by Alan Baxter
‘Gently. Sip it.’
He took the advice and the cold water was nectar on his tongue, iced pleasure down his throat. He rocked gently, a soft hum rising up through whatever he lay on, and realised they were travelling in a vehicle. A vague engine noise registered from as far away as the words.
‘Gonna be bittersweet this time.’
He smiled inwardly. That was Silhouette’s distant voice and her special healing potion was coming. The glass touched his lips and he gulped greedily, the supersweet, acridly bitter potion washed down. He coughed, gasped a breath, drank again.
‘Easy, easy.’
Tendrils of warmth tickled and buzzed through his body, pushed aside the aches and jets of pain that danced through every limb. He felt muscles reknit, tendons reduce from swollen insertions. The burns on his skin, grazes, cuts and breaks from fighting, cooled and closed.
‘Thanks,’ he said. Or did he? Perhaps he only thought it, his mind a turgid mass, sunk in a deep and black abyss. He wanted to open his eyes, but inconceivable weights hung from his eyelids. As the potion worked its magic, he smiled and let himself sink back into warm oblivion.
‘Fucking lightweight,’ Silhouette whispered as he went, but he heard the smile in it, and the last thing he felt was her soft lips on his.
‘You were quite happy to fucking sacrifice him, you bitch!’
‘Not sacrifice. There’s a greater …’
‘Don’t you dare fucking lecture me about the greater good!’ That was Silhouette. ‘Do you have any idea what Alex has done for this world?’
‘I would suggest that without Alex this world would not be in the danger it is currently in.’ That was Emma Parker’s clipped English tones.
There was a scuff and surge of movement, scrabbling and grunts of surprise.
‘I’ll fucking kill you!’ Silhouette snarled. ‘Let me go!’
‘Please don’t let her go, Jarrod,’ Emma said, fear quite evident though she tried to keep her voice level.
Alex sucked in a deep breath, forced his eyes to open. ‘Easy, Sil. She’s right.’
‘What?’
He pushed himself up onto one elbow, pleased the waves of pain through his tortured body were a fraction of what he had expected. He felt pretty good, all things considered. ‘It was Welby who led me to the book, which led me to the Darak. Only because I could read the book was I then put on a path to find that stone. You know how it went down. And only because I did that did the Fey try to leverage me into Obsidian. And only because I cast out the Lord’s heart from there are the Fey coming after me now. And Hood is a by-product of all that, created by me.’
Silhouette sagged in Jarrod’s grip and her brother warily took his hands from her arms. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said in a small voice.
‘It is, Sil. It wasn’t deliberate, any of it. But it is my fault. I need to own that.’
She winced, moved to sit beside him and pull him into a hug. She cast a hateful glance at Emma. ‘But you would happily have given him up, not given us a chance to fight. And look what happened. We fought anyway and succeeded. And Alex saved the children!’
Emma nodded, eyebrows high. ‘You did. The three of you really are quite amazing. I’m stunned you managed to do that. Of course, without the intervention of the army, Hood would have finished you all off.’ At Silhouette’s look of outrage, she quickly added, ‘It’s only a shame he got away.’
Silhouette hissed with annoyance, turned away from Parker. She stroked Alex’s brow. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah, pretty good, thanks. That healing potion of yours …’
‘I swear, I’ve got through more of that in the short time I’ve known you than in the previous one hundred years.’
‘Got any more?’
‘Yeah, still plenty from the last purchase. But you’re making a good dent in it.’
Alex smiled, squeezed her hand. ‘Reckon we might need a bit more before we’re done.’
She scowled at him. ‘You plan to fight then? I heard what you said to Hood. You told him you were done.’
‘I thought I was. I had nothing left, felt like my body was about to fall to pieces. And it’s true that if I die, the Fey threat is gone and others can deal with Hood.’
Silhouette shook her head, hair hanging over her eyes as she looked at him. ‘It might be true, but it’s unacceptable. I can’t deal with it. Don’t you get that?’
‘Yeah. And to answer your question, yes I plan to fight them both now. I want to live, I want to live with you. When I saw you rush in and save me again … But I will not let the Lady take me.’
Emma Parker cleared her throat in an entirely British way. ‘If I may? The battleground is prepared. We have teams of battlemages on site, preparations to attempt to contain Hood, and everyone with a gun is on orders to shoot to kill Claude Darvill the moment he’s spotted. Honestly, that bastard isn’t even indestructible and needs to be rubbed out on sight. We can’t underestimate him and that blade, or his ruthlessness. We also have some ideas about controlling the Lady. But there’s kind of a missing piece now.’
‘Which is?’ Alex asked, but thought he knew. Hood had gone underground again.
‘How do we get Hood there?’
Alex nodded. ‘He’s battered and run to lick his wounds. But his wounds heal quicker than I do with Silhouette’s potion. He’ll be in tip top shape again already and only more infuriated. We need to get a message to him before he sets up another elaborate supervillain debacle like that bus thing.’
‘Indeed. So how do we get him to come to us?’
‘I have an idea.’ All eyes turned to Jean Chang in the back, sitting tall and looking more together than she had since he’d met her.
Alex realised they weren’t in the motorhome they had been using previously, but a plush, short tour bus. He lay on a comfortable bed, another opposite him, and a fully fitted kitchen to one side. Three people sat up front, in Armour fatigues, paying their conversation no mind at all. ‘You look like you’re ready for a brawl,’ he told Jean.
Chang smiled, licked her lips. ‘What you said before about owning our guilt, that’s true. Sure, I’ve tried to do what’s right recently, but if I’d done that all along, maybe Hood wouldn’t be out.’ Before Alex could answer, she held up a hand. ‘But I’ve had a lot of time to think. I was a powerful board member of a multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporation. I owned that male-dominated circus and I’ve realised I need to get that confidence back. I’ve watched you guys work, watched you deal with things so massive, so dangerous … I can be a part of that.’
Alex nodded. ‘I know you’ve felt out of place here, and I know you feel like you’re somehow responsible for things. But I made Hood, not you. Darvill released Hood, not you. It’ll be good to have you firing on all cylinders. You’ve been invaluable to us.’
‘And I plan to atone for my part in all of this.’
‘Good. Hood would still be here if you had never become involved, you know. Darvill would have done it with or without you. Own your guilt, sure. But you’re bigger than that, right?’
‘Yes, I am. And so are you.’
That gave him pause, and he let her words sink in for a moment. ‘Good. Well, step up, Chang. What’s your idea?’
Jean looked around the group, her smile broadening at their nods and encouraging expressions. ‘Right. Well, Hood is motivated by money. He worships it. Not in some esoteric, idealistic way. He actually worships money as the highest ideal of existence. He equates cash directly with power and the more money he has, the more powerful he believes he is. He’s built all of Black Diamond on that philosophy. He might be some indestructible creature carrying this despicable curse now, but he’s still Hood. He still has that primary drive. He collects wealth by collecting artefacts for which people will pay massive sums of money. All along, more than anything else, he’s wanted the thing that makes you powerful.’
Alex put a hand to his chest. The Darak. The thing everyone wanted and the
thing he was vey reluctant to lose. ‘But he can’t have it, any more than the Lady can, unless she can separate it from me, and remove the entropy from it.’
‘But Hood doesn’t know that.’
Alex frowned, not seeing where this was leading. ‘But we can hardly call Hood up and offer him a deal.’
‘No, not exactly. But if he was led to believe you were setting up a trade with the Fey, especially if there were many items of arcane significance involved, he would not be able to resist. He might be thinking up some new and elaborate way of drawing you in again, which we can’t allow. If he got wind of the idea that you had a way to remove the Darak from yourself and you were arranging a meeting with the Lady to let her have it in exchange for some other items of great value in a kind of trade to bring about peace between you …’
‘He would definitely crash that party,’ Alex said. ‘You see, Jean! You’re good at this shit.’
‘I just know Robert Hood very well.’
‘Wait, though,’ Silhouette said. ‘You can’t just call Hood and tell him. He’d know it was a trap.’
‘Yes, he would.’ Jean held up her tablet. ‘But I still have access to Black Diamond files and accounts. That means I still have access to their subcontractors too.’
Alex winced at the word, the memory of his defeat in Canada at the hands of the hideous monster known as the Subcontractor. Would he ever get over that? The boom of the hotel clerk’s shotgun that had been the only thing to save him. He shook the thoughts away when he began to realise how much safer everyone would be if he had died then. Except Hood would have got the Darak and the book. It was all so fucking complicated, he just wanted it over and done with. ‘How does that help?’
Jean tapped up a screen that showed a list. ‘While we drove I’ve been putting together a fake deal, using contacts we’ve used in the past. Hood never trusts anyone and always has seers along to any deal, scrying to make sure no one is lying or planning a double cross. He knows some people he calls the home guard, with moderate battle magic skills, basically, as well as great physical training. I was never sure whether I believed all this stuff before, but now … Anyway, he always arranges his deals using various members of these groups, but he never uses the same combination of employees more than once. Too paranoid about people knowing his business.
‘So I’ve put in fake contacts and calls, made it look like I’ve been sneakily using his methods and his personnel to arrange a deal of our own. I’ve encrypted it all, but not well enough. I know Darvill will be watching and he’ll crack my encryptions and think he’s stumbled onto something. The fact I’m using Hood’s own people will infuriate him further. All I need to do is add a final location to the contracts and it’s done.’
Emma Parker made a strange noise, part chuckle, part squeak. ‘You really are one clever cookie, Ms Chang.’
Alex grinned. ‘You really are. You think that’ll bring him in?’
Jean shrugged. ‘I can’t think of anything more likely. He’ll want to call the shots and make you come to him. Unless we convince him he’s missing out on something big and valuable.’
‘How long till the thin day kicks in?’ Alex asked.
Parker looked at her watch. ‘Nine hours. I don’t expect the Lady will wait a minute longer than she needs to. As soon as the realms are thin, she’ll come.’
‘And she’ll be able to home in on me?’
Emma pointed at his chest. ‘With part of her husband’s heart embedded in you, yes she will. She’ll find a gate as close to you as possible. That’s partly why we set up where we did. Old country, lots of gates. Plenty not far from the chosen battleground.’
‘That’s not long at all. How far are we from the place?’
Emma turned, shouted up to the driver. ‘How far from Ground Zero, Gareth?’
‘About an hour.’
She turned back.
Alex nodded, lips pursed. ‘Hood can chopper in from anywhere pretty easily, right?’
‘Sure,’ Jean said. ‘When he gets this info he could be on site in less than two hours, I would guess.’
‘Then we’d better time this well. How ready are you to release the information for them to find?’
‘It’s all good to go. Take me a couple of minutes to set it in motion.’
Alex nodded, stretched kinks from his neck and shoulders. ‘Then we’d better get to the site, see how it all looks and make sure we don’t give Hood more than two hours to drop on us.’
Jarrod moved to sit beside Jean. Alex noticed a soft look in the big man’s eyes and had the sudden thought that perhaps Jarrod had a thing for Chang. He looked at Silhouette, a half-smile tugging at his lip, to see if she saw it too. Sil rolled her eyes at him, gave a slight shake of her head. What did that mean? He realised he was last to arrive at this particular nugget of gossip.
‘What if Hood takes too long getting there?’ Jarrod asked. ‘Or the Lady is late or whatever.’
‘Not a problem,’ Emma said. ‘Ideally we’ll let those two fight it out amongst themselves, at least to start with. But regardless, we get them into our terrain and if we have to fight or contain one or the other for any length of time, we will. It’s a good plan. Well done, Jean.’
They sank into silence as they wound into the countryside of northern Wales. Alex wondered what the near future would bring. Only nine hours until the Lady would be coming for him. He remembered how easily he had been shackled by her, how effortlessly she had trapped and tortured him. But he had seen the workings of that enchantment now and knew he could fight it off. And Emma had promised to teach him some Fey defence tricks. They had a little while to prepare.
Hood was another matter. Having faced the indestructible bastard once, he worried that he would turn out to be an unbeatable adversary. But if he could refine the Eld magic from Halliday, he might have a chance. His heart double-thumped. ‘My grimoire! From Halliday.’
Silhouette picked up a small backpack from the floor. ‘Here. We kept it for you.’
Alex relaxed, his knotted gut unravelling slightly. Another hour to the battleground would give him at least a start on the remainder of the complicated magic ‘Thank fuck. I need to read the rest of this.’
He kissed Silhouette, scrunched up on the bed, and buried himself in the swirling script.
28
Time passed in a dichotomy of fast and slow. While the hours seemed to drag by interminably, Alex struggled to internalise the contents of the grimoire, his sense of urgency increasing with every page. The text was dense, the concepts convoluted. But it slowly came to him. The way the Eld had scalloped away a part of something indestructible, the hard magic of the Fey Lord’s heart almost impossible to compromise, was inspired. Dividing the physical without entirely dissecting the essence. Playing trickery with form and realms. Alex had first felt it when he sought the shards of the Darak, the way they had been drawn to each other, impossible to resist. As soon as he got close, the shards were attracted to each other like irrepressible magnets. He felt it again in Obsidian, when he had finally found the anchor stone, the Lord’s heart, and it had drawn him forward so powerfully. He had barely been able to resist the pull, using the power of the Darak against itself, against the ground to cast the heart into the Void and use himself to replace its anchoring magic. It had nearly torn him apart.
But he understood now, better than he had when he faced Hood, how these things were separated only on a physical plane, in this realm, and ever ached to be rejoined. The Lord’s heart was truly lost in the Void, the only place absolutely separate from all realms, its influence utterly removed. But the Lady could perhaps gain enough from the shards in him to resurrect her Lord and that would be disastrous. He had to prevent it, had to remove the threat from any impact it could have.
He had a final solution, the strange and unexpected side effect of his bonding. He would gladly die to remove the threat to the world if that was his last and only option. But his fight with Hood had reinvigorated his anger.
He had hurt the indestructible lunatic and now he had learned more, maybe enough to truly control and refine the ancient magic and finish Hood. That was his first priority. And perhaps he could similarly find a way around another impossibility and figure out how to kill the Darak without dying himself. The more he read, the more unlikely that seemed, but he would try.
He sat back, raising his eyes from Halliday’s grimoire for the first time in hours and revelled in his refreshed strong urge to live. He remembered Silhouette and Jarrod fighting for him against Hood’s men. He surged with love for Silhouette. She had been the real hero since the beginning, when he became tied up with Welby and Uthentia’s book. She saved him and fought for him every step of the way, had rescued him from Faerie, and still fought. She never gave up. He should learn from her example. He was no fool; he had to always remember his death was preferable to the Lady recovering the Darak. But perhaps they had a chance here. And Jarrod was a genuine ally.
Though one truth nagged at him. This new magic that churned inside him had been designed by the Eld to be wielded by the Eld. By a team of powerful mages. He harboured doubts he would ever be able to truly control the sorcery on his own.
He stretched stiff and aching muscles, marvelled again at the healing potion. His body, broken almost beyond use from his fight with Hood and the magic of catching the falling bus, felt whole and strong again. They had arrived in Snowdonia hours before and he told the others to go, see the battleground. He had to finish reading first. He had reached the end of the book and finally felt as ready as he ever would, so perhaps it was time to see outside.
He stepped from the bus into a dark night to find Silhouette and Jarrod sitting on a bench under a canvas tent without sides. A gas lamp burned and flickered on a table beside them. Sandwiches and fruit and a gleaming silver coffee urn steaming gently covered the tabletop. They smiled to see him.
‘Read the thing?’ Sil asked.
‘Yeah. My head feels like it’s about to burst, but I got through it.’ He winced as the magic squirmed and burrowed in his mind, taking its time to assimilate into his consciousness. The few grimoires he’d read were old and powerful things. The process left him nauseated and discomforted every time. Probably something he would never get used to. He figured most people spent years developing enough magical ability to be able to read grimoires, built their strength slowly in order to gain the enormous advantage of those abnormal books. And even then, start with far simpler, less powerful tomes. His vision had very much thrown him in the deep end, to his detriment and his benefit.