None of us, of course, had any weapons. They’re not something you’re allowed to hold onto during an interrogation.
Quillan was looking at me. “Help her!” he said as we scrambled for the door. Perhaps he thought I was strong enough to simply lift the abomination away and hurl it into space.
“In case you failed to notice, it is on fire,” I answered. “Fire does not like me.” Similar to the way wood erodes under running water, fire is an element against which I simply have no defenses. But that did not mean I was not in the process of devising my own plan to help the unfortunate fairy.
A loud crash sounded behind us. When we turned around, the abomination was gone and Dulcie was crawling through the furthest hole in the wall that led to the outside. It was significantly larger than it was only thirteen seconds prior, and through it, we could faintly hear Dulcie cursing.
I did not wait for Quillan. I dematerialized and shadow-sped my way through the parts of the building that weren’t drowning in the vampire-consuming flames. I ran out of the building and around to the side where Dulcie and the abomination were now circling one another in the parking lot.
Before I say anything more about the abomination (which was still burning) or Dulcie (who was panting, which only caused her cleavage to further attract my attention), I am afraid I must pause here to describe the sky.
There was nothing inherently wrong with the sky, except that it seemed to vibrate, as the horizon might appear to vibrate on a very hot day. The cold wind was severe enough that even I could feel it, and those who were not already lacking proper body temperature were very likely shivering in their shoes. The darkness between the stars was steadily slinking away, revealing the dull, orange-grey of very early dawn, or so it seemed. When the first rays of glimmering bronze struck my skin, I flinched, but it was too late.
Yet I did not burn.
A cloud of something hung over us, shielding me from whatever bits of the sun were responsible for the burning of unholy things. As you can imagine, my feelings about this were mixed; I was safe, yes, but my safety from the sun’s rays also implied that something was intrinsically unnatural about the condition of the sky. I wondered if Meg played a part in its transformation.
In that pre-dawn moment, I stood perhaps less than seven strides from a burning abomination and a snarling Dulcie. The pair were now wrestling on the ground, and I had a thought that perhaps this was why Meg chose to join the Darkness in the first place. The promise of sunlight. That precious brightness was a luxury we had not enjoyed for hundreds of years. It was a change Meg could wring from the atmosphere itself, so we might never have to hide. And I must admit, watching the sunrise—or rather, what had become of the sunrise—I think I almost understood.
But I digress.
Dulcie was underneath the abomination now. It was a colossal creature with the heads (yes, in the plural) of the aforementioned drow and something very scaly with more teeth than I cared to count. Their necks were thankfully short, so there was no chance of one getting closer than the other as they snapped at Dulcie like rabid dogs. Two sharply pointed tails lashed back and forth as it struggled to keep Dulcie beneath it and away from its throat. She held both heads at bay in the place where their throats joined the rest of the body, raking her nails across their skin, ostensibly to carve the heads off their bodies so she could reach down and pull out their hearts.
I heard light, fast footsteps before Quillan was beside me, panting.
“What are you doing?” he demanded rather testily.
“Spectating,” I responded. I crossed my arms and tilted my head.
“Why aren’t you helping her?”
“Why are you not helping her?”
Quillan scowled and started to run forward but I caught him by the back of his shirt.
“Your gun cannot defend you. And perhaps I should point out that our dearest Dulcie, who is infinitely stronger than you could ever hope to be, is presently having enough of a challenge without you barreling in there and distracting her.” I paused for a moment. “I am helping my dear sweet by not helping her and you should do the same.”
Dulcie wrenched the abomination sideways and landed on top of it. She drove her hand into its throat with the adrenaline strength of an enraged werewolf on a mission, splattering her torso with black flecks. The expression on her face seemed somewhat frenzied. She was thrilling to observe.
“Give her a moment,” I said, and one moment was all she needed.
Dulcie, being more fairy than she was vampire, had no difficulty with the abomination’s current status as a living torch. The heads opened their mouths and we watched, utterly enthralled, as she pounded her fist into the face of one of them. Long and unnecessarily sharp teeth clattered to the ground. When all that remained were toothless gums and a writhing tongue, Dulcie thrust her hand down its throat, all the way up to her shoulder.
She was nothing short of spectacular.
The drow head sank its teeth into her shoulder and its claws into her arm, doing its damnedest to rip her arm off. Its left hand, the one Dulcie had broken already, was scrabbling on the ground, groping for purchase, and maybe trying to drag itself away. It left long, shallow grooves in its wake. The drow head began to chew.
“Oh, dear,” I said and took a step forward but Quillan’s hand on my arm prohibited me from moving closer.
“You’re right,” he said simply. “She can do this without us.”
I nodded and stepped back again, turning my attention back to Dulcie as I watched her fish inside the abomination’s body for barely three seconds before she found something. She ripped it out hard and fast enough to crack a bone in the abomination’s skull. The drow screamed. Dulcie flung a grey heart onto the concrete, where it shattered, exposing a clean grey interior.
Her arm was drenched in black and her fingers were curled into a dark, dripping fist as she punched the drow face squarely in its nose. I heard the cartilage crumple when the bone shattered and impaled its shards into whatever was left of its brain. If it were still alive conventionally speaking, her blow would have surely killed it.
Dulcie retrieved another heart. This one took a minute longer to find, spent fishing through the interminable number of organs Meg undoubtedly shoved inside. She probably wreathed each one with enchantments to stave off decay. A dark puddle of black and gold surrounded her. It was the abomination and fairy blood mixing, repelling each other like oil and water do. The blood glowed in the abomination’s fire.
Above us, the sky seemed to shiver.
“Bram,” said Quillan. He was looking at the rapidly spreading pools, now ponds, of Dulcie’s blood. The molten gold gleamed softly as the sun dragged itself over the horizon.
Sunlight touched my skin. Pale, clear, and warm. The sensation was bizarre.
“She is fine,” I replied. And of this fact, I was wholly convinced. If she were not, God himself would have had to intervene in stopping me from doing something, fire or no fire. “See?”
Dulcie pulled and something snapped inside the abomination. Whatever was physically anchoring the last heart to the rest of the body, when it snapped, she toppled backwards with the full momentum of her own weight. The abomination crumpled like a paper doll in the rain.
The heart fell to the concrete and broke apart. It was the last in the body and the shadows were still squirming inside when its grey skin burst, scattering everywhere like broken terra cotta pieces. Dulcie rolled until she was several yards away, then she sat up, panting, and striped with black and gold.
“Stand back,” I said. The abomination’s disappearance did not necessarily mean its death. But it was the most we could hope for until we could find some way to kill it properly. “It is going to burst into flames.”
And it did just that. Right At the same moment as the last of our intrepid party came streaming around the corner, like water over a broken dam, Samantha was upon the heart before she even realized what it was.
I called her name; but o
f course, I was too late.
The dark fire engulfed her completely. She collapsed to her knees. It swarmed all over her face, making her eyes shine darkly, if such a thing could be said of things that shine. She opened her mouth but did not scream. She had the same bizarre, starry look on her face that I saw in Knight’s apartment, when she stared through the flames to see the great, terrible fool responsible for them.
I stepped forward, unsure how I intended to help. The flames would vanish in another moment, but whatever they were doing to Samantha did not seem at all pleasant.
Then a figure appeared from nowhere, glowing gold, and he grabbed the burning heart.
He closed his fist tightly around the heart, which burst into flames—real ones—red and gold and white. The dark fire was instantly extinguished with a furious hiss. The heart spent another moment making an awful, whining sound before resigning itself to shimmering ash in short order.
“Ah, there you are,” I said, feigning a detachment I did not feel. “We have been looking for you.”
Vander did not share eye contact with me. Instead, he opened his hand. The ashes blew away, starry glitter sifting through his fingers like sand into the steadily brightening sky. I tried not to be impressed.
“Are you okay?” he asked, looking at Samantha. She was still staring at the ground and silent, but shaking.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. And then, “Fuck,” a sentiment we all shared.
“You can kill them,” Quillan announced, somewhat astonished. If Vander was surprised to see Quillan, he did not appear so.
I scoffed. “Stellar observation, sir. Tell me, what clued you in?”
“Shut up,” said Quillan, and then, to Vander, he asked, “How?”
“It’s a long story,” Vander replied, sounding beleaguered by the mere thought of it. He knelt by Samantha and placed a gleaming, golden hand on her shoulder. It was the glow that shines from a Loki in the Netherworld, lighting up his skin like fire. She calmed down at once.
“Loki thing. I’ll tell you about it when this is over,” he said.
Quillan nodded.
Vander looked up, perhaps to say more, but went statue-still. I followed his flaring, white-lit eyes across the bloody, black ground to Dulcie, who stood stiffly next to Henry. Pitch and gold dappled her skin, dripping down her fingers. The smell was most peculiar.
“Dulcie,” he said, and his voice was tight, as though some invisible force were doing me the great favor of strangling him. “I… Dulcie.” He said her name again and a flood of anger passed through me, like a spectral hand punching me in the gut with closed fingers of solid ice.
He swallowed, perhaps preparing to say something equally uninspired, but I could practically feel the numbness coming from his mouth. He blinked at her as one might blink at a UFO or a scantily-clad waitress.
Dulcie refused to look at him. Henry broke the silence before it could totally descend as he ran to Dulcie and threw his arms around her. She appeared quite surprised. Whether by Henry’s informality or the appearance of her estranged beau, I could not say.
“We should save the greetings as Dulcie is quite wounded,” I interrupted as I took a step toward her. But she held up her hand to ensure I remained where I currently was.
“I’m fine,” she said and her expression warned me not to argue with her. So I did not.
“Hi, Agent O’Neil!” Henry said, waving. “Sorry I’m late. I fell out of the sky and ran into Agent Vander in a volcano.”
That startled Dulcie out of her stiffness and rigidity. She blinked several times before she managed to reply. “You what?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” Henry answered, sounding suddenly rather sensible, and much older than he previously looked. “We should probably take care of all this before I tell you. But I will. It was interesting. Mr. Vander and I met Hades.”
“Hades?” Dulcie repeated, and I started nodding slowly. So that explained the vaguely dark but not inherently malicious presence I felt in Vander’s apartment. The god must have paid him a visit. Interesting…
Vander tore his gaze from Dulcie with considerable effort. “It’s just Knight, Henry. Don’t call me Agent Vander.”
“Right. Sorry, sir. Knight.”
I had a sudden vision of a small, blond child calling him “Sir Knight” and snorted. No one who heard me gave any comment.
“Don’t be. I’m just…” Vander swallowed as he cleared his throat. When he spoke, his eyes flitted restlessly between Henry and Dulcie. Eventually, they landed on her and remained there. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Dulcie did not reply. She was stiff as a board and radiating the unbridled anger and discomfort of a werewolf trapped in a very small cage. For whatever reason, she looked at me to ask, “Is Sam okay?”
Samantha sucked in a long breath and nodded. “I saw her again.”
“Saw her?” said Vander. “What do you mean? Who?”
“I mean I saw her,” she repeated, only then realizing she was playing the pronoun game. “Meg. I glimpsed her through the smoke. Just now. I saw the same thing in your apartment too, when I was testing the smoke to see what it was.” She sucked in a short breath through an audibly constricted windpipe. “Meg’s on the other side of all the abominations, telling them where to go but…” She closed her eyes, perhaps in her effort to remember what exactly she saw, and grimaced as though it pained her to look. “But they aren’t listening. They are, but they aren’t, not all of them; they’re just off killing anything that moves. And she’s afraid…” She opened her eyes and frowned at nothing in particular.
“Of what?” I asked.
Samantha did not seem to hear. “It’s too much. Meg can’t see through them anymore and she doesn’t have enough bodies.”
“What do you mean?”
“The mist, the smoke, and the shadows! Meg was making bodies for them, but she doesn’t have enough bodies left. There weren’t supposed to be this many, and now The Darkness is getting impatient and angry and it’s becoming more than she can control. It wants something and she can’t stop it…” She trailed off, trembling, staring at the ground as though it could open up and swallow her.
“It is using her,” said a new voice, “to enter the world and devour it.”
We all turned as one to see a tall, remarkably unimpressed figure clad in a dress shirt and slacks, kneeling over the bodies. He was examining their faces and frowning deeply as though he knew some of them.
“Ezra,” I said.
Meg’s maker, my grandmaker. Easily more than eight hundred years old, and, consequently, infuriatingly patronizing. “How good of you to join us.” I certainly didn’t expect him to. He formerly asserted with some resolve that Meg was beyond saving. He insisted that it was our collective duty to end her unfortunate life for the betterment of existence as a whole. But he was also her maker, and they certainly must have shared a strong and ancient bond. I was not alone in assuming he would have preferred to leave this most unpleasant task to a younger, less involved generation.
“The power of the Darkness is consuming her,” Ezra explained without acknowledging me. He pushed up his sleeves, rolling them to his elbows. They were hideously stained with dust and blood. “She took the heart of the monster into her body to retake the Netherworld, and you,” he said to Dulcie. “But it was more than she bargained for. Obviously. She traded her spiritual autonomy for the right to draw on the considerable power of the Darkness, to build an army only the children of Hades could destroy. In doing so, she agreed, in practice if not in word, to act as its anchor and its future gate into the physical world.” He rolled his eyes, perhaps at himself, perhaps at Meg. “The Darkness does not make deals that are lucrative for its mortal party.”
“How do you know that?” Vander asked.
Ezra turned to him. “Which part?”
“The part about Hades’ children.”
Ezra shrugged. “I am very old,” he said. “I know many things.”
; “Uh-huh,” said Vander, clearly unconvinced. “And where the hell have you been?”
“Following Meg, but very discreetly. I’ve been attempting to thwart her from behind the scenes. Perhaps I can convince her by way of her own spectacular failure to return to the land of common sense.”
“Is that where we are?” I asked, rolling my eyes. Ezra ignored me.
“But,” he said, “that, as you can imagine, has not worked out as I hoped. I have spent the better part of the last several months searching for the paltry remains of Meg’s coalition, but they are either very good at hiding or very dead. The dead most likely were killed in service to the Darkness, and the reckless manufacture of Meg’s abominations.” He shook his head, as though Meg were no more than an errant child being disciplined for breaking another child’s toy. “Meg has given herself over to the Darkness completely now, or perhaps it usurped her control and she cannot realize it. Regardless of how, she is an integral part of it now.”
“What happened to Meg being lost from the beginning?” I asked.
“I did not want to believe it, no more than you did. Perhaps I allowed myself to linger overlong in a state of profound denial, desperately hoping she could still be redeemed.” He gestured to the black rain falling all around us. “That is difficult to swallow in our current circumstances.”
“No kidding,” said Henry.
Ezra, for the first time, turned his eyes on the young human. “And may I ask the identity of our glowing human friend?”
“Henry,” said Henry. “Henry Cotton.”
“Henry Cotton,” Ezra said thoughtfully. “And what is your purpose here?”
“He’s our guide,” Vander answered.
“To what?”
“Meg, we hope.”
I frowned. “Do we?”
“There’s a big, red, tornado thing over that way,” Henry chimed in, pointing across the highway toward the old suburbs. His voice sounded so small and far away compared to the rest of us. “They can’t see it but I can because Hades pushed me inside a volcano.”
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