Soul of Fire tp-2

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Yeah, you’re just the dumb blond. We got that,” Jan said with more than a touch of sarcasm. “So, if the balance is thrown off,” she asked, “then what? What happens?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Change may not always be a bad thing, but that does not automatically make it a good thing.”

  “You said that before, about maintaining a balance.” Tyler caught Jan’s glance at him and shrugged. “He was trying to talk me out of being an idiot.”

  “Hmm,” she said and then decided that they didn’t have time to dig into that, not without knowing what was about to happen. “And about the Center and earning a place here?”

  “That...wasn’t me. I think it was the Center.”

  Somehow, that was the only thing in all this that made sense to Jan, that the oasis of calm and recovery would be able to reach out and speak through Martin’s voice. In fact, when she thought about it, it all made perfect sense. She had lost her mind.

  “My life is insane,” she said. “All right, so we’re supposed to help with the defense?”

  “I can’t,” Martin said. “But I needed to agree, to get you two out of there.”

  “I’m staying,” Tyler said. “I have to.”

  “You’re going to die, human,” Martin said, as if he’d said it before, and Tyler shrugged, looking unhappy. “Maybe.”

  There was a sharp rap of something hitting glass, and all three of them turned to look at the kitchen’s single window. A hand pressed against it, palm down, and then made a pointing gesture toward the door.

  It wasn’t a gnome’s hand, so Jan moved to unlatch the lock. A slender figure with dark, mica-glittery skin slipped in, its clothing rumpled, shoes covered in mud and its face splattered with what Jan was pretty sure was blood. Not its own: it seemed unharmed, if exhausted.

  “Seth.” The lizardlike super had been one of AJ’s lieutenants back at the Farm. “Are you all right? What happened? Did AJ send you?” The questions tumbled out of her mouth, even as she reached out to brush at the smudge on its cheek. “Is everyone okay? Did you get my email?”

  Seth shook his head, not saying no but rather indicating that there was no time to answer questions. “We’ve been looking for you. AJ’s orders. The witch told us where you were. You need to come. Now. AJ needs you.”

  That was all Martin had to hear. He half turned, opening the refrigerator to grab three bottles of water, handing one to Jan. “All right,” he said. “But we have to hurry—the preters have found their missing queen, and they’re coming, fast.”

  Seth blinked at them, double eyelids making the effect seem even more surprised. “Preters, here?”

  “And we don’t want to be here when they get here,” Martin said.

  “Right. No. Right.” Seth blinked his underlids again and then slid back out the door, clearly expecting them to follow. Martin was barely a step behind, while Jan, the water still in her hand, was staring dumbly, trying to catch up to what had just happened.

  “Wait, how are we going to—” she started to say, but they were already gone. “Damn it,” she swore, checking to make sure that she had her inhaler in her pocket, the witch’s sachet and the carved horse in the other. There wasn’t anything still upstairs that was hers, really.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” she said to Ty.

  “I can’t.”

  “What?” Her first thought was that she’d misheard.

  “I can’t. I won’t.”

  “Ty...” She looked at the door, then back to her boyfriend, feeling helpless. “You’ve got to!”

  “I don’t got to do anything except what feels right. Zan said so, back at the Farm. And it feels right to stay.”

  “Jesus Christ, Tyler.” Jan almost hurled her water bottle at him. “You— I can’t—”

  “Go. You don’t need to be here.” Before she had time to parse that, either, she was in his arms, a rough and unexpected hug. It was the first time he had initiated contact, and certainly the most intimate contact, since...since before he had gone to meet Stjerne, the preter who had stolen him. “I love you,” he said, almost a confession. “I always have. I always will. But I can’t be like this. I can’t let go, and that means I can’t be with you, either. Let me do this.”

  And then he shoved her away, out the door, and closed it roughly behind her.

  The backyard was quiet. The area where the gnomes had been camping was a mess of abandoned bedrolls and tents, but nothing moved, not even a squirrel or bird. She could hear traffic from down the road, the sound of an occasional car, and voices shouting to each other, but if there were a dozen or more supernaturals gathering, preparing for battle, she could neither see nor hear them.

  Somehow that was worse than if she’d walked out into an armed camp.

  Martin and Seth were nowhere to be seen, either. Jan felt abandoned by both her companions, a hot splice of self-pity mixed with panic. Should she go back into the house, throw herself onto Nalith’s nonexistent mercy, fight and hope that whatever had spoken through Martin’s voice was wrong, that battle wouldn’t doom them all?

  No. Whatever happened, whatever Tyler decided, Jan knew she could no more go back into that house than she could fly. Martin had told her where he’d left that car; she didn’t have GPS or a map, but maybe she could find that and...then she’d worry about where to go next.

  Uncapping the water bottle she only now just realized she was holding, Jan stepped off the back deck and started walking as casually as she could. The yard was large enough, but it seemed twice as wide when you were hoping not to be noticed.

  “You, human.”

  “Yes?” Her voice didn’t crack, not even when hard, thin fingers latched on to her arm, halting her midstep.

  “You’re not armed.”

  No, she thought, half-crazed, you took them all. She hadn’t encountered a multi-limbed super before, much less one shaped vaguely and disturbingly like a praying mantis. “I... No. I was supposed to go out to the shed to find a weapon.”

  The super snorted, impressive considering it didn’t seem to have a nose, only a wide mouth set over its eyes. “Nothing out there you could use, bitty thing like you. Here.” It reached out with a lower limb, and she took the serrated blade offered almost automatically. “Go low and stab,” it told her. “You’ll do more damage that way than trying to go overhand.”

  “Oh. Okay. I’ll... I’m going to walk the perimeter. One thing I’m really good at is screaming loud, if I see something I don’t like.”

  Jan was pretty sure the super grinned at her, and the grip on her arm turned into a pat on the shoulder. “Not bad for a human,” it said and then went on its way in the opposite direction.

  Jan finally remembered to breathe and, with the knife in one hand and the water bottle in the other, kept heading for the far edge of the property, where a break in the fence suggested she might be able to slip through unnoticed. It took sliding sideways to manage, and the splintered wood dug into her legs, but she got through.

  When another hand grabbed at her from behind, tugging the sleeve of her blouse, she swung instinctively, the point of the blade digging up until it met resistance, and she heard a startled yelp.

  “Woman, what?”

  “Oh.” Jan let the blade drop back a little, looking into Seth’s startled face. “Sorry?”

  “Good reflexes” was all he said, although he winced a little as he flexed the arm she’d hit. “We’re going to need that. Now, put that away and come on.”

  Martin was waiting across the driveway on the other side, looking impatient but also relieved. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, she suspected. But Tyler wasn’t the only one who went with his gut. This, crazy as it was, felt right.

  They made it on foot to the bridge that led into town. A girl with pale green hair sat on the stone-lined bank and kicked her feet absently, looking up when they approached. Not Jenny Greenteeth, but another water-sprite. “I guarded the car like you said,” she told Seth. “Good luc
k.”

  It was the truck they had taken from the Farm. That unexpected bit of familiarity hit Jan harder than expected. This had been the truck that had taken her from New Haven originally, sandwiched between AJ and Martin, having no idea how her world had already changed....

  “What happened?” she asked. “Why did it take you so long to find us? Why didn’t anyone else come? Is AJ pissed we took off?”

  “Farm’s gone,” Seth said bluntly. “Preters are here.”

  * * *

  The ritual had followed the rise of the new moon. Although they could not see it, deep in the basement room, the gathered preters could feel it. As it reached the apex of its nightly cycle, the humans waiting patiently were gathered in the center of the room, their masters placing a hand on their chests, under the silver chain, and commanded each to take up the others’ hands, creating an outward-facing circle, their masters a looser ring around them.

  There was an unearthly silence, the sound of their breathing the only sound, softly echoed in the dark corners of the room before fading. Then their fingers curved inward, nails digging into the flesh underneath like bloodied thorns, and the humans cried out in a blend of agony and joy, the pain their masters inflicted welcomed as proof of their affection. The sound filled the room, driving out the silence, creating the bond that tied human to preter, giving the magic a bridge to move over, united preternatural with natural.

  One-to-one, such a bridge created and opened a single portal. Combined and focused, matched to the natural bridge of the new moon, and that single portal expanded, deepened, until the mist filled the entire church, and the painted concrete walls were replaced with the cold stone walls of the Court Under the Hill.

  Above them, on the streets of this town, and the one next to it, and the ones surrounding it, computer screens and cell phones flickered as the universes twisted into each other, the logic behind them hijacked to another cause.

  And there in the basement, on a dais that had not been there a moment ago, presided the consort, regal, cold, and filled with rage. He stood, and his advisers stood with him, watching as he strode off the dais and into the natural world.

  Behind him, at a respectful distance, came a dozen more of the court, the greater lords and lesser ones, until only the consort’s advisers and a score of lesser preters remained, to hold the court until they returned. They watched through the Grand Portal but said no word, made no gesture of greeting or farewell.

  The consort had put aside his robes, replacing them with trousers and a close-fitting shirt and vest, low boots on his feet, his long, chestnut-brown curls tied back instead of flowing around his shoulders. His gaze raked over the humans, then lingered over the preters who had opened the way for him.

  “Well done,” he said. “It will hold?”

  “It will.” The proper response would have been It will, my prince. The dropped honorific did not go unnoticed, and the consort’s lips pressed into an even thinner line, but he did not challenge the courtier. And that, too, did not go unnoticed. The consort had held the court together in crisis, but he would not be able to maintain that hold forever; if the queen did not return, if they failed here, his reign would have no legitimacy. She had bred no heir, and without a queen, the court itself would fail, the courtiers turning on each other until there was nothing left. They all knew it.

  “Then let us reclaim my lady,” the consort said. “And then we will claim this realm, once and for all, so that it will bother us no more.”

  “’Fraid I can’t let you do that.”

  A human stepped out of the shadows. He was older, his hair silvered, his long leather coat open to show a crisp white shirt and dark slacks. He could have been any corporate manager, heading home after a long day, except for the small, sharp ax he held in his hands.

  One of the preters snarled at the intruder, who merely raised an eyebrow at it, then turned to the consort. “There are rules. You’re breaking them.”

  “The rules have been rewritten,” the consort said. “And your people are the ones who rewrote them.”

  “Maybe so,” the human said. “We do a lot of dumb things, mostly without thinking. Sometimes it turns out okay, sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s why we look out for each other, fix the stuff that’s gone wrong. Find the source of the noise and shut it down.”

  “Noise?” The consort was almost amused.

  “Noise. Static. Clamor. The natural realm objects to your intrusion. Every witch on the East Coast knew where you were the moment this thing opened—did you really think you could sneak in?” The human, too, sounded amused.

  “Does this look like sneaking?”

  The human looked around, making a performance of it. “Under the cover of dark, in a deserted building, coming without invite? Yes, my lord preter, it looks much like sneaking.”

  “Stand aside, human,” another of the preters said, almost growling.

  “Can’t.”

  The consort was still not taking the threat seriously. “Just you, to turn back time? Do you seek to challenge me, to win another truce? That will not happen.”

  “No truce,” the Huntsman said. “Die.”

  He swung the ax as though he were aiming at a tree, a low sweep that any of the preters could have easily dodged, but when they did, another form came from the shadows as well, lower to the ground, teeth glinting white and red just before they fastened into flesh and hauled their prey to the floor.

  And the shadows came apart, revealing the battered, bloodied remnants of what had fled the Farm, mixed with a handful of humans, most of them female, each carrying an ax or sword or, in at least one instance, an athame.

  “Glad you made it,” the Huntsman said, dodging a preter’s lunge. He stepped to the side, and the ax bit into preternatural flesh and bone, taking it down as easily as a sapling. But even on the ground, it struck back, long fingers curling into the Huntsman’s clothing, burning through to the flesh like a living brand, and the human cursed, trying to yank free.

  “You doubted me?” Jack said, a green-wire garrote in his hands, stopping to finish off the Huntsman’s opponent. “I’m hurt.”

  “Kill, don’t flirt,” one of the supernaturals growled at the both of them, and then they were too busy to spare breath for talking.

  Chapter 16

  Once they were in the truck and out of Little Creek, Seth started to talk. From the first warning of danger to the flight from the Farm, the tattered, bloodied survivors of the battle heading each to different, predetermined points.

  “And then the witches found us. Which is one for the history books, mate. Witches finding us.” He was hyper, twitching with energy he didn’t seem to know how to use.

  “I should have been there.”

  “Yeah.” Seth didn’t cut Martin any slack. “You should have. But your job was to keep this one safe, and you did that. So don’t try feeling around for the guilt or regret. You’re not good at it, and anyway, AJ would have sent you two out the moment things got iffy, same as he did the other human.”

  “What other human?” Jan put a hand on the dashboard, bracing herself as she turned to look at Seth. “What other human?” she asked again, her voice rising. She and Tyler had been the only humans at the Farm. The only other humans who knew about it, as far as she knew, had been members of her team. Her friends.

  “The Huntsman sent her, so don’t yell at me.”

  “Who?” But she knew, a hollow, heavy feeling in her stomach. “Glory. Why the fuck was Glory there? Is she all right?” Her friend was tough and fierce and smart, but she was supposed to be safe in London, not in the middle of all this.

  “Why is the Huntsman involved?” Martin asked.

  “I don’t know, and how the hell should I know?” Seth answered them both, guiding the truck onto the highway and putting on speed until he was going a few miles over the limit, letting other cars pass him on the left. “The Huntsman and witches and it’s cats and dogs living together, man, we’re living history. Any
way, when the attack hit, AJ sent the human and the dryads into the basement. Elsa said she got them out when the defenses fell, but I don’t know anything more than that. I’m sorry.”

  Jan stared out the window at the road passing by and instinctively reached for her inhaler, safe in her pocket. She didn’t need it, and it wouldn’t help relieve worry, but at this point it was almost a talisman. So long as she didn’t lose it, everything would be okay. Eventually. “The preters are here.”

  “Yeah. And the turncoats their dogs, like that’s any surprise. Nobody else, though, not that we saw.”

  “That’s good. Right?” When neither of them answered her, she went on, “So, what’s a Huntsman?”

  “Old friend of AJ’s,” Martin said. “Human, or he was, long time ago. Got tangled up in a dryad’s roots and stayed. If he’s rousting other humans... Huh.”

  “Yah, like I said. Interesting times.” Seth was starting to come down off his jittering high, slumping a little in the seat.

  “And we’re going to where AJ is?”

  “Plans were, if everything went to hell, we split up, scatter, and do what damage we could until either we got an all clear or it all went south for good. AJ sent me to get you, bring you to where he was. Don’t know more than that.”

  “So, where—” Jan started to ask, when Martin put a hand over hers. His skin was cooler than usual and slightly clammy, and the black nails were ragged at the edges. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Get some sleep. Whatever we’re going into, if AJ needs us, we’re going to need to be alert.”