by Eric Asher
“It’s good to see you, too.”
The innkeeper grumbled something under her breath and gestured to the hall that led back to the large kitchen. My boots thunked on the ancient hardwood floors. I glanced up at the portraits lining the wall as I made my way past the grand staircase on my right. Beneath it waited a small upright piano, the only one in the building that had been tuned and working the last time I’d been there. The display case nestled in the corner of the opposite wall caught my eye, and I pursed my lips at the old, worn photo album within. I remembered what lay inside it. The thought of the faceless skinwalker still made my flesh crawl.
I’d heard voices when we first entered the hall, but now I could make them out: Zola, Drake, Aideen, and another with a light accent whom I hadn’t expected to be here. I rounded the doorway, and my eyes roved across the old fireplace before settling on the group at the kitchen table.
“Casper?” I asked.
“I won’t be here for long.” Casper held up a tiny square box.
I frowned at it for a moment. “What is that?”
“A camera.”
I gave her a half smile. “I mean, what’s on the camera?”
“Enough evidence to get Sam and Foster out of lockup,” Casper said.
Relief flooded through me, releasing a bit of tension I hadn’t realized I was holding in.
“Word came through after you met with Dirge,” the innkeeper said.
“What’s on it?” I asked.
“It shows Sam and Foster in training at the moment the bombs went missing.”
“Is that enough? Couldn’t they still get them on conspiracy for it or something?”
Casper shook her head. “This on the other hand,” she said, pulling a small flash drive from her pocket. “This is footage from a few of the silos. But I tell you, you’re not going to like what you see.
Gwynn Ap Nudd had a man, or Fae, rather, at each facility to move almost every bomb.”
I shook my head. “That’s impossible. There’s no way he could get someone inside all of those installations. I mean, how many are we talking?”
Casper shrugged. “No one really knows. Let’s just say it’s a shit-ton.”
“Some of them used wards,” Aideen said. “You can see the way the portals opened, but there were Fae in others.”
“Inside some of the most secured areas of the military?” Zola asked. “Nudd has been planning this for a long time.”
“They weren’t all Fae,” Vicky said, shoveling another forkful of breakfast soufflé into her face.
“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.
“Dark-touched were there.”
I glanced at Casper, and she nodded.
I pulled out a chair and sagged into it. “How can the dark-touched steal nukes? That’s insane.”
“It’s the smart ones,” Vicky said.
I rubbed my chin. “That’s just what we freaking need.”
“Be glad the green men noticed those bombs going missing,” the innkeeper said. “If not for them, who knows how long your sister and Foster might have been locked up.”
“I know, but why are the green men aware of what happened to the nukes?”
“It may not be my place to answer,” the innkeeper said.
A moment later, something tapped on the large rear window. The innkeeper frowned and then gave a kind of half shrug as she made her way over to it. She opened the blinds, and the tangle of bark and vines that formed Stump’s face appeared just across the deck. She slid the windowpane open and nodded to the green man.
“You want to explain this?” the innkeeper asked.
“You could hear us out there?” I asked.
“It was muffled, but yes.” Stump rubbed at the bark that formed his beard and it sounded like a belt sander. “With some effort, if I am able to touch certain boards of this home, I can hear what those inside are speaking.”
“Stalker much?” Vicky said.
I flashed a grin at the kid before turning back to Stump. “It’s good to see you again.”
Stump inclined his head, the vines of his neck flexing with the movement. “It is always good to see you, my friends. To clarify what the innkeeper said, we do not so much track the weapons of the commoners, but we are aware of them as a body may be aware of a cancer. And when the disease has left, one tends to take notice of it.”
“The metals?” Zola asked. “The uranium?”
“Call it what you may,” Stump said, “but it is poison. No different than what the commoners use to kill the growth around their homes, or murder their fellow humans.”
“It’s a little bit stronger than weedkiller,” Zola muttered.
“Regardless,” Stump said, “the meaning behind my words stands. No matter what the commoners may choose to kill with it, poison it is, without doubt.”
“That still doesn’t explain how we have surveillance video,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t pull that off their network.”
“Of course not.” Stump gave a small shake of his head. “The ways of the electric machines are far beyond what my people know, what with their lights and nonsense and all.”
“He means computers,” the innkeeper said.
Vicky smiled at the green man. “I could listen to him talk all day.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” the innkeeper said. “Or you will.”
Stump returned Vicky’s smile, and the expression gave a softness to his bark- and moss-covered face. “In some ways, the young ones are wiser than all of us.” He turned his gaze back to me. “You are not the only ones with spies among your ranks. The commoners have not yet developed reliable ways for identifying the Fae. Because of this, more than one spy has made their way into the ranks of the commoners’ military forces. Some of them are Nudd’s, but there are others more closely allied to the Morrigan, and those of the new water witch queen.”
I frowned at that. “Nixie has spies in the military?”
Stump nodded.
“Of course she does,” the innkeeper said. “She’d be a fool not to. Those morons now have weapons that can hurt a great many Fae. I suspect she’ll keep eyes on them for a good long time.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Put like that, it made sense. I wasn’t sure why Nixie hadn’t told me outright. Maybe she thought it hadn’t been something I’d needed to know. It still gnawed at the back of my mind.
“Take your evidence and free your allies. I fear we will need all that we can gather.” Stump turned to go, his words somewhat pointed and far less rambling than I was used to hearing from the old green man.
“Wait,” I said. “Stump, wait.”
The green man paused mid-stride beside one of the towering old trees and turned back to face me.
“Gaia says hi,” I said. “And so does Dirge.”
Stump smiled, but it didn’t seem broad. It felt sad. “The goddess is always with us. One just needs to know how to listen. Whether she is awake upon the earth, or slumbering beneath us, it matters little, for she will always be with us. And that is something I wish my brethren could understand in full. We have the forest gods, and the wisdom that the goddess left behind. And that is enough. Go in peace, young one, though I fear that peace may not last long.”
Stump walked away in earnest, his lumbering steps barely a whisper in the grass.
The innkeeper slid the windows closed and lowered the blinds once more. “I guess I need to learn how to lock the sound down a little better in this place. All the times I’ve threatened to turn him into firewood behind his back, and the bastard’s probably heard half of them.”
“Will they join us?” I asked.
“Join you?” the innkeeper asked, one eyebrow rising. “They never left you. Stump and those closest to him will be your allies until the end of time. You walk with Gaia, which means you walk with them. Some of the green men may have chosen to forget the power of the goddess, but now they know she lives, and I suspect the rest will fall in li
ne. They likely wouldn’t want to deal with the consequences if they chose the wrong side.”
I gave the innkeeper a half smile.
“Don’t flash your teeth at me,” the innkeeper said. “You need to figure out how in the hell you’re going to get beneath Falias to retrieve those bombs, or destroy them.”
“That was damn smart of Nudd,” I said. “There’s no way we can approach that place without them seeing us coming. Nudd’s army will be ready. We need a better way in.”
“Sound familiar?” the innkeeper asked. “Hiding your best weapons so close to home. Right beneath your own feet?”
I didn’t like what she was insinuating. “I’m not like him.” But despite my protests, the innkeeper’s words spoke to me. In some ways, she was right.
“Every time you’ve needed an artifact of dark magic, it’s been at your hand. It is clear you keep the things you value nearby, and if you look at Nudd, he also keeps the things that may be useful nearby.”
“Lots of people do that.”
The innkeeper shook her head. “Lots of people do not manage to wield a Key of the Dead or the splendorum mortem with little more notice than a tornado siren.”
I frowned at the innkeeper. “We aren’t that alike.”
“But more alike than you may think,” the innkeeper said. “Gwynn Ap Nudd is simply willing to cross more lines than you are.”
“Are you sure about that?” Vicky asked. “Damian did pull a fully crewed ghost pirate ship out of the Burning Lands.” She wiggled her hand across the table. “Now it just sails around the rivers here. Think it’s a perfectly normal thing? It’s not a perfectly normal thing.”
“There isn’t much that’s perfectly normal around here, girl,” Zola said. “Ah understand what the innkeeper is saying, but there is much that sets them apart.”
Zola and Vicky tried to argue about just how different we were while I pondered the innkeeper’s words. Vicky eventually gave up, opting to dive into another serving of soufflé rather than argue the finer points of dark-touched vampires versus raising an undead pirate ship.
“Stump didn’t tell us exactly where the bombs are,” I said.
The innkeeper sat back in her chair, a small smile lifting the corners of her lips. “And?”
“But if you’re right,” I said, “wherever he has them stored will be easily accessible. Practically beneath his feet. Why wouldn’t Stump be able to tell us a more precise location?”
“Because they’re hidden,” Zola said, leaning forward. “They aren’t simply stored underground. They’re masked by something.”
The innkeeper nodded.
“He’s done that before,” Drake said, breaking his long silence as he stood up on the table. “Nudd used to hide his forces underground in a four-walled room. Always four walls with four corners, exactly at ninety degrees. We can ward them against any portal.”
“Could Gaia break through it?” I asked. “Use the Abyss to circumvent it?”
“If you didn’t want to survive the experience,” Drake said. “It would be like opening a portal and having no idea where it came out. You could end up lodged in a brick wall, or be integrated with one of the bombs.” Drake frowned. “Now, that would be something to see.”
“I think I’d rather not see that.” Vicky gave a frustrated sigh. “But how are we supposed to find it? Or better yet, how are we supposed to get into it?”
But my mind was already working, and I had an idea that would either be really good, or really bad. But when it came to fighting Nudd, there wasn’t much in between. “First, we’re going to spring Sam and Foster from their cells, if Park hasn’t done it already. We need to tell him how to hunt down the Fae who infiltrated his ranks. We can assist him with that, but our priority is the nukes. And I think I know someone who can help us sniff them out.”
Zola narrowed her eyes. “If that was a pun about the werewolves, so help me …”
I grinned at Zola.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Park frowned and squinted at the screen, studying the evidence. “I’ve seen these recordings before. You’re telling me the ones in our system are faked? No one has access to do that.”
“It’s stored on the network, isn’t it?” I asked.
Park nodded. “You’re talking about military-grade hardware. You’d need someone with world-class skills just to get into that, much less swap it out without any trace of what they did.” He paused and drummed his fingers on the edge of the keyboard. “Which begs another question. How did you get this?”
“Old friends,” I said. “As to your other question, how much do you know about the Watchers? Or at least the group that used to be the Watchers?”
“Probably less than you’re about to tell me,” Park muttered.
A ripple opened nearby. I eyed it, waiting to see who came through. “Who are you letting open portals into the base? I thought that was restricted.”
“It is,” Park said, still looking down at the screen. “You and that creepy hand are the only ones that …”
But Park trailed off when he saw where my attention was. His eyes locked on the slash of red expanding before us, and on the armored fairy who stepped through it.
Park already had his gun leveled at the Fae. “This is full of lead and iron. Don’t make me use it.”
Drake raised his hands into the air. “I salute your defenses, First Sergeant Park, but they’re not impenetrable.”
Another fairy came through behind Drake. It was Aideen, in her smaller form, followed by Zola and finally by Vicky with Jasper.
“I think I’m gonna hurl,” Vicky said. “What the hell happened?”
Park’s gun slowly lowered. He blinked at the newcomers as he holstered his weapon. “That’s supposed to be impossible.”
“It certainly wasn’t easy,” Drake said, a small crease of frustration on his forehead. “Whoever built this structure knew what they were doing. The building itself forms a ward, which makes this place … difficult to notice.”
“Aeros built the tunnels,” I said, “or at least reinforced them on top of some old ruins.”
Drake nodded. “Did you tell him about the mage machina?”
“The hackers?” Park said, frowning.
“No one calls them hackers anymore,” Vicky said.
“They aren’t hackers,” Zola said. “They are mages with a technological inclination. Most were assassinated when the video of the conflict with the blood mages was released a few years ago. But Ah suspect Edgar has a few remaining resources.”
“You think Edgar got us the evidence?” I asked.
Zola nodded, looking over my shoulder toward the door.
A loud crack sounded on the floor behind us, and it was only then I realized I’d been hearing it for a while. Down the hall, through one of the corridors, came a sound not unlike Zola made when she wanted to call attention with her cane. And then he was there.
“I got the evidence,” Edgar said, drawing every eye in the room to him. He stood in the doorway in a neatly cut three-piece suit, and a bowler seated on his head.
But Edgar only had eyes for one person. He locked gazes with Drake, and neither of them flinched. “Not all of the mage machina worked for the Watchers. The best of them, yes, but there are some who can breach whatever they set their minds to.”
Park frowned. “Good to know. I guess there are still a few advantages to keeping things off the network.”
Edgar shrugged and finally broke eye contact with Drake. “You have the evidence. It hasn’t been tampered with, but someone did tamper with what remains on your network. I have two mages trying to track them down, but whoever they were, they were very good. From what I understand, there isn’t much of a trace left on anything.”
Park pressed a button on one of the consoles, and a small green light brightened. “Release the fairy and the vampire.” He gave a long order, that sounded more like alphabet soup than something anyone would make sense of. But a short time later, a v
oice crackled to life over Park’s radio.
“On our way.”
Park picked up his radio and held down the button before he spoke. “Bring them to me. I’m in the control booth nearest the archives.”
“Understood.”
“I do have one question, though,” Edgar said, eyeing Drake again. “I would call him an imposter, but I understand his powers rival those of Foster.”
“My mantle is older than his. Different,” Drake said. “There are no laws to say only one Fae can be blessed with fire, just as there are no laws that say only one immortal can lead the Watchers. Or what’s left of them.”
Edgar stiffened, the first reaction he’d shown since joining us in the room. “I wouldn’t …”
“Enough,” Zola said. “There isn’t time for bickering amongst ourselves. We have the location of the bombs. We just have to figure out how to get to them. Focus on the task at hand. If Drake betrays us, we’ll deal with him then.” She eyed Edgar. “Not before.”
Vicky moved closer to the old Fae. “I’ll stay with Drake. If he gets out of line, Jasper can eat him.”
“So be it,” Edgar said. “I’m afraid I may know the answer to who was helping Nudd’s spies. Some of our networks are still alive, and some of our own spies are still in Falias.”
“Out with it, then,” Zola said, biting off the words. “It’s not polite to make an old woman wait.”
Vicky snickered, but Edgar’s expression didn’t change.
“It is not my place to tell you everything,” Edgar said, “but I can tell you enough. Ward once had an apprentice in Gorias. A young woman with the skills to manipulate runes almost as well as the Warded Man himself.”
Zola’s frown deepened, the lines on her forehead folding into canyons. “Ah was not aware of this.”
Edgar turned to her. “Not many are. Leviticus, myself, and perhaps a few water witches.”
I flexed my hands into fists and glanced at Zola before turning my attention back to Edgar. “Are you telling us Ward’s apprentice is working for Nudd? Ward, who can create ghost circles, and warded knots, Devil’s Knots, and bend the very fabric of this reality? He has an apprentice who’s not on our side?”