by Amy Sumida
“I'm vaguely insulted by your little macho, and slightly psychotic, tirade,” I chuckled, “but I kind of agree with you too.”
“Then ditch the asshole,” Killian shrugged. So simple.
“I love the asshole,” I sighed. “And in his defense, he slapped me because I said 'fuck Danu', and most fairies are deeply religious. I think the slap was just an automatic reaction from him. Though he was damn calm about it.”
“Whoa,” Killian whistled. “You know, I'm not really sure what to think of that anymore. I mean, I got a foul mouth on me, but I'd never say that. Bad mouthing the Goddess may be a step above not hitting a woman. I think he may have been right to slap you. In fact, maybe I should slap you too.”
I looked over to him in shock, and saw the mischief brewing in his eyes.
“You're an asshat,” I huffed.
“Maybe,” Killian said smugly. “But I know how to treat a lady. Even a princess. I'd be happy to prove it to you sometime.”
I blinked in surprise and swerved the car a little. He chuckled as I sent him a shocked look.
“That's right, I just came onto you,” Killian smiled wide. “Now you have three hats in the ring. Deal with it, Twilight.”
Chapter Thirteen
A few hours later, we were touching down in Great Falls International Airport, Montana. We rented a car and headed towards Helena. Killian assured me that this was where Uisdean and Rue had fled to. But Helena was a big city. When he'd said Montana, I'd thought they'd be up in the boonies somewhere, hiding.
Nope, not hiding.
We found them occupying a massive property on the outskirts of Helena. Nothing behind or to the sides of them. They were sort of at the end of a cul de sac, on a rounded piece of land that abutted a sparse forest. Four buildings sprawled across the parcel, patrolled by fairy-struck humans with semi-automatics.
Normally, humans who have been struck could only be un-struck by the fairy who placed the enchantment upon them. However, I had the unique ability of uncrossing. I could remove the enchantment, no matter who had cast it. Problem was, it was a sort of one-on-one type of work and it took a little while to cast, or un-cast, as it were. I'd have to get each of those men alone before I could uncross them. I couldn't do a mass removal. I could, however, use my dream-dusting on them, and simply put them all to sleep.
“And you scoffed at my gun,” Killian smirked at the armed men.
It had only taken a little over three hours to get to Montana, so it was still night. But just barely. We were parked across the street from the property's gate, scouting through our binoculars (Killian had his own). We both had all of our weapons, thanks to some glamour spells and a few temporarily fairy-struck airport security personnel. Killian slid into his shoulder harness, positioning his iron swords carefully before tightening the straps. The he pulled his rifle from the backseat, and started to get out of our rental.
“Hey,” I grabbed his arm. “We can't kill those men. They're innocent. They've been fairy-struck.”
“I don't care if they're toddlers in tiaras,” Killian growled. “They're standing between my mother and her safety.”
“I know,” I held up my hand when he glared at me. “My dad is in there too, remember? But those men could be good guys with a nice family of their own. People who love them and who are frantic right now. I'm not going to kill someone else's loved one to save my own. Not if I don't have to.”
“If it comes down to them or us, I'm choosing us,” he huffed.
“Of course,” I agreed. “But there are other ways to handle this.”
“Such as?”
“We sneak in,” I shrugged. “I have a magic that puts people to sleep. It's called dream-dusting.”
“You don't think your evil relatives have prepared for that?” Killian rolled his eyes. “Take another look, Twilight. They've got anti-fey charms all over them.”
“Anti-fey charms?” It was such a strange thing to have an anti-fey charm used against me, that I hadn't even thought to look for them. “But they're fairy-struck.”
“They probably gave them the charms after they were struck,” he rolled his eyes. “I thought you said you were an extinguisher once?”
“I still am,” I growled.
“Then you should have known to look for the charms,” Killian growled back, getting right in my face.
We stared at each other, both of us furious, and then something shifted. Anger turned into excitement. Excitement slipped into attraction. Desire. His stare dropped to my lips and I licked them nervously. His jaw clenched and he began to lean forward. But I swallowed hard and eased away. This was not what I needed right now.
“Look, let's just try and scout the perimeter,” I offered. “Maybe we can find a way in without having to hurt any humans.”
“Alright, Twilight,” Killian's voice had gone low, somewhere it shouldn't be going with me. “We'll start with your way, but we might have to finish with mine.”
I ignored Killian's innuendo and got out of the car, quietly shutting the door behind me. We both headed into the shadows, silent as jungle cats, and prowled our way through what little cover we had. We made it to the gate and crept around to a side wall. A length of cement blocks gave way to black iron bars. I smirked at that. Fairies protected by iron. Clever, very clever. The guards were making their rounds. I watched carefully, and after they passed, I started to climb the fence. Killian grabbed me and yanked me back into the cover of a copse of trees.
I turned in his arms and looked up at him with rounded, angry eyes. He gave me an annoyed look and pointed emphatically. I followed his gaze to a camera, whose lens had just passed over the spot I'd been standing in. Dang it, I hate being showed up. I sighed in irritation and felt Killian's chest shaking with silent laughter. A light punch to his side stopped that.
But then Killian's hand snaked around my waist and he pulled me even closer. His cheek slid along mine as he angled his mouth to my ear. “Don't start something you can't finish, Twilight.”
“I can finish it,” I answered smugly, “but it won't have a happy ending.”
I eased out of his grip and headed back to the fence, this time watching both the camera and the guards. How the hell did they get this kind of security up so quickly? They must have taken this place from someone who had all this stuff already installed. Poor bastard. Even the most high tech security system wouldn't keep a fairy out. I could have simply dismantled the camera with some elemental beag (minor) magic, but that might have alerted someone to our presence.
So I left the camera alone and climbed the fence. I landed with a soft thud, crouched and staring around me carefully. One of the perks of being only half fey was my immunity to iron. No full-blooded fairy would have been able to touch that fence, much less climb it.
Killian landed a second after me. We crouch-walked, I like to call it crawlking, across the yard, then flattened ourselves against the side of a building. I edged up to the nearest window and peered inside. The shutters were closed. I couldn't see a damn thing.
“Put your hands up,” the voice sounded hollow, without any kind of emotion behind it.
We turned to see one of the human guards holding a handgun at us. Before I could say anything, Killian simply elbowed the guy in the face. He caught the gun as the man fell backwards, flicked the safety on, and smoothly stuck it in his belt.
I gaped at him.
“What?” Killian huffed. “I didn't kill him.”
“I know,” I blinked. “Just... well done. Very slick.”
“Oh,” he brightened and preened a little. “Thanks.”
“Come on, People's Elbow,” I rolled my eyes and headed towards the front of the house.
“Quoting The Rock from his wrestling days?” Killian sounded impressed. “Nice one, Twilight.”
“Thanks, I'll fist-bump you later,” I teased. “And will you stop calling me 'Twilight'?”
“Nope, it's stuck in my head now.”
“You're an infa
nt.”
“You're a fairy princess.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, “valid.”
“Look there,” he pointed.
About twenty feet across a cement parking area from us, was a window with light trickling through its closed drapes.
“Alright, let's go,” I speed-crawlked across the cement, ducking behind car after car, and Killian followed.
There was a door a little down from the window. Locked, but that didn't matter when you had magic. I smiled, eager to show off a little of my skills, and reached for the handle. I could use telekinesis to move the bolts. But before I could even touch the handle, Killian grabbed it. The metal turned blazing white and then there was a small popping sound as the lock broke. He grinned at me, pushed the door open, and gallantly waved me inside.
“Show off,” I hissed at him as I passed.
The room we entered was dark, but light was seeping down a hallway from another room. Killian headed towards it, like a moth fluttering towards a bug zapper. I stopped him, and laid an invisibility glamour over the both of us. He disappeared immediately, but I could feel the heat of his body beside me. And I distinctly heard an impressed huff.
I padded down the tiled hallway. Even though I was invisible, I pressed myself flat against the wall before I peered into the room at the end. Just in case someone happened to be monitoring the area for auras. It was a huge room, the sort made for meetings, or dinner with the whole family, but all the furniture had been removed. In its center stood Rue and Uisdean, though Uisdean looked a bit unnecessary. It was Rue who was obviously in charge. Her husband merely watched from the sidelines with a worried expression as she worked her evil.
Rue held Dagda's club, the pommel pressed to her pale breast like a Bible clasped to the chest of a nun, with reverence and fervor. It would have made a beautiful painting; her standing there in a silk gown, fiery hair falling around her in disarray, and her hands clasped firmly around one end of that shiny, silver club. The other end of the club was thicker and rounded, covered in spikes, and the shaft extending down from it was carved with strange symbols. Those symbols were glowing with magic.
Was Rue bringing more of the dead back to life?
I felt Killian start to pass me, but I grabbed at him desperately, snatching the leather of his hanging hood and yanking him back. I felt his body tightening in protest, and shoved him in response. Hard. That must have finally got through to him because he gave in, and I was able to pull him back down the hallway. I headed outside and away from the building as fast as I could. Once we were safely around a corner, I removed our glamours.
Killian was glaring at me.
I hardly noticed him as I gasped for breath. My mind was still back in that room, seeing things I wished I could un-see. There were bodies lying limp around Rue. No blood, no wounds of any kind that I could perceive in those few, fast moments. The men appeared to have simply laid down and died. Those were the Pack witches, Wesley Dearheart among them. They had been strong men, and yet they looked as if they'd gone down without a fight. Could the club kill without even touching its victims? I couldn't process it. My mind pushed the question aside to focus on the rest of the scene. The witches had only been a macabre background for the true horror.
There had been other people in that room. They were dead too, except their corpses didn't know it. The zombies, for lack of a better term, were black, purple, and putrid yellow with necrosis. They all stood at attention in a circle around Rue, staring outward with cloudy, dead eyes. They held weapons, the weapons they'd brandished in life. Most were swords, but some wielded daggers, holding them out before themselves in relaxed, untiring grips, in case someone dared to attack Rue. The missing soldiers. Hunters and extinguishers both. From the looks of it, the witches had been the lucky ones. These animated dead men were living a nightmare. Shambling about in their decaying flesh, slaves to their enemies.
And Ewan Sloane was one of them.
I dropped to my knees and bent over double to vomit as tears simultaneously poured down my cheeks. I heaved and heaved till there was nothing left to expel. Then I spat and swiped at my mouth as I struggled to stand. I was gasping for air, silent sobs wracking my body. Killian paused only a moment before he helped me stand, and eased me against his chest.
“Easy now,” he said gently. “He was in there, huh? Your dad?”
I just nodded.
“Alright,” Killian rubbed my back soothingly. “We're going to get through this. Me and you, Twilight. We'll make them pay for what they did to him. We'll hurt them, I promise. We'll make it okay again.”
It was so stupid and careless, hugging him there in the middle of that enemy compound. So sloppy. But grief is sometimes too strong to be denied. I had lost Ewan, as my father, a long time ago, but I'd never given up on him. I had been so certain he just needed time to get over his anger towards my mother, and then he'd remember that he loved me. I was his daughter, despite the blood in my veins. Ewan raised me, and that counted for a lot. At least with me it did. I'd never know how he truly felt now. We'd never have our reunion. Because Ewan was dead.
Just not dead enough.
“We have to give him peace,” Killian echoed my thoughts. “Come on, Twilight. You can do this. We're going to go back in there and kill those bastards. Your father deserves to have a proper burial. He needs to be laid to rest, and you need to do that for him.”
“No,” I took a deep breath. “There were too many of them for us. Uisdean and Rue have dead soldiers to protect them. The dead don't feel pain, and that means they'll be harder to stop. They don't even need to kill us. Those zombies could just pile on top of us and hold us down while Uisdean and Rue kill us. Or worse, make us into zombies too.”
“But-”
“Was your mother in there?”
“No,” there was a note of guilty relief in Killian's voice.
“Good,” I laid an understanding hand on his shoulder. “Then let's use their distraction to find her. The living have to be our priority. Let's get your mother out of here and make sure she's safe. If we die, so does she, and then all of those men in there will have gone through hell for nothing. Ewan wouldn't want that. He would tell me to leave him behind and save your mother.”
“Alright, Twilight,” Killian nodded grimly. “The living come first, then we take care of the dead.”
Chapter Fourteen
Killian eased along the side of the building towards another door and did his heat trick to unlock it, “Seems as good a place as any to start.”
I nodded, still a little numb with grief, and followed him into the dark. The building was a make-shift barracks. Half of the men were gone, probably the guards outside, and the other half were sleeping. Luckily, they hadn't seen the need to post more guards inside the barracks. I suppose that would seem like overkill when they had men patrolling the grounds. Their mistake allowed us to search the building, and leave without drawing attention to ourselves.
We didn't find the witches until we came to the last construction. This one was guarded, but Killian and I made swift work of the fairy-struck humans. It was sword pommels to the heads for them instead of stabbings. I had insisted, even in the midst of my sadness and fury. I couldn't take my anger out on innocent men.
Inside the house, we found more guards and a roomful of chained people. Witches, every last one of them. As soon as we took care of the guards, one of the witches came rushing to the end of her chain, arms outstretched, calling Killian's name.
“Mom,” Killian cried in relief and held her.
A lump formed in my throat. It was bittersweet to see their reunion, so similar to the one I'd hoped to have with Ewan. Yeah, I could admit it now. I'd gone there with thoughts of a grateful Ewan finally forgiving me for my mother's sins. I had envisioned his gruff face wet with tears as he hugged me, and imagined him telling me I was still his daughter. That he'd been so wrong to denounce me. That he still loved me.
“Seren?” Killian's use of my given na
me startled me out of my thoughts.
“Right,” I blinked away the tears and started searching the unconscious guards. “Keys.”
“That one has them,” a male witch pointed to one of the unconscious humans.
I nodded, went over to the guard, and pulled the keys from his belt. Killian's large, calloused hand covered mine. His other hand went to my back, and I felt him press me there supportively.
“Just a little further, Twilight,” he whispered. “Can you hold it together?”
“Of course,”my words were tear-roughened, but I was steady when I stood and handed him the keys. “Unchain your mom.”
He gave me a grateful grin and hurried back to his mother. The witches gathered around him, holding out their hands for freedom, as Killian's mother eased over to my side.
“I'm Elara,” she held out her hand to me.
“Seren,” I gave her a little smile and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“How do you know my son?” Elara asked casually, like we were standing around her kitchen counter having a cup of coffee.
Elara had Killian's hair. Or I suppose I should say, he had hers. Though her hair was streaked in places with silver. Elara's eyes were dark and soft, reminding me a little of Cat's, and her figure was gently curved. A mother's body, made for hugging. My heart twinged a little, thinking of it. It hadn't been so long ago that I'd lost my mother, and now Ewan was dead too. Mom hadn't been anything like this woman though. Catriona Sloane had been an extinguisher through and through. When I hugged my mother, there had been little softness to her. Still, they were the best hugs I'd ever had.
“Mom,” Killian chided. “It's not the time. Come on, people, we're moving out, silent and fast. Got it? If you can't do both, opt for silent.”