far.
Crowley muttered a spell, and soon he was wrapped in tendrils of shadow. I knew from tangling with him in the past that those inky limbs acted both as armor and weaponry. When attacked, his magic would enclose him in a cocoon of semi-solid shadow, and alternately those shadowy limbs could lift, throw, tear, and crush his enemies as easily as a kraken’s tentacles.
Guts merely scanned the area above and below us as he waited for us to finish. I reached into my Craneskin Bag and pulled out the war club I’d used to battle the Dagda. I took a moment to examine the rune he’d scratched in the butt of the weapon and shrugged, deciding that I would determine its purpose when we got back to earth.
I cracked my neck and gave everyone their marching orders. “I’ll take point. Hemi pulls rear guard, to make sure nothing sneaks up on us. Crowley, you’re our artillery and long-range support. If we’re attacked, start tossing boulders at whatever opposes us. Guts can watch your back and step in if one of us gets in too deep. Everyone ready?”
After receiving assorted nods and grunts in reply, I hefted my club and headed up the trail.
We had barely rounded the boulder ahead before I spotted them. There were two giants—one on each of the peaks that flanked the pass—perched on cliffs that had been carved into the stone. Unlike the fachen I’d fought at Crowley’s farm, these giants looked exactly like large, ugly humans.
I estimated each one to be at least ten feet tall. They sported no armor, and dressed in brown burlap tunics over loose woolen pants tucked into short leather boots. I spotted a huge wooden staff—easily the size of a small tree trunk—leaning against the mountain wall behind the one on the right, and assumed his partner was similarly armed.
“Above us!” I shouted. That’s when things got interesting.
As soon as the giants realized we’d seen them, they began chucking large rocks at us. I wound up with my club, intending to bat the rocks out of the air, but Crowley beat me to it. Like some sort of magic Patriot anti-missile system, smoky black tentacles swatted rocks out of the air with surprising and welcome efficiency.
Guts hooked his stone axe on his belt and pulled an old-school sling from a waist pouch. He began gathering stones from the trail, and soon returned fire at the giants.
“Guts, keep the one on the left occupied!” I ran at the slope to my right, leaping up to grab the edge of the cliff on which the giant stood. I nearly got brained by a boulder as I climbed up, but thankfully Crowley whipped a tendril of shadow magic around and saved me from an involuntary lobotomy.
I pulled myself over the edge of the cliff and rolled up into a crouch, just in time to block an overhead blow from the giant’s staff. I spun in place and snapped my leg around, in an attempt to sweep his legs out from under him. With surprising alacrity, the giant man jumped over my kick. I rolled to the side as his staff crashed into the ground where I’d been crouching.
I grabbed a handful of dirt and rocks as I stood, and tossed them in the giant’s face. He was a few feet taller than me, but I was still tall enough to hit him square in the eyes. He blinked and backed away, which was what I’d hoped he’d do. I skipped forward and front-kicked him off the ledge, and watched him tumble down the mountainside. It was a long drop, several hundred feet at least. I doubted he’d recover.
A large rock whizzed past my face, reminding me of the giant on the other peak. I pivoted and brought my club up in time to block another boulder, which shattered into shards all around me. “Crowley, a little help here!”
Crowley complied, launching a sizable rock through the air. It struck the giant on the shoulder, just as a smaller rock hit the giant on the cheek. Another small stone followed that one, then another large stone. Soon, the giant had backed up against the wall behind it.
I was about to jump down and climb up the other side to finish it off, when Hemi rolled over the lip of the ledge. Hemi was a big man, but this giant towered over him.
“Hemi, no!” I shouted.
He smiled and twirled his spear. Crowley couldn’t safely toss more boulders at the giant without danger of hitting Hemi, so the Maori was on his own up there.
“Shit,” I muttered, as I jumped down to the trail below. I lost sight of Hemi as I started climbing up the other peak.
Seconds later, I reached over the cliff’s edge and pulled myself up enough to see what had happened. Hemi was sitting on a rock near the opposite side of the cliff, his spear balanced across his knees.
“Oy, mate, what took you so long?” he asked.
I got both elbows over the cliffside to stabilize my position, and shook my head. “What the hell, man? You should have let me hand
le it.”
“And let you have all the fun? I think not.”
I was just about to respond with a suitably smart-assed reply, when a giant hand reached over the edge of the cliff to grab Hemi’s ankle. His eyes grew wide as the giant yanked him off his perch and over the side.
“Noooooo!” I cried, levering myself up the cliff’s edge and onto the shelf of rock. I ran to the opposite side and looked over. There was no sign of Hemi or the other giant.
“Hemi!” I shouted, cupping my hands to amplify my voice. “Hemi, are you down there?”
No answer. The cliff dropped off for hundreds of feet below me, disappearing into dark gray clouds of mist below. No one could have survived that fall. No one.
I fell to my knees, staring at the empty expanse below. I heard voices from behind me, and turned to witness Crowley crawling over the cliffside, his shadow magic pulling him up in a manner reminiscent of Doctor Octopus.
“What happened to the Maori?” he asked.
I shook my head. “The giant pulled him over the side.”
Crowley’s magic lowered him to the cliff’s surface. His voice was strained and low as he replied. “There’s nothing we can do. Come, let us take the trail down. Perhaps we will find his remains. I believe you made him a promise—at least we can do that for him.”
“Uh-uh, I refuse to believe he’s gone. We’ll find him.”
The dark wizard crossed the ledge and stood next to me. He looked down and stood silent. Finally, he lowered his hood, exposing his scarred visage so I could see his face. His eyes betrayed real emotion as he quietly objected to my protests.
“Perhaps he survived. Come, Colin—there’s nothing we can do from up here. Guts awaits us. Let’s climb down and begin our search.”
We did exactly that, leaving the mountain pass behind as we descended. I shifted back into human form as we went, and Crowley and Guts had to force me to get dressed before I froze to death.
The steep trail cut down the side of the mountain, where it soon transitioned into rough stone stairs that cut back and forth every fifty feet or so. We walked down the stairs in silence, and with every step I prayed that my friend had survived. I began counting stairs so I’d know how far we’d gone—and to distract myself from the inevitable.
I estimated that we’d dropped down a thousand feet or more, when we found the second giant’s body. Hemi’s spear was embedded in the thing’s chest, and the broken shaft jutted eighteen inches from its breastbone.
I planted a shoe in the thing’s chest and yanked the remains of Hemi’s spear out, tucking it in my Bag for safekeeping. Then I continued on down the stairs.
I hadn’t gone far when I spotted a pale blue glow in the mist beneath us. I leapt down the steps two and three at a time, and found Hemi on a rocky outcropping a hundred feet below where his foe had landed. His limbs had been shattered by the fall, and they splayed out from his torso at impossible angles like some sort of bloody Escher drawing. His wards were still active, but the magic was fading. The horror of it all stopped me in my tracks for a moment, then I ran to his side.
“Oh, Hemi,” I cried.
One side of his face was a bloody swollen mess, but an eyelid fluttered on the unaffected side. “Took you long enough,” he whispered.
“Hang on, man—just hang on. I’ll get you to the Dagda, and he can heal you. Just don’t die on me, please.”
Hemi coughed weakly, and pink frothy sputum escaped from his lips. “Naw, mate. I’m done for. No sense crying now. Just don’t leave me down here.” He coughed again. “Get me back to my mum, yeah? Can you do that for me?”
I nodded, unable to speak for a moment. “I promise.”
Hemi exhaled in a death rattle, and his eyes grew fixed and vacant. He was gone. My best friend in the world was gone.
I cradled his head in my lap, and cried until I could cry no more.
14
I decided to have Guts take Hemi’s body back to the Dagda, where it would be safe until we were ready to return to earth. Secretly, I hoped that the old man might be able to bring Hemi back from the dead, but I kept my hopes to myself.
We created a litter for my friend’s body, and Crowley conjured a spider-like construct made from shadow magic to carry the litter. We wrapped Hemi in a tarp I found in the Bag and placed him on the shadow golem’s back.
“It’ll last long enough to get you back to the Dagda’s farm, but no more. My powers will be weakened while the construct is active, and I will need to recall my magic when the task is done.”
Guts nodded. “Understood.” He looked at me. “Druid did all he could. Hemi pay the final price, now he go to warrior’s paradise. He beyond all pain. Take heart, you see him again.”
That was the most I’d ever heard the troll say in a single breath. Despite my somber mood, his awkward assurances made me feel a bit better.
“I—thank you, Guts. You’re a good friend.”
Guts nodded, and he took off at a jog with the strange shadow-spider construct trailing behind him, carrying Hemi’s battered body on its back. We watched them go, and Crowley waited silently until I turned my eyes away and began walking down the remaining steps. We said nothing to each other until we reached the bottom, and I spent that time reflecting on what had just happened. I wondered what I was going to tell his mother, and struggled with guilt over choosing to bring him along.
My single-minded focus on revenge had just gotten another one of my friends hurt. And this time, there was no fixing it. The Dagda was a long shot. After trading blows with him, I knew that his powers had been weakened over the centuries, perhaps by the gradual sickening of Underhill, or by the inevitable march of time. From what Finnegas had told me, even immortals had to die sometime—as oxymoronic as that sounded.
I walked through mists lost in my thoughts, footsteps muffled by the fog. Crowley interrupted my melancholic rumination by yanking me into a cleft between two boulders. Shadows sprang from the ground, concealing us further by thickening the darkness in the crevice he’d chosen to hide us in. He held a finger to his lips and pointed outside. I strained to see through the mist that shrouded the landscape beyond, and soon saw shadowy figures trudging through the fog.
A herd of ghouls walked out of the mist, shuffling directly past our hiding place. I’d failed to hear them coming, because the fog had muffled the sound of their movements—or because I’d been lost in grief. Crowley waited until they were long gone, then grabbed me by the shoulders and leaned in close, speaking in low tones to avoid alerting stragglers to our presence.
“Listen, Colin, and listen well. We are in the winter lands now, the habitation of the unseelie fae and what remains of the unsavory Tuatha De Danann. You must stay focused on the task at hand, because I cannot be responsible for the safety of us both. You will have time to grieve your friend later after this task is done. Right now, I need your focus and resolve.”
I hung my head for a moment, then nodded silently. He waited several seconds, then he patted my shoulders roughly and exited the crevice. I heard him whisper to me from just outside.
“I will keep watch while you gather yourself for the task ahead.”
I took several deep breaths as I quickly ran through one of the mental exercises I’d learned from Finnegas. I thought back to the days after Jesse had died at my hands, and remembered how I’d had to let anger replace my grief in order to get through to the other side. I meditated on Fuamnach and the Dark Druid, their roles in it all, and how their machinations had led to Hemi’s death.
It had all started when they’d sent Crowley to steal the Eye from Maeve. Maeve had needed me to recover Balor’s Eye, because I was the best bet for keeping it out of their hands. No one else could’ve bonded with the damned thing, which made me her best option. So, she’d blackmailed me into working for her, and engineered circumstances so I would go after Crowley and attempt to get the tathlum—and thus Balor’s Eye—back.
That had led to the Dark Druid coming after
me. He’d thought he could possess my body and acquire the Eye’s powers for himself. And because of my near brush with death during my battle with him, I’d decided that I needed to learn to control my ability to shift. In doing so, I’d be able to fully harness the Eye’s powers and defeat the Dark Druid and Fuamnach.
For that reason, I’d gone to the local alpha, Samson, for help in learning to control my shifter abilities. Then Sal the red cap’s son had gone missing, and he’d asked me to find the strange little fae child. In the course of tracking him down, I’d ended up thwarting a child sex trafficking ring. One that, according to the Rye Mother, had Fuamnach’s fingerprints all over it.
Once I’d pulled on that string, it was a foregone conclusion that I would follow it to the bitter end. Fuamnach knew that. Hell, she was counting on it to bring me straight to her door with the Eye.
Fuck her.
She had to pay for Hemi’s death.
I got good and pissed off, then took my anger and compressed it into a white-hot ember that nestled itself somewhere between my chest and gut.
It’d do.
I exited the crevice without looking at Crowley, and headed down the trail.
“Let’s go. I have things to do and fae to kill.”
Crowley grunted and whispered prophetically as he fell in step beside me. “‘The rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed after him.’”
We snuck around Fuamnach’s undead and fae patrols, taking our time as we made our way to Peg Powler’s demesne. Thankfully, Crowley knew the place like the back of his hand. Between that and his shadow magic, it wasn’t hard to stay out of sight. The entirety of Fuamnach’s domain was a dark, damp, dead place, devoid of living foliage and covered in mists that concealed dangers at every turn. Twice Crowley had to stop me from stepping into dank, foul-smelling bogs that remained hidden by the fog until you were right on top of them.
“Cheery place,” I remarked.
“What you see is a reflection of my adoptive mother’s magic and personality. Underhill itself is magic, and each demesne adapts to the nature of the Tuatha or fae who has mastered it.” He pointed at a nearby bog. “Do mind the pits. They are poisonous and designed to trap the unwary. The harder you struggle, the farther you sink.”