There was no way she was going to be able to sleep, torn between worry about what they were driving into and worry for Tyler, left behind to face whatever was coming for Nalith. But there wasn’t any point in arguing, either. Jan let her head fall back against the seat back, stretched her legs out in front of her as best she could, and closed her eyes, hoping that would satisfy the kelpie.
He squeezed her hand once and tucked his thumb under her palm, the gesture as comforting as a hug.
“Once more, dear friends, once more,” she murmured and was rewarded by Seth’s soft laugh.
* * *
The street outside was silent, any humans who might have been out having trusted their instincts and taken another route that evening. A few cars were parked along the curb, but their engines were cold. Overhead, the dark moon hung in place like an evil eye, unblinking.
There was blood in the air. They could smell it, standing outside the building where the preter lords had told them to come. Nearly fifty of them, all that was left of the hundreds when this started, all that could make their way to this place at this time. And if some of them kept looking over their shoulder, convinced that Herself would be there, ready to flay them alive for abandoning her, none broke ranks.
They were supposed to join the preter lords as they came through the Grand Portal, form shock troops to their preternatural grand purpose, do all the things minion armies did. Supposed to serve and die, if needed, so their betters could live and rule.
“Screw that shit,” one of them said and stepped up onto the stone steps, the others close behind.
Inside the church, the noise of battle came from elsewhere, curses and the clank and crack of weapons. Their attention was drawn not to the wide staircase leading downstairs, however, but to the faint glow rising through the floor. A misty blue arc, barely three feet high and a dozen feet wide, filling the nave.
A collective sigh escaped them, relief, fear, and anticipation.
“Is it enough?”
“It has to be.”
The Grand Portal itself was out of reach; to go downstairs would be to be drawn into the fighting, where both sides had no reason to care for them. This was their chance, while all other attention was distracted.
“Make sure your body stays inside the band,” the one who had spoken before said. “Anything that goes outside might not come with.”
A running start, steps matched to prevent anyone from tripping over an unwary limb, and they ducked and slid under the glowing arc, into the portal.
Gnomes were no strangers to change: their bodies shifted and contorted naturally, elongating or contracting to fit the space. But going through a portal pulled and shoved them in ways outside their own control, turning them sideways and upside down into screaming winds and bitter cold before dropping them abruptly onto cold, hard stone.
They rolled and got to their feet, hands shaping into claws, eyes alert to danger even before they focused enough to see the tall—armed—forms circling them.
Preters. Armed, alert preters.
“Well, well,” a voice said from the crowd, dry and eager. “Maybe it won’t be so boring staying here, after all.”
“Oh, fuck,” one of the gnomes muttered.
The plan had depended on the elves being distracted by the portal, by whatever it was they wanted to do to the other realm. But gnomes were used to things going wrong.
“Will you yield, live, and serve?” another of those dry voices asked. The preters had already drawn weapons, edged blades glinting in the pale lights of the cavern, so the question wasn’t so much a query as a suggestion.
They had answered that question before and lied. There was no room now for prevarication or treachery.
“Die here, or die there,” the lead gnome said, speaking for them all. “It doesn’t matter.”
Chapter 17
“Come on,” Seth said urgently.
They had abandoned the truck a few blocks away, Seth practically dragging them down the street. Jan had no idea what city they were in, or even what state, although she thought it might be Hartford, from the not-quite-gentrified feel. The air was cold, and the streetlights cast more shadows than light as they passed underneath. Caught up in her own half-awake thoughts, Jan crashed to a stop on a corner, when both Seth and Martin both halted abruptly.
“We’re too late,” Seth said, his face up, sniffing at the air.
“Never too late,” Martin said. “Not until everyone’s dead.” With that uncomfortably cryptic comment, he started moving again, running not for the building itself—a church, Jan finally realized—but the wrought-iron gate behind the building. Her eyelids flickered in a now-familiar urge to close, and when she opened them again, a dark, four-legged form was soaring over the gate.
“Show-off,” Seth muttered and headed for the gate’s swinging door, unhooking the latch and slipping inside like just another shadow in the night.
“Too late for what?” Jan asked, caught between confusion and a sort of undefined rage that had apparently been building in her while she slept, and Martin, it seemed, got information she didn’t have.
“Supers,” she said with disgust and then, for better measure, “men.”
Wishing she still had the blade they had found in the preter realm, or a Taser, or something that could qualify as a weapon, Jan touched the fabric of her pocket over the inhaler once for reassurance and followed the super through the gate.
On the other side, there was a narrow verge of grass and then low, thin shapes that she identified as tombstones. They were in the graveyard. An old church, then, and as her eyes adjusted, she saw that it filled the entire city block, a low scape of headstones broken by the occasional mausoleum or statue.
Scattered and moving through that stonescape were other shadows, breaking apart and coming together, over and over again. And while on the other side of the gate there had been silence, here the night was filled by the grunts and low-pitched screams of bodies being thrown against each other, and an occasional, nerve-rattling sound like metal being scraped against stone and bone.
“Oh, god.” As her eyes adjusted, she was able to make out more detail, seeing that the fighting filled the graveyard, still more forms emerging from the double doors at the side of the building, occasionally falling back inside the building as though going back for seconds. She scanned the entire scene, instinctively looking for and then finding Martin. He was surrounded on all sides, hooves striking out. One hit a preter, another clashed off a tombstone, creating hot blue sparks and sending the abused stone tumbling over to the ground.
Another set of bodies flew past her—literally—as a winged super went by carrying an elongated form that could only be a preter. A third, unidentified figure ran alongside, hacking at the preter with a blade. A wet splatter of something hit Jan, and she raised her hand instinctively to wipe it away. Her hand came away glistening with something dark and heavy, strands dangling from her finger.
She heaved, and her chest caught, fingers squeezing her lungs until all the air left and none could get in, panic starting even as she fumbled for her inhaler, pulling it out of her jeans pocket and fitting it to her mouth, breathing in. It took real force to move her hand away long enough to exhale, and when she tried to breathe again, her lungs unclenched only long enough for her to toss the contents of her stomach onto the grass in front of her.
She stayed down on her knees, some part of her brain telling her that she was less of a target that way, and forced herself to watch the battle raging in front of her. It was brutal, the sounds vicious, and she couldn’t tell which side, if either, was winning.
Her lungs still felt like something was pressing against them, and her mouth and throat felt awful from throwing up, but she could breathe, could move. The smell of the sachet in her pocket came to her faintly, and she breathed in, openmouthed. The panic receded a little more, and she could think again. I need to do something. But the thought of moving, of doing anything, was beyond comprehension
. Nalith had been right; she was useless.
A body came out of the shadows at her—it was flying backward, she realized, even as she reacted, ducking out of the way and grabbing at it as it went past, yanking down hard until it hit the ground.
“Nice!” A supernatural grinned at her from out of the gloom, its face streaked with what might’ve been mud or blood and was probably both. Its teeth were very white, and then it was gone, back into the melee.
At her feet, the preternatural groaned and tried to get up, and Jan put her foot on its face, pressing it back down to the ground. “Stay put,” she told it. It would be smarter to break its neck or something. The knife the supernatural had given her in the yard was tucked inside her jacket—she hadn’t wanted to be walking on the street with it visible. She could pull it out, stab it...but she didn’t know where a killing blow would be, and if it broke free and grabbed her, then it would have the knife. She was wearing boots—maybe a heavy stomp would do it, and...
The faint sting of the splatter was still tingling on her face, and the acrid taste of vomit in her mouth was too real, the thuds and low screams around her too insistent. Not even a preter. She couldn’t.
Jan’s eyes had adjusted enough to the lighting, or lack thereof, to see the battle better now. She didn’t want to see it better, didn’t want to see it at all, but that was Martin in there, and Seth, and somewhere AJ, too. They were fighting for their lives—and hers. Jan had no illusions about that. The preter lying restless but still under her foot would destroy her, given a chance. Maybe not kill her, but something worse than that—would take her will away, turn her into something that served out of some kind of twisted love/fear/masochism thing.
“I know it wasn’t you who did that to Tyler,” she said to it, almost conversationally, “but you did it to someone else to be here, didn’t you?” That was how they held the portals open, with humans. Human slaves. Human “pets,” tortured emotionally and physically until they would do anything for the preter who held their leash. Until Ty, broken free and healing, still couldn’t return to his old life, couldn’t accept love or hope, but stayed behind so he could wash the pain off with blood....
The preter looked up at her, its face pale and beautiful, even half-coated in its own blood. “And they loved me for it,” it agreed, its voice too beautiful, too melodic, to come from such a creature. “As will you.”
Everyone had their breaking point. Jan knew that, rationally. She knew that there was provocation that caused someone to bend down and pick up a stone, to hurl it with such force that it became a weapon, a killing tool.
When blood splattered up her arms, across her torso, the metallic grit of something on her tongue, and she wasn’t sure if it was her blood or not, Jan dropped the rock in her hands, her fingers clenching convulsively.
Too many friends had died. Too many things had been destroyed. Jan couldn’t feel regret at her actions. She couldn’t feel anything at all.
If the preters won here, they would do terrible things. They’d admitted it in their own words. By the time anyone else realized what had happened, tried to resist, it would be too late.
But if they killed all the preters, every last one of them who was here, then the magic tying them to the humans and holding open the portal would also die. Wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t that stop them, if not for always, then at least for now, until they could find a way to shut the portals forever?
Where were the humans? Jan thought suddenly. Where were the ones holding open the portal? Indecision pushed aside the numbness, indecision and fear not for herself but for the others. Others like Ty, who hadn’t had someone like her and Martin to get them out, get them home safe. Where were they?
Worry about them later, a small, cold part of her brain said. As long as the preters need them, they’re safe, physically.
Mostly, another part of her brain said, remembering Tyler in the first moments. Only mostly.
Mostly had to be enough. The preters were the real threat. Jan reached inside her jacket and pulled out the knife. She didn’t know how to fight with it, but if someone fell on her, she could probably manage to stab them. She could take out one or two....
We cannot destroy each other, or the balance between the realms will shift. You know this.
Martin’s voice, but not Martin shaping the words. Jan didn’t believe in god, or gods, or fate...but she believed in the Center. She had to; she’d been there.
This wasn’t what the words had meant, Jan told herself, taking a firmer grip on the fabric-wrapped hilt, trying to rub off the sweat on her palm. That had been about all-out war, about destroying realms, not—
Balance. About maintaining balance. How no matter who tried to change the balance or for what reasons, imbalance would only make things worse in the long run.
Jan wasn’t sure she wanted to know what “worse” might be. But she couldn’t just stand there and let people—more people—she called friend, die. Her fingers curling around the hilt of the knife, Jan tried to find that place she’d been in before, that numb space where killing had become the only possible reaction. Her nostrils flared, and for a moment—just a moment—she could almost smell what Martin and Seth had reacted to. Blood, yeah, and fear, and a particular cold taint that she had come to recognize was the scent of a preter.
And it was coming from behind her.
* * *
Somehow, impossibly, she wasn’t surprised to see Nalith or the shadow lurking just behind her. If even she, Jan, could smell the bloodshed here, there was no way the preter queen could resist it, even if it meant abandoning her own court.
She had done it once before, after all, hadn’t she?
“You got here fast,” she said almost idly, letting the blade rest obviously in her hand. If Nalith tried to aid the preters, Jan was pretty sure that she would be able to thrust the blade into the queen’s side. Pretty sure.
What she wasn’t sure about was if Tyler would try to stop her or not.
“I killed the one who brought me here,” Nalith said, her gaze on the battlefield, not acknowledging Jan’s words or even her existence. “So that they could not open that portal again, could not find me, to bring me back. When their scouts came close, I merely moved, keeping a pace ahead of them at all times. I did not think that they would go to such lengths, to bring so many over at once.”
She sounded almost pleased by those lengths, by the carnage. Apparently, Jan thought with cold amusement, even unwanted attention fed her preternatural ego.
Like Stjerne, she thought. Like the consort. All me-me-me.
“It’s not only about you anymore,” Jan said. “You paid too much attention to this realm, so now they want it. Not to keep it, though. If they win, they’ll destroy everything you desire about us. They will take you back like a spoiled child being sent to her room, and lay waste to the things you value. It will destroy the spark you were chasing, grind it into ash, and laugh when it goes out forever. The Center warned you.”
The Center didn’t speak to her, a mere mortal human, but she was good at looking at the pieces, putting them together and finding the pattern that made it all work. Logic. It wasn’t just for breakfast anymore.
“They will not succeed,” Nalith said, still not looking at her. Preternatural eyesight must be better than human, the way she was almost eating the scene in front of her, her face rapt with...something. “I am stronger than them, in any configuration they attempt. I will not go back.”
“Yeah.” Jan pulled up as much sarcasm and irony and doubt and all the other tones she’d ever used to cut someone down, and loaded that one word with it. It was enough to make Nalith turn and look at her. “But they’re not going to stop trying, are they? You preters, you don’t change. You don’t want to change, most of you, and the fact that you did, that scares the ever-living whatever out of them.”
There was a slight brush of something against her hand and then the familiar feeling of fingers sliding against her palm, clasping it. A human hand, s
lightly sweaty but real. She squeezed once briefly and kept talking. “And they will keep coming, to either take you or destroy you, and you will keep—what? Moving? Throwing your new court in front of you like some kind of living wall? Think about this, then, when you’re contemplating that future. You’re using our tech to enhance your own magic. I don’t know how, but I know you are. Only thing is, our tech? It’s fragile. A single power outage and you’ll be just as helpless as we are.”
Maybe. A theory, on the spur of the moment. Don’t show doubt, Jan thought. Be ruthless, go for the kill.
“No, you’ll be even more, because you’ll be dependent on your court. And how well will those leashed dogs be loyal, if you show them weakness?”
Nalith straightened her shoulders, her pale blue eyes not showing the spark that supers did, but unnerving enough in the night. “They will give up. Eventually. Especially if your people kill enough of them.”
“So long as you are here, they will return.” Tyler spoke up now, his voice small but clear, even when Nalith turned to stare at him, as though her lapdog had just bitten her. “They could let me go—I didn’t matter. But you are part of them. They could have chosen a new queen, pretended you were dead or had never existed, but they couldn’t.”
“It’s not in their nature,” Jan said. “They won’t change.”
Nalith lifted her chin proudly, refuting them. “I changed.”
“No, you didn’t,” Jan said, sure now that she was on the right track. “Not inside, where it matters. You saw something you wanted, something you didn’t have, and you tried to take it, demanded it as your right. But it doesn’t work that way.” Jan took a breath to say something else, something scathing, but Tyler squeezed her hand harder, a clear warning. Push her too far, and she would kill them.
A shape came over the far-right line of tombstones, kicking a preter in the face and sliding under the blade of another. Jan’s breath caught: Martin. She couldn’t see if he was injured, but he was moving awkwardly, without his usual horse-form grace. And then a third form came out of the gloom just as he dealt with the first two, trying to cut Martin’s legs out from under him. Jan forgot Nalith, forgot everything but the danger in front of her. She dropped Tyler’s hand and moved forward, her other hand gripping the small blade the super had given her. Off balance on the gore-slick grass, she was still able to jab the blade up, catching the preter in what she thought was either his thigh or ass. Either way, it was enough to distract him away from Martin.
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