Exile

by Caleb James

  “Above and beyond setting a couple hundred fires in one night?”

  “Just the start. She’s got Alice…. She’s going to go after everything she thinks was taken from her.”

  “Which would be?”

  “The world. With a haffling body… she has all her magic.” Alex’s voice weakened.

  “I think Liam is going to try to go after her. I think he has.”

  Alex rasped, “Then he’s dead, Charlie. I’m sorry, but it’s why he came back.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Liam. I’ve been too hard on him. People can change… if he’s even a person. He came to try to make good for all the crap he’s done.”

  Over the line, Charlie heard him sip something to try to ease the burn. He waited.

  Alex cleared his throat. “I’ve learned a lot about the fey and the Unsee in the past three years. What matters most to them is balance. He wants to be good… clean, and the only way he believes that will happen is by completing what he came to do.”

  “Alex, just say it!”

  “Okay. He has to bring word to my mom—real mom—that Alice and I are okay. That’s not possible. The second is to get information to May’s sister Lizbeta about how we defeated May—it’s fuzzy at best. Which, if I were him, leaves one option. Take her out himself.”

  Charlie knew Alex was right. “He’s no match.”

  “No one is, but we’ve got to try. Better together than alone.”

  “Alex, you have to stay in the hospital.”

  “Not an option.”

  “Shut up and put Jerod on. We’ve got to be smart about this. We’re not going to get a lot of chances.” He pictured Alice Nevus in her tutu and fluffy sweater. She was on fire…. She didn’t burn.

  Jerod’s voice. “He’s ripping out his IV.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Bellevue, still in the ER.”

  “Keep him there. We’ve got to stay strong. It’s the only way, and I get that he’s got someone he loves on the line… so do I. But here’s the thing. It’s the first thing they teach in probie school—a dead hero is no hero. We’re not going to help anyone if we’re not smart. I’ll get there as quick as I can, but there’s something more about these fires—Alex’s old apartment, the one here, my parents’ house, where Liam just happens to be staying. These aren’t coincidences, and they may give us an answer, or at least a direction. Can you hold him there?”

  “I’ll do my best, but hurry.”

  “You got it.” And knowing he was putting a job he loved on the line, he turned his back on the under-control fire and, worse, on his station mates. Abandoning a post is grounds for immediate dismissal. Shit. He stared up the avenue, another blaze four blocks north, a dwindling plume to the east. You have no choice. This is war, and you must fight. He broke into a run and sprinted north toward Bellevue.

  Thirty

  HIS ENTIRE life, Liam had been aware of May’s power and presence, her eyes on his every move. She was a prickle on the hairs of his neck, a twist in the gut, and the surety that if he were to run and hide, she would find him. He felt that now, though with a difference. He wasn’t running or trying to blend into the background. He was frightened. I will not run.

  As he rode the ferry, all eyes and ears on board fixated on the sirens and the flames, mostly in Manhattan, but as he listened and learned, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Jersey City had also been hit.

  There was a strong wind and chop in the water. Passengers pointed and speculated. “It’s 9/11 all over again.”

  “Why can’t they leave us alone?”

  “I’m getting out of the city. I can’t take this crap!”

  “And who the fuck is baking cookies?”

  They scanned the night sky. “They’ve stopped.”

  Liam looked up. Indeed, since the fireball that hit the Fitzgeralds’ home, there’d been a lull in May’s attacks.

  As the ferry made it to the Manhattan docks, the hairs on his nape bristled. He knew what the cease-fire meant. May had broken free from the Mist. She was here, and what had started bad was about to get far worse.

  He disembarked and headed to the closest subway. It was closed. Standing at the mouth of the station, he felt her presence. Not near… but on this island. He wished Charlie were here. No, you don’t. This won’t end well. Better that he be far from here, far from me.

  A block north, he came to a park and climbed a bronze statue of a masked woman holding scales. He gazed out at the city filled with flashing lights, smoke, and sirens from engines like Charlie’s and shorter ones like the navy clan had driven. He had no doubt. She is here. How do I stop her? She can’t be stopped. Not helpful. What do you know? There must be something. He stared at the sky. Here and there a faint star was visible through the smoke and lights. I know that fairy fire pierces the Mist. What else? She needs the haffling—Alex’s sister… or the little boy, Adam. He thought of Marilyn and Cedric but mostly May. Given a choice, she’d come after the teen and not the boy. She’ll want to dress up. But why so much fairy fire? It would have come at cost. And why Charlie’s house…? Because I was there. And I was in Alex’s old apartment, where the first one landed. But I’m not in these other places. So who is? Alex has his Nimby—are there others? Were these bombs sent to homes of sidhe? But why? You know why. He did. To frighten, to cow us into submission. To kill those who resist. To steal our power.

  From his vantage point atop the statue’s base, he counted plumes of smoke and fire, some still burning red and gold, like the tips of candles. He stopped at a hundred. Not possible, and yet it is so. So much power…. She will need more. She will be hungry. She has come to conquer worlds, and she will need to feed. He looked around at the towering buildings and thought of the brave men and women inside. They have armies that will fight her… and she has magic. They won’t see it coming. They won’t know how to battle her.

  He felt the folded map, like a talisman from the man in green, in the pocket of Charlie’s sweats and pulled it out. He held it in front of him, fixed his current position and the vicinity of Katye’s pink palace to the north. If he was right about the fairy fire having been directed, he suspected Katye’s lovely home with its priceless books would be gone. Would she attack her sister? He climbed down, folded away the map, and started to jog and then to run. Lizbeta’s directions to him seemed impossible. She wanted the means to stop her sister but had made clear her intent was not to kill her. Would May feel the same? Not likely. Her power comes from death.

  His legs pumped, and his nostrils filled with the delicious reek. At the corner of Pearl and Fulton, he came to a smoldering four-story brick building. A lone engine pumped water into the basement. There was no flame, but waves of dark gray smoke flooded the street. Frightened tenants looked on. All so familiar as he searched the crowds, his eyes peeled, like doing one of the puzzles in the books his mother would get at the fair. Find the troll, the ogre, the thing that doesn’t fit… and there she is. She looked human enough, a blonde in her late twenties, tall, thin, her luminous eyes wide as she watched her home burn.

  Careful not to scare her, Liam worked his way toward her. She was taller than he by three or four inches. Nearly as tall as Charlie. Tears streaked her cheeks, and the only thing she’d managed to save was a frightened ball of red fuzz in a blue-plastic pet carrier. Its inhabitant was some sort of dog with a long body, fluffy auburn fur, and short legs.

  He edged through the crowd until he stood at her side. Each glance confirmed his suspicions. With his voice low, he said, “Tell me, this was your home.”

  She turned, and he knew. Her teeth had been filed; they were pearl white and perfectly human. Her long hair was tied back and revealed human ears, but they’d been altered.

  “It was.” Her attention riveted to Liam as recognition blossomed. “Tell me your name.”

  “I am Liam Summer.”

  “You don’t look like a Summer.”

  “You don’t look like a s
idhe… and you are.”

  “I had work done.”

  “Interesting.”

  Her hand clenched the handle of the little dog’s case. Liam wondered if she would run. He eyed the strange creature in the carrier and wondered if it might be fey.

  “He’s a Maltese,” she said. “His name is George.”

  Liam nodded, unconvinced that something so odd could be a native of the See and not the Unsee. “I mean you no harm, but we are in great danger.”

  “Yes. I smell it.” She shuddered. “Few creatures are capable of fairy fire, and none of so much.”

  “There is one, and she is ravenous. You need to leave the city, take George, and get as far away as you can. Though if she achieves her aim, I don’t know how far is far enough.”

  The women shook her head.

  He noted how many in the crowd openly ogled her, as well as him. “Tell me your name.”

  “Lianna, and I will not run. This is my city. It’s where I choose to live. My house is gone. I will find another. I will not run, Liam Summer. So tell me the name of the creature that attacks my city and destroys my home.” She leaned in to him.

  He whispered, “Queen May.”

  Lianna shuddered. “Of course. Because of her I fled through the Mist.” She stared back at the smoldering building. “These fires were sent for us.”

  “I believe so.”

  “And you, Liam Summer, you appear to run toward a danger rather than away.”

  “Yes, and I must continue. You should flee.”

  She shook her head. Tears glistened in her eyes. “Tell me what you intend.”

  For a moment he wondered if this lovely creature, with her fluffy dog, could be a spy. But no, she is in exile, just as I. Just as all these others who May is trying to burn out. “I will not say. But you are in danger. You need to get away.”

  Lianna arched her neck and looked over the crowd. “Wait here, Liam Summer.” She ran toward a mother and her teenage daughter. She spoke and handed the girl the pet carrier. She opened the door and pulled out George. His bright pink tongue lapped at her face, his tail wagging as she kissed him and ran her cheek across his fur. “Keep him safe,” she instructed and handed George to the girl.

  She returned to Liam. “Whatever you intend, Liam Summer, I will help. This is my home. She ran me from one. It will not happen again.”

  “No. You mustn’t. The thing I intend will not make me a hero. It will likely leave me dead.”

  “Tell me.”

  He edged back, turned, and ran north. I will not drag her into this.

  Lianna was just as fast and kept apace. “Tell me, Liam Summer, for I intend to help.”

  Liam sprinted, but the long-legged sidhe with her surgically altered ears and filed-down teeth stuck to his side.

  “She will kill us both,” he argued.

  “I am aware. Tell me the plan. At least that way, I’ll know when we have failed.”

  “We’ll know when she kills us and dines on our hearts and livers.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  He couldn’t shake her. And perhaps two are indeed better… stronger than one. He voiced the thing that would get them killed. “She has stolen a haffling child. She will be new in its body, weak, and not at her full power. This fairy fire has cost her magic, even for one as powerful as she. She will need to feed, and feed a lot.”

  “You know her.” Lianna slowed her pace. “And I know you, Liam Summer.”

  He braced for the accusations. She’d not recognized him at first, and now she did.

  “You are of her court.”

  “I was.”

  “You know her better than anyone in the See.”

  It was not the response he’d expected. “It’s possible,” he said without slowing.

  With a burst of speed, she was back at his side, their strides in sync. “Tell me the plan.”

  “She will be weak inside the body she stole, though weak for May is stronger than a hundred of us. There will be a sliver of a chance. I intend to take it.”

  “Stop dancing around. Tell me your plan.”

  Liam recoiled from the thing he intended, where either success or failure would leave him hated and alone. Both paths would cost him any hope of seeing Charlie and of telling him what he’d figured out. He would stand with Alice Nevus’s blood on his hands, and Charlie, the man he loved, would hate him for it.

  “Tell me!” Lianna demanded.

  “I mean to kill the haffling girl with May inside. She will break without the body, and before she has the chance to flee back into the Mist or the Unsee, I will end her.”

  Lianna didn’t flinch or slow. “Yes. You are right, Liam Summer. It is the only way. I will fight with you, and if need be, I will die. But here’s the thing.” She pointed to a plume of smoke, three blocks north on Broadway. “Two are stronger than one, and three are stronger still. She means to kill us.”

  “She means to eat us and take our magic.”

  Lianna sprinted toward the building where flames shot through shattered windows and danced high upon the roof. “Then we save who we can, and we fight. I fled once. You did the same. I am of this world now and have nowhere left to flee.”

  They stopped at the edge of the orange plastic barriers and searched the crowd. Liam spotted him first, a tall man with dark close-cropped hair, dressed in drawstring pants and a Blondie T-shirt with the sleeves torn off to reveal muscular arms. Like Lianna his skin shone a bit too pale, even for New York, his lustrous blue eyes a bit too bright. Without pause he went to him. “I am Liam Summer.”

  The man looked from his house on fire to Liam. He swallowed and for a moment seemed about to run. He met Liam’s gaze. “I am Frederick Flowers.” He pointed at what was once his home. “This is not my imagination. This is fairy fire.”

  “Yes, we are under attack.”

  “She comes.”

  Liam nodded. “She does.”

  “Tell me, do you run from her or to her?”

  Lianna came to Liam’s side. “Hello, Frederick.”

  “Lianna, she has found us.”

  “Yes, and I will not run. Liam Summer means to kill her. I will fight at his side.”

  Frederick looked from Lianna to Liam. “You were her vicious thing. And now….”

  Liam smiled. This Frederick, like Lianna, knew what he was and what he’d done. “I’m better now.”

  “Then I will follow you, Liam Summer, and I will fight.”

  And two became three, and a block north… four. They swelled to ten by Fourteenth Street, and with May’s fires to point the way, their little troop grew, each aware of the danger, and each, like Liam, prepared to fight and willing to die.

  Thirty-One

  CHARLIE ARRIVED at the Bellevue ER, still in his full turnout gear, covered with soot, and smelling freshly baked. The doors whooshed open, and he entered chaos. Burn victims on stretchers were parked two deep on either side of the broad corridor. Doctors, nurses, and aides moved among them, their expressions blank, exhausted. One resident pulled a hand through his hair.

  “They’ve got to stop coming. We have to go on diversion.”

  “We can’t,” a senior physician told him. “It’s the same everywhere. Just focus on one at a time, Tim. It’s all you can do.”

  Good advice, Charlie thought as he pushed past the reek of blood, feces, and pastry. With everyone too busy to notice a random firefighter, he strode through the ER and stopped in front of the electronic patient-tracker board. He saw Nevus, A, connected to Trauma Room D. Standing still in the middle of people crying for help, passed out from drugs, or possibly dead, he turned and checked the numbers over the doors and curtained-off cubicles. A sign with an arrow and the word Trauma seemed a good bet, and he headed down a patient-packed corridor.

  “Water,” one woman cried out, two-thirds of her face blistered and slick with a hastily applied antibiotic salve. He knew she’d need skin grafts and stiff doses of narcotics, and for the rest of her life
children would point and stare. He knew too that many as badly burned as she would choose to never again leave their home… if she even makes it home. While there to find Alex and figure their next move, he stopped in an occupied cubicle, grabbed a paper cup, filled it, and handed it to the woman.

  “How bad?” she rasped, her vocal cords hoarse from smoke inhalation.

  “Just rest,” he said, not wanting to lie.

  “Thank you.” And clutching the paper cup, she lay back.

  He glanced at her IV bag and was relieved to see it contained a potent narcotic to mask the pain. As he passed, hands reached out for him.

  “I need a nurse.”

  “Have you seen my doctor?”

  “I’m sorry, no.” He checked the letters above the doors and found Trauma D.

  He heard them from the hall. Alex croaked, “Jerod, I have to find her.”

  Without pause Charlie pushed through the doors. There were six patients jammed in a room meant for two. Alex was closest to the door, Jerod with a hand tight around his wrist, trying to keep him in bed. He was dressed in a johnny coat, with an IV in his arm and thick white trauma pads taped to large areas of his back, shins, and thighs. Charlie didn’t want to think about how close he’d come to dying, how close they’d both come.

  He started at the memory of pretty Alice in her fluffy sweater and ballet outfit, commanding him to stay and burn. “Shit!”

  Jerod turned to Charlie. “You got to help me. He thinks he can find her. He thinks he can stop her.”

  Alex stopped struggling. He couldn’t mask either the pain or his desperation. “We have to! We have to get her out of Alice.”

  Charlie nodded as Nimby flew to him and, hovering inches in front of his nose, said, “She will kill us all.”

  “Not helpful,” Charlie replied as he came to Alex’s bedside. This is bad. If even a third of the area concealed by the trauma pads was burned, Alex was headed toward months and even years of grafts and rehab. At least his hands and face hadn’t been affected. But if he were to leave… the wounds would become infected, and an awful situation would turn fatal. “Alex, a dead hero is no hero.” He thought of Gran’s stories. We have our own banshee. “Before this night is over, we’ll all be counting our dead. We have to be smart.”