I plunged into the battle with ferocity, periodically catching a glimpse of the ebony-skinned beast that was Barrons, lunging, powerful muscles bunching, jaws wide, ripping with talons, shredding with fangs. As I worked my way toward Jada, Barrons pushed farther into the crush, and I realized he was shoving sidhe-seers from harm’s way, trying to make them see he was on their side by taking down Fae in front of them.
I began shouting to all the sidhe-seers I passed, knowing the other Nine would soon be joining us: “The black beasts with red eyes are on our side! Don’t attack them! Don’t kill the black beasts. They’re fighting for us!”
Shit. Not even Jada knew their true form. This was a liability. Although they’d definitely come back, we needed them here to fight.
As I closed in on Jada, I tried to keep an eye out for Barrons. I hated knowing he might die tonight. I suddenly realized how much he must hate knowing the same about me. At least I knew he would come back. Not so for him: I didn’t have a get-out-of-jail-free card.
I shook that thought from my head as I plunged my spear into a particularly vile Unseelie with wet, flailing tentacles and shoved and fought my way through the throng to Jada.
Then I narrowed my eyes, staring at the cuff glinting silver on my wrist. The next Unseelie I turned on, I didn’t null or stab. I just stood there and gave him ample opportunity to take a swing at me.
His fist bounced off as if it had hit an invisible shield.
I scowled. It wasn’t my amazing prowess after all.
I had the cuff of Cruce on and it was as good as V’lane had claimed it was. The Unseelie couldn’t touch me. Damn.
Still, that was sweet.
“Watch your sword,” I snapped to Jada as I moved into range. Like my spear, it could do horrible things to me. I wanted her to know exactly where I was at all times.
Her head whipped up and she looked at me, and I sucked in a breath. Oh, yes. She killed. That was what she did. Her emerald eyes were completely empty of all emotion. She was so drenched in guts and blood that her face was camouflaged and the whites of her eyes were blinding in comparison.
We stepped back-to-back, fell into perfect sync, whirling, slicing, stabbing.
“Who the bloody hell published that daily?” Jada demanded.
“No bloody clue,” I told her grimly.
“I found it on my way back from Dublin. They were already holding them off. My women are dying,” she snarled.
“I brought some…beasts…with me,” I told her over my shoulder. “I have an ally you don’t know about. They’re fighting for us. Let your sidhe-seers know that.” I described them to her.
“Where did you find them?”
“One of my times in the Silvers,” I lied. It felt good to be here, doing this, slaying with Jada. We’d done this before and I’d missed it. I felt so bloody alive fighting with her, as if I was exactly where I was supposed to be and together we could beat anything.
“You trust these allies of yours?”
“Implicitly. They can kill the Fae.”
“Dead dead?” she said incredulously.
“Yes.”
“Is Ry—Are Barrons and the others coming?”
I didn’t know what to say to that and suddenly realized we had a problem. If the beasts showed up but the Nine didn’t, she would wonder why they hadn’t come to help. “I’m not sure how many of them,” I finally said. “I know some of them are off on some kind of mission-thingie for Ryodan.” Wow. That was pathetic. Mission-thingie?
But Jada said nothing and moved away for a time, and I lost her then, as she vanished into the battle to spread the word to her women, and no doubt verify for herself these beasts I’d brought were indeed allies and indeed capable of the impossible.
I devolved into a killing machine, understanding the purity Jada and Barrons found in the act.
Here, in war, life was simple. There were good guys and bad guys. Your mission was also simple: kill the bad ones. No facade of civility required. No complex social rules. There are few moments when life is so uncomplicated and straightforward. It’s disconcertingly appealing.
Eventually I found myself near the front entrance and Jada was there, with several of the Nine in beast form, snarling around her, helping block the door to the abbey.
Ryodan and Lor were there as well, both in human skins, vanishing, reappearing, sticking close.
I snorted. Ryodan thought of everything. Some of the Nine would show their faces, and others would be “off on some mission-thingie.” Great minds think alike.
Around us, the Fae were beginning to fall back. It was one thing to march in to free a prince, but few of them were willing to sacrifice their immortality to do it. Humans could be motivated to fight to the death, protecting the future for their children, defending the old and weak. We’re capable of patriotism, sacrificing for the long-term survival of our progeny and well-being of our world.
But not the Fae. They had no future generations, cared little for others of their kind, and had a serious aversion to parting with their arrogant, self-indulgent lives.
I warily dialed my sidhe-seer senses to a distant, muted station, in no mood to be assaulted by the cacophony of so many jarring melodies.
As I suspected, there was strong discord spreading through our enemy. Some in the outer ranks were loping away, others, near the center, were fighting their way free to do the same.
This was not a focused army. They were stragglers from here and there, unled, un-united. They might have come pursuing a common goal but with no more fully formed plan of attack than frontal assault. And that assault was getting them killed. Permanently.
I sighed, knowing even if the Fae pulled out right now, darkness would soon come crashing down and some would try again. They would launch better attacks, stealthier, more focused and brutal. The news was out: the legendary Prince Cruce was trapped beneath our abbey.
A sudden explosion behind me nearly took me off my feet, and a spray of glass rained down on my back.
“Fire!” someone screamed. “The abbey’s on fire!”
My head whipped around just as another explosion rocked the abbey.
33
“I’ll love you till the end…”
Things got crazy then.
Half the sidhe-seers rushed toward the stone fortress, the other half remained on the battlefield, looking impossibly conflicted. I was startled to see that even Jada looked torn. She never showed emotion, yet there was sudden uncertainty, a hint of worry and vulnerability in her eyes.
“Where is the fire? What part of the abbey?” she demanded.
“I can’t tell from here,” I told her. I was too close to the abbey to get a clear view of it.
“It looks like Rowena’s old wing,” a sidhe-seer about twenty feet from us shouted.
I had no problem with that. I wanted everything the old bitch had ever touched burned, and it conferred the added bonus of getting it out of the way of the expanding black hole.
“And the south wing with the seventeenth library!” another sidhe-seer called.
“Get on it. We need what’s in there,” Jada ordered. “Let Rowena’s wing burn,” she added savagely.
“The east wing looks like it’s burning the hottest,” another shouted. “The Dragon Lady’s library. Must have started there. Leave it? There’s nothing in there, right?”
Jada blanched and went completely motionless.
“What is it?” I said. “Do we need to put it out? Jada. Jada!” I shouted, but she’d vanished, freeze-framing into the still-exploding abbey.
Ryodan vanished, too.
Then Jada was back, with Ryodan dragging her. His mouth was bleeding and he had the start of a serious black eye.
“Get off me, you bastard!” She was snarling, kicking, punching, but he had twice her mass and muscle.
“Let the others put it out. Your sword is needed in battle.”
Jada yanked her sword off her back and flung it away from her. “Take the
fucking thing and let me go!”
I gaped. I couldn’t fathom anything for which Jada might be willing to throw away her sword. One of the nearby sidhe-seers shot her a look. Jada nodded and the woman picked it up and returned to the battle.
Around us, the fight surged with renewed vigor, as sidhe-seers vacated the lawn to save the abbey.
But this was the only battle that mattered to me. If Jada wanted to fight the fire instead of the Fae, that was her call. I suspected there was something more to it than that. I just didn’t know what. But the intensity of her reaction was spooking me. “Let go of her, Ryodan,” I demanded.
They vanished again, both moving too fast for me to see, but I could hear the grunts and curses, the shouting. Jada was superior to humans in virtually every way. But Ryodan was one of the Nine. I knew who’d win this battle. And it pissed me off. Barrons lets me choose my battles. Jada deserved the same.
They were there again.
“You can die, Jada,” Ryodan snarled. “You’re not invincible.”
“Some things are worth dying for!” she shouted, her voice breaking.
“The bloody abbey? Are you fucking crazy?”
“Shazam! Let me go! I have to save Shazam! He won’t leave. I told him not to leave. And he trusts me. He believes in me. He’ll sit there forever and he’ll die and it’ll be all my fault!”
Ryodan let go of her instantly.
Jada was gone.
So was Ryodan.
I stood blankly a moment. Shazam? Who the hell was Shazam?
Then I turned and raced into the abbey after them.
—
I couldn’t get anywhere near them. I was forced to concede defeat a third of the way down the burning corridor to my destination. The fire wasn’t natural, it glowed with a deep blue-black hue. Wood was being eaten to ash, stone was crusted with cobalt flame, and when I dragged the tip of my spear over a nearby burning wall, the outer surface of the stone crumbled to dust.
Fae-fire, no doubt.
I wondered how it had gotten into the abbey. Had someone slipped inside in the heat of battle? Gone around the back way and broken in? Had the attack on the abbey been far cleverer than I’d thought?
Sidhe-seers were rushing everywhere, carrying buckets and fire extinguishers, but neither had any effect on the flames. Blankets seemed at first to smother it, then the blaze sprang back up, hotter and more voracious than before.
“Icefire,” one of the new sidhe-seers muttered grimly as she pushed past me. “It can only be made by an Unseelie prince.”
How did they know this stuff? Jada’s sidhe-seers were ten times more knowledgeable and well trained than ours. Thanks to Rowena, who’d only permitted a select few into select few libraries, the bitch. Obviously, in other countries, they were actually allowed to read the ancient texts and legends. I narrowed my eyes. “You think Cruce…?” I trailed off.
“Must’ve. Unless new princes have already replaced those slain. It can only be put out by an Unseelie prince,” she tossed over her shoulder. “You wouldn’t happen to know where we might find one of those, would you? One that’s not the current repository for the Sinsar Dubh? Oh, wait, you are, too,” she spat.
I ignored it. As a matter of fact, I did know where to find an Unseelie prince. In the dungeon of Chester’s.
And one of the Nine owed me a favor.
And there were sifters out there in battle, and the Nine could take one alive.
I turned and raced back out into the night.
—
When I returned from Chester’s with a pissed-off Lor and a seething Christian, the battle was over.
Not won—far from won. Just over.
The sidhe-seers had rapidly realized nothing they did affected the fire and returned to the front where they could at least prevent the burning abbey from being invaded. The Fae had retreated but I knew they’d be back. The abbey was ablaze in three wings, with the enchanted, blue-black fire shooting into the sky, and I had no doubt the Fae believed our fortress would be ash by dawn.
“Icefire,” I told Christian. “Only an Unseelie prince can put it out.”
He smiled bitterly, unfurling his wings. “Aye, lass, I’ve seen it before,” he said, his eyes strange and remote, and I knew he was remembering something from his time in the Silvers, or perhaps his time on the cliff with the Hag. Perhaps he’d explored his forbidden powers in a way I was afraid to. Tried to create something to warm himself, trapped in the Unseelie prison, who could say. All I knew was, he was here and knew what it was, and maybe parts of the abbey could be salvaged.
He sifted out abruptly.
Movement near the entrance caught my attention.
I turned to look and gasped.
Ryodan stood in the doorway, stumbling then catching himself on the jamb, so badly burned I couldn’t comprehend how he was even staying upright.
He was a mass of red, weeping blistered skin, blackened flesh, with charred bits of fabric falling off him as he stood.
Jada was motionless, tossed over a badly burned shoulder.
My heart nearly stopped.
“Is she okay? Tell me, is she okay?” I cried.
“Goddamn,” he croaked, swaying in the doorway. He coughed long and deep, an agonizingly wet sound, as if parts of his lungs were coming up. “Relative.” He coughed thickly again.
“What about Shazam? Did you get Shazam?” I said urgently. I couldn’t bear the thought of Jada suffering one more loss. Again I wondered who Shazam was, where he or she had come from, why Jada had never mentioned this person.
“Relative,” he croaked again, and I stared at him, realizing the invincible Ryodan was having a hard time functioning and something had stunned him so completely he was as close to utterly blank as I’d ever felt myself. The look in his eyes was wild. Hunted. Haunted.
Then Lor was gently taking Jada from his arms, cradling her against his chest, and I was relieved to see, except for her singed clothing and charred hair, she seemed virtually unburned. I moved in for a closer look at her face. It was wet, tear-stained. She looked so young, so fragile, her eyes closed, like a child. Without her eternal cool mask, I could see Dani in her features much more clearly. She appeared unconscious, limp, but barely touched by fire, and as Ryodan staggered and I saw the rest of his brutally burned body, I realized he must have used himself as her shield, no doubt whirling around her like a small protective tornado, burning himself, front, back, and sides, so she would remain unscathed while she searched for her friend.
“Where is Shazam?” I said again, swallowing a sudden lump in my throat. It was only the two of them. No one else had made it out.
Ryodan’s eyes were slits, his lids blistered, eyes glittering, seeping bloody liquid, and I held my breath, waiting for his answer. I wondered if he needed to change to heal. I wondered if he was dying and I should get him out of here fast, before he disappeared in front of everyone.
He sighed, another awful gurgling sound, and lifted a melted mess of a hand that was clutching a charred object from which white stuffing exploded.
“Ah, Christ, Mac,” he whispered, and blood gushed from his mouth.
He collapsed to his knees and I raced to his side to catch him, but he roared with agony when I touched him. I yanked my hands quickly away and took charred flesh with them.
As he fell to the ground and rolled over on his side, he convulsed with pain. “She went back in there for this, Mac.” He thrust it at me.
“I don’t understand,” I said wildly. “That doesn’t make any sense. What the fuck is that?” I knew what it was. I wanted him to tell me I was wrong.
“What the fuck do you think? A goddamned stuffed animal.”
Part IV
You looked.
Point?
Stare into the fog long enough, you start to see shapes everywhere.
Point?
Staring at nothing is dangerous. You gotta make something of it, dude! Fill it up. Color it every shade of the fecking rai
nbow, with big, laugh-out-loud stuff. Otherwise some ghost ship’ll come sailing right out of the fog with Death on the prow, bony finger pointing right at you. You look into the abyss, dude, the abyss always looks back.
What the bloody hell do you know about the abyss?
That we all got one. Bottomless, black, and chockfull o’ monsters. And if you don’t take control of it and fill it up with the good stuff, it takes control of you.
—From the journals of Dani “the Mega” O’Malley Conversations with Ryodan
34
“The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload…”
“Christ, Mac, what the bloody hell do you and Barrons do in this place?” Lor said as he walked in the front entrance of BB&B.
He stood looking around the room, at the broken furniture I hadn’t been strong enough to move, the crimson paint sloshed everywhere, and the small area of organization in the rear I’d set up for myself with a love seat and a table that looked like a very small eye in a very large storm. He whistled low and shook his head.
I knew what it looked like. A battlefield.
“Never mind,” he said. “I don’t wanna know. Guess there’s a reason Barrons keeps you around. So, where’s my little honey?”
“Upstairs. In my room,” I told him. We’d brought Jada and Ryodan back to BB&B, with Barrons working more of his Bewitched magic to get us through the funnel cloud. “How’d you get in through the storm?” I wondered if they all knew the same spells. I’d somehow gotten the impression Barrons was by far the most proficient, that Ryodan had some degree of skill but preferred to leave the heavy lifting to Barrons, and I’d assumed Lor was mostly oblivious to…well, everything but blondes with big boobs. And recently, Jo.
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