by JK Cooper
He leaned against the inside of the old door, paint chips falling to the stained hardwood floors. It was a modest studio that rested over a bakery on one side and a bar on the other, just off Main. The previous tenants hadn’t appreciated the noise and scents early in the morning, followed by very different noise and scents in the evening, but Theo loved them all. It made him feel mostly human to be surrounded by the hum and odors of life.
Theo pressed his body against the door and balled his hands into fists as he thought, screwing his resolve. He had the means to begin looking for the resolution of his banishment or his brother’s murderer, but not both at the same time. I have a month to find the weird-eyed girl. The demon can cause more death and havoc if I let it live.
“What would Alec say?” He knew the answer.
Theo unballed his fists and wiped away the orange crescents his fingernails had cut into his palms. “Duty.” It felt like a swear word, bitter and full of anger, but it was also his only real choice. The demon would come first.
He pushed off the door and went to a wooden chest he had resting beneath the window that overlooked the graffitied brick walls of the alley. The lock was a complex mathematical puzzle no human could solve without hours and a supercomputer on hand. Theo knelt down, lifted the lock, and altered the entropy around it, pushing the unlikeliest patterns into the forefront, past the realms of possibility into necessity. The lock craved these patterns, the tiles on the front cycling through them rapidly. It clicked as the cipher fell into place.
The lid blew open, pushed from within. The Will-o’the-Wisp shot around the room, bumping into pictures, plants, walls. It tumbled into Theo, licking at him with happy flames.
Theo couldn’t contain his laughter as a piece of the sentient fires of his homeland frolicked over his face like a happy puppy. “I know, I know, I’ve been away too long, little Fizz. Calm down.”
The wisp nuzzled into his chest, humming with magic and potential energy. Like him, his wisp had been a reject, lacking the usual reserve and finesse the Fae expected from their sentient servants. It happens sometimes. The fires of Mount Estorathi could be unpredictable, especially after the death of the Goddess, but Fizz had been a rare case of pure ecstatic joy. It loved to be alive, to dance, to hum its wordless songs, to chase fireflies through the caverns of Underhill.
Theo hugged the wisp and rubbed the blue flames with his hands, unconcerned about the fire. Wisps only hurt when commanded to. It wasn’t in their nature to harm. Theo glanced down and noticed the fingernail marks in his palms had been healed. “Awww, thank you for that, Fizz. You’re such a good wisp.” Theo was glad again he’d managed to rescue Fizz from being cast back into the living fires to be reforged into a more appropriate companion for the queen.
She was in a generous mood that day . . . for once.
“I have a task for you, Fizzlet. You ready to play?”
Fizz zipped out of his grasp and around the room in dizzy loops, humming and spitting blue sparks of excitement. It knocked a mug off a table. The mug shattered. Fizz flitted to it and the shards lifted back together, cracks vanishing.
“My fault for leaving it out. Thank you again.”
Fizz slowed to a more controlled loop around the apartment, still excited, but more careful with the décor, what little there was.
“Okay. I need you to find something for me. It’s important.”
The wisp stopped in front of him, expectant. Theo could feel the intelligence and curiosity in the hovering flame.
Theo pulled an arrow out of his quiver, the illusion that kept the quiver and arrows invisible falling away as he willed the arrow in his hand to be seen. He held the stained titanium tip out to Fizz. “I need you to find the demon this touched.”
Fizz flashed red and sparked.
“I know. Demons suck. You have no idea how much.”
Fizz seemed to sense the sadness in his words. It flitted forward and rubbed against his cheek for a second before flying to the extended arrow to sniff the blood on the titanium. Fizz sneezed a yellow flame that singed hairs on Theo’s knuckles. “Watch it.”
Fizz hummed an apologetic note.
“It’s okay. Not your fault. Demon blood is nasty stuff. Messes with magic. Took a lot out of me to glamour it. You got it?”
The wisp bobbed and shot out the window, shattering the glass and reforming it at the same time, like a boomerang from Instagram played out in real life.
“Good luck, Fizzlet! You’ve so got this!”
A faint hum came back. Theo turned from the window to his studio. Guess this is me for a while. Do I get a real job? Keep DJing on the weekends out at Salt Air? Any chance this mystery girl will just wander into a rave?”
He pulled out a phone. “Okay, Google, red, green, and gold eyes.”
The results weren’t helpful, bringing up eyeshadow suggestions and rare eye colors. Hurry, Fizz. I’d rather not be one of the screaming Fae. Drool and insanity won’t look good on me.
Taking the more scenic routes turned out to be one of the better decisions Kale made. They were able to get gas once more before the station owners got wise and stopped selling. If the world tips into the apocalypse, gas will be gold. At least as much value as food in our end of days economy.
Almost as much as toilet paper, mused Skotha.
Really? Kale chuckled. You’d put that before alcohol and honey?
You humans seem to really like the stuff. And you do not want to know what Daeglan used way back then as toilet paper.
Kale almost asked, but he felt a wave of uneasiness flow through him. It was only a second, but he recognized it as Shelby projecting an accident. A wave of calm reassurance came quick on its heels. She noticed what she did and corrected it. He was about to ask her through the pack link when her voice sounded in his head.
Sorry. We have another flat. Pretty sure we used the last spare.
Buses can run on a couple flats. We just have to move the tires around.
Silence came back.
What aren’t you telling me? Kale asked.
Shelby’s voice practically squeaked when she replied. Remember that spike strip we dodged a while back?
Yeah?
We didn’t dodge it as well as I led you to believe. Sorry. I was trying to keep you from worrying.
Shelby! Kale didn’t even know what he should be mad at her for. Telling him wouldn’t have changed the current outcome. He calmed himself. Okay. We’ll pull over now.
He stepped from the stuffy bus into a desert breeze that tossed his hair into his eyes, still crisp from the morning mountain air. It smelled like pine with hints of caramel. Iorna had told him all the trees of the Rockies had a distinct scent, some of butterscotch, vanilla, raspberry, even chocolate. He hadn’t believed her, but he was beginning to.
He met Shelby between the still idling buses. She bit her lip, showing her anxiety. Can’t have her worrying. That’s my job. So, he hugged her and held her close. “It isn’t your fault. I know you’re our Omega. That doesn’t mean you need to take on all our problems and cares as if they were your own.”
“Doesn’t it?” She pulled away slowly, painfully, but interlocked her fingers in his as she looked off to where the sun was rising above the tree-covered hills.
“A staff lends strength to the weary, but lean too hard and it snaps.” Chenoa had come up behind them.
“Always helpful with the analogies, Chenoa,” Shelby replied without looking back.
Chenoa put a hand on Shelby’s arm, making the girl jump. “You do too much. The pack is growing. No one wants to see you snap.”
Kale blinked at the hand still on Shelby. Chenoa wasn’t one to touch people. She wasn’t one to comfort. She’d also not loved exactly Shelby from the start. This war is doing weird things to us, Kale thought just to Skotha.
Skotha growled in agreement. It will get worse before it’s over.
Some of the tension bled out of Shelby’s shoulders. Kale could feel her grip relax.
“I�
��ll try to be a smarter staff,” she said. “What do we do about the flat tire in the meantime?”
Kale looked to the bus Shelby had been riding in, the one just behind his. “We siphon the gas, take the tires, scavenge any parts we think we might need, and cram ourselves onto one bus.”
The tension returned to Shelby’s grip. “The Feral won’t handle that. We have over fifty of them on the bus now, not counting the ones loping along behind us, and there’s way too many people. Everyone’s barely keeping it together as it is.”
Kale had already considered that. “We’re only about a hundred miles from Salt Lake now. The Feral can make it on foot. They’ll be happier running alongside the bus with the others anyway.”
Chenoa grunted before she spoke. “And the pup becomes the hound, guiding the flock without nipping heels or getting kicked in the face.”
Shelby chuckled. “I followed that one. I think your analogies are getting less opaque, Chen.”
The elder woman shrugged. “Sometimes I enjoy your looks of puzzlement and sometimes I want you to understand my counsel.” She paused and stared hard at Shelby, pulling her hand back, and crossing her arms. “But no nicknames.” It came out as a cold warning.
“That’s rich from someone who calls me destroyer, bringer of death, and a million other unpleasant nicknames.” Shelby laughed. “Sad when ‘staff’ is actually one of the better ones, Chen.”
Kale worried Shelby might offend the old Lycan, but the corners of Chenoa’s mouth tugged up.
Kale grinned. Shelby’s getting good at reading and playing off emotions, when she can get Chenoa to almost smile. But his grin vanished as a shadow raced through the tree line. He pointed. “More Feral?”
Shelby shook her head. “Not what they feel like.”
“They?” Kale eyed the broken-down bus, wondering if he should risk running on a rim for a while. They’d managed to dodge the Advent, but luck always ran out.
“There’s at least fifteen.” Shelby closed her eyes. “They are a little anxious and excited, but I’m not feeling the usual pre-attack stuff.”
“Pre-attack stuff?”
She huffed and squeezed his hand. “It’s a thing. I’m not getting hungry excitement, anger, fear, or anything like those. I think they’re friendly . . . ish.”
“Ish? Love the confidence, love.”
She leaned into him. “Well, they are still Lycans. We’re touchy and territorial on a good day.”
A howl came from the hills, moving closer.
Kale tensed. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
Chelsea ran through the incantation while the buses were stopped, Amanda watching from the side. The vibrations during travel made some spells more difficult.
“See, this finger runs across this finger and then you twist them like this. Got it?”
Amanda made a noncommittal noise and looked off to where Bubba checked and rechecked his many pockets, the wiener dog crawling over him and sniffing each one.
“Do you think Trish really liked him?”
Chelsea dropped her hands. She had been cruel to Trish for wanting to date DeShawn, calling him plenty of names she regretted, and not just because her words no longer fit his physique. “She went against my orders, so she must have.” Chelsea eyed her friend. “Do you now?”
“I don’t think so.” But Amanda nodded at the same time.
Chelsea laughed. “You don’t know is what you really mean.”
Amanda bit her lip and looked at her hands. “Yeah. I guess.” She wriggled her fingers in her lap. “Okay, show me one more time.”
“No, I’m done teaching you this spell. You can’t focus.”
Amanda sat up straighter. “I’m good.”
“Prove it. Try the spell on your own, for real this time.”
Amanda’s face went pale. “Inside the bus?”
“It’s a strengthening spell. As long as you don’t punch anything or anyone, we’ll be fine.” Chelsea smiled. “You feeling punchy?”
“No more than usual.” Amanda grinned back. “My best friend is a bossy witch who has been manipulating my feelings for years so she could rule our high school.”
Chelsea felt the blood drain from her own face. She’d stopped using such spells the last few weeks, and the feistiness of her friends returned with a vengeance. Watching a friend die and living into the end of days changes your priorities. She felt a twinge for Kale as she thought about all she’d done to win him and ultimate popularity over, but her feelings for him had waned as they’d moved away from the school. I was obsessed.
She swallowed the bitterness in the back of her throat. “I can’t apologize enough.”
Amanda put a hand on her arm. “Part of me wanted it too. It was fun and powerful being a piece of the whorey trinity.”
Chelsea growled and glanced back at where Sean slept against a window. “I hate that nickname.”
Amanda shrugged. “It fit.”
Chelsea bristled. “We weren’t whores!”
Amanda laughed. “Not in that way, maybe, but we still deserved the name.”
“Maybe.” Chelsea looked at her own hands. “But you’re avoiding the assignment. Try it.”
“Okay, fine.” Amanda lifted her hands, ran through the movements, and spoke the words in a near whisper. A vibration came off her hands in the last moment. “Did it work?”
Chelsea blinked. “That was . . . perfect.” She tamped down the envy that wanted to build and chose pride instead. “I’m such a good teacher!” She rummaged through the backpack beneath her seat and pulled out a metal stylus from a tablet that had lost power days ago. “Try to bend this with just one hand.”
Amanda took it between thumb and forefinger. She pushed against it, her hand shaking with the effort. Nothing happened. “I didn’t do it right.”
Chelsea took the stylus back. “No, it was perfect. The words. The movements.” She set the stylus down, ran through the spell herself. As the vibration came off her hands, she felt it drain away, pulled from her like a string unraveling. It was an unpleasant feeling. “That was weird.” She tried to bend the stylus with both hands. It resisted.
Amanda bit her lip again as Chelsea looked up at her. “What is it? You have your freaked-out face on.”
“May be nothing. Let me try another, one I know I get right every time.” Chelsea ran through a spell meant to bolster her confidence. It was a spell she’d used every day for the past five years. The same unraveling, pulling sensation happened at the end. Her ego remained at its flagging level. She tried it again. Nothing. A third time, for luck. The magic fell apart.
Amanda squeezed her arm. “You’ve gone silent. That’s never good.”
The stylus rolled off her lap. She ignored it as it clattered against the rubberized floor of the bus. “I think we need to talk to the Druid.”
Deep beneath Underhill, a pair of warrior Fae stood at attention, both staring at a portal. They knew this one had been the most active of the four demon gates in the past thousand years. And with Theophinus’s banishment for failing at another, they were alert and well stocked with arrows.
The moment the portal flared, spitting off sparks, NaKyla loosed an arrow at the bell near the ceiling. The magical chime sent for help as a wispy claw reached through. They could hear reinforcements running through the tunnels to their aid as their arrows flew, biting into the shadowy flesh of the creatures pushing through.
But these demons were hard to hit. They leaked through the portal, flowing like smoke, hazy tendrils wavering from their indistinct bodies. Arrows flew through the smoke with little effect.
NaKyla recentered her aim. Her arrow thudded into the more solid flesh near the middle. The demon screamed, biting at itself with multiple mouths and rolling into a writhing ball. “They are smaller than they seem. The exterior is just smoke and ash, illusion.”
She was partly right, but more wrong than she knew. Another of the creatures oozed through and raced her way. She focused and aimed sl
owly, locking on the center. A tendril of smoke touched her leg as she waited for the perfect shot.
Flesh tore open and burned. Sharp ash burrowed deep beneath skin and then burst out the far side. Smoke wrapped around the leg and pulled, sending her spinning. NaKyla’s arrow flew ineffectively into the dark cavern and her skull cracked into stone. She did not see help flood into the room, even though her eyes were open and fixed on the entrance.
But she heard her brothers and sisters die.
The queen of Seely Court, Silphinaera, could hear the screams half a mile away. Alarms sounded higher in Underhill as demons escaped into other sections, working their way to the surface. A shadow, black as night with streaks of red, stole into the throne room. With a steady hand, she pulled a knife from her corset and sent it flying.
Smoke and ash pooled on the floor, dissipating in the shifting air. A twisted thing of mouths and limbs sat at the center, dripping black blood from the knife wound in its chest that caught fire as it sizzled to the floor. It tried to crawl her direction. A second knife sunk into an eye socket, barely a new stream of acrid smoke escaping the wound as the demon died.
The queen stood as more screams came from the halls above her. At least one of the demons was about to escape, moving toward the gates they held close to the surface. She pulled more titanium knives from hidden places and willed her wisps to follow her as she ran toward the screams.
She launched over smoldering corpses and moaning injured. Reaching one of their magical gateways, she found a shimmering sheet of light. The Fae who had stepped through it into Underhill stood staring at the charred hole in his chest, mouth open in a silent scream. He fell to his knees as the light behind him flickered and died. At least one demon had made it out.
“Hurry, Theo. We’re running out of time.”
Tarloch, Demon King of Bassindahr, felt the loss of each demon, but two survived the initial battle. He felt an immediate influx of energy from Earth as those two absorbed the life force of fallen kin, along with hints of Fae magic from Underhill. Non-diffusers have made it through. It is time to hit harder.