by E. A. Copen
My walk through the crumbling fort brought me to a courtyard. Tall, stone walls marked out the edge of it in the distance. Moss and grass had overtaken a lot of it, and there were lots of puddles from where the water squeezed its way in. The water, silt, and stone created a sort of artificial marsh where cattails grew and fireflies blinked against the dark. Every so often, enough of the lightning bugs would light up at once that it’d illuminate the harpies patrolling above. I stayed parked under the stone-arch that acted as an opening into the courtyard, protected from view by a crumbling stone awning. I could see them, but they couldn’t see me.
I crossed my arms and watched them circle. How were we going to get back to the mainland without a boat, Beth had asked me. Even back then, my mind had immediately gone to the forbidden spell Josiah had passed to me. It wasn’t a safe mode of travel and using it would draw lots of attention from the supernatural entities around New Orleans, but that might not be such a bad thing since I needed to talk to most of them. I could open a portal and get the three of us through it with enough concentration.
But once I did it in front of Beth, I’d never be able to use that trick again to get close to Loki. I’d lose that advantage. That spell was the only reason I’d been able to get close to him before, but maybe I wouldn’t need it now.
That was, of course, considering Beth got Emma back on her feet. I knew she could do it. Beth was the best healer I knew, even if her powers didn’t work on me. Not without causing excruciating pain anyway. That was the price I paid to become the Pale Horseman.
I was tired of paying and not getting something back.
“Wouldn’t be a bad view if not for the harpies.”
I turned my head at the sound of Emma’s voice. She stepped out of the darkness behind me, a spear in her hand. The uneven light of the fireflies and distant highway lights rolling over the water played against the side of her face, catching the corner of her smile.
“You’re up.” I uncrossed my arms and stepped away from the doorway. “Beth didn’t think you’d be on your feet for a while.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “I’m tough to kill, even for those bitches.” She gestured to the harpies on patrol.
While her attention focused on the monsters circling the fort, I couldn’t help but look at her and wonder where it all went wrong. In the days following what’d happened, I went over it again and again in my head, looking for some small detail I’d missed, something I might’ve done differently to get to her in time. No matter what I did, though, I couldn’t see a way for it to turn out any differently. Josiah had been right. There was no way to save both of them, no matter how much I had wanted to.
“You could take a picture,” Emma said without turning her head. “It’d last longer.”
I turned my attention away. “Sorry. I was just wondering where things stood between us. If you’re even in there.”
“You don’t think I’m me.” She flashed me a wary smile. “That’s okay. I’d be suspicious too, I suppose. Can’t blame you.”
“Well, you are working as a personal bodyguard for the evilest god I’ve ever met. Kinda hard to get past that, you know.”
She turned to face me, the butt of her spear tapping lightly against stone as she set it down. “Then let’s take Loki out of the equation. I’m still me.” She cupped my cheek in her hand. “These are my fingers. My hand, my mouth speaking my words.”
I leaned into her hand and closed my eyes. It was tempting to just accept what she was saying. Maybe there was something I wasn’t seeing, some truth I had missed. But I knew better. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t convince myself this new Emma was the same Emma I knew and loved. Maybe it was the same body, the same voice. If I opened my Vision and looked at her soul, it might even be the same soul. All those things together weren’t enough to make a person who they were. Something was missing.
Her hand retreated and my heart fluttered in a panic, afraid I’d never get to feel her touch again. I squashed the instinct to fumble through saying the right thing. There was nothing to say.
Emma gripped the spear with both hands. “I can still kick your ass too. And I don’t even need a gun to do it anymore. How about it?”
I frowned at the spear. “You sure that’s a good idea? You were half-dead not so long ago.”
Her smile widened. “Oh, come on. You could use a few pointers, especially if you want to take on the father of all monsters.” She paced to the center of the hallway and took a stance I’d seen the other Valkyries use.
I hadn’t fought many Valkyries, mostly because I knew I was shit at fighting and they were certified trained badasses. Even with limited training, Emma could’ve smacked me all around Fort Pike a few months ago. But since then, I’d become more than just a necromancer and Pale Horseman. I was king of my own court, which meant I got my own knight, and I’d been training with Sir Foxglove twice a week. He could still kick my ass, but I never used my staff when fighting him. It was iron, and like most fae, the touch of it left him burned.
I picked the iron staff up from where I’d leaned it in the corner. “You think Typhon will fight me with a spear?”
“I think when you’re dealing with a Titan, you’ve got to be ready for anything.” Emma jabbed at me.
I rolled the staff in a half-circle, knocking the pointed blade to the ground and holding it there with my staff on top. Emma pulled the spear back, spun it and sent the butt end smashing toward my face. I shifted the staff the other way, again knocking her advance aside.
“If you want to hit me, you’re going to have to do more than block,” Emma said and snapped the spear to the side, slamming it into the inside of my elbow.
Since I’d gotten the blunt end and not the spearhead, it wasn’t a serious injury, but she hadn’t pulled the strike, letting me take the full force of the hit. It radiated up my arm, as powerful as a roundhouse kick. My arm folded and I lost my grip on the staff for just a moment. In a fight, a moment was all the difference between losing and winning, and a trained killer was taught to capitalize on small moments.
Emma’s spear jabbed at my chest, aiming for just below my neck. Rather than try to fix my grip and turn the move aside with the staff, I sidestepped and let her stab empty air. She stepped into the space I’d made, throwing the blunt end of the spear out behind her and to the side, somehow managing to jab it into my ribs.
I doubled over as all the air went out of my lungs only to find the point of Emma’s spear right in front of my nose.
“Come on,” she chided. “You’re not even trying.”
“Of course not,” I wheezed and blinked away tears. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You said I was working for your enemy. What if Loki orders me to kill you? You just going to stand there and let me do it?” She pressed the flat of the spear under my chin and forced my head up.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
She blinked, all the emotion going out of her face at my answer.
I finally fought through the pain to stand, gripping my chest where she’d jammed the spear in. There’d be a nice bruise there in a few hours. “I went to Hell for you, Emma. I set Fenrir free, started all this, just to save you. I love you. Or who you were. And I know you. I held you while you cried over deaths you thought were your fault. Fought with you to get you to see they weren’t. The guilt of that almost destroyed you. The Emma Knight I know and love wouldn’t hurt me, not even under Loki’s command. So, if he did order you to do it, I have to believe you’d break through whatever control he has over your mind and that you wouldn’t do it.”
Her gaze intensified. Why did she look so angry? Her shoulders heaved with a breath and she retracted the spear. “I should be working on a plan to deal with the harpies so we can get out of here,” she said and turned on her heel to march away.
I stayed where I was, trying to rub away the pain and staring after her. Every time I brought up who she used to be, she shut me down, unwilling to talk about it. I still cou
ldn’t tell if she didn’t remember, or if she just didn’t want to talk about it.
A shadow shifted in one of the doorways nearby. I turned, pointing my staff at the shape, hoping it wasn’t a harpy who’d gotten brave enough to sneak into the fort. Beth stepped out of the shadows and I relaxed. Not completely, just a little. She might be working for the other side, but I didn’t think she was allowed to kill me. Loki wanted me alive.
“You won’t be able to get through to her,” Beth said.
I turned away and tugged up my shirt for a look at the big, red mark. I didn’t think anything was broken or cracked, but she’d gotten me good. “You think I’m just going to stop trying because you tell me to?”
“No, I know you too well to believe that.” She sighed. “I tried to tell Loki, you know. I told him you weren’t going to come around just because he has your woman.”
I frowned at her over my shoulder. “He expected me to just fall in line because he’s done something to make Emma think she’s on his side?”
Beth shrugged and took another step out of the shadows. “Loki is a god. Like most gods, he doesn’t understand human stubbornness. To him, it doesn’t make sense. Our lives are short. Pointless in the grand scheme of things. He believes our desire to matter, to be remembered and leave our mark overcomes our desire for self-preservation. In a way, he’s right.”
“Is that why you did it?”
Beth gave me a flat stare. “You know it is.”
I sank to the cold stone floor with a sigh and turned to face the open courtyard.
Beth came up beside me. I thought she’d been walking around with her arms folded, but up close, it looked more like she was hugging herself than anything. “History is what separates humans from everything else, you know. The gods, they don’t record their history. Most of them don’t remember anything other than important events. Time has no meaning when you’re practically immortal. Animals are driven by their biological processes to breed and die. Even the fae only mark a few historical events, and even then, they don’t think of them in terms of ages or culture. They’re simply things that happened. Only humans can look back at the age of pyramids with awe and wonder. We create heroes out of dead men and legends out of those forgotten in their own time. That’s the power history has, Lazarus. I made my choice to preserve what I could for as long as I could.”
“Isn’t it all pointless if the world is going to end though?” I looked up at her, watching the harpies circle like buzzards.
Her eyebrows scrunched closer together. “The Great Library burned, and we lost a thousand years of knowledge. An apocalypse would wipe even more knowledge from history, but I have to wonder if we would be better off not knowing. If the world was full of mystery again.”
“If billions died so one god could have his vengeance?”
She looked down at me, her expression still guarded. I couldn’t tell if she agreed or disagreed.
“Maybe you’re too jaded and angry to see it, but there is still good in the world, Beth. I remember thinking that the first time I held Remy. All the awful shit I’d done, the terrible things I’d seen, all the pain I’d been through and put others through, it’s all meaningless in the face of moments like that. I held her and I remember wondering how the hell could someone as fucked up as me make something that perfect.” I looked down at my scarred and calloused hands. “I don’t want that wiped away. Not for me, and not for anyone else. I’d give up every ounce of magic I had to go back in time, hold her just one more time.”
“That’s never going to happen.”
I dropped my hands into my lap and sighed again. “I know. Just like I know I can’t go back in time and get to Emma before Loki did whatever it was he did to her. It’s history. You can’t change history. Not even with an apocalypse.”
Beth was silent for a long moment. A gust of wind picked up and howled through the fort like the low, mournful cry of a ghost. But there were no ghosts here. At least, none that had made themselves known to me. It was just an empty stone fortress.
Slowly, she sank to her knees next to me, placing her hands on her thighs and focusing on some distant point in the darkness. “He’s brainwashed her with magic. Made her believe his way is the right way. The only way to fix the world. That’s what Loki does. He takes something you love and twists it, uses it against you. For me, it was history. But Emma’s not like me. Not selfish. She cares about people. It hurts her to see so much evil in the world. She just wanted it to end, for people to give a damn about each other.”
I studied Beth’s face but found no hint of emotion. She was impossible to read. “Is there a way to undo it?”
“Maybe,” said Beth, tilting her head to the side. “But only if she wants it enough. Facing reality is hard. It’s easier to live in the fantasy world Loki convinces you is real. The fantasy has clear-cut solutions. You don’t have to question everything or live with the pain of your mistakes. You just…trust whatever he tells you.”
That was enough for me. If there was a chance I could get through to her, remind her of who she was before, then I’d take it.
But first, we had to get out of Fort Pike and try to pull together these so-called sacrifices.
“I’m not comfortable with the idea of killing all these people,” I told her.
Beth smiled, showing her first hint of emotion since emerging from the shadows. “Of course, you’re not. I’m sure you’ve been racking your brain, trying to find a way around it.”
“Well, part of it.” I patted my staff. “There are probably some sacrifices we won’t have to worry about if I’m right. But a human, an angel, and a fae? Everyone I know that fits those descriptions is a good person. I’m sort of hoping we can round up some bad guys, but is there even such a thing as a bad angel?”
Beth leaned back and brought her knees up. “You’d be surprised what kind of assholes they can be.”
“Now you sound like Josiah.”
“Who?”
“Nobody.” I grabbed my staff and used it to pull myself to my feet. “Of course, our first order of business is getting past these harpies and back to the mainland. Any idea how we can do that?”
She glanced up at the shapes moving against the darkness and shook her head.
Of course. Why would it be that easy?
“I have something we can try but…”
“But it’s an ace up your sleeve you don’t want me or Loki to know about?” Beth rolled her head lazily to the side and raised an eyebrow at me.
I nodded.
“Well, suck it up, Buttercup. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that.” She rolled forward and somehow wound up on her feet, a graceful move I never would’ve expected to see out of Beth. “I assume it’s a spell of some kind?”
“Yep,” I said and started down the hallway back toward where we’d left Fenrir. “but first we need a few ghosts.”
Chapter Seven
There were times I missed just being a necromancer. The Pale Horseman mantle had complicated everything to where I didn’t get to just enjoy the magic for magic’s sake. Sure, back when I made my living doing tarot and seances rather than saving the world, I hated it. Hindsight, as they say, is twenty-twenty. I had it made.
Talking to the dead was second nature and being Death only made it easier. I still wouldn’t attempt it outside a circle. I probably could but performing the magic inside a circle gave me greater control if something went wrong. Stranded on the tiny island, however, I didn’t have access to any chalk or a marker. It took a while to find a stone that’d leave a visible mark on the floor, but once I had it, I returned to the main room.
The fire had burned down to flickering embers, for which I was thankful. It was plenty warm, and now that I was dry, the last thing I wanted was more heat. I paced to the center of the room, close to the flame and marked out my circle on the floor.
Behind me, Fenrir pricked his ears and tilted his head to the side curiously. How will the dead help you return
to the mainland?
“They won’t,” I said, digging the rock harder into the stone, “at least not directly. While we’re bound by the laws of gravity, ghosts aren’t necessarily. Some are, but not all. It depends on how aware of their situation they are.”
What I didn’t tell them was that summoning ghosts was dangerous, even with the circle. Unlike shades, ghosts had their own will and sentience. Over time, their sanity tended to fade, leaving them angry and dangerous. Considering how old the fort was, the chances that I’d have to deal with a couple of crazy ghosts were higher than normal. It wasn’t something I was unprepared for. Like everything else, I had a control spell that’d help me keep them in line, though I didn’t like overriding any sentient being’s free will, ghosts included. When it was the difference between us staying there and getting back to the mainland to save the city, those reservations had to take a back seat.
“Ghosts can fly,” Beth clarified.
I nodded and finished marking out my circle. “They also can’t normally affect the physical plane, which means I’m going to have to give them a little extra juice. While they’re doing their thing, I’ll be virtually useless except for keeping control of them. Once they start attacking the harpies, they might get agitated enough to break in here and try to take us out. You three will have to be my backup.”
Am I allowed to eat the harpies? Or would that go against my previous oath, Horseman?
I stepped back to the edge of my circle, shrugging. “Harpies aren’t human. I’ve got no problem with you chowing down on them. Have at it.”
Fenrir stood, stretched and yawned. Beth grabbed her black staff and stood in front of me to the right. Emma took up a position opposite Beth with her spear and they waited.
“Mind if I borrow that for a second?” I asked and pointed to Emma’s spear.