Dark and Stormy_Phantom Queen_A Temple Verse Series

by Shayne Silvers

  Chapter 34

  I shook off the memories.

  And yet, the fear remained.

  “I see you have come to me,” Balor said, his voice ridiculously deep and masculine—and strangely familiar. The light of his jeweled eye cast an azure glow that flickered across the water—as lovely a replacement as his old eye had been hideous. “I did not expect you to be so bold.”

  “We prefer the personal touch,” I replied, the sound of our voices layered, one on top of the other. “Come on down here and we’ll give ye the welcome ye deserve.”

  Balor cocked his head. “You sound different. And you seem taller.”

  “Upgrade,” I quipped.

  I could practically feel my aunts shaking their collective heads.

  Whatever. Backseat drivers.

  “This is not the Morrigan you faced in the past,” a voice said, so similar to Balor’s own that it took me a minute to realize the Fomorian hadn’t spoken. “Morrigan is dead. This is her daughter’s form.” Dobby—several feet taller than when I’d last seen him, his body stretched, his once-comical features considerably less off-putting—stepped out from behind the throne. “Hello, my lady,” Dobby said, with a slight bow.

  I took a threatening step forward, but a wall of water appeared in my path. “Why?” I snarled, kicking up spray in frustration. “Why d’ye do it?”

  Dobby glanced up at Balor.

  “Tell her whatever you wish,” Balor said.

  Dobby nodded. “Quinn,” Dobby began, flicking his eyes up at me, his gaze oddly dispassionate. “Do you know what a spriggan is?”

  “Ye mean besides a soon-to-be dead Fae?” I replied, ignoring the sudden sense of alarm Dobby’s words had triggered in my aunts; to be honest, I was getting really tired of experiencing emotions that weren’t my own.

  “Spriggans,” Dobby said, ignoring my threat, “are a myth.”

  “What d’ye mean?” I asked, seething, prepared to leap the wall and end the miserable bastard. I wanted answers, but if Dobby wasn’t going to give them to me straight, I figured I might as well kill him now and be done with it.

  “I mean they do not exist. They are not a species within Fae. The truth is a spriggan is little more than a spoil of war. Long ago, you see, the Tuatha drove the Fomorians into the sea,” Dobby said, ignoring Balor’s warning growl. “But, before the war was over, the Tuatha stole a sizeable chunk of the Fomorian’s power. Their shadows.”

  I felt a tremor of something—intuition, perhaps? “No, not the Tuatha,” I said, gauging Dobby’s reaction to see if my guess was correct. “The Morrigan.”

  Dobby sneered. “Indeed. Your mother, specifically. She fashioned Fomorian shadows into bodyguards. We became constructs, designed to protect Fae royalty. But, of course, we would never have agreed to that, so first, she stole our memories. Our autonomy. And so we remained, enslaved, shielding our oppressors from harm for centuries—not even aware our memories had been taken, and that we were protecting our jailers. But then, something changed, as it always does. The walls between realms thinned and border security was lax. That’s when a lone spriggan, the oldest of his kind, wandered into the human realm.”

  I shook my head in denial. Not because what he said struck me as untrue, but because it still made no sense. Why had Dobby betrayed us? Ryan and I had given him a home. We’d kept him safe from the outside world, from the Chancery…and yet, hadn’t he sought them out on his own, spying for them in exchange for his freedom? I frowned, remembering how cagey he’d been around some of the older Fae who might have recognized him. Had it all been a lie?

  “But ye helped me,” I said, trying to understand. “Ye protected me.”

  “Well, of course,” Dobby said, as if I were being obtuse on purpose. “I needed you. If the Chancery found out a spriggan was running wild in the mortal realm, they’d have executed me immediately. But, for some reason, you were their blind spot. So long as I stuck with you, I was safe. At least until I no longer needed you.”

  “The whole time?” I whispered. “Ye were plannin’ to betray me the whole time?”

  Dobby waggled his hand. “I wouldn’t think of it as betrayal. I simply did what I had to in order to motivate you. Feeding you enough information to keep you searching for answers was tough, I’ll admit. But when I found out from your meeting with Hansel that you turned down the Winter Queen? I knew I’d have to do something drastic to get you to cut the umbilical cord. I was surprised to find you’d put up wards around your aunt’s house, though. Took me a little while to figure out a way around that.” And like a kindly father, he added. “I’m proud of you, my lady.” Then he grinned, wolfishly.

  “Why?” I growled, hands balled into fists. I wished I could say I wasn’t hurt, that all I felt was anger—but it wasn’t true. To know I’d been manipulated was bad enough, but at one point I had trusted Dobby. Felt safe around him. And now I learned it had all been a lie.

  “Why what?”

  “Why d’ye want me to embrace me power?” I ground out.

  “Because you were the key,” Dobby replied, as if that were obvious. “Once I realized you were Morrigan’s daughter, I cast a spell on you. A spell to erode that awful seal your mother put on you. Remember?” Dobby raised his hands as if feeling the air, mimicking his actions the very first day I’d met him in Christoff’s warehouse.

  “Why would ye do that?” I asked, eyes wide.

  “Well how else was I going to wake Balor up and tell him where to go?” Dobby asked.

  My mouth hung open, too stunned to speak. For some reason, I recalled Jack Frost’s voice as he stood over Lakota’s body in that industrial warehouse a few months back, talking about a beacon. The signal calling to Balor and his men. The source that invited nothing but destruction and mayhem.

  At the time, Jack hadn’t told me what that beacon had been.

  But…now I knew.

  I’d been that beacon. My power had called the Fomorians to Boston.

  It was all my fault.

  “Besides,” Dobby added, “we needed the Morrigan. All three of you.”

  “Needed us for what?” I asked, numbly.

  “Enough talking,” Balor said, rising from the throne, the water caving in on itself to leave him standing on a flat surface. The One-Eyed Fomorian stepped forward, and Dobby fell into his wake, folding in on himself until all that remained was a thin shadow attached to Balor’s heels. I cursed myself for not killing the spriggan fuck while I’d had the chance, wondering now how I was supposed to tear a fucking shadow to pieces.

  “Let’s kill Balor, first,” Macha said, “and go from there.”

  I grunted my agreement. Sounded good to me.

  Chapter 35

  The one-eyed giant struck the first blow—calling to the water beneath my feet, liquid tendrils wrapping themselves around my legs, trying to drag me down. Luckily, my reflexes took over and I rocketed upwards before they could get a firm grip. I hovered high above the water, already feeling out of my depth. Despite the crash course I’d undergone, I was far from an expert when it came to wielding magic. Which meant I either needed to get better acquainted with my new abilities rather quickly, or I needed to win this fight fast with a cheap-shot; once Balor figured out he was dealing with a relative novice, I imagined my odds of killing him would steeply decline.

  What I needed was something big. Something flashy, like what I’d done to the second Fomorian. But bigger. Much bigger. Something like…a thunderstorm. I could do a thunderstorm, right?

  Then I looked up, and grinned.

  Of course, I could do a thunderstorm. One was already right above my fucking head!

  I threw my arms out wide and began to spin, slowly at first, but then faster. Soon, the sky above—already dark and foreboding—brightened as the first arc of lightning ripped across the sky. I concentrated, focusing on bringing the lightning straight down. A blast crashed into the ocean below. Then another. In an instant, dozens arced towards the water’s surface, like s
omeone had pressed the palm of their hand along the smooth curve of a plasma ball—each discharge linking to the other until the whole ocean glowed and frothed with charged ions.

  Finally, exhausted and a little nauseous from spinning a couple hundred times in mid-air without stopping, I slowed. Surely, one of those blasts had hit the one-eyed bastard, I thought; his depth perception couldn’t be that great, especially since his one good eye was, in fact, a fucking rock. Once I got my bearings, I scanned the surface, hoping to find his body floating belly up.

  But of course I wasn’t that fortunate.

  In seconds, massive waterspouts—water tornadoes as wide as footballs fields—began to form. I could feel Balor’s magic riding the air, causing an insane amount of turbulence as the towering behemoth funnels tore through the sky, the wind buffeting me so violently it was all I could do not to fall to my death.

  Basically, we’d placed our bet, bluffing with the best of them.

  And the fucker had raised.

  I angled towards the ocean’s surface, fighting against the air in a bid to reach the waves below.

  “What are ye doin’?” Macha demanded. “The water is his element. We’re better off above.”

  I didn’t bother responding. She and I both knew it didn’t matter whether I was up in the sky or swimming in the Godforsaken ocean; his magic was not only stronger, but better controlled, than mine. But I wasn’t giving up—far from it. From what I could tell, my only chance at beating him was a head-to-head confrontation—something the giant bastard would least expect.

  I realized, with a jolt of surprise, that no matter how badass Balor was…I wasn’t exactly a featherweight. Frankly, if you got right down to it, this was no different than a bar fight. A grudge match.

  And grudge matches? Bar fights?

  Those were right up my alley.

  I felt my aunts’ doubts hit me like a physical weight.

  I ignored them both. I wasn’t an idiot; I knew it was a long shot, but—no matter what they said—the reality was I trusted myself more than I trusted the magic. Duking it out in the skies was all well and good, but I’d been scrapping my whole life, often against men who were bigger and stronger than I was. Picking a fight, at least, felt familiar.

  “Balor!” I shouted, finding a place to land far from the whirling monstrosities he’d created. “Olly olly oxen free!”

  His silhouette rose up from the depths a moment later, emerging slowly as if to increase the creep factor, his body eerily dry. “Are you ready to surrender?” Balor asked, finally, his feet firmly planted on the ocean’s surface.

  I snorted. Hell, I wasn’t sure I even knew what that word meant. But, since he didn’t yet know that about me, I flung myself at him.

  I’d always heard actions speak louder than words, after all.

  Chapter 36

  The fight, if you could call it that, was over in an instant. It turned out the sisters were right to doubt my chances, though not for the reason they thought; I didn’t lose because I was smaller, slower, or even weaker. I lost because I’d forgotten all about the one thing that made Balor, Balor.

  His Goddamned eye.

  And so I hung, suspended in mid-air, held in place by the power of that precious stone—all my strategies, my plans to shatter kneecaps and snap limbs—completely unfulfilled. I felt resignation settle in almost immediately as the sisters realized what I’d known all along; we were the underdog in this fight, fated to lose.

  “Now that we are done playing,” Balor said, stepping up to me, “I want you to fashion me a door.” He released me from the power of his eye, but took me by the throat before I could break away or lash out. He barely had to put any pressure for it to hurt; his hands were so big he held my neck between three fingers in a Force choke—like he found my lack of faith disturbing.

  “We’re not…fuckin’ carpenters,” I ground out.

  “A Gateway,” Balor said a moment later, having paused to glance back at his own shadow. Dobby, I thought, gritting my teeth and struggling to breathe. “A Gateway to the Fae realm,” Balor said, more authoritatively this time.

  “Oh, sure,” I wheezed, fighting for air. “Would ye like us to…solve world hunger…while we’re at it?” I managed between gasps.

  Balor grunted. “Do not test my patience. If I must, I will snap your neck. There are others who will comply with my demand, even if you do not.”

  “Well, I guess...we’re goin’ to die, then, because…” I drifted off as voices in my head began yelling to get my attention. I raised a finger. “Hold please.”

  Balor scowled.

  I focused inwards, talking to my aunts solely within my mind as my physical body choked beneath Balor’s grip.

  We can create Gateways into Fae? Seriously? I asked them.

  Aye, Badb replied.

  All of the Tuatha can do such t’ings, Macha added.

  Internally, I snarled at them. Goddammit. So, the big, dumb one-eyed bastard really does plan to use us to create a Gateway…

  And suddenly, I was struck by a truly brilliant idea.

  Oh no, that’s a terrible—Macha began.

  I really don’t t’ink ye—Badb chimed in, simultaneously.

  Executive order! I snapped back, cutting them both off.

  I came back to the real world and grinned up at the Fomorian warlord. “Ye should be careful what ye wish for, Dick Fury,” I ground out, splitting my gaze between Balor and his shadow—Dobby. “I hope ye fuckers know a good shanty.”

  And, with that, I did exactly what the Fomorian had asked me to do.

  I opened a Gateway into Fae.

  Chapter 37

  King Oberon’s fleet—including the USS Cyclops—was right where we’d left it, each ship prepared to launch at any given moment. Which was exactly what I’d desperately counted on when I opened the Gateway in the first place. I ignored the immense pressure of Balor’s hand around my throat and poured every ounce of my new power into the Gateway, expanding it, throwing it so high and wide its tip carved through the rainclouds above our heads. Impossibly bright sunlight from the Fae realm shone across the surface of Massachusetts Bay, and the merging of storm clouds and sun beams produced a double rainbow that arced over us like a comet.

  “What have you brought me? A snack?” Balor asked, his grip tightening, making it impossible for me to breathe, let alone answer. But that was alright; I could die happy knowing I’d done what I could to even the playing field by bringing the fight to the Fomorians.

  Plus—this way—Boston would be safe.

  Balor’s shadow writhed, and suddenly Dobby appeared at his side, staring at the armada on the other side of the Gateway—which had already begun creeping forward—with a disdainful expression. “It seems the denizens of Fae have come together to face you.”

  Balor snorted imperiously. “I see none of the Tuatha among them.”

  “Neither do I. You should release her throat, though,” Dobby said, staring down at me with flat, emotionless eyes. “If she dies, the Gateway will close on us, and we will have to find another way into Fae.”

  Balor released my throat, tossing me into the water with a splash, my power too diminished to keep me from sinking. “She is nothing. Come.” He marched forward, and soon the giant and his shadow faded from view.

  I floated, coughing every so often, my throat burning. I wasn’t sure what it was with men and choking me out, without permission, but I was getting pretty fed up with it. Sadly, it didn’t seem like I’d have a chance to teach Balor a lesson in safe words; I was utterly spent. The energy I’d used to make and expand the Gateway had been far more than my body could handle. In fact, as I lay there, I could feel the other two slipping away—their combined power no more. In an instant, my aunts were no longer in my head, but beside me in the water.

  “It’s over,” Macha said, a moment later. “We lost.”

  “Aye,” Badb replied.

  I twitched in irritation—their defeatist rhetoric nearly as
irksome as Balor’s self-assurance had been. No wonder neither had been capable of being the leader of our triumvirate. Still, they weren’t wrong. Balor was simply too strong. At this point, the only way he’d lose was if he offed himself. I frowned, then began flutter kicking towards the Gateway, relying on buoyancy to do most of the work.

  “Oy! Where are ye goin’?” Badb yelled.

  I paused long enough to look back at them, treading water. “Ye two can give up if ye like, but I’d rather die,” I replied, meaning every word. If I was being honest with myself, I realized, this had never been about beating Balor. Hell, even going after Dobby had been little more than an excuse to focus on something else, something other than grief.

  What I’d really wanted, more than anything, was to feel nothing.

  To crawl away and die.

  But, after everything that had happened—after realizing this whole mess was my fault, one way or another—I couldn’t just walk—well, swim away.

  I could curl up and die later.

  Right now, I had shit to do.

  Besides, now that I was no longer plagued by my aunts’ doubts and indecisiveness, I had a plan. Unfortunately, that plan hinged upon me finding my way aboard one of Oberon’s ships on the other side of the Gateway—but one thing at a time. First, I needed to get closer. I turned and started swimming towards the fight that was about to erupt between the Fae armada and the Fomorian horde, when I felt something grab me beneath both arms, raising me up out of the water.

  “So what’s your plan, then? D’ye want us to throw ye at ‘em?” Badb asked, holding my right side.

  “I t’ink you’d make an excellent projectile,” Macha added, on my left. “And they definitely wouldn’t be expectin’ it.”

  “Actually, could ye drop me off on that ship?” I asked, jerking my chin.

  “The flyin’ one?” Macha clarified.

  “Aye, that’s the one,” I replied, grinning. “The Jolly Roger.”