by Eric Asher
Foster’s grin widened, sending a chill down my spine.
Aideen raised her hand to cover Foster’s mouth, and it broke the somewhat creepy tension in the air. He tried to bat her hand away, but she held firm, the muscles in her forearm straining against his futile attempts to escape.
“Then it’s settled,” Aideen said. “Frank will go with Park, and the rest of us will go hunting.”
“Should we wait for nightfall?” I asked.
“No,” Zola said. “Contact the water witches. Then we hunt.”
“Zola’s right,” Aideen said. “They’ll be expecting us in the evening or after nightfall.” She let her hand fall away from Foster’s mouth, and he gave her a bemused look. “We’ll have the element of surprise by attacking in the daylight.”
“You’re more likely to be mistaken for the enemy in the daylight,” Park said. “Some of the soldiers out there have only been in the reserves a few months, and a lot of them came in during the enlistment rush after Gettysburg. Many of them are out for vengeance.” Park hesitated. “I don’t want them getting in your way.”
“Then we hunt,” Foster said, “and I will remind this imposter of the true power of the Demon Sword.”
* * *
I took the Wasser-Münzen disc with me to contact Nixie, and headed toward the Missouri River. It wasn’t dinner time yet, so the light crowds on Main Street weren’t that unusual. The tourists had been replaced by media, drawn to the military presence as much as the tourists had been repulsed by it. Our city had become a crippled, zombie-like version of its former self. It limped along, the media acting like some kind of symbiotic parasite.
I crossed the cobblestones and asphalt, finally reaching the riverfront. I hopped down onto the bank so I could set my feet in the river. The water was cold, and the chill reached out for my bones.
I crouched down and set the obsidian disc on the river rocks beneath the water. Almost a minute passed, and I couldn’t help the rising worry in my gut. Nixie was bouncing between Europe and the Obsidian Inn, violence with the queen had been escalating, and now we had evidence of the queen moving against humans. Nixie needed to know. We needed the water witches’ help.
The knot in my stomach loosened just a hair when the disc pulsed with a soft light.
“Damian,” a voice said, rising from the river. “What is it?”
“Alexandra or Euphemia with you?”
“No, they’re on a mission with the Obsidian Inn. Why?”
“We might need reinforcements.”
The water took on the rough shape of Nixie’s face, just enough that I could see her frown. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The queen has attacked some of the guardsmen stationed here. One of them was in the hospital, bleeding green poison. Sounds like the queen’s troops were impersonating us, or at least Foster.”
Nixie cursed. “I don’t like this, Damian. The coincidence and the timing are too much.”
“What coincidence?” I asked.
“I can’t say over our connection. This isn’t secure enough. I’ll send someone to you when I can, but for now, use caution.”
I nodded. “I will.”
The light on the disc began to fade, but not before I heard her whisper, “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
* * *
Frank and Park were gone when I got back to the shop. The bell on the door jingled as it closed behind me.
“Alexandra and Euphemia are both on a mission with the Obsidian Inn,” I said, glancing between Zola and the fairies. “Nixie will send someone when she can, but I don’t know when that will be.”
“Good,” Foster said. “That gives us time.”
I started toward the back room to grab my backpack, filled with beef jerky, bullets, and other things that were essential to any mission. It was only then that I noticed Foster and Aideen were both in their armor, the intricate details of Celtic knot work flowing over their silver cuirasses and down their greaves. Foster held his helmet under his left arm while Aideen left hers resting between her feet on the glass countertop.
I scooped my backpack up off the shelf and patted Bubbles on the head when she stuck her snout out of her lair’s entrance. I thought about bringing the cu sith with us, but the pony-sized dog might attract more attention than we needed. I looked to the corner where I had often kept the demon staff before it tried to kill me. I still couldn’t break the habit of wanting to grab it when things were going sideways.
I pushed my way through the saloon-style doors and adjusted my backpack. “Ready.”
“Stealth,” Aideen said. “This is no time for theatrics.” She stared at Foster as she spoke, but he didn’t shy away from her words.
“Do you think that armor is low-profile enough?” I asked.
“No other fairy wears this armor,” Foster said. “Even if there is an imposter Demon Sword, there are some things he cannot duplicate.”
I wasn’t exactly sure how much I believed that. I’d seen some pretty crazy glamor put on by fairies. They were the kind of illusions human perception couldn’t pierce. But I didn’t think this was the time to pry.
“Are we driving?” I asked. “Let’s take the car.”
“Yes,” Zola said, “because your car is so low profile.”
We followed Zola through the back and out into the parking lot where my ‘32 Ford Victoria waited. Zola and I climbed into the front seat while the fairies took up a post on the dashboard.
“From what Casper told us,” I said, “it sounds like they were attacked right by the comic store.”
“Start there,” Zola said.
I turned the ignition and pulled out of the parking lot, swinging down onto the cobblestones for a moment before the road mercifully changed to asphalt. We followed Main Street until it merged into N. 2nd Street, and the roundabout sent us off to the north. We briefly drove through a residential area before the buildings became strip malls. I turned right into one of the first of them, which held the local comic shop.
Aideen shifted the helmet in her hands. “We should leave these here. If one of Nudd’s court is the imposter, it may make it easier to find us. Or, at the least, see us.”
Foster let his helmet fall to the dashboard, the coif rattling as the metal slithered to a stop.
I stepped out of the car, and the fairies zipped over my shoulder, hovering just above me for a second before settling onto the roof of the car.
“Work toward the bridge,” Zola said. “You hear anything, scream.”
Zola was one of the most reassuring people I had ever known in a fight.
“We’ll be right above you,” Foster said. “If anything kills you, we’ll kill it.”
“If you don’t mind,” I said, “kill it before it kills us.”
Foster shot me a grin before launching himself into the air. Aideen followed.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I thought Park said they were closer to the river,” Zola said.
I glanced up and one of the pale silver dots drifted back down toward us, until I could make out Aideen’s form.
“That’s true,” Aideen said. “But that bridge is steel and iron. Unless they’re very powerful, or very stupid, I suspect they will be quite predictable.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean they’ll still be in the area, if they haven’t already retreated to Faerie. No mere soldier will risk contact with a bridge that deadly.”
Aideen flexed her wings and rose into the air, rejoining Foster far above us.
“Smart,” Zola said. “We head for the bridge, follow it to the river, and search the grid.”
I sighed and kicked a stone across the parking lot. It wasn’t a long walk to the bridge, but Zola’s plan meant we were going to be out there for a while, unless something decided to ambush us. I frowned at the thought. “So, you think we’ll get ambushed?”
Zola smiled knowingly. “Bored already, boy?”
I chuckled and
adjusted the pepperbox holstered under my arm.
The asphalt of the parking lot gave way to an unruly section of long grass and scrub brush. We reached the bridge a short time later and turned right, heading east toward the river. I remembered running Lewis down not far from here when Philip had kidnapped Zola. It seemed like yesterday, but it had been years. Memory felt heavy, and it took me a moment to realize that the weight wasn’t from the memory at all. The dead were close. Very close.
Gravel and dirt made it hard to walk silently, but the roar of the nearby freeway helped mask any sound we would make. What concerned me was that it would also mask the sound of any attack that might be heading our way.
I glanced up but saw no movement. “You see them?”
Zola nodded. “To the south a bit. Ah believe they’re behind this junkyard, or whatever it is.”
Old rusted-out cars flanked the railroad tracks. The lot looked like it might be a body shop, but some of those cars had been there for decades. We passed the junkyard and made our way down the gradual decline that ended at a line of trees just before the river bank. Zola sighed and glanced back the way we had come. She stared at the river for a short time, and then turned to the south.
“This will take all night,” she said. “You take one side of the building, boy. Ah will take the other.”
“I don’t like splitting up,” I said.
“Neither of us are alone, boy. Foster and Aideen are with us.”
Zola vanished between two buildings on the junkyard property. I waited for a short time before moving, and then when no one screamed, I started forward.
I neared the riverbank first as the trees thinned, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever water witch had almost killed Casper. The witch who had killed Casper’s teammates. The more I thought about running into an undine on that bank, the more I thought it might be a terrible idea. I didn’t have one of the stone daggers that could kill a water witch. I didn’t even have an arrowhead. Foster and Aideen might, but I’d be helpless outside of my shield if that river surged forward and struck out at me. That was enough to send me wandering off away from the water, down a path on the opposite side of the junkyard.
A shadow moved in the distance, and my heart leaped, calming only when I realized it was Zola’s hooded form. Our paths crossed time and again as we walked the grid across the junkyard, and eventually moved past it.
The attack site was plain to see once we found it. The earth was disturbed, but that was the least obvious sign. The nearby tree line was scorched—parts of it ash and others charred beyond recognition. The sight gave me pause because it certainly looked like the fire had been spherical, and I remembered that searing orb of death Foster had once conjured.
I raised my voice. “Zola. Here.”
She rounded the nearby building, which I suspected was the office for the salvage yard. She paused for a moment, taking in the sight of the torched copse of trees standing between us.
“Ah did not expect it to be this obvious,” Zola said. “This is not the subtle work of the Fae.”
“You think?” I said, my voice flat.
Foster glided into my line of sight for a moment before settling on my shoulder. “Not subtle?” His eyes rolled from the trunk of the tree off into the scorched canopy. “Someone wanted whoever found this to know it was Fae.” Foster cursed. “They want people to think this was me. And if people think I did this, they’ll think it was one of Nixie’s witches that stabbed the soldiers. That they used the poison blades.”
“And imagine how convincing it will be with your armor strewn across the battlefield,” a voice screamed from our right.
We all turned toward it, and that’s when the attack came from the woods behind us.
For a split second, I thought Stump had come to help us. But the face of the Green Man was twisted in rage, and he was far taller than Stump. The fist I thought might be angling for our attacker was actually coming for me.
I raised my arms and shouted, “Impadda!” The shield burst into brilliant life a second before the Green Man’s attack connected and a shower of sparks flew into the air. I stumbled backward, barely staying on my feet as the Green Man struck again.
I didn’t think shooting him with the pepperbox would do any good. Maybe it might if I channeled fire through the gun, but I knew how that could end up. That had been what had sent Leviticus into the darkness during the Civil War. Instead, I reached out to the gravemakers, called the dead to me, and raised the Fist of Anubis. My shield flickered and died as my concentration waned before the protective light snapped out of existence. The nauseating rusted flesh surging out of the earth around me replaced the glow of the shield.
The Green Man was already committed to his attack. There was no way for him to slow. No way for him to avoid the attack. The Fist connected with a satisfying crunch, snapping one of the larger branches from his chest and sending a cascade of leaves and debris off into the woods behind him. He fell to one knee while I let the Fist expand, the Hand of Anubis wrapping around the Green Man’s head and pulling him forward, smashing his face into the earth.
Foster’s bellow drew my attention away from my foe. The Green Man rolled to the side, but he did not attack again.
A sword streaked in blood glistened from the back of Foster’s armor, piercing him. To land the strike, Foster’s opponent had had to open his guard. Foster didn’t miss his chance. He lunged forward, impaling the Fae knight much as the fairy had impaled Foster in turn. Only, when Foster struck, his sword cleaved through his opponent’s cuirass and sank into the tree behind him. The blade pinned the knight in place. The fairy struggled, but could not free himself.
I looked around for Zola but couldn’t find her. “You good, Foster?”
“Yes,” he snarled, his dagger sinking into the other fairy’s shoulder.
I ran past Foster and rounded the corner of the short building. Aideen’s sword clanged off the helmet of a dark-touched vampire. Zola was there too, crouched on the ground, a scorched ruin beneath her left hand. I don’t know what, or who, it had been, but Zola had made sure they were no longer a threat.
Aideen closed on the dark-touched vampire and feinted left. It gave me enough time to line up a shot with the pepperbox. I took it, the boom thundering across the battlefield. It didn’t do any real damage to the vampire, but it caused the creature to pause and look, and that was the last thing it ever did. Aideen slid her sword through the thing’s eye socket. It stiffened, and then fell to the ground.
“Are you hurt?” Zola asked.
Aideen shook her head. “No, where’s Foster?”
“He has the fairy knight pinned to a tree,” I said.
“Alive?” Aideen asked.
I shrugged. “Probably not for long.”
Aideen hurried past me. Zola and I followed.
“Who sent you?” Foster growled.
The fairy tried to speak, but Foster cracked the side of his face with an elbow. “If you try to use that incantation again,” Foster said, “I’ll tear you into 1,000 pieces before you burn to death.”
“The Green Man is awake,” Aideen said. “I thought you would have killed him.”
“I may have gotten a little distracted,” I said, glancing at the prone form that was struggling to rise.
“This is good,” Aideen said. “We have no need of the knight.”
“Then I shall remind him of the true power of the Demon Sword,” Foster snarled.
Evening turned to a bloody sunset as Foster wrapped his hands around the knight’s neck. A hellish incantation of fire whirled to life. The grass and the earth burned away as the roaring cyclone of flame and rage scoured the knight from the earth.
CHAPTER SIX
Foster’s firestorm faded, and our group’s attention slowly turned toward the downed Green Man. He still hadn’t regained his feet, but his emerald eyes were wide, aware and staring, fixated on Foster.
“Noble one,” Aideen said, “why did you attack us? Why did y
ou attack the Demon Sword of the Royal Court, son of the Sanatio of the city?”
The bark-like flesh of the Green Man showed what I could only describe as a frown. Layers of flesh shifted as his mouth slowly opened. “The word of the Demon Sword himself told me there was an imposter here.”
“Clearly I didn’t.” Foster pinched the flat of his blade and ran his fingers down it, clearing the edge of blood and ash. “And you were wrong.”
“You must tell us who sent you,” Aideen said. “Our lives, and those of all who stand against the king, are at risk.”
Aideen certainly hadn’t exaggerated about our lives being in danger. I did wonder if our lives being at risk, or our dying, would affect the lives of all who stood with us. Even if it didn’t, it still put the lives of all humans in front of a homicidal king.
The Green Man considered Aideen’s words. He slowly sat up, bark and broken branches cascading from the left side of his body where I had struck him with the Fist of Anubis. “I did not know. One of Stump’s most trusted advisors, an old friend, an ancient Green Man, told us that the imposter would be here. I do not understand why he is not.”
“The imposter is dead,” Foster said, indicating the pile of ash with his sword.
“Please,” Aideen said, drawing the Green Man’s attention away from Foster. “We need to know who told you this.”
The Green Man hesitated. “He does not have a human name, like Stump does. Many of our people have taken human names.”
I didn’t really consider Stump a human name, but perhaps to an ancient and immortal tree, that was as human as it got.
Zola circled behind the Green Man, her forehead wrinkling as she peered into the woods and back.
The Green Man continued. “He was crowned with flowers, a unique feature I have not often seen in my many years, though Green Men like him were once known to roam the lands around what is now named Kansas City. It is a smaller city, a sub-city.” The Green Man frowned. “I do not believe that is the word used for your sub-cities, and it is not the heart of the city; it is the smaller city around the heart of the city.”