High Voltage

by Karen Marie Moning

  “You know who I am and what I do,” I said to Sara softly. “Have you heard such terrible things about me, then? Or the foster center?”

  “I’ve not heard of your ‘foster center’ at all,” she said stiffly. “But kids on the telly always get split up.” And dreadful things happen to them, the shadows in her eyes said.

  “What about me?” I said.

  “What about you?” Sara said, with a dismissive sniff.

  I smiled faintly. She knew who I was. I was a legend. My talents coupled with the infrequent appearance of Shazam had seen to that.

  “You’re some kind of superhero!” the boy exclaimed. “And your sword,” he gestured to it where it was sheathed across my back, “crashes like lightning when you fight. And you have a great, fat cat with superpowers!”

  I winked at Thomas. “Never call him fat. It makes him grumpy. Nor is he…quite a cat.” Well, he was a Hel-Cat, but that was an entirely different thing.

  “There’s no such thing as superheroes,” Sara scoffed. “And if you are one, why didn’t you stop the Faerie—” She clamped her mouth shut.

  These weren’t the first children I’d found who believed the Fae had stolen their parents. It made no sense. Fae didn’t abduct adults, they lured them off with glamour, illusion, and lies. “Where else will you sleep tonight? They firebombed your squat and burned you out,” I reminded.

  For no reason. In a moment of boredom, a diversion for the three bullies who’d done it. They’d laughed as the children fled the blazing shell, screaming. Sent three half-starved kids and a helpless baby out into the deadly night. I’d been torn between going after the kids or the bastards who’d tossed the bombs. I’d gone for the kids.

  First.

  Sara fisted her hands at her sides. “It wasn’t fair! I found that house. No one else was living there. I watched it for five days before we took it! And they burned it. A perfectly good place to live. They didn’t even want it! Why would anyone do that?”

  A house with running water and electricity; a thing she’d needed desperately to keep her family alive. But possession was nine-tenths of the law only if one was strong enough to enforce that law, and her ragged troop wasn’t.

  During the day, Dublin, AWC, was a normal, bustling, safe city, if there was such a thing with the walls down between Fae and Mortals, two-thirds of the world population gone, fragments of Faery drifting free, Light Court Fae living openly in town, establishing cultlike settlements around the country, and gangs warring to control supply and demand.

  At night all bets were off. The predators came out to play, and if you weren’t one of them, you were meat. There were only three types of beings that dared trespass beyond the protected Temple Bar District after dark: the very powerful; the very foolish; or the helpless, driven there by one threat or another.

  “Just stay here with me for the night,” Rainey said gently. “See how you feel in the morning. No one will force you to remain with us. May I see the baby, Sara?” She extended her arms. “I believe we’ve a diaper that needs changing.”

  Sara shot a quick glance over her shoulder and sniffed. Then glared up at Rainey.

  “I suppose you’ve no diapers,” Rainey went on in a low, soothing tone. “No food, or change of clothing. We’ve plenty of that here.”

  Of course, Sara had nothing, I thought with a rush of bitterness and relief. She hadn’t been in the streets long enough to realize a child on her own needed many, many places to hide. All that she’d managed to beg, borrow, or steal was stashed in the house that was taken from her.

  It was time for tough love. I said, “Do you want your baby sister to get diaper rash? Or catch cold from the weather? How will you get medicine if one of you gets sick? You might be able to survive out there, Sara, but the others won’t. What if something happens to you? What will your sisters and brother do then? You’re responsible for them. You have to be strong enough for four. Now isn’t the time to be shortsighted and selfish.”

  Sara flinched and cried, “I’m not selfish!” Fear, isolation, crushing responsibility, she woke up to it, lived it all day, and fell asleep with it—a too-heavy stone in her too-empty stomach. I wanted to hug her. Take her in my arms and promise her life would be good again. Not selfish at all. Selflessly doing everything she could. But I needed to get her inside the door of the townhouse. There were three bastards skulking around out there, preying on the innocent, with my sights on their backs.

  I knew what she was thinking, freedom conferred a certain solace: When it’s only you taking care of your world, you feel as if you have some control over the many things that might go wrong. When you widen your circle to trust others, the risks increase exponentially.

  As if she’d just ended an inner debate on the same thought, Sara Brady tensed, rising onto the balls of her feet again, trembling but determined.

  I shot Rainey a look that said, She’s going to bolt.

  On cue, Rainey pushed the door to the townhome open all the way, allowing the scent of baking bread and a slowly simmering stew to waft out.

  I watched Sara carefully. I’d had to drag a few kids inside, kicking and screaming, and had no problem doing so now. But more often than not, what words failed to accomplish, the promise of a hot meal did. It was easier for them in the long run if they took that first step willingly.

  “Sara, I’m hungry,” the younger girl cried plaintively. “And thirsty and I need to pee! Just tonight, okay?”

  “Can we, huh, Sara, please?” Thomas chimed in. “I’m cold!”

  Sara looked from my eyes to Rainey’s and back again. Few adults probed gazes with such intensity. But the fate of her entire family was in her eleven-year-old hands. I wanted to tell her how proud I was of her. That she impressed me with all she’d done to keep them alive and together. But Rainey would say all that and more.

  “Okay,” Sara Brady said tightly. “But just for tonight. One night,” she repeated, glaring at her siblings.

  Once my charges were tucked safely inside and the door was closed, I smiled as I melted into the night.

  That was what they all said, at first. Then found their fears were no match for the breadth and scope of Rainey Lane’s heart.

  Seeing Mac’s mom was always uncomfortable for me. Given the unspoken that lay between us.

  She’d never been anything but welcoming and kind. It was why I’d chosen to bring the first of the children to her and her husband, Jack, that bloody night, months ago. And why I would continue bringing them, assured she would always grant them safe haven.

  Anyone who would welcome someone like me could never turn away a child.

  * * *

  π

  I tracked my prey into Temple Bar and out, across the River Liffey and back again, debating whether the trio was so powerful, so drunk or drugged, or just so bloody stupid that they brazenly walked the killing fields of our city.

  Their deaths would save countless lives.

  Still, my sword hand itched so much from not being allowed to use it to kill the Fae now that Mac was queen, I’d begun to question my sentencing methods. I’d been taught a taste for the kill at a young age. Patterns like that are hard to break. I was good at it and someone had to do it. Then Dancer died and the finality of death took on new meaning for me. I still haven’t found mercy—with the exception of kids and animals—but I’ve discovered creative sentencing. I had a few choice fragments of Faery—IFPs, Mac used to call them—I’d begun using for prisons.

  Speaking of my sword hand, it really was itching, and scratching it through my fingerless glove wasn’t working so I peeled it off.

  My palm was black and cold as ice. The last time I’d seen it this bad was years ago, standing in a cemetery, watching shadows explode from the graves. Shadows I’d been hunting for the past two years, with no success. No one else had seen them that night, and no one
had seen them since.

  I watched as the darkness spread, creeping around to the back of my hand then shooting up into my fingers. A sudden, sharp pain stabbed beneath all my nails. Black veins exploded up my wrist, vanishing into the sleeve of my jacket.

  I stripped off my coat. Inky veins and black streaks marbled my left arm, nearly to the shoulder.

  I was fourteen when I stabbed a Hunter through the heart with the Fae Hallow, the Sword of Light. The giant winged beast gushed black blood and shot me an incomprehensible look before closing fiery eyes. I thought I killed it but when I returned to snap photos for my newspaper, the enormous dragonlike creature was gone. My hand turned to dark ice within the hour, making me worry something of the creature had seeped up my sword and infected me. I was enormously relieved when my hand regained its normal color and temperature a few days later. I’d since discovered spells work better when etched with that hand and if, occasionally, I woke in the middle of the night to find it dark and freezing, I considered it a static oddity.

  It was no longer static. Something had changed.

  I waited to see if the darkness under my skin would continue to spread. When it didn’t, I put my glove on and shrugged back into my jacket.

  There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t unstab the Hunter. I’d think about it later.

  My hunt took me in the direction of Barrons Books & Baubles. I liked seeing the lovely, spatially challenged bookstore that was sometimes four floors, sometimes six, slicing the night, bastion eternal, spotlights blazing on the rooftop. It was a promise, made of timeless stone, polished wood, wrought iron, and stained glass: One day, Mac and Barrons would come back. One day, I’d bang in that door again. One day, the people who mattered to me would return.

  Through the many disasters and riots that had befallen our city, even the ice age of the Hoar Frost King, Barrons Books & Baubles had remained untouched. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it had stood there since the dawn of time. There’s a special feeling about the spot, as if once, a very long time ago, something terrible nearly happened at this precise longitude and latitude, and someone or -thing dropped the bookstore on the gash to keep the possibility from ever occurring again. As long as the walls stand and the place is intact, we’ll be okay. Some people have churches. I have BB&B.

  I turned a corner, anticipating the familiar sight, the rush of warm memories.

  The bookstore wasn’t there.

  I narrowed my eyes, blinked and looked again.

  Still not there.

  I scowled down damp, fog-wisped blocks at an empty concrete lot. Then I kicked up into the slipstream and devoured the distance, stopping shy of where the front wall of the bookstore should be. If the building was concealed with glamour, I had no intention of crashing into it. I sported fewer bruises these days and liked it that way.

  Beyond the empty lot, Jericho Barrons’s epic garage was gone, too. In its place was another empty, concrete-surfaced lot.

  My stomach clenched.

  I reached out and felt around. No wall. I took a few steps and groped blindly about again. I strode forward until I was standing dead center in the rear seating area of the bookstore. Mac’s fireplace should have been to my right, the Chesterfield behind me.

  There was nothing.

  I got a sudden chill. “Nothing” wasn’t quite the right word. The bookstore was gone. But a thick, gluey residue lingered, as if something cataclysmic had transpired here, leaving a miasma of emotional, temporal, or spatial distortion in its place. Perhaps all three.

  “This is bullshit,” I growled. I’d had it. Enough was enough. Chester’s nightclub at 939 Rêvemal Street had gone dark two years, one month, four days, and seventeen hours ago, not that I was keeping track or anything; the Fae-run club Elyreum on Rinot Avenue had taken its place, the Nine were gone, and the last I’d heard Christian was somewhere in Scotland, holed up in an ancient crumbling castle (shades of Unseelie King anyone?) with powerful wards placed at a seventy-five-mile perimeter around him to keep everyone out. Or him in. No one seemed sure.

  Now someone or something had taken my bookstore. The universe continued erasing the best parts of my life.

  Squaring my shoulders, I stalked to the empty lot where the garage should have been and studied the concrete, looking for wards, spells, any hint of illusion or glamour.

  Nothing. Both buildings were simply gone.

  As was my promise.

  I knew nothing about what was going on with Mac, and had no way of contacting her. Had she established control over the Fae court? Taken them away and tidied up after herself? The bookstore was a site of immense power that she and Barrons would never leave lying around for someone else to exploit or claim.

  Feeling oddly lost without my Mecca—Dublin just wasn’t Dublin without BB&B—I spun away and was nearly back to the street when I felt a rumble beneath my feet, paused and cocked my head, listening intently. There it was again faintly, so faintly I’d almost missed it, even with my superb hearing. The baying of an animal. A wounded animal from the sound of it. Badly wounded. Not a wolf. Something…Fae? Terrible sound. Pain, so much pain.

  I’ll never let you be lost again.

  Out of the blue, Ryodan’s voice exploded in my head, deep and faintly mocking. I had no idea how that memory escaped incarceration from the high security ward of my disciplined brain. All my “that man” memories were under strict house arrest, locked down tight. I didn’t think about Ryodan anymore.

  There’d been a time the sheer number of superheroes in Dublin had annoyed me. Now I was a wolf without a pack. There’d been a time everyone had wanted me to open up, let them in. I’d complied; a word I can barely think inside my head even when it’s the right thing to do, without hackles sprouting like poison ivy all over my body. And what did they do?

  Left.

  I was feeling as volatile as my Hel-Cat but the bookstore’s disappearance was the last straw.

  It began to rain, further dampening my mood. Rain is just what Ireland does. You’d think I’d be used to it. I hold a deep, personal grudge against rain: it makes my hair go curly and wild, completely undermining the cool, composed look I like to project to the world.

  Breathing deep, I kicked up into the slipstream where I could avoid the raindrops. Unless animals began attacking Dublin, whatever was baying wasn’t my problem. It sounded like it was dying anyway. And if such an attack did come, I knew one very hungry Hel-Cat that would relish the job.

  I turned my focus back to what I excelled at: the hunt.

  Dublin, or dubh-linn, “the black pool,” with its many colorful inhabitants, was my city now, more so than it had ever been, given every bloody damned one of my fellow warriors had bloody well decamped.

  I would protect it.

  * * *

  π

  I lost my prey at the mirror.

  Or rather, I let them go, unwilling to leap blindly into a Silver with an unknown destination.

  I’d been closing in fast when the three men ducked into the entrance of an abandoned, crumbling brewery on the north bank of the River Liffey. I’d shadowed them through the gloomy industrial interior and was about to ease up into the slipstream to nab them when they abruptly vanished into a wall.

  I approached with caution. When the Song of Making was sung, repairing the fabric of our world, I’d thought reality would return to a semblance of normal; the Fae-induced changes to our planet would reverse; the Light Court would retreat to their own realm despite the lack of a wall between our worlds, and society would resume its usual bleating, morally ambiguous course.

  In retrospect, I don’t know why I thought any of those things. Perhaps I’d just wanted a happy ending.

  None of it happened. Post-Song reality was one in which the rules only became clear by interacting with them, often with unpleasant consequences. Children were
being born with unusual gifts—although I’d call some of them curses; objects didn’t always function quite like one had every rational reason to expect; doors didn’t consistently go where you thought they would; and mirrors were the most unreliable of all—even human ones.

  Magic burned in the planet, more potent than ever, as if the ancient melody had penetrated deep into the Earth, crooning in dangerously random fashion “Awaken.” Everything had gotten more juice, even us sidhe-seers.

  The many new elements of unpredictability had changed my behavior. I traveled in the slipstream only for short distances now, under calculated circumstances. There was too much I needed to see, less I could take for granted, and I absorbed few details moving in a higher dimension.

  I skirted a large vat to get a closer look at the Silver. Embedded in stained and crumbling brick, a narrow black opening rippled in the wall, three inches from the floor, stretching all the way up to decaying rafters. Something about the slender, dark aperture made my blood run a little colder.

  A gust of stifling air belched from the shivering surface, reeking of wood smoke and—I cocked my head, sniffing—old copper, perhaps blood. Distantly, I heard a rhythmic chant, thousands of voices—perhaps tens of thousands—repeating something over and over in a nearly hypnotic cadence.

  It wasn’t English. I didn’t recognize the language.

  I eased warily closer, kicking through several inches of litter and broken bottles, sending a small horde of roaches skittering into shadowy corners of the room. All mirrors debut on my dangerous list; few of them work their way off it. I wasn’t even willing to put one in my bathroom until it underwent rigorous testing.

  A person with normal hearing would have heard nothing coming from the dark glass, but I’m not normal. I catch the gentle whoosh of air displacement as people move; if I lay my ear to the earth, I hear countless insects wriggling and tunneling in the top layer of soil. I still couldn’t decipher the words but the indistinct chant was now threaded by thin, distant, bloodcurdling screams.