“Good,” Didi said, finally. There was a note of understanding, even compassion, in her voice. “Now…relax, and allow it to happen.” She placed her hands on Felincia’s forehead. “Felincia; we need you.”
She chanted under her breath for a long moment, her words just inaudible to my ears. I felt it, however, a vast and powerful field building up around us. A thunderclap echoed in the distance, harbinger of an oncoming storm…or perhaps it only existed in the room. The Words of Power seemed to hang in the air, their very presence oppressive…
And, slowly, an image appeared in front of us.
At first, it was barely human, little more than a glowing sheet of light. As Didi chanted, it took on shape and form; first a glowing humanoid form, and then a more feminine shape. It hung over its former body, held there by Didi’s will and the magical field she’d summoned, spinning slowly in the air. Unlike the demon I’d defeated – it felt like years ago – there was no sense of threat, merely an aching pain and abiding loneliness. I saw, for one second, her face…and I almost fled. It had been torn by a despair too deep to be borne.
She was a very sad girl, I thought, somehow forcing myself to stay seated. I felt as if we were doing something utterly forbidden, as if we were peeking on girls undressing, girls who trusted us not to take advantage of them. I felt filthy. It wasn't like my first dirty magazine, or my first foray into the world of online porn, where the disgust and reluctance had finally faded. It was something that would always be forbidden. Didi…no wonder Didi had covered herself in piercing. It would be easy to just give up and allow the despair to take you. The pain kept her focused.
“We have called you here,” Didi said, speaking aloud. That was for my benefit. Felincia’s ghost would have heard even a whisper. “We require answers from you. We bind you to speak truthfully and to give us full and complete answers.”
“Let me go,” the ghost said. It was a haunting childlike voice, yet I heard it perfectly. It tore at the very heartstrings. No one could resist such a plea for long. “Let me go to my rest.”
Didi continued to speak, binding the ghost to its former body. I forced myself to watch, recalling old facts I had once been taught in basic training. Necromancy’s rules were odd, but very clear; there were certain questions that no one was allowed to ask. The principal ones – the existence of God, or Heaven and Hell, or what happened after a person died – were forbidden. At first, the dead would simply remain silent. Later, they would never respond to the call. A necromancer who asked too many of the wrong questions would find himself powerless.
“Let me go,” the ghost pleaded. Somehow, Felincia was becoming more…solid, more real. I felt as if we were bullying her, or abusing her; how could Didi stand it? I wanted to hate her at that moment. “Let me go!”
“Not yet,” Didi said, harshly. Perhaps she was affected too. “You will answer our questions.”
Felincia stared at her mournfully, but offered no further resistance. “Good,” Didi said, finally. “Good girl. What happened when you were last in this room?”
The ghost was staring down at her former body, as if she was unable to believe that she had once inhabited that shell. “They took her,” she said finally, numbly. One translucent hand reached for her throat, feeling the absence of the dog collar. I realised, suddenly, just how much she had resented its presence. It had been the final humiliation, the final sign that she was not trusted by her employers. The dead, free of all such limits, would want revenge. “They came and took her from me. They killed me!”
Her voice became a wail. “I had a job, I had a boyfriend, I had a life,” she screamed. “They killed me!”
“It’s all right,” Didi said, calmly. “We can pass on a message to your boyfriend if you want, or…”
“No,” she screamed. “How can I face him now?”
Didi nodded once in understanding. “Tell me who killed you,” she ordered. “Who were they?”
“They were just there,” Felincia said, her form beginning to break up into a ghostly white light. Didi stared at her until she reformed into a humanoid form. “I was there. I had just put Cecelia to bed – she wanted a nap, poor thing – and then they were just there. I couldn’t face them…”
Her voice rose. “They were there and then their form shifted and I couldn’t think and then they just pointed at me and…”
“You died,” Didi said. She pushed compassion and understanding into her tone. “You’re safe now, Felincia; you can talk freely.”
My thoughts were elsewhere. When humans had first encountered the higher levels of supernatural creatures – elves and the Faerie – they had had problems in comprehending their nature. The magic that surrounded them – that defined them, in some sense – made it hard for humans to perceive them. Human perceptions were simply incapable of seeing them as they truly were. The mere sight of one of them, without proper protection, was enough to paralyse or stun an unwary human. It could have been a magical illusion – invisibility is one of the easier spells to master, although it’s hard to hide from infrared detectors – but I suspected otherwise. If the Faerie had taken Cecelia…well, it would explain what happened to the wards.
“I can’t,” Felincia said. There was something different in her voice now, something worse than death. “I can’t...they’re coming, they’re coming, they’re coming…”
Her voice became a scream, too high-pitched for my ears, and then she broke apart into a wavering sheet of white light. A moment later, I felt something new appearing in the room, a presence that seemed beyond comprehension. It pushed down at our magical fields, trying to drain them to help manifest itself fully in our reality…I heard Didi scream before Felincia simply flickered out of existence. A moment later, her body exploded into a bloody mess.
And then the new presence was gone and calm descended once again.
“Well…fuck,” Didi said, picking herself off the floor. I couldn’t help, but giggle. She was covered in blood. It dripped off her bare body onto the floor. “I don’t know what you’re laughing at, hotshot; you’re covered in blood too.”
I looked down at my trenchcoat and swore. She was right. My black coat now looked as if I had been walking through a vampire’s private blood supply. Varsha was going to kill me when I brought it home for her to wash, but I doubted that most cleaning spells would remove all the blood. Hell, I might have to abandon the coat and get a new one entirely.
“Never mind that,” I said, ignoring her rude snigger. Perhaps she had a point about remaining naked. She could just jump into the shower and emerge clean. “What the hell happened?”
“Good question,” Didi said, thoughtfully. “Something else attempted to force its way into the summoning circle and tried to manifest in this realm. There are plenty of higher entities that reside in higher dimensions that sometimes try to break through into our reality, but…the only time I have ever heard of something like this was back during Haiti’s civil war.”
I winced. The civil government of Haiti – such as it was – had been utterly incapable of dealing with the Voodoo cultists and their priests. Armies of zombies and supernatural creatures had devastated the security forces and destroyed the government. In the aftermath, the captured politicians had been turned into zombies and sent to till the fields, except one. That one had, somehow, resisted being turned into a zombie. No one knew why. Haiti, these days, was a theocracy, with millions of citizens trying to escape. It could only be improved by a direct nuclear strike.
“It’s not a good sign,” she added. “Whatever took the girl was a major Power.”
“And that points right to the Faerie,” I agreed. The absence of a puppet or changeling still bothered me, but Felincia’s description definitely fitted the lower-caste Faerie. It was unlike one of them to resort to magic to kill a human, but they might have regarded Felincia as an abomination, a human changed by magic. The Faerie think of us as little better than rats scurrying around their feet. “I think that we’d better go h
ave a word with Mr Faye.”
“You might want to move fast,” Didi suggested. “If they did take the girl, they won’t wait for long before they start…experimenting on her.”
I shuddered. “I know,” I said, standing up. The blood had splattered everywhere and cleaning the room was going to be a major operation. There wouldn’t be time to even have a shower before I raced off to the Faerie Mound at Mannington. It wasn't the closest, but it was their…local capital, as we understood the term. I performed a cleaning spell and watched as most of the blood dripped off my clothes. It still felt disgusting. “Come on.”
“We’ll deal with the mess,” Vincent said, after we had explained everything. He hadn’t actually seen the mess yet. “Felincia was our servant and we will take care of the body, unless you want to autopsy it or something…?”
“No,” I said, tiredly. There was very little point in keeping the remains of the body. No one, not even Didi, would be able to summon Felincia again. I wondered if the other entity had killed her, or eaten her soul, but it hardly mattered. A human ghost can only be summoned once before it goes onwards.
“You’ll go after her at once?” Vincent asked. “You’re not going to wait for any support from anyone?”
“No,” I said, slowly. I understood the question, but no amount of force would convince the Faerie to see things our way. The only way to deal with them was to greet them on their own terms and be diplomatic. No one wanted another Moscow in the heart of America. It would have been nice to have an army at our backs, but the entire United States Marine Corps would just make more targets for the Faerie, if they decided to start a fight. “I’ll go alone.”
I looked over at Didi. “Get a shower and then go inform the Circle of what I’m doing,” I ordered, shortly. I wanted a shower myself, desperately, but there was no time. A second in our world could be years for the Faerie, or vice versa. I had to move as quickly as possible. “I’ll let them know what happened when I come out of the Mound.”
“You take care of yourself,” Didi said, flatly. She was brushing blood off her body without any regard for their carpets. I felt a moment of sympathy for whoever would have to clean them later in the day, but hardly any for Vincent Faye. Even if Felincia had accepted the compulsion spell willingly, it was still evil. “I don’t want to summon your ghost for an explanation of what happened.”
“You do that and I’ll haunt you,” I said, equally firmly. “Be seeing you.”
I walked out of the door, barely noticing how Aylia was watching me.
My mind was elsewhere. No one went to the Faerie and returned unscathed.
Chapter Ten
The thing about words is that meaning can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
-Terry Pratchett
When I had been young, the world had felt safe. Oh, I had known – and knew – that there were dangers out there for a young boy growing up into a man, but on the whole it had been safe. The city had been my home, a place where humans were dominant, a place I understood. These days, after the rise of the supernatural, the cities no longer felt safe…and it was worse in the countryside. As I materialised near the military checkpoint just below Mannington – and the Faerie Mound beyond – it hit me like a jackhammer. This was no longer any place for mortal man.
It began as a vague feeling that all was not quite right, a sense of unease that dug into my very soul, and blossomed into full-grown paranoia. I knew, somehow, that I was being watched by a thousand unseen eyes, belonging to creatures that were far from human. The sense only grew stronger as I looked around, taking in the deserted road and, far below, the noise coming from the hippie camp. If I remained for too long, I would either have to come to some accommodation with the supernatural forces…or die at their hand. This was their world now.
The farmers knew it, far better than anyone else. Some of them had tried to fight the supernatural entities and creatures, only to wind up dead – or worse – at their hands. Others had learned, rapidly, never to be out of doors after dark, or to leave some milk and food out for the Little Folk. Some had even managed to form alliances with the more human-like Faerie, the ones who considered us more than prey or fodder, while still others had become dependent upon them. I had heard that hundreds of farmers were deserting the lands every year, escaping to the city as the supernatural presence grew stronger; indeed, there were towns and hamlets that were rapidly becoming ghost towns, abandoned by their inhabitants. The Circle had run some highly-confidential projections and concluded that the United States might be at risk of famine within twenty years if the situation grew any worse. I drew my trenchcoat around me as I considered the implications. For all the successes we’d had in confronting human magic-users, the real threat might be the slow and steady transformation of the countryside…and the entire world. The human race might be heading towards extinction.
I shook my head and walked up towards the checkpoint. Whatever long-ago concerns about the use of military forces within the country had once existed had vanished years ago; the military had been the only force that could try to keep people away from magical sites. I – personally – believed that anyone stupid enough to walk into a Faerie Mound deserved everything that got (unless it was me, of course, seeing that that was just about what I was going to do), but Congress hadn’t agreed. The cynical side of my mind whispered that the real reason had as much to do with restricting the spread of magical items – they fell out of Faerie Mounds with dismaying regularity – but it hardly mattered. The maps of the infested areas suggested that no amount of military force could contain the spread. Humans were being pushed back towards their cities.
The sense of unease grew stronger as I approached the checkpoint. It was almost a relief when a soldier stepped out of hiding – I hadn’t even sensed him – and levelled a rifle at me. I held up my hands, to demonstrate that they were unarmed, and watched him carefully. His stance seemed normal, at first, but his eyes were haunted. Anyone who spent too long near a Mound ended up terrified of the dark, jumping at every little noise; I kept a careful eye on him, ready to jump aside if he looked like squeezing the trigger.
“Guardian Glass,” I identified myself, when he finally demanded my pass. By an executive order, only Guardians and people cleared by the Circle are allowed to walk into a secured region. I knew that the army was good at keeping people out, but it wasn't perfect. The hippies down south worshipped the Faerie, convinced that they lived in a land of milk and honey inside their Mound, and tried to get in at every opportunity. Magic-users, too, could slip through with ease. “I have clearance to enter the restricted zone.”
“Yes, yes,” the soldier said. The others had appeared now, relieved to finally have some other company. The unit had probably started out as a crisp and professional infantry platoon. By now, it looked as if it was on the verge of breaking up; two of the soldiers looked as if they were drinking on duty, while a third looked as if he was going to blow his brains out at any second. The Army rotates units through the restricted zone as fast as it can, but there just aren’t enough soldiers. “Good luck.”
“Thank you,” I said, gravely. It wasn't uncommon for people living near the Mound to have a sense of its inhabitants, so I asked. “Have you seen anything odd recently?”
“Odd?” A Sergeant asked. His voice was slurred almost to the point of being impossible to understand. “We saw wolves two days ago, a handful of pixies the day before, a dragon last week and…something the week before that. Is there anything in particular that you were interested in, oh high and mighty Guardian?”
“No, thank you,” I said, making a mental note to insist that the soldiers be withdrawn as soon as possible and sent for a long leave. Soldiers seem to take the presence of the supernatural harder than civilians, but no one knows why. My theory is that it’s because a soldier expects to ha
ve more command over his environment – and his enemy – than a civilian. The scores of slaughtered soldiers, at the hands of various supernatural foes, only made the situation worse. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I stepped through the checkpoint – feeling a gust of wind at my back as I moved – and walked onwards towards Mannington. Whatever the outskirts of the town might have looked like once, it was now an overgrown mess, a strange mixture of greenery and the modern world. Rusty cars were covered in bushes, the road was breaking up as shoots pushed their way through the tarmac and houses were falling down, broken up by the advancing wall of nature. I studied it for a second, thinking of how Washington or New York might look when the advancing supernatural world finally entered the cities and completed our destruction, and then walked into the town itself. It stood in stark contrast to the outskirts…
No one knows what happened in Mannington. A year after the first reports, before anyone really knew what was going on, every man, woman and child in the town just vanished. No one even knew what had happened until concerned citizens from other towns had gone to investigate, finally discovering a completely empty town. There had been no signs of a struggle, no hint that slave traders had decided to walk off with an entire town’s population…nothing. The investigations had been cursory. Once the world had woken up to the supernatural, it was quietly conceded that none of the town’s population would be returning and the search was called off. Two years after the disappearance, the Faerie Mound appeared. I suspected – and I knew that the other Guardians agreed with me – that it wasn’t a coincidence.
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