The Forgotten

by Bishop O'Connell

  “Dia ár réiteach,” Siobhan said softly. “What’s going on?”

  Dante opened his mouth to answer but was brought up short.

  Magic washed over them, like the pressure wave of an explosion. Both he and Siobhan were knocked off their feet and onto their backs, but the snatchers and two changelings vanished like smoke in a strong wind.

  Dante’s head spun, his mind struggling to put a coherent thought together as he looked around and fought to get to his feet. He saw a girl standing alone in the market. She was young, probably in her midteens, but tall and thin. She wore an oversized hooded jacket, strange goggles, and an even stranger leather gauntlet on her right hand.

  Dante looked at Siobhan, who was staring at him with wide eyes and open mouth.

  His glamour was gone.

  “FBI!” a man shouted.

  Dante looked up to see the agents pointing their pistols at the girl.

  “Hands where I can see them,” the lead agent said. The other two men were on either side, the woman was to the right and just behind.

  “Why won’t you just leave us all alone?” the girl shouted. “Stop sending your damned snatchers after us!”

  “That’s not us,” the bald agent said. “We’re the ones trying to stop the Theurg—­”

  “In nomine domine mi,” the woman agent said, then shot her partners in the back of the head.

  Dante watched in shock as the three men fell to the ground.

  “Aetate legenda revertetur ,” the woman said.

  The girl lifted her gloved hand and shouted, “BANG!”

  The agent flew back, then tumbled to a stop, not moving.

  The girl ran toward Dante.

  Siobhan lifted her shotgun and took aim.

  “No!” Dante shouted and tackled the Fian.

  Her shot went wide, blowing apart an already mangled stall.

  The girl glanced at Dante as she ran by. He saw markings over one side of her face, not the magical symbols of the Taleth-­Sidhe but complex mathematical formulae. Her eyes were another matter. They were brown and sad, but behind them burned the blue fire of raw magic.

  Then she grabbed something around her neck and vanished.

  “What the bloody hell are you thinking?” Siobhan asked, shoving Dante away from her. “You let her get away!”

  “No,” Dante said. “I saved your life. Didn’t you see what she did to that agent?”

  Siobhan didn’t answer; she just got to her feet and offered Dante her hand.

  He took it and was pulled roughly to a standing position. He stumbled past the three dead men to their traitorous companion. The woman lay limp but still breathing.

  “My glamour is gone!” Elaine shouted as she came running up. “We have to go, the police are coming and we can’t let them see us like this!”

  “Too right, that,” Siobhan said.

  Dante knelt over the unconscious agent and drew a pinch of sand from inside his coat. “Codail,” he whispered and sprinkled the sand in her eyes.

  “What are you doing with her?” Elaine asked. “Who is she?”

  “Someone I hope can answer some questions,” Dante said, lifting the lifeless woman and throwing her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  “You’re putting her under a slumber?” Elaine asked.

  Sirens filled the air from several directions.

  “We leave now,” Siobhan said. “Or some nice fellas in blue with guns are going to be giving us ride.”

  They ran as fast as they could.

  Chapter Twenty-­Two

  Everything was madness and the pandemonium reached well past the market. Mundanes were running and screaming or cowering and whimpering, while fae and fifties tried to cover themselves as they fled for some place to hide. Wraith didn’t run, she walked through the insanity wrapped in the cloak, an unseen witness to the havoc she’d created. Despite being invisible to the world, no one came near her. It was surreal; ­people came running at her full speed, but swerved around her without seeming to notice. Sometimes Wraith would see someone pull out a phone to record the mayhem.

  “Kaput,” she would whisper absently, waving her hand toward the device. Then the phones would die. Some sprayed sparks, others caught fire.

  Her mind raced and she fought to fit lucid pieces together. That had been Shadow, SK, and Fritz, but how? She hadn’t even really been surprised when they’d vanished, but the snatchers disappearing had caught her off guard. As had the bald man’s final words. She’d come to a few conclusions as to why it had happened that way, but she kept returning to one in particular, and it made her stomach twist. And her anger rise.

  Police cars, as well as unmarked black SUVs, raced by with lights and sirens going, but she didn’t hear anything.

  “They tried to warn me,” she said to herself. She stopped walking and leaned against the wall as the world spun around her. After several long, slow breaths, everything settled and she opened her eyes.

  She turned down an alley toward an old steel door, a door-­door; the tumult of the world around her faded further into the background, growing more and more distant.

  She focused on the equations, gathering them around her, and grabbed the knob—­

  Her breath caught and the formulation fell apart as she yanked her hand back.

  It was open!

  But how?

  Her heart began to race and she struggled to put the calculation together again, but her concentration kept slipping. She’d closed it behind her; she knew she had. Her hands started to shake. She didn’t even notice when her cloak collapsed around her. Somewhere deep inside, something whispered that the door had been opened from the inside.

  She fell to her knees, tears running down her face. Then it dawned on her and a sense of betrayal chilled her. Her friends, she’d called them her friends. And weren’t they? No, it couldn’t have been them. None of them could’ve opened the door. Someone had gotten in and made it look like it was opened from the inside, right? That had to be it.

  She’d thought Shadow and the others were her friends, but they’d known all along and kept it from her. Why would friends do that? She sobbed harder, not knowing what to believe anymore. She closed her eyes and drew in one slow breath after another until her sobbing eased, then stopped. It didn’t matter. Ovation and his group were trapped in that room because of her. She’d left them there with no way out; her, no one else. Even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being played, and had been for quite a while.

  “Okay then,” she said through gritted teeth as she got to her feet. “It’s time I got into the game.”

  The equation snapped back into place, then wove into the doorframe with little more than a thought from her. Wraith grabbed the knob and turned it. She had to pull hard, but when the open door-­door and physical door aligned, the latter flew open and she stepped through.

  Her breath caught and she stopped just inside the room.

  The place had been turned upside down, maybe literally. The furniture was reduced to splintered pieces, most with burn marks, a few still smoldering. The workbench lay broken in the corner opposite where it had been; the beds had been tossed against a wall. A hole had been knocked through the bricks, and smoke drifted out from a few small fires that still burned. Wraith lifted her gloved hand, formed a thread formulation, and snapped it like a whip. It tore pieces from the fire’s quantum information and they all died.

  She swallowed and looked around again. No one was here. She was too late. She noticed roughly fist-­sized holes in spots along the wall, and more than a few scorch marks. Geek and Con had put up a fight. She swallowed when she saw the blood. Not pools of it, but spattered on the walls and floors.

  Her heart turned to lead and she leaned against the wall to keep from collapsing.

  She heard a soft whimper.


  Her head snapped up. “Toto?”

  Another quiet whimper, muffled. She turned to source of the sound and saw a ­couple of mattresses lay atop each other and they were moving, barely.

  She was there instantly, tossing the beds aside.

  Underneath she found Toto, crouched in front of an unconscious Con and Sprout. Con held Sprout in one arm, her face buried in his chest. Wraith could see one of Con’s arms was broken and Toto had taken a serious beating.

  Wraith extended a shaking hand and touched Sprout’s cheek. Relief flooded her when she felt warmth and life. Toto whimpered louder and tried to press his head to Wraith’s leg.

  “Easy, boy,” she said and stroked the dog. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you.”

  “Not your fault,” Con said, eyes still closed and not moving.

  Wraith looked at him. His face was bruised and he had scrapes and cuts. Someone had tossed him like one of the mattresses, probably a few times.

  “Snatchers?” Wraith asked.

  Con shrugged. “Don’t know, didn’t get to ask. Buggers came in fast and hard like bloody SEAL Team Six. Dressed for the part too.”

  Wraith blinked. “What?”

  Con turned and groaned, wincing. “Half a dozen blokes, dressed in camouflage, like something out of a bleeding movie, and tossing magic like it was nothing. Serious heavyweights.”

  Something tugged at Wraith’s memory, but she couldn’t get a hold of it and it was infuriating.

  “We gave nearly as good as we got,” Con said. “Nearly. Ovation and Geek took them head on, told me to watch the little one.” His expression turned grim as he looked around the room. “The bastards got them both.” He stroked Sprout’s hair, then petted Toto. “If it weren’t for your pup . . .”

  The way Con looked at Sprout tore at Wraith’s heart, and she fought back tears as she hugged the big dog, careful it wasn’t too tight.

  “We shouldn’t take any chances,” Wraith said. “Not with Sprout or with your arm.”

  “My arm?” Con said and tried lifting it, but grimaced and stifled a groan.

  “Don’t move it, you idiot,” Wraith said.

  “Bleeding thing’s broken,” he said after getting his breath back.

  “Can you walk?”

  “I can bloody well walk out of here,” Con said. “But I can’t carry Sprout with one arm.”

  “I’ll take her.” Wraith turned to Toto. “What about you, can you walk?”

  The big dog got to his feet. He staggered, but didn’t fall. When he seemed sure, he licked Wraith’s hand.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” Con asked.

  She swallowed back a tide of guilt. “I think so, but things went, um, badly.”

  Con nodded. “Seems to be a lot of that going around. Here, take her.”

  Wraith gingerly took Sprout into her arms. She was surprised how light the little girl was, and how small she felt.

  Con pushed himself up, grunting through clenched teeth. Watching it made Wraith wince; but after a long moment he straightened, holding his broken arm close to his side, and nodded.

  Wraith started toward the door, Toto limping behind her.

  “We can’t go to a hospital,” Con said. “So where are we going?”

  Wraith stopped midstep and turned around. “Why not?”

  He nodded at Sprout. “At her age, she’ll be in a foster home before you can blink, likely me as well.” He shook his head. “She hasn’t talked about it, but I got enough from Geek to know things were bad and she wouldn’t want to go back.”

  Wraith looked down at the girl. It was disconcerting how limp she was, and black circles were appearing around her eyes.

  “No, I won’t let them—­”

  “What?” Con asked. “Take her? You going to take on the police and the hospital staff?”

  “I don’t know,” Wraith said.

  “We’ve got to find someplace safe,” Con said. “A sanctuary.”

  Wraith blinked. “What did you say?”

  “Sanctuary?”

  She tried to remember. That big Russian fae had said something about sanctuary, hadn’t he? No, it was the street kid, he’d used the word, but she’d come in the middle of the conversation. She closed her eyes and focused harder.

  “What are—­” Con asked, but when Wraith shook her head, he went silent.

  The fae had handed the kids a piece of paper and—­

  She opened her eyes. “I know where we’re going.”

  “Okay,” Con said and nodded. “Where’s that, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Con sighed.

  “But I think we’ll be safe there,” she added

  Con gave her a weary smile. “Your skill at building confidence is truly astounding.” Wraith made to apologize, but Con shook his head. “Lead on.”

  Wraith went to the door and shifted Sprout so she could hold the girl with one arm. Still wearing the glove, Wraith reached out to the door. She began reworking the equation, shifting the variables to try and find a door close to the address she had seen. It was more complicated than anything she’d ever done before. As the formulation neared completion, it felt oddly familiar to her and Wraith felt a twinge of apprehension. Eventually, the formulation reached a zero sum. Wraith opened the door, cautiously.

  “Stay close and be ready,” she said. “It might be some kind of lure or trap.”

  Con nodded, wincing as he let go of his broken arm. After a moment’s effort, he lifted his good right hand, and with a muttered word, it became wreathed in fire.

  Wraith stepped through the door, Con and Toto close behind her.

  Chapter Twenty-­Three

  Dante led the way. They ran through yards and narrow alleyways, desperate not to be seen. Despite the glamour being gone, there was also the unconscious murderer Dante had slung over his shoulder.

  The sound of sirens and helicopters overhead brought Dante up short. He stopped near a fence under the cover of tress, and crouched down, Elaine and Siobhan following his lead.

  “We’re never going to make it back to the car,” Dante said.

  “We can’t walk back to the club,” Elaine said.

  “Aye,” Siobhan agreed. “Not with the baggage and your arse showing, as it were.”

  Both elves gave her a disapproving look.

  “You two stay here,” she said, ignoring their withering stares. “I’ll find us a ride.”

  “Wait—­” Dante started to say.

  “You two keep your heads, and ears, down,” Siobhan said. “I’ll be back.”

  Before either could protest, Siobhan was running down the street.

  “What happened?” Elaine asked.

  Dante could hear the fear in her words. He also knew what she was really asking: Was it permanent?

  “I don’t know,” he said and put his hand on her shoulder. “We have to deal with one problem at a time.”

  Elaine looked up at him. Her luminescent eyes were a ­couple shades paler green than he’d remembered, but there was a strength and determination behind them. They looked at each other for a long, silent moment.

  “I mean we need to deal with the more immediate and urgent problems first,” he said, slowly withdrawing his hand.

  She smiled, just a little. “That’s not very comforting.”

  His mouth turned up at the corners. “Best I can do on short notice.”

  A screeching of tires made them both look up to see a fairly new minivan skid to a stop. Dante exchanged a look with Elaine. The side door slid open and Siobhan leaned over.

  “This ain’t a house,” she said. “You don’t need a fecking invitation.”

  “After you,” Dante said and motioned to Elaine, who climbed into the backseat.

  Dante laid the stil
l-­unconscious woman across the bench seat in the third row and climbed in, shutting the door.

  “Interesting choice of vehicles,” he said when they started moving.

  “Get on the floor,” Siobhan said. “Keep out of sight.”

  Dante and Elaine did, but both of them had to tuck their legs up to fit.

  “What do you think the odds are that the guard will stop the family football coach?” Siobhan said.

  “That’s good thinking,” Dante conceded. “You know the way back?”

  “Aye, just keep down,” Siobhan said. “If something happens, I’ll let you know. I don’t want someone spotting your glowing eyes and pointy ears.”

  Dante let out a breath. He wasn’t exactly comfortable, but his metaphorical position was exceedingly less so than his actual one.

  What felt like hours later, the minivan came to a stop.

  “Tell me you didn’t—­”

  “I parked down the alley,” Siobhan said. “Let me make sure the way is clear.”

  Dante waited, then waited some more.

  The door slid open. “Aye, no one around, let’s go.”

  Dante got out, threw the prisoner over his shoulder, and made his way to the side entrance of the club. When he reached the door, he realized Siobhan was heading back to the minivan.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “It’s a stolen vehicle, isn’t it?” she said. “I’ll park it a ways off and come back.”

  Dante didn’t have time to reply before the minivan was gone.

  “I’ll give it to her,” Elaine said. “She’s not stupid. Uncouth and short tempered, but not stupid.”

  Dante nodded. “Well, we shouldn’t continue standing in broad daylight with an unconscious body,” he said. “Come on.”

  He reached out, but before his fingers touched the door, it opened, and Dante’s mouth dropped open.