The dweller had noted my difference from the start and had calculated that remaining obscured would not be sufficient. The more I felt of its power, the more I was aware that it had already nearly grown strong enough, anyway. Mrs. Hauptmann probably would have “vanished” within a few more days had she not become aware of the advertisement.
And if I did not stop the shadow creature now, she still might be its final meal before it departed for a better lair. Of course, that would also be after it finished me.
I switched my grip and threw the blade. It soared past four grasping appendages and struck the middle orb exactly. As the dweller hissed in pain, a foul, greenish substance spilled from the ruined orb.
Enraged, the fiend threw itself at me.
Eye can help! the voice ever in my head bellowed. Set me free!
I ignored his demand, aware that I might never be able to regain control if I did as he bade. I had planned exactly for these circumstances, and only one thing thus far—a significant one thing—threatened to unravel all my intentions and leave me—us—to suffer a grisly fate.
From behind my foe there came the crashing of glass.
The last piece fell into place . . . and Fetch landed atop the shadow dweller.
Fetch opened his mouth and from it dropped a silver medallion. I had had it with me since Silene, since the beginning of my curse, and although it could not cut, its very creation and blessing made it burn into the fiend as a hot coal tossed upon a patch of ice.
The hiss grew shrill. The shadow dweller reared back, tossing Fetch into the stack of boxes and sending the medallion tumbling to the side. The fiend sizzled wherever the relic touched.
“Be damned!” Fetch growled, as he vanished among Mrs. Hauptmann’s forgotten possessions. The curse was followed by a whine as the boxes fell upon him.
As the creature rose above me, I drew a second weapon from beneath my coat. It glowed a sinister crimson and, as I pulled it free, it became a sword with jagged edges and stones in the gold hilt that looked as if pieces of the moon had been taken to make them.
That the sword had escaped the monster’s notice was not due to any mishap on its part. It would have taken one of the greater Wyld to sense the gift of Her Lady.
The shadow dweller’s underside was open to me. With the dagger, only the orbs presented a viable target. With the Lady’s sword, however . . . I merely had to swing.
The crimson blade sliced through the fiend without pause, stretching farther than its mere physical presence warranted.
With one last shrill hiss, the monster fell in two pieces. I immediately thrust, not for the portion where the orbs still gleamed, but rather deeper into the base end, where the mind of the shadow dweller truly existed and still survived.
The blade sank into the wiggling abyss. As it did, the blackness adhered to the edge. I turned the sword over and the blackness sank into the blade.
In barely a breath, the sword devoured the latter half of the fiend, swallowing it and briefly leaving the blade’s finish muted. Yet, even as I raised the weapon, the foul brilliance of Her Lady’s gift returned.
A growl brought my attention back to the remnants of the creature. The front end continued to grab for whatever might be before it. The orbs no longer saw and the movements were reflex only, but Fetch, who had at some point extracted himself from the boxes, now snapped at them as he tried to decide which to bite off first.
“Stop playing,” I ordered him, at the same time raising Her Lady’s gift. Fetch growled one last time, then retreated from the vicinity of the sword.
“Mind ye not swing that shiv too wide, Master Nicholas,” he rumbled, well aware that his undoing would be much akin to that of our quarry should the blade so much as scrape him.
I ignored both his warning and his growing use of current slang, the latter seeming to affect Fetch the more he lived on the streets. The sword removed the remaining evidence. I then returned it to my coat, where it vanished into that place outside of both realms until I needed it again.
Fetch circled the area where the shadow dweller had fallen, as if still seeking some sign of the fiend. I retrieved the dagger and the medallion. “Did anyone notice you out there?”
“Ye think if someone’d seen me leapin’ up the back of the house that we’d not be hearin’ sirens by now?”
I expected such an answer, but with Fetch it still paid to ask the question. He was trustworthy for what he was, but that still did not make him entirely truthful at times.
“That turned out to be duck soup,” Fetch remarked, his words readily understandable, even despite his canine maw not designed for speech. This close to me, he was slightly more than a pale reflection of his once-proud self. “Thought it’d put up more a fight . . .”
Duck soup. I fought back a frustrated glare. Fetch had done his part, but I’d been facing the front. The struggle had been short, but hardly duck soup, as he’d put it. “The dweller was not the point of our coming, though its destruction was necessary. Do you smell anything out of the ordinary?”
His nose wrinkled as he tasted the air—and other things. “No trace. Nothin’ to mark who opened the way, Master Nicholas.”
He did not have to call me as he did, but thus was Fetch’s way, even despite his recently found love for the colloquialisms of this decade. I desired mastery over no one, though fate had decreed otherwise.
The bulb abruptly flickered to life. I glanced at the window through which Fetch had arrived. It had not been by chance that he had chosen it for his entrance. Mrs. Hauptmann had been unaware that we had scouted the house before announcing our arrival—ever a necessary precaution. “Best leave now. I’ll meet you out front.”
Without preamble, he wended his way to the broken pane, then leaped outside. I waited a moment, heard nothing, and then retrieved the case I used as a decoy. At the same time, I blinked, returning my eyes to their normal appearance.
You are welcome . . . came the bitter voice within. As ever . . .
I ignored him as best as I always could. Descending from the attic, I was greeted by one of the cats, who energetically rubbed against my leg in what I suspected was gratitude for ridding its home of the menace.
True to her word, Mrs. Hauptmann was in the sitting room, reading. She’d shut off the radio at some point, probably to listen for me. I cleared my throat as I entered. “I’m finished here.”
My client jolted, then quickly recovered her composure. Her gaze narrowed. “You’ve given up?”
“No. I’ve gone over the place thoroughly. There’s nothing up there.”
She frowned. “I promise you, there is!”
“I found nothing. You owe me nothing. If you decide that you want me to try again, we’ll take it from there.”
I had often seen the expression that spread across her face at those words. “I shouldn’t be complaining, but that’s a peculiar way to run a business, Mr. Medea. Very charitable. I’m tired of being thought—what do they call it—a ‘patsy’? Just what are you up to?”
I forced a chuckle at her suspicion, even though she was right to be distrustful. “I mean what I say. However, if after a day or two you feel anything is still wrong, call me and I’ll search again.”
“You sound more like you dealt with something, not just did like the others and tried to prove I was only verrückt—crazy.”
“You’re not crazy, Mrs. Hauptmann.” As if an afterthought, I added, “Oh, some bird must have collided with the back window. I found it broken.”
Mrs. Hauptmann had naturally not heard the crash any more than she had the struggle, so had no reason not to believe my explanation. “I’ll call someone in the morning. Thank you for letting me know.”
The repairman would see that most of the glass was inside the attic. It would look very unlikely that I had anything to do with the damage.
She finally led me out front. Fetch, seeming not to have moved at all since she had last seen him, wagged his tail and looked back and forth from Mrs
. Hauptmann and myself.
“Good night,” she muttered, as she closed the door. Her disappointment was obvious, but she would soon realize that her home was clear of the darkness she had felt. By then, if she sought to contact me through the advertisement to let me know, she would find neither any trace of the notice in her home nor any listing in any paper. The magic was thorough in that regard.
Fetch made a noise as if wanting to speak, but I ignored him until we were out of sight, even though the street was deserted. Mrs. Hauptmann would have been surprised to find out that no car awaited us around the corner. Not only did I not own a vehicle, but this visitation had actually taken place not far from where I both lived and worked. Not that she would be able to discover that, either.
Despite my best attempts, Fetch finally had to speak again. “Master Nicholas, I smelled nothin’ of Her Lady’s Court, but ye still act wary . . .”
“I appreciate your help tonight,” I answered instead, my mind already deep into the very subject of which he had spoken. However, for now, Fetch’s part was done. I had no desire to draw him into something far worse than a lone shadow dweller, though that creature was the very mark of how great the danger was. “You can be off now . . .”
Fetch started to move, turned back, turned away again, then turned to me once more. His desires and instincts fought with his loyalty to me, something I’d never asked from him. I was the closest thing to a friend that he had had since being cast out by Her Lady. He was now a shapeshifter who could not shift shape because he was too far removed from the realm of Feirie and could only talk here in the mortal world because of the curse on me that inadvertently returned that ability to him when he was within roughly twenty feet of me. That at least enabled him to keep remembering that he was not simply some horrendous mixed breed prowling the streets of Chicago at night for whatever warm meal—rats and other vermin, at my insistence—that he could hunt down. I’d tried to give him shelter one time, but the alleys were his preference, as was the bringing down of prey.
I feared Fetch would lose what remained of himself one day, unless somehow he earned Her Lady’s favor again.
Of course, if that happened, I might have to slay him.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked. His lupine features contorted as he sought a more modern term. “Not . . . copacetic at all?”
This time I didn’t hold back a grunt of annoyance at his insistence on constantly trying out the latest word he’d heard. “It’s bad.” I saw no reason to pretend otherwise. “That kind of shadow dweller could not have entered on its own through some spell.”
Fetch growled low. “The Gate’s been breached, Master Nicholas?”
“The Gate’s been breached.”
He nodded. “I will be standin’ with ye when ye need me. Just—” To his credit, the shapeshifter bit back another new expression, simply finishing with, “I will be standin’ with ye.”
He rushed off into the darkness, heading for wherever he chose to call home for the night. I should also have headed home, but I had one more visit to make. This time for my own sake.
CHAPTER 2
“Still praying for redemption, Georgius?”
I had come to St. Michael’s, an old brick church that had survived the Great Fire, just to do that, but I would not say so to him. I looked up from where I kneeled in one of the last pews and eyed the gray-haired figure clad in what at first glance might have seemed a monk’s robes. His rough-hewn features spoke of an eastern European birth and, like me, he had the appearance of someone who had once served in the military. In fact, I had once served him well and faithfully.
And yet, despite that loyalty and faith, I had been betrayed.
“I thank God for every blessing he gives me, Diocles.”
“Has he given you so many that you spend so much time here?” Diocles surveyed the interior, something he had done countless times before, and yet he always seemed to be seeing it for the first time. “A rustic and yet enchanting place, I admit, and I would be the last to prevent your prayers—” He grimaced as my brow rose at this remark. “You know that I speak the truth . . . now. Still, it amazes me how strongly you believe, especially in this day and age and under the heavy yoke you bear.”
“Spoken oddly for a late convert.”
Diocles looked uncomfortable again. “Spoken because I do not know if I could have suffered as you and remained so true.”
Compared to my unwanted companion’s formal manner of speech, I sounded at times nearly as casual as Fetch sought to be. I wished Diocles away, but naturally he remained where he was. Aware that he would speak regardless of my obvious desire to continue praying, I sat back in the pew. For Diocles, I would no longer stand at attention, and he understood why, even if he had paid for his betrayal and I was supposed to forgive. I knew that I was in the wrong, at least where the forgiveness was concerned, but it was something that I could not, even after all this time, change in me.
“You had an incident tonight,” he went on, in an obvious attempt to change to a safer subject. “You rarely come this late unless you have been in contact with one of them. One of the shadow folk.”
The prayers and the calmness of the church itself had just begun to ease my tensions when he had interrupted. I struggled to maintain my composure. Diocles knew that he ever stirred old angers in me and yet it was his curse to come to me again and again until something—perhaps true forgiveness on my part—enabled him to move on.
“It was one of the lesser folk. A shadow dweller. Fetch and I dealt easily with it. It hadn’t even started to prey on the locals save for a couple of cats.”
A grim smile spread across Diocles’s marble face. “You permit Fetch forgiveness . . .”
“The incidents do not compare,” I replied, finally rising as frustration made it impossible to remain in the pew. I glanced past him to a statue of the church’s patron. St. Michael and I had our own differences, but I understood why he had done what he had. It had been his duty to come to me at that time.
“When you were on the other side of the Gate, that mongrel of a werewolf tried to kill you at the command of his damned queen!”
I stared into his eyes, forcing him, despite his condition, to look away first. “He failed.”
Diocles’s hands tightened into fists and now he turned his eyes to one of the statues of St. Michael. “I’m sorry, Georgius—”
“Nicholas,” I angrily corrected him. “Especially to you. Nicholas or Nick Medea. Never anything else.”
He tried to look at me again. Tried and failed. Instead, his gaze fell to the well-trodden floor. “Nick Medea,” Diocles muttered unhappily. “Nicomedia. So long as you choose to keep some variation of that name, I can never be free, lad. It’ll always be there to remind you, even if you could forget on your own.”
“And that’s the way I prefer it, Diocles. I have fallen from grace, and though I pray, as you said, for redemption, I cannot release either of us from this particular curse . . .”
From near the altar, there came the creak of a door opening. Diocles and I immediately turned our attention there.
A young priest with large, round glasses and thinning blond hair stepped out. He looked toward us and managed a relieved smile. “Nick! I should’ve known it’d be you. For a moment, I feared robbers.”
“Evening, Father Jonathan.” Next to me, Diocles grimaced.
“I know that Father Peter considered you a special member of the congregation, with the unique privilege of having your own key—which, between you and I, the archbishop would frown upon—but this is late even for you.”
“I was in the area. I felt the need to pray.”
He looked concerned. “Anything I can help you with?”
“No, thank you, Father.”
Father Jonathan looked slightly exasperated. I could not blame him. “I don’t know what you do, though you’ve more than once promised me that it doesn’t involve this current gang war or any other sinful activity going on. I
wish we had the trust that you and Father Peter had. Perhaps someday . . .”
“Perhaps.” Father Peter had learned the hard way about my existence and the dangers of it. I was hoping to keep his young successor safely ignorant. Father Jonathan was a good man, but he did not know about Feirie. Bootlegger wars paled in comparison to even the slightest aspect of the shadow realm.
“Well, I hope that you find comfort in the Lord. May his blessing be upon you.”
“Thank you, Father.”
He started to leave, then stopped. “Were you talking to someone else just before I came?”
“No one.”
“I thought I heard you speaking. That’s in part why I came to see—”
“My prayers got a bit loud,” I lied, aware that in this house I had added another sin to my long list.
“Damn you, Georgius,” Diocles muttered.
“Nothing wrong with that, I suppose,” the priest replied with another smile. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
The moment that Father Jonathan left, I turned to depart. St. Michael’s would provide me no respite this late evening.
“Georg—Nick—” Diocles tried to grab my shoulder, but his hand went through. Sometimes, even a ghost forgot that he had no substance.
“Sleep well,” I responded bitterly, not looking back at the specter. There was no warmth in my words, and both of us were quite aware that sleep was a release beyond his grasp. Diocles could only haunt the vicinity of St. Michael’s and other churches day and night, seeking some end to his eternal wandering, especially from the archangel who gathered up souls at death for judgement. He had about as much chance of that happening as I did.
“Nick . . . we must talk . . . There is something gathering. I feel—”
I looked back. “You feel nothing. You’re dead.”
He faltered. At the moment before his passing, Diocles had silently turned to Heaven, the same Heaven whose followers he had viciously persecuted. Death often changed one’s perspective, but I could not see past his crimes, not yet . . . Not ever, perhaps.
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