Fire & Water

by Alexis Hall

  The whole nasty business couldn’t have taken more than a minute. When it was over, Sebastian was back in front of me, blood spattering his previously spotless white suit.

  “This is becoming tiresome.”

  My would-be rescuers had fanned out into a semicircle. Now the chaos had died down I couldn’t help but notice there was no sign of the Shaper. Two of the wolves had shifted back to their human forms, which—given that clothes aren’t part of the whole transformation deal—I’d have appreciated much more if I hadn’t still been kind of mid-sacrifice. One of them was Tara Vane-Tempest and the other was a redhead who I thought I recognised, although this was the first time I’d seen her naked.

  “Heather?”

  “You had to get yourself murdered in my back yard, didn’t you, Kate?”

  “You know, I really, really meant to stay in touch.” We’d been friends back in the day—when I’d been living in the North, dating Patrick, and yet to work out that I preferred girls. At the time, I’d felt quite modern for having a lesbian best friend. Now I was really kicking myself for missing out.

  “If you’ve quite finished”—the Prince of Wands sounded genuinely aggrieved—“I am about to ascend to godhood, and your attempting to catch up with old acquaintances rather dents the gravitas of the situation.”

  More people bundled into the room. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Patrick forced his way to the front, snarling and posturing. I was slightly more surprised he’d brought Sofia with him and flat weirded out to see her new boy with them. I’d have said that must have made the most awkward threeway in history, but I tried not to think of Sofia like that because, y’know, basically a child.

  “Sebastian!” Patrick announced. He had a tendency to announce things. “I shall serve you no more!”

  With a tone of oddly sincere regret, the Prince of Wands sighed. “Oh, my boy, you had so much potential. And you proved yourself so very useful.”

  “I’m done letting you use me.”

  “That assertion would carry greater weight if you’d ever had any idea what I was using you for.”

  I had no clue how this was going to play out. Patrick was a juvenile prick, but every so often, his creepy obsessive mindset made him a whole lot more effective than he should have been. For my own sake, I really hoped that this was one of those times.

  “Enough!” And here it was. This was the point where either Patrick or the Prince of Wands got a really nasty surprise. Patrick flew at his former employer with a passionate intensity that should have been impossible in anybody over the age of twenty-five. Sebastian raised a hand contemptuously, twisting his fingers upwards. There was a hideous cracking sound and Patrick’s legs bent like pipe cleaners.

  It didn’t stop him, though. Pushing through what must have been unbelievable pain, he threw himself forwards howling like...well, like an enraged bloodsucking monster now I came to think of it. That was enough to kick off round two. The werewolves leapt back in and, from my excellent vantage point of being chained to a fucking wall, I could see Eve bringing up the rear. She was keeping her distance and using one of those dart-launcher-wrist-things I’d seen her fight vampires with before. I was glad she was playing it safe-ish, because I really didn’t want her getting her neck snapped on my account, and she was way less invulnerable than most of my exes. While everybody else was jumping into the—in some ways literal—dogpile around the Prince of Wands, she skirted the edge of the room and sidled up to me.

  “Hang on.” She swivelled her arm and some kind of blade popped out of her gauntlet, allowing her to begin levering my chains out of the wall.

  Hephaestion, who had been dutifully guarding me and the bowl of god-making juice, turned to her. “Please refrain from doing that.”

  Eve ignored him. She shouldn’t have. He grabbed her and yanked her backwards. She’d been doing this fighting-the-darkness thing for a couple of years now, but I doubted she’d ever taken on an animated statue before. She shifted her weight with a confidence that came from years of dedicated martial arts training and hit him on the side of the head. I was really glad she was wearing that armour, because otherwise that would have been it for her punching hand.

  “He’s made of stone,” I explained. Slightly too late, I admit.

  “Yeah, beginning to work that out.” She twisted free of Hephaestion’s grip and backed the hell away. “Any idea how to actually hurt this thing?”

  “He is not a thing, Miss Locke. He is a person.” I’d been so distracted with the melee and the rescue attempt and the blood loss that I hadn’t noticed Elise coming up from the other side. “Mr. Hephaestion,” she asked, “might you be so kind as to allow us to remove my friend from this wall?”

  Hephaestion turned again, with that weird quicker-than-you’d-think grace that the statue posse seemed to share. “I am afraid that will not be possible. I have strict instructions.”

  Across the room, I saw a large golden-furred wolf fly backwards and slam into the wall. I was pretty sure it was Tara, and I was pretty sure she was bleeding badly.

  “It appears to me,” Elise went on, quite unperturbed, “that the individual who gave you those instructions treats you rather poorly.”

  “I fail to see how that observation is pertinent.”

  For a moment, I saw the Prince of Wands clearly through the fray, his fingers closed tightly around Patrick’s throat. “If you guys could sort this out sometime soon, I’d be really grateful.”

  Hephaestion hesitated. And Elise took the opportunity to move towards me, only to be cut off by a wall of blue fire, tinged with a light like the sun.

  Another great psychic burst knocked everybody to the ground, even the statues. The Prince of Wands stood in the middle of the room, pale blue-gold flames between me and everybody else.

  “That is quite enough.” He had no business being this calm. “Understand that I have the power to destroy everybody here and it is only the delicacy of my present undertaking that prevents me from using it. If you continue to push me, I will be forced to demonstrate the full extent of your folly.”

  Elise stepped forwards. “With respect, Mr. Douglas, I have yet to meet any entity that is capable of physically harming me, and so while I would agree that the rest of these people should, perhaps, withdraw for their own safety, you may make no such threats against me.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  From behind, one of Eve’s men sprang up and attempted to drive some kind of bayonet through Sebastian’s spine.

  The Prince of Wands didn’t even blink, he just let the blow fall, and the man erupted into a pillar of fire. “As I say, there is nobody in this room I cannot destroy.” He gave Elise one of his condescending smiles. “And that includes you.”

  Defiantly, Elise reached through the flames and yanked one of my wrists free. Sebastian raised a hand and spoke a few short words in a language I thought I recognised, but couldn’t remember where from. Elise froze. Her skin paled, and her eyes darkened. Reaching up with my free hand, I touched her and felt nothing but stone.

  He looked me right in the fucking eyes. “You see, none of you are beyond my power.”

  I pulled as hard as I could against my chains. They dug into my wrist, and clearly all I was going to do was dislocate my thumb, but right then I really didn’t give a shit. I was going to get my hands on this bastard if it was the last thing I did. Except I wasn’t. Between the iron and whatever magic the Prince of Wands had worked on me, I had no access to my mother’s strength, and solid metal wasn’t going to randomly break because I wanted it to.

  Around the room, people were picking themselves up. Even Patrick looked wary. He’d sorted his limbs somehow and retreated to his standard position, hovering over Sofia like he was the only thing between her and painful annihilation. Which, in this case, he might really have been.

  “And I see you’ve brou
ght my priestess.” Sebastian stalked over to them. “My faithful tracker serving his function as ever he has.”

  The fight seemed to have gone out of Patrick. It could have been the pain, but it was more likely the insinuation that he might have endangered his girlfriend.

  The Prince of Wands took Sofia by the arm and led her gently towards me. He retrieved the knife-of-killing-Kate and placed it in her hand. “I had intended to carry out this stage of the ritual myself, but it would be so much more fitting if you were to assist me. And who knows, perhaps instead of letting Sibyl eat you, I will allow you to serve as my bride and oracle.”

  This was too much for Patrick, who stumbled after them. “Sofia will never be your bride!”

  Okay, things had just got a whole new level of skeevy.

  “The term is entirely symbolic. I assure you I have no erotic interest in her. But heredity is as it is, and when at last I have assumed the throne of the Sun, she shall serve as my mistress and my voice on Earth.”

  “That’s never going to happen.” Now it was Samuel who stepped forward. The jury was still out on whether he was a regular teenage boy or an evil monstrosity from before the dawn of history. For the first time in a while, I was really hoping he was a monstrosity.

  “And what,” asked the Prince of Wands, “would you know of these matters, child?”

  “More than you’d think.”

  Yup. Monstrosity.

  For the second time, Sebastian seemed genuinely thrown. I took it as a personal victory every time he looked something other than smug or exasperated. “You’re not?” His tone was caught between irate and unbelieving. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Sofia.” Samuel held out a hand. “Come over here. It’s really important that you come over here right now.”

  Almost in a daze, Sofia began to walk towards Samuel. The Prince of Wands seemed curiously unwilling to reach out and snap her neck.

  “Turn back, or I shall cause your lover unimaginable pain.” As if in illustration, Sebastian raised a hand, and Patrick’s flesh began to smoulder.

  He didn’t scream. But the look of manly, piteous suffering in his eyes was just as bad. Sofia stopped. She looked at Samuel, at Patrick, then at me, of all people, although I wasn’t sure what the hell sort of advice I was going to be able to give her.

  “Sofia—” Samuel was still holding out his hand. “Please, come over here and say that you choose me. That’s all you have to do. But you have to do it now.”

  She was looking even more confused. “But I don’t choose you. I didn’t choose you.”

  “I know, but, look, come over here and say the words and this will all be over.”

  Sebastian moved his hand downwards, and Patrick’s flesh burst into flames, his skin blackening and necrotising as the corpsefire worked across it. Sofia glanced towards him, then ran into Samuel’s arms.

  “I choose you,” she cried. “Please, if you can stop this, I choose you.”

  And the room filled with daylight.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The End & Nothing Else

  Everything had changed, and nothing had changed. I was still mostly tied to a wall, Elise was still a chunk of lifeless stone, and nearly everybody who’d come to rescue me was still battered, bleeding, or dead.

  But the fire in front of me had vanished, and while the iron around my extremities was still bunging up my senses like a thick blanket, Sebastian’s eerie presence in my mind seemed to have gone too. Patrick had stopped writhing in agony, and the new boy in Sofia’s life was now bathed in golden light and looking a whole lot less like a teenager than he had ten seconds ago.

  “It is over, usurper,” he said.

  The Prince of Wands straightened his lapels. “I assure you, it is far from that.”

  “The power you stole has been returned.”

  “I still have plenty of my own.”

  “None that will help you against the sunlight.”

  “Do not be so sure. Your kind have weathered modernity far less well than mine.” Sebastian surveyed the room. Now the fight was over, he’d settled back into the implacable, immaculate calm that I always found so infuriating. You shouldn’t be able to carry that shit off covered in blood, but he somehow managed it. “As for the rest of you, you have made an enemy today.”

  “You will never...” Patrick’s voice was harsh, faltering. He was royally fucked, but it still wasn’t enough to stop him grandstanding. “You will never harm Sofia again.”

  “Had you permitted my ascension, I would have been incapable of so doing. As it stands, I’m afraid all bets are off.”

  Eve peeled herself away from the wall. From the way she was holding her ribs, it seemed like she’d taken a nasty fall. “Big words from someone we just beat.”

  “You believe”—the Prince of Wands folded his hands neatly in front of him—“the fact that two werewolf packs, an ancient vampire, a former servant with access to far too many of my secrets, a squad of fully armed soldiers, a prophetess, her guardian, and an actual god were, between them, able to fight me to a standstill reflects poorly on my capabilities?”

  The great golden wolf, its wounds already closing, shifted and stood upright, becoming Tara Vane-Tempest in her more bipedal, more distracting form. “I think it reflects poorly on your chances of leaving this place alive.”

  I glanced round. She did kind of have a point. We were in a stone room underground with one exit. Unless Sebastian had something very sneaky up his sleeve, he was totally fucked.

  I was not betting on him being totally fucked.

  As the wolves closed in, his hand tightened around the tiny bone and briar amulet that he had, in good Blue Peter style, made earlier. He vanished in a flurry of fallen leaves and a gust of air that smelled of uncut trees and hunters’ dens. My mind was still fuzzy from the iron, but in the Deepwild, my mother’s head came up sharply. Trespasser.

  Patrick made a futile grab for the space where the Prince of Wands had been and Tara swore the way only a truly posh person could. While everyone else was either licking their wounds or flipping their shit, Eve limped over to my side and began working me free of the last shackles.

  When she was done, I slumped to the ground, absently rubbing the marks where the metal had bitten into me. I’d expected to feel more... I don’t know...angry, shocked, scared? But I was kind of done right now. Just...done. I mean, what the fuck was even happening? The room was a babble of people planning, emoting and stressing. Sofia’s new boytoy was standing in the middle of it all glowing like a white shirt in a nightclub. And Elise...

  Fuck. Elise.

  I could recognise a statue when I fucking saw one but I hauled myself up and called her name and touched her face and did a bunch of other stupid shit that I knew would never help or make a difference. She looked so perfect, so like herself, as if she was just on the other side of alive. But there was only stone and stillness.

  “Kate...” Eve put a hand on my arm.

  Which was absolutely the last fucking thing I wanted. Flinging her off, I whirled around and saw Hephaestion, all fucking demure in the corner like he hadn’t helped reality’s biggest arsehole destroy my only fucking friend.

  “What did he do to her?” It came out quite screamy, but I was way beyond the point of give a shit.

  “He quenched her animating fire.”

  I punched him in the face and immediately regretted it because I’m pretty sure I broke my hand. Couldn’t quite feel it though. He didn’t even blink. “How do we unquench her?”

  “I’m afraid I am not privy to the master’s secrets. And you will find striking me unproductive.”

  I hit him again anyway, and my hand protested loudly. Yep, definitely broken.

  “Kate.” That was Eve again. This was her for-fuck’s-sake voice not her I’m-sorry-this-happened voice. “You have to stop th
is.”

  I didn’t have to do anything. But I also didn’t have it in me to fight anything anymore.

  Next thing I knew, I was sitting on the grass outside and somebody had put a blanket around me. My hand was taped up, and my cuts were bandaged.

  I really needed a drink.

  I didn’t keep track of what happened next. All I could think about was getting Elise home, and Eve eventually promised to arrange it. She accidentally called it shipping which made me want start punching things again.

  The weird thing about being rescued is that once you’ve been rescued your job is over. Which was probably for the best because I was completely out of it. I barely even said hello to Heather, despite not having seen her in fifteen years. It made me a shitty friend, but why break the habit of a lifetime.

  A bunch of people offered to take me home, but I couldn’t quite face six hours in a car—or even two hours on a jet—with any of them. I was going to ask somebody to take me to the nearest railway station, but it turned out that was in Carlisle. In the end, I let Eve put me in a sinister black transit van with one of her squads of quasi-legal paramilitary monster hunters. It was a pissing miserable drive back south, but at least none of them seemed interested in talking to me, and they’d lost enough of their own in the operation that they didn’t seem particularly inclined to make me feel better about anything that had happened. Honestly I think I slept most of the way back. And for the first time in a good long while, nobody came to speak to me in my dreams.