Soul of Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Humans, you change. Constantly. You create things to drive away your boredom.”

  Oh. Jan exhaled. Pieces clicked together a little better, but she still wasn’t seeing a complete picture. Her cheek burned from the slap, but she had to risk it. Keep her talking, pray nobody else came in to distract her, try to get more intel... “Create, my lady?”

  “Distractions, interruptions in the sameness of every day. We englamour, enhance, but underneath, it remains the same. Our food, our entertainment, our songs, our views. It began to drive me mad. I could no longer bear it, needed to find a different view, a different anything.”

  And that had meant fleeing her court. Jan tried to find a way to push, but she didn’t need to: Nalith kept talking.

  “The humans we brought to us, they had that...but it faded, always faded. As though the very air around us stifled their ability, prevented us. Always, we had to find new sources of entertainment, new performers. It was as it had always been, the way it always would be...until something changed. Not in us, not in you, but in the ways between. But I could not see where, could not understand how to make use of it. And then, a storm appeared in the sky, and the way opened, suddenly, unexpectedly. I saw the chance and took it.”

  Her expression tightened, as though remembering something unpleasant. “I thought... But each thing I put my hand to... I can see, but I cannot do.”

  There was a layer of irritation, of annoyance, in the preter’s voice, a frustration that both despaired and refused to give up. Despite herself, despite knowing how dangerous preters were, Jan felt a moment’s real twinge of pity.

  “I have never failed.”

  Jan bit her lip, willing the laughter to stay silent in her throat. Do what was needed, do what would get them information. Do not tell the selfish elf to get the fuck over herself.

  “But you do not understand,” Nalith said, dismissively. “You see colors wisely, yes, but you cannot create, cannot perform even as your leman does. I waste my breath even speaking to you.”

  Brief moment of pity over, Jan tasted blood as she bit down harder, reminding herself again that she needed to manage this egomaniac, not alienate her. She had come through a gate on impulse, had started all this out of a selfish whim....

  “My lady, what do you most desire?”

  * * *

  The preter’s words burned under Jan’s skin all day, until she was able to round up her companions in as unobtrusive a manner as she could manage and get them outside, where fewer ears might overhear. “She has no idea what she’s doing here.”

  “What do you mean, no idea?”

  “I mean, she’s here on a whim, winging it, improvising, not a fucking clue.”

  Martin snorted, running his fingers through his hair as if he was contemplating tearing it out by the roots. “Jan, preters don’t do things on a whim.”

  “Yeah, because all your great gathered wisdom tells you this. Oh, no, wait, you’re just as clueless as us humans when it comes to figuring them out, right?”

  Martin glared at her but had no comeback. She was right. She knew that she was right. Everything the supers knew was generations out of date, gathered as much from legends as history. AJ had been a cub the last time preters were overtly visiting this world, and he’d admitted that he was winging a lot of it, although he’d used better-sounding terms.

  “What did she say to you?” Tyler was sitting on the railing, balanced like a cat, seemingly without effort. She had the urge to poke him just to see if he would fall. Had he been that poised before he’d been taken? She couldn’t remember.

  “I told you already,” she said to Martin. “She felt a twitch or an itch or something and followed it here. That she was bored and wants us to somehow make her boo-boo all better. Only, she doesn’t know what hurts, and we’re supposed to magically gift her with a bandage.”

  Jan heard her voice rise and tried to modulate it, keeping the sarcastic tone but at a lesser volume, even as Martin made shushing gestures with his hand. Jan made a face at him, to say “Yes, I know, shut up,” even as her gaze went through the window to check the scene inside.

  Nalith was in the side parlor, meeting with the brownies Jan thought of as her majordomos, the same one who had talked to her on the porch and one other. They were going over a map spread out on the table, the two supers making a case for something, and Nalith listening, neither agreeing nor arguing.

  They had been there all evening. Jan and the others had eaten dinner around sunset, filling their plates at the stove and taking them into the dining room. They ate with the other humans and a few of the supers who would join them; most of the others ate later, and Jan was careful not to poke her nose into the kitchen to see if they were given the same food or something else.

  Nalith ate alone. Once or twice she had commanded that Tyler sing to her while she ate, but more often she preferred solitude, sitting at the main dining room in lonely splendor. Tonight, though, the two brownies had gone in to join her—not eating, just carrying the maps and waiting until she gestured to them to clear her plates and unroll the sheets of paper. They looked like blueprints and maps, but Jan hadn’t been able to see clearly enough to tell of what.

  “She wouldn’t deign to notice what we do,” Jan said even as she knew that that was a lie. Nalith noticed everything, even if she didn’t seem to care. Nalith wasn’t the only one they had to worry about. Ears were everywhere, and none of them friendly.

  “She’s been drawn here,” Tyler said, finally contributing to the conversation. “I know that much. Something called her, and she can’t go back. She’ll die inside if she goes back.”

  Jan paused, then nodded thoughtfully. That fit with what Nalith hadn’t said, as much as with what she had. Not that she had taken the route between realms, but that she had been impelled to do so.

  “So what?” Martin said. “So what if she has no clue and wants something bright and shiny she didn’t have there? Why do we care?”

  He, clearly, didn’t.

  Martin kept his voice low, speaking directly to Jan. “Have you forgotten what she is? What’s at risk?”

  “No,” Jan said, stung. “I haven’t. It’s only that...” That what? What was digging at her, the splinter in her shoe, the buzz in her ear, that made what had seemed so clear and easy before, now so crowded and complicated? The flash of pity she’d had earlier was back, only it didn’t feel like pity anymore. But what, then?

  “Huh. ‘Bring us your huddled masses yearning to be free....’”

  “What?” Martin and Tyler both looked at her as if she had lost her mind. Maybe she had.

  “She’s looking for something here. Something she couldn’t find at home. Drawn, Tyler had said, and she could see that, clear as if there was a thread pulling in the preter’s chest, leading her, half-unwilling and helpless before it. If Ty’s right and she’d die if she went back... She’s cruel, and selfish, and pretty much horrible in all those ways, but do we really have the right to send her back somewhere she ran from, or use her as a potential hostage, knowing they’ll only take her back?”

  “Are you shitting me? Seriously, Janny, have you lost your mind? Did she englamour you?” Martin had backed away from her as if she’d suddenly started emitting toxic fumes, and him without a gas mask.

  “Jan has always been kind.” Tyler said it as if it was a bad thing, the sort of thing that you apologized for.

  “I’m not— No, Martin, relax. It’s not... It’s about being decent,” she said defensively. “About being, I don’t know, human. Humane. Not being like preters, all selfish and...I don’t know.”

  She’d had a point when she’d started talking. Or not a point maybe but a thought, something important. She couldn’t remember what it was now. She had been the one to urge them to come here; why was she arguing against it now? Jan wondered if she would eve
n know if she had been englamoured. She touched her pocket, only then realizing that she’d forgotten to switch the sachet and carved horse into her pocket that morning. Still, surely Martin, if not Tyler, would be able to tell? Or was that what he was telling her, and she couldn’t hear him?

  “If we can’t stop them, there won’t be a point to being humane,” Martin said. “We’ll be cattle, all of us, subject to their whim. All because you felt sorry for a preter queen, who would as soon knock you across the room as look at you.”

  Jan raised her hand to the side of her face, where a bruise had risen, purple shadows against her skin. She’d almost forgotten about that.

  “Jan.” Tyler took her hand in his, his skin cool against her own. “Jan.” His voice, the touch of his hand, grounded her, but the not-pity lingered, the sense of something-not-right pressing on her brain.

  “Janny, don’t do this.” Martin’s deep brown eyes flickered with those odd golden lights again, reminding her that he wasn’t just a slightly odd-looking human. But the sincerity and worry in his voice were entirely real, and all for her. “She likes pretty things, shiny things. But there’s a reason she can’t draw a picture, can’t sing a song, can’t do all the things that she’s gathered you humans for. There’s a reason why they’ve always taken humans—to entertain them. Because they can’t do it themselves. Kindness now, pity now, and you doom us all to a lifetime as slaves, subject to their whim. Nalith seems kind now, but how will she treat us once she’s bored, once ennui or whatever kicks in?”

  Jan shook her head. That hadn’t been what she’d meant...except it had been, too, she guessed. Nalith wanted something she couldn’t have, wasn’t able to have, and when she realized that...

  “You’re right. I know you’re right. But I don’t like this,” she said. “There should be some other way.”

  “Should but isn’t,” Martin said.

  “So, how do we do this?” she asked. “How the hell do you bind a preter queen? Because I haven’t found any weakness in her, other than not being able to draw her way out of a wet paper bag.”

  “That’s exactly how. The same way they bind humans,” Tyler said, his voice bleak, his hand releasing her own. “With her own obsessions.”

  * * *

  The deadline had ticked by, leaving everyone on the Farm on edge, expecting something and not knowing what. Shifts and schedules fell by the wayside; everyone was working full-out in the hopes of a breakthrough. AJ had considered issuing some sort of sedative in order to make sure they slept, but he decided it was probably a bad idea.

  Midafternoon, two days after the deadline had passed, a scream nearly shattered every eardrum within a square mile, cutting through the stone and timber structure of the Farm like tissue paper. Half the supers dived under tables as though expecting a bomb to hit, while the others did various things with their bodies, expanding wings or pulling up feathers, and in one rather notable case, suddenly being covered with six-inch quills bristling like a porcupine’s back. Glory, her hands over her ears in a vain attempt to block out the painful noise, managed to ask, “What the hell was that?”

  “Bansidhe,” someone yelled back at her, barely audible over the noise. And then it was cut off, the echoes still painful inside her brain.

  “Ban-what?” she asked, even as her memory and research caught up with her. A Celtic spirit, supposed to foretell death. “Oh. That’s not good.”

  “Double plus ungood,” Beth said, sliding to a stop in front of her, feathers fluttering in distress and excitement. “Basement, you.”

  “But—”

  “You’re useless in a fight, Glory. Get into the basement, and stay there!”

  It hurt, but Beth was right. Glory followed several other supers down the stone-cut stairs into the basement. It was really more of a root cellar, with a solid wooden door between them and the kitchen. It was dark, lit only by the electric lantern one of them carried, but there were blankets and boxes down here among the food supplies, plus what looked like cases of bottled water; someone had thought about the potential need for a bolt-hole, previously. Glory wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.

  The door slammed above them, and the noise of activity was suddenly cut off, leaving only the sound of six pairs of lungs, breathing.

  “So not good,” Glory said. Nobody down there with her disagreed.

  * * *

  “Leave everything where it is!” AJ yelled, projecting his growl to carry over the chaos. “If they get through, it won’t matter worth a damn what they learn. Leave the barn, forget about everything else, defend the main house!” He strode through the old farmhouse, fighting the urge, the need, to change. Just a few minutes more, he promised that urge. A few minutes more to make sure everything was in place, everyone was ready. At his left, Meredith paced, already in her four-legged form, teeth bared at the yet-invisible intruders who dared threaten her pack.

  “Team A, to the roof,” he ordered, trusting that his words would be carried through the crowd. “Team B, go to ground. Come on, you bastards, we trained for this. Get to it!”

  They weren’t lupin, this motley assortment who had come to his call, heeded his warnings about the preternatural threat. But they were fierce and determined, and they knew what was at stake. Now was the time to trust them to do their job and for him to do his.

  Lupin were guided by the moon’s seasons but not bound by them. And he fought better on four legs rather than two. Lifting his face to the ceiling, AJ imagined the moon silver in the sky, hidden now by sunlight, then he let go of his control, opened all of his senses to the magic that hummed inside him, and changed.

  It wasn’t as fast or easy as what he’d seen the kelpie go through, but it didn’t hurt, either; more like a fast, surprise orgasm running through his body, twisting him into knots and then pulling him loose almost as quickly. Blood fizzed and his senses roared, and he felt himself drop to all fours, the rightness of this position matching the rightness of his two-legged form. A lupin was neither man nor wolf but both equally, and neither.

  He snarled and heard his beta echo it as they leaped through the now-open front door and out to defend their chosen pack.

  According to plan, the outbuildings should have been emptied and left open. Let the enemy attack those spots if they felt the need; infestations could be dealt with later. Everything of importance was in the house, and it was the house they would defend. The bansidhe’s warning had given them enough time to get into place.

  AJ hoped that the creature had survived, that it wasn’t down in pale blue shreds along the border of the property, but that was all the time he had to give to that thought before the first wave came out of the tree line, flowing toward them in a disturbingly organized fashion.

  His mind told him that the sky was pale blue, the trees still holding on to the last of their red-and-gold leaves. His wolf-form eyes saw things not so much in color as motion, the heavy fur on the back of his neck bristling protectively even as his muscles tensed in readiness.

  “Got your back, boss” he heard coming from his right, even as Meredith paced at his left, and then something swooped low over his head, cackling madly and soaring up into the sky, three others following. He raised his muzzle and snarled at the owl-headed splyushka even as they banked and headed back to the house, taking up aerial cover the way they were supposed to.

  When the warehouse had been attacked, the gnomes had tried for a circle-and-press tactic. That had ended badly for them—they had done damage but left themselves too open to counterattack. This time they spread out and kept moving, dashing from tree to rock to fence post, arms and legs elongating and contracting again as needed. It made AJ slightly queasy to watch, but he kept looking, trying to remain aware of the wider field of battle, never letting his gaze rest too long in one place. There was a second line of attackers waiting—he could scent them, th
e acrid-sweet smell filling his nostrils and making his blood rage with the need to bite, tear, rend. He reined it in. Emotion served thought, not the other way around.

  “Left field covered.” A report came in, one of the wisps swifting by, barely visible in the morning breeze. “Ready to engage.”

  “Wait for it...wait for it....” one of the supers to his left muttered, and there was a burst of nervous laughter. Meredith growled, but AJ let them be. Battle nerves were better dealt with by quips, not silence.

  A scream and roar came from the north side of the house; a brawl under way, and AJ had his mouth around raw, too-damp skin, his teeth cutting through flesh and down to bone, tearing the elongated arm off his assailant.

  A lupin pack hunted shoulder to tail, minding each others’ flanks, instinctively protecting blind spots. This makeshift pack could not function that way; they had adjusted for it. Overhead, the splyushka swirled and dived, less to do damage than to provide distraction, although occasionally AJ saw a gnome snatched up and then dropped from a height, bits of them torn off by heavy claws and dripping down on the combatants.

  The smell made him want to throw up; this was not fresh meat, but something tainted, disruptive. Whatever the turncoats had been into, it had rendered them unfit to eat. He spat the arm out and surged forward.

  They would take this place over his dead body, and they would pay fiercely for it.

  * * *

  Noise didn’t carry through the heavy door and stone walls of the basement. Glory sat on a case of water, her arms wrapped around her, and tried very hard not to panic.

  The supers who had come down with her weren’t ones she knew. They looked to be two different types, three of them frail boned with narrow heads and long, almost luminescent hair flowing down their backs, the other two normal-ish, but with skin that was dark and rough, like a tree trunk. All five huddled together, occasionally saying something in a soft voice to each other, occasionally glancing in her direction.