—Ace Vane
Ace came to with a start, his head hammering, his vision blurry, and the taste of death in his mouth. In the corridor outside, soldiers were shouting to assemble in the courtyard. Wincing, he tried to bring the room into focus. Drops of rust-red blood dotted the torn sheet next to him, but as he ran his hands over his body, he couldn’t find an injury. He couldn’t …
Malin. His gaze snapped over to where he had left her, a corner that now held only an empty plate, a full goblet, a blanket wadded on the floor, and a set of open wrist shackles.
Ace cursed as he stood up, and cursed again as the room spun. He staggered over to the steps and held onto the banister as he made his way down to the corridor, where soldiers were jogging past, some of them still pulling on their armor. Ace grabbed one man’s arm as he passed. “What’s happening?” Ace asked.
“Sabotage,” the man said. “Fae spies. Poisoned everyone and slit the throats of twelve men and women in the dining hall.” The man squinted at Ace. “You look pretty bad yourself, sir.”
“I … the wine. It was the wine, wasn’t it?”
The soldier nodded. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he said as he pulled his arm out of Ace’s grip. “My prince needs me.” He turned and ran down the corridor with his fellow soldiers.
Ace leaned against the wall and tried to remember the night before. He’d left dinner early, feeling terrible about leaving Malin chained in his chamber without so much as a blanket to keep her warm. It hadn’t mattered how she’d felt about him—he’d still wanted to win her over, and he figured he should start by taking care of her basic needs. By the time he’d made it back to the room with the plate and goblet, though, his head had been swimming. He could barely recall what had happened after, though the evidence Malin left behind indicated he must have offered her the food and blanket before passing out.
It was unlikely, though, that he’d offered her the key to the shackles.
“Ace,” boomed a voice from the banquet hall. “Ace!”
Ace walked in the direction of Fen’s voice, noting in it equal parts rage and desperation. When he walked into the chamber, he understood why. Bodies of nobles were being carted away, leaving behind pools of blood on the tables, the chairs, the floor. Fen stood in his armor in the midst of the carnage, his eyes alight with horror. “Twelve of my people,” he said in a low voice.
“Dean,” said Ace, his heart lurching at the memory of his brother laughing and gulping the wine.
“He’s alive,” Fen said. “Headache of a lifetime, but alive.”
Ace rubbed his hand over his face. “I have an inkling of how he feels. It was the Fae slaves, wasn’t it?”
“We caught and killed two of them,” said Fen.
Ace’s heart lurched again. “Oh?”
“A man and a woman.”
He could barely breathe. “And the woman? What color was her hair?”
“Blue.”
A swoop of relief nearly brought him to his knees, but his loyalty to his brother brought him up short, and he forced himself to say, “There is another, I think.”
Fen gave him a grim look. “The one who picked the locks. The one you bought.”
Ace met his gaze and nodded. “She’s escaped.”
Fen turned and headed for a staircase leading to a lower floor. “Then I’m amazed you’re still alive.”
“I am, too, come to think of it,” Ace said as he followed, thinking about the drops of blood on his bedsheets. He couldn’t fathom what had happened, only that, for some reason he was desperate to know, she hadn’t killed him when she had the chance. “Where are we going?”
“I think your Fae has been hard at work.” Fen stalked down the stairs. The body of the tall green-haired male Fae lay crumpled against the wall, his eyes open and clouded over, blood smearing his chest and throat and gut.
Ace looked away from it. “They had this planned. They probably meant to be captured.”
“Correct,” said Fen. “And I know why.” He reached the gate control room and gestured Ace inside. “Which means I need your help.”
Ace looked around at the gears and cogs and shifting beams he had so carefully designed, then to the casing where the controls were. When he saw what had been done, he laughed in spite of himself. “That wasn’t nice.”
Malin had to have done this. Somehow, she’d figured out how to put the pins together, unlock the controls, and open the gates to the Seven Realms—the lever that managed the direction the gates would move was shifted all the way to the right—and then she’d filed the pins off in their respective slots, making it extremely difficult to remove them again to close the gates. “Not nice at all,” Ace muttered.
“So the gates to Inferna are open to the Outlands,” Fen said, “And I have just gotten word from one of my scouts that there are rebels in the forest just outside the city. Possibly as many as a hundred, possibly more if they are pouring in. A siege is imminent. We’ve sent ravens to warn our brothers and Father as well, telling them to block the canals and prepare for war.”
“I can fix the gates,” said Ace. “I just need some time.”
“I need something else from you right now, brother,” Fen replied, clapping a hand onto his shoulder. “I need that weapon of yours up and running. I’m going to make those Fae regret ever hatching this plan. I’m going to make sure they flee my realm with their tails between their legs, and that they never try anything this bold again. And you are going to make that possible.”
Ace swallowed back a sense of dread as he remembered the look on Malin’s face when she first saw his trebuchet. He had to push down the urge to be sick as he thought of what it would do to her body if she was with the rebels when it struck.
Yes, he was loyal to his brother, to all his family, to his people.
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that had taken root inside his chest. “I have to get some parts and plans from the barge,” Ace said. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”
Fen nodded. “I’ll be with my soldiers. We’ve closed the city gates and will be assembling there—and we’re bringing the trebuchet with us. If we can get it working before night falls again, I will fire at the first sign of smoke I see in my forest.”
“Fair,” said Ace. “I’ll send my chief attendant, Devin, to you, to supervise its transport and prepare it.”
“But you will join us?” Fen asked, fixing him with a dark stare.
“I’ll do my best,” Ace said. “I just need to get something done first.” He left Fen standing in the control room and marched up the stairs, already planning his next few moves.
Wandering aimlessly had always been a specialty of Ace’s. It helped stir his mind and let it stray to places of inspiration. Fortunately, he’d done enough wandering at Stonehill to know how to exit both the palace and the city while avoiding the front gates.
He had a question, and he wasn’t going to stop until he’d heard the answer.
He’d made a stop at his room, and then at the barge that had carried the trebuchet from his realm. He hadn’t been lying to Fen about that, but he hadn’t been honest about his purpose. Now he was creeping along a small hunting trail outside the city, approaching the city gates from the northeast. The rebels would have come up from the south, and Ace was slow and careful—he knew there might be scouts in these woods, and he wasn’t keen to end today with an arrow in his chest.
He reached up and turned the dial on the side of his goggles, increasing the magnification. It gave him a much better chance of seeing the enemy long before they could hear or spot him. The instrument fastened to his head and cupping his ears amplified the sounds around him, too, so he could hear the tiniest snap of the tiniest twig beneath the lightest of steps. His entire body was tense and ready, his tools stored in the satchel on his back. If Fen had been right, the rebels should be up ahead, massing near the gates in preparation for a siege. They would be well-armed and determined. They would probably also be filled with a sense of superiority and imp
ending victory after what Malin and her comrades had done last night. The three of them had nearly taken down Stonehill from the inside, but for a few accidents of timing and luck.
And, possibly, sentiment. Mercy. Caring. Affection? Ace wasn’t sure, and he had to ask the question, even though it probably wouldn’t change how this would end.
Malin had enabled a rebellion.
He would finish it if he had to.
He fought the ache in his chest as he imagined facing her again. He’d only known her for a day, but the connection he’d felt was palpable, unmistakable. They might be on different sides, of different races, but they had met in a place where none of that had mattered, the realm of the mind. Of invention. Creation. Inspiration. She was his mirror. She could make him better.
He wanted to slam his fist into a boulder at the loss of that dream.
Instead, he made his way up the trail until he spotted movement hundreds of yards ahead, and stepped behind the trunk of a sturdy tree to observe. Count. Assess.
Using the toggles on his eye gear, he calculated the distances. The rebels were positioned one-hundred-fifty yards from the gate, one-hundred-three yards to its southwest, forty-five yards due west of the main road leading into the city. There were at least fifty fighters. A small group. Probably highly trained. Ace was guessing more would come, and soon. This was not a force upon which one could build a siege.
The sun was beginning to sink in the sky, and the air had taken on a chill. Ace could see his breath as he exhaled. The Fae would probably light fires to keep warm, and that was how Fen would know where to aim. Devin would know how to help him—his attendant understood the steam engine and how to calculate the tension, trajectory, and counterweight based on the mass of the payload. Ace didn’t have much time to avert the slaughter.
And perhaps he wouldn’t. But the answer to his question would help him decide.
Ace moved a bit closer to the band of rebels. There were some posted on the perimeters, watching the forest. Ace was far enough away to remain unseen even by the sharpest eyes, but his goggles allowed him to see the looks on each face, the tension around each mouth, the determined set of each jaw.
Oddly, they had a prisoner tied to a tree near the front of the encampment, closest to the wall. Was it one of Fen’s scouts? Ace adjusted the magnification setting to get a clearer view.
That was no vampire.
It was Malin.
She was being guarded by two fighters. Her face was bruised, her mouth bleeding, but she had her head up and was speaking sharply to a man pacing in front of her, one with striking blue eyes and hair the same color as Malin’s. Ace’s fingers dug into the bark of the tree he was hiding behind as he watched the man step forward and strike Malin across the face.
Ace glanced at the city wall as he heard the familiar cough and chug of his steam powered killer. Fen was probably pressuring Devin to get the trebuchet ready—after the mass murder of his nobles, he wouldn’t want to be seen as weak. He’d want to crush the threat. Not because he was cruel, though. Ace had known Fen for long enough to understand that the Prince of War did not revel in death so much as he believed it to be a necessary event at times. And if killing each and every one of these rebels in a bloody and painful way struck fear in the hearts of others, enough to keep them from attacking the Seven Realms in the future, Fen would believe that a good thing.
It might be a good thing, but not now, not here, not today, not with Malin tied to a tree and likely to be the first life his trebuchet claimed.
Ace had to talk to her—she was the only person who could offer him what he needed right now. All he had to do was get the others away from her.
Good thing he knew exactly how to do that. The bad thing was that he had to get closer and manage not to get killed. Grateful for the gathering darkness, Ace moved forward, scanning the woods for scouts or other threats. His sound magnifier carried voices to him from the Fae camp. They were discussing the horde of rebels who would soon join them from the south, expecting their arrival within a few hours. That would be when the attack would begin.
Ace was a hundred yards away from Malin when the Fae rebel stepped right out in front of him. Stout and muscular, the fellow had crimson hair and black eyes and nearly took Ace’s head off with the first slice of his knife. Ace threw himself backward even as he pulled the propulsion net from his back, and he was already pulling the trigger when his body hit the rocky ground. The silky net flew from its casing and wrapped itself around the Fae, and Ace was up and on his enemy within a second, pulling the fabric tight around the fellow’s neck. He twisted it tight and then wrenched with all his strength. “Sorry,” he said to the Fae as he heard the snap of a neck, the end of a life.
Unpleasant, but he’d had no choice.
He left the Fae limp and still on the forest floor. The gloom was thick now, aided by the canopy of branches overhead. They blocked the light well, but they would provide little protection from the barbed iron crow’s feet that would come flying out of the steel casing upon impact with the ground.
Ace knelt behind a scramble of boulders to put his strategy into motion. He pulled another propulsion tool from his satchel and assessed his options. Then he fastened a cartridge onto the end of the tool and pulled the tension switch back. He aimed the device at a broad tree just at the edge of the main road, a hundred or so yards south of the rebel camp. When he pulled the trigger, the tool fired with a soft pop, sending the adhesive cartridge flying toward its target. He pulled his headgear to protect his ears from what was coming next.
The forest echoed with several loud snaps. Even without the aid of sound and sight magnifiers, Ace could hear the alarm from the rebels, the crunch of boots as several of them rushed away from the encampment. Excellent.
Now for the hard part. Ace fastened yet another cartridge onto the end of his propulsion tool and cranked it back yet again. He could hear the cartridge’s contents shifting around inside as he drew his flint and steel lighter from his pocket. One strike created the spark that lit the fuse dangling from the cartridge’s little metal body. Then he held it close to his mouth and whispered, “Please work.”
He edged out from behind the boulders and aimed at a spot perhaps fifty yards past the encampment to the east. Another soft pop. Two beats of his heart.
And then a sound that brought him joy. Hissing. The black smoke from the cartridge would rise above the trees in a few seconds.
While at least a dozen rebels scoured the woods to the south, looking for the source of the snapping noises, Ace heard a few others going to seek out the sound of hissing. Bad luck for them.
He loped forward, moving from tree to boulder until he was less than a dozen yards from where Malin was tied up. He crouched down and waited.
The trebuchet was largely a silent beast, but Ace knew the moment it stirred. A slide and a whisper, a sharp crack of wood on wood as it reached the end of its arc, and the whistle of horror as death approached.
It crashed through the branches and hit the ground near the smoke bomb with the clang and zing of metal, and then the echo of agonized screams.
The entire camp became roiling chaos in the space of a moment, and Ace took his chance. He ran to Malin and squatted next to her, pulling a knife from his belt and cutting her bonds as she gaped at him in shock. Then he pulled her to her feet, ripping the loose ropes from her body and holding her close to him. She moaned when he gripped her forearms, and he released her to see that her sleeve was stained with a thin line of blood. He tugged up that sleeve, revealing an improvised bandage made from his bedsheet.
“One question,” he said. “Did you pretend to kill me last night?”
“What are you doing here?” Her dark eyes were round and terrified as her people clamored and screamed on the far side of the camp.
“I thought I just made that clear. I came to get an answer from you.” As he talked, Ace was pulling another cartridge out and attaching it to the propulsion device. He needed to give
Fen another target. After he’d lit the fuse and fired another smoke cartridge about twenty yards south of the encampment, he turned back to Malin.
She was blinking at him, her mouth opening and closing before she summoned her words. “Yes. I cut myself and told them I had slit your throat.”
He moved close to her. “Why?”
“I thought you had only one question!”
He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Why? I have to know.”
She glared at him. “You know why, vampire. You feel it, too.”
He shivered at the certainty of it as he stared at her mouth. This was the worst timing ever for a kiss, but—
“Look out!” shrieked Malin.
Ace threw them both to the side and rolled, ending up on top of Malin. He raised his head in time to see the blue-eyed Fae stalking toward them with an axe in his hand. “I knew you were weak, Malin,” the Fae said. “But I didn’t know you were also a traitor.”
Ace stood up to face the man. “You should probably get your people out of here,” Ace suggested. “Otherwise, you’re all going to die.”
The man raised his eyebrows, looking amused even as another slide and crack and whistle indicated a second steel bomb was about to land. “You have no sword, vampire.” He flinched as the ball hit, as more people screamed, but instead of running to help the wounded, the man kept waving the axe at Ace. “Who’s going to die?”
“Ugh,” said Ace. “This is way too much work.”
And with that, he let his instincts take over. He might not have been a soldier, but he was what he had been created to be. A fanged killer, devastatingly strong, eerily fast. He ducked the arc of the man’s axe and lunged at him, a snarl rolling past his now razor-sharp eye teeth.
It was over very quickly. Ace let out a heavy breath and wiped his bloody hands on his pants. His victim lay gurgling and clutching at his throat a few feet from the dropped axe. As Ace turned around, Malin scooped the axe from the ground without sparing the dying man so much as a look, even as he took his final shuddering breath. Holding the weapon in her hands, she took a step toward Ace.
Copper Snare_A Vampire Girl Novella Page 6