by Lily Velez
The Amadan Dubh. The Dark Fool.
Before he’d become imprisoned in the Otherworld as one of The Vanquished, he’d lived in ruined castles throughout Ireland, occasionally venturing out to find prey. His favorite roosts were the hillsides of fairy mounds, especially on a Midsummer’s Eve. He’d sit there and play his reed pipe. He’d play all through the night, reeling in one victim after another. The music eventually drove a person mad, but that wasn’t The Dark Fool’s cruelest trick.
It was the simple touch of his hand. One touch, a single careless touch, and he could render a person paralyzed for the rest of their life.
“Should you ever chance to come upon one,” my grandfather had told us when we were younger, “run. Run as fast as you can and as hard as you can. Your life will surely depend on it.”
Almost as if to guess my intentions, the Amadan flew at me, a fierce arrow of shadows. I threw out a hand to a broken mast I’d spotted earlier and flung it at the creature like a spear. The Amadan jerked to the side, the mast zipping past it, and continued toward me.
This time, I ran. Not away from the docks but toward them. I ducked under the Amadan’s reaching talons and charged for a part of the pier that slumped against a bobbing boat. Wind and water hit my face from all angles as the sea raged, the smell of salt everywhere.
Where are Connor and Lucas? The question was a sledgehammer swinging at my heart.
My eyes honed in on the fishing net I’d glimpsed, draped over a pile-up of crates. The wooden slats of the dock, soaked through from the water, whined under my feet. My footing slipped more than once as I tried to navigate the unsteady pier, which seemed minutes away from collapsing entirely. Before it could, my fingers closed in on the coarse, fraying threads of the net. Ripping it off its perch, I had only enough time to push a quick pulse of magic into its fibers before twisting around and flinging it into the air at the Amadan.
The net’s spelled edges stretched out like a spider web, catching the Amadan mid-air and then closing tight around the phantom’s figure before tying themselves into knots. The Amadan crashed onto the docks and shrieked from within his confines. He clawed at the net, bit at the net. He was an animal gone rabid, and the seal on the back of his hand flared like stubborn embers refusing to be put out.
Wood creaked from behind me. I spun around, half expecting another one of The Vanquished to appear. Instead, Connor and Lucas strode my way, the latter slightly limping and both looking worse for wear.
“You’re alive,” I said, relief washing over me.
“And you’re late,” Connor snapped.
“And that thing is going to land me in therapy when this is all said and done.” Lucas draped an arm over my shoulders, leaning his weight against me. He sniffed the air twice and then furrowed his brow at me. “Why do you smell like fish and chips?” He gasped, turning fully toward me. “Bollocks. Have you seen the light? Are you finally eating meat now? Gods, you aren’t the milkman’s son after all. You beautiful ginger you.”
He grabbed a fistful of my hair and drew me closer, kissing the side of my head with an exaggerated mwah!
I pushed him away and looked at Connor. “How do we stop it?”
“I’m not entirely sure we can,” he said, his expression grim.
I wasn’t either. We’d heard reports of the Dullahan being sighted last night on the outer bands of Rosalyn Bay. Riding off a cliff had apparently done little to it, but we could find nothing in the texts at Crowmarsh about how to destroy The Vanquished.
Connor marched across the docks and drove a vicious kick into the Amadan’s side. The creature roared and snapped his fangs at him.
“Grab whatever you can find that might add some weight to him,” Connor said. “Let’s see if phantoms can swim.”
Within minutes, we’d tied an assortment of random debris to the net: a few anchors we detached from their boats, an old-fashioned helm with wooden spokes, a number of crates with odds and ends inside.
Together, we pushed the Amadan off the pier and into the water. We watched as his form sank deeper and deeper, his shadows mixing with the murkiness of the ocean depths.
“Is that it then?” Lucas asked, frowning down at the water as if it’d all been too anticlimactic for him.
We waited and waited, but much to Lucas’s chagrin, that was, in fact, it.
Haggard and disheveled, we retreated. Not a second too late. The moment we stepped off the pier onto the waiting beach, the docks caved in and crashed into the water.
I paused to take it all in, the overturned boats, the floating wreckage. That familiar ache crept through me, my fingers craving a charcoal pencil and a blank page. There was something entrancing about the sight. Captivating in the way only a broken thing could be, like castle ruins or forgotten dirt roads in the countryside or an abandoned house filled with untold stories.
Rain started to fall again, this time in a mist. The way it hit the water, causing thousands of ripples, the way the water grew choppy, the way it frothed at the base of the cliffs in the distance…I wanted to draw it all.
“Tell me I’m seeing things,” Lucas said from beside me.
I followed his line of sight and froze.
Impossibly, the Amadan rocketed out of the water into the air, tearing at his net with a deafening bellow until the fibers strained and ripped apart.
“If he wasn’t angry before,” Lucas said, “the ugly bastard definitely is now.”
The Amadan snarled, its fangs seemingly longer, its talons seemingly sharper.
“Rory!”
My thoughts faltered.
No.
I spun around, praying to the gods it was only a figment of my imagination.
The gods would have nothing of it.
As sure as I was standing opposite the Amadan Dubh himself, Liam was on the beach, making his way to me.
He’d driven me here. Upon arriving, he’d offered to accompany me too, worried by my sudden urgency in getting to Connor and Lucas as quickly as possible. I’d assured him everything was fine. Despite his reluctance, he’d accepted that, and we’d parted ways.
At least I thought we’d parted ways. Apparently, Liam’s concern had gotten the better of him, and he’d doubled back to check in on me and my brothers.
Everything happened so fast.
The boat that had landed in front of me when I’d first arrived at the beach slowly rose from the sand. I saw the moment the Amadan noticed Liam’s approach. I saw the spark of malevolence in those carmine eyes, the desire to harm for the sheer thrill of it.
I didn’t think.
There wasn’t any time to.
I only ran. Faster than I’d ever run before. Faster than I ever thought I could run.
I bolted across the stretch of beach still separating me and Liam, and when I was close enough, I leapt and tackled him down. Before I could catch my breath, I pushed myself up and wheeled around to face the boat charging for us like a battering ram, my hands instantly going up like a shield.
I clenched my teeth as my magic collided with that of the Amadan’s. My arms and hands trembled, my veins taut as my fingers strained to hold the boat back. The gridlock started to burn the muscles in my shoulders and upper back, but I didn’t drop my hands. I didn’t drop them even as the boat inched closer. I didn’t drop them even as the weight of the boat became heavier as the Amadan pushed harder.
I squeezed my eyes shut to focus. I pictured the destroyed pier, all those broken slats of wood, all those splintered beams. I beckoned them, lifting them into the air. I snapped them like toothpicks, until their ends were brutal points.
Then I sent them racing for the Amadan.
My army of wooden stakes drove into the phantom at once, impaling him.
The Amadan bellowed with rage, and the brief distraction was all I needed to take the upper hand in our impasse. I threw the boat high up into the slate-gray sky, and with the mere flick of a hand, I made it explode in a rainfall of splinters and dust.
Eyes narrowed to crimson streaks, the Amadan made a fist and pulled his arm back, as if reeling something in. In the next instant, an invisible force dragged Liam across the sand to the phantom. Fast.
Connor and Lucas continued attacking the Amadan with all manner of debris. Nothing was working. Liam was nearly to the Amadan, and if the creature managed to lay a hand on him, he would be incapacitated instantly. And he’d stay that way forever.
Fire burst in my chest. The heat swelled in a dizzying rush as unspeakable amounts of power mounted in me. I turned my hands so they were palms-up, and I trained my eyes on the Amadan.
I unlatched the trap door. Magic charged through it, and all at once, I let go.
Walls of gray ocean water rose into the air. I lifted them higher still. Until they were as tall as buildings. Until they were as tall as mountains.
I let go, and in fists of rage, they thrashed the Amadan, beating down against him in a merciless assault. Again and again, the waves buffeted the phantom, clawed at him. Even after he released Liam, even when I could feel his power weakening, I continued to deliver blow after blow.
My magic was furious. It was wild. It was a typhoon within me that rattled my bones. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the Amadan. I found I didn’t want to. Instead, I called forth every drop of water at Five Maidens Beach and made the entire ocean body rise, boats and all, until a colossal tidal wave formed, so tall it canceled out the sky.
Now!
At my command, it pummeled the Amadan, charging into him in a deafening clamor, as if a warhead had been dropped from the sky. Water splashed everywhere, rising up in towering arcs before crashing down again. Boats and other wreckage charged into the water as well, creating even more splashes.
The ocean’s surface was turbulent for several long moments as the water sought to calm itself. My eyes swept over its trembling face for the Amadan, but even now, I could feel the distance unspooling between us as the water dragged him out to sea, to the deepest parts of the ocean, an extension of my magic working even now.
I dropped my hands, surprised that I wasn’t the least bit out of breath. The flames of the living inferno I’d temporarily housed abated, and only the slightest sense of residual warmth lingered in my chest and arms.
I turned to face my brothers.
They stared at me, slack-jawed. With good reason. I’d never manipulated one of the four Quarters with such potency. I’d never exuded magic on so powerful, on so destructive a level. I’d laid the truth of my witching year bare before them to finally see.
That wasn’t the worst of it.
Their gazes eventually slid past me.
To Liam, who slowly rose from the ground, covered in sand.
To Liam, whose wide eyes were fastened to me, questions flying across them.
To Liam, who was Sightless and who I’d just used magic in front of.
An offense against witch-kind that was sure to land me in The Citadel.
25
Scarlet
The voice led me to another cavern, this one much smaller. Armed only with my fire rock, I shined its brilliant light into the space, puzzled by the emptiness surrounding me. Odd. I was sure the voice had come from this direction.
I nearly turned to leave, but then the space before me shimmered, and in the next instant, a flickering apparition materialized, its colors muted and its form translucent, the way a hologram might appear. The apparition was of a casket, its base molding festooned with garlands of flowers. The head panel was open, revealing an occupant inside who rested upon a bed as white as dove feathers, a blanket pulled up to hide their face.
I drew closer. I pushed iron into my veins and reached for the edge of the blanket, surprised when my fingers didn’t slip through the apparition but instead gripped solid fabric. Bracing myself, I slowly peeled the blanket back to reveal the face of the mystery person underneath.
My heart cartwheeled.
Lying in the casket, pale and cold and clearly long departed…was me.
I stared at my lifeless form, my thoughts scattering to every corner of my mind like autumn leaves in a gust of wind. It was an eerie and sickening sensation, gazing upon your dead self. I tamped down the nausea, grabbing hold of one of the casket’s icy handles while my mind reeled.
Even then, staring at my corpse, I couldn’t help the small sense of triumph that bubbled up from the pit of my stomach.
“Nice try,” I told The Cave of Nightmares. “But I’m not afraid of death.”
The truth was I’d never given much thought to death prior to my mom’s diagnosis. Who did at seventeen? It was only after we’d received the heart-wrenching test results that death became a real thing, that I realized there was a chance that the person I loved more than anyone else could be forever ripped away from me. Before then, death had always seemed like something that happened to other people, never me. Something portrayed in movies and TV shows but that never touched my life in the real world.
Then, when my mom passed away, I considered for the first time what it might mean to die. Was there anything waiting for you after your last breath? My best friend Natalie’s family was religious. They believed in the immortality of the soul and an unseen, eternal paradise where people reunited with loved ones.
As comforting an idea as it was in the depths of my grief, I wasn’t sure I bought into the idea. If only because it seemed too good to be true. If only because it seemed more so a fairy tale people had started telling themselves long ago to lessen their fear of death.
What if there was actually nothing waiting on the other side for us? Absolutely nothing? What if once the lights went out, that was it? What if your existence simply blinked out like a doused flame and you never laughed or loved or did so much as think ever again?
The thought crushed my heart as I considered the possibility that my mom had been lost to a great void, reduced to a nonentity.
And it terrified me, to the point of waking up in the middle of the night with a palpitating heart sometimes, that the same fate would one day greet me.
That’s more or less what I continued to believe until I met Jack and his brothers, until I discovered that we truly did have souls that continued living on long after death. I’d seen the beautiful entities for myself. I’d spoken to Maurice’s very spirit, just before he’d ascended to that realm of everlasting peace that awaited us all.
Death, I’d learned, wasn’t the end at all, only the passageway to a new existence.
And death didn’t have the power to sever the ties we had with our loved ones, no matter the distance separating us.
The Cave of Nightmares had played the wrong card, and it was all I could do to keep from letting out a quick, exultant laugh.
“It’s not death that’s on display,” a familiar voice said from behind me.
I whipped around, and my heart became stuck in my throat. A carbon copy of me stood only paces away.
My living doppelgänger came around to the foot of the casket. She was clad in a gown of black mist, tendrils of smog trailing behind her as she moved. Even though we were identical in physical appearance, there was something different about her, something about her airs.
I realized it was the gleam in her eyes. There was a sinister edge to it. That, and she looked worldly in a way I never had, as if she were fluent in dirty, dark, and devastating secrets.
My shadow self.
We all have one, Seamus had said at Uisneach, when Lucas had turned on Jack. That dark aspect of ourselves we refuse to identify with, that contains all the parts of ourselves we try to suppress and hide from others.
“Look around,” my shadow self said.
It was odd taking orders from myself, but I did it anyway. “There’s nothing else here.”
“Nothing,” she agreed. “And no one.”
It took me a moment to catch her meaning. I looked around the cavern again, as if to prove her wrong, but sure enough, in this scene of my death, there was no one gathered to mourn me.
“Poor, little Scarlet,” my shadow self said, coming beside me to stroke back the hair on my—our?—cadaver in the casket. “That’s what cut you the deepest when mommy dearest met her maker, isn’t it?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She laughed. It was a poisonous tune. I imagined flowers would wilt at its sound, that grass would brown and weeds sprout.
She closed the head panel of the casket, and as she did, the glossy white finish transformed into a familiar, shiny bronze that I knew all too well, just as I knew the floral arrangement draped over the casket’s top, the pink hydrangeas and snapdragons grouped with carnations and roses. Their sweet aroma, a mix of baby powder and greenery, filled my nose. I remembered touching their silky petals. I remembered being both in awe of their beauty and resenting them for merely existing, because of what their existing meant on that day.
“Hard to believe this was only months ago, isn’t it?” My shadow self turned and surveyed a scene behind us.
My insides twisted as panic made my heart beat harder. I made fists and squeezed them as tight as I could, as if to charge my strength. When I faced what awaited me, my breath paused in my lungs, even though I’d expected it.
It was the funeral home that had overseen my mom’s service. As before, there was a diaphanous quality to the scene, every person and thing made of see-through light, as if I were watching ghosts go about their business in a haunted dwelling.
“A stark contrast to the fanfare, or lack thereof, that accompanied your death. But then, people absolutely adored mommy dearest, didn’t they? That beautiful smile, that infectious laugh, that warm personality. It’s no wonder hundreds turned out for the service. She touched so many lives. Oh, look. Just in time.”
The service had just ended, and people were coming up to the grieving version of me to express their sympathies. It was strange seeing it all from this vantage point. I noticed for the first time people that I hadn’t even remembered being there that day. There was very little I remembered from that day, though. It had been a blur of faces drowned out by numbing heartache.