The spell seemed to have finished its job, as the arm looked fully functional now. But as I’d learned very well over the years, “healed” did not mean “painless.”
Oh, Saoirse, I thought solemnly. I wish you didn’t feel compelled to push yourself so hard. If you don’t stop trying to “keep up”
with practitioners and faeries and literal gods, you’re going to…
“Nah, I think Drake will stick around,” I finally answered as I set off toward the living room. “The Hunt is a danger to every living creature on this planet, including him. So unless he wants to relocate to the Otherworld, or Mars, he has just as good a reason as us to stick around and work to stop it. Though if we fail to stop it in the end, I’m a hundred percent sure he’ll portal off to some safe house to ride out the devastation. Guy’s developed a keen sense of self-preservation, growing up under Vianu’s thumb.”
“Well, he’ll never be stuck under that thumb again.”
“No,” I said, “he will not.”
We reached the living room entryway to find everyone packed inside. The sídhe had clustered in one corner, the Watchdogs in another. Drake sat on the floor in front of my coffee table, and Kennedy sat in the middle of my couch, the same place I’d left him before I ran off to fight Vianu. The blank slate of a man literally hadn’t budged, not even to take a sip of water or eat one of the snacks I’d set out for him.
I would have found it sad, a human being reduced to nothing but a shell, with no personality whatsoever, no wants, no loves, no hopes, no dreams—if Kennedy hadn’t been such a massive dick.
Now, I wouldn’t say he deserved this horrible fate.
But he certainly didn’t deserve much better.
I plopped down in my recliner and addressed Drake. “Saoirse tells me you got something out of him?”
Drake held up a piece of lined paper he’d snagged from one of the notebooks stacked on my bookshelf. On it, he’d drawn a replica of the summoning circle Abarta had used in Maige Itha to complete the first stage of the Ritual of Hollowfiends. “I had Wikipedia man here break down each element of the circle to see if there’s something about the spell construction that we could possibly undo with a spell of our own. There isn’t, unfortunately, because this kind of bullshit is never that simple to clean up.”
He poked the paper with his finger, indicating a particular section of the circle. “But, during my questioning, our compendium of all knowledge here inadvertently revealed a potential alternate solution to casting a counterspell: hijacking a part of the original ritual.”
“Hijacking?” I said. “In what way?”
He poked the paper more emphatically. “You remember this part of the circle, don’t you?”
I snatched the paper from his hand, examining the drawing up close. The part of the circle he’d indicated was the part I’d damaged right before Abarta cast the spell. The circle had backfired on Abarta as a result of my sabotage. But I had apparently failed to destroy any elements critical to actually summoning the Hunt, as the spell had still gone off.
At the time, I figured Abarta had lost some sort of extra benefit that particular element of the circle would have granted him in relation to the Hunt, but I hadn’t known what type of boon it could be. Perhaps it was some kind of immunity to being targeted by the Hunt, or…I took a harder look at the design of that portion of the circle.
The circle was extremely complex, a product of a very old and convoluted style of magic. There were so many symbols and lines and shapes laid overtop one another that it was hard to break them down into their most basic components. But I managed to pick out a few key elements whose functions I recognized. When I added all those functions together, they produced a vague impression of what that circle segment’s sum total had been meant to achieve.
“Control,” I murmured. “This is a control factor.”
“It was,” Drake replied. “Until you destroyed it.”
“This would have given Abarta the ability to directly command the Hunt?”
“That’s what Wikipedia man claims.” Drake shrugged. “He hasn’t been wrong yet.”
“I see.” I settled back against the cushion of my chair. “Abarta wasn’t going to let the Hunt roam around Earth as it pleased. He was going to guide it from city to city, with no stretch pit stops in between, to inflict maximum damage and rack up as many mortal casualties as possible. The back-to-back attacks would have overwhelmed the initial sídhe response to the crisis, forced the courts to send reinforcements to Earth and further diminish the strength of the defenses left on the home front.”
“The perfect storm in which the newly awakened Tuatha could launch an attack on the fae,” Saoirse said, sinking down onto one of the recliner’s armrests.
“Exactly.” I wrung my hands in my lap. “I’m certain that’s what Abarta is working on now. Breaking into Maige Mell to start waking his old pals.”
“Maige Mell is heavily protected though,” said Boyle. “Queen Mab designed those defenses herself. How’s he going to get past the wards, or the guard battalion?”
“The same way he’s been one-upping you fools all year,” Odette snapped. “He’s smart. He’s strong. And he’s stubborn as fuck.
Guy’s an old god with a clear goal, the most dangerous sort of deity you can be.”
“So you say,” muttered one of the other sídhe soldiers. “There’s no evidence he’s really Abarta of the Tuatha—”
Orlagh shut the guy up with a hard glare. “This isn’t the time to play petty politics. Call the man what you will and ignore any narrative that doesn’t toe the official line, if you need coddling like a child to prevent yourself from quaking in your boots under the threat of a truly dangerous enemy. I don’t care what you name him. I don’t care what you think of him. All I care about is that you give me your best in the effort to stop this man from harming the people of Earth, and the people back home.
Clear?”
All the soldiers, except Boyle, straightened up and muttered,
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Back on topic then.” Orlagh looked to me. “During your conversation before the battle with the vampire lord, the King of the Cats claimed he had informed our queen of the events that took place in Maige Itha, including your supposition that our adversary may attempt to assail Maige Mell in short order. I take this to mean that we need not concern ourselves too much with said adversary’s designs on Maige Mell for the time being.
Correct?”
“Neither Tildrum nor M-A-B will make any overt moves that indicate Abarta is a major threat,” I answered, “but since Maige Mell already has an active guard contingent on site, I’m sure
they’ll take precautions to try and ensure Abarta doesn’t breach the plain.”
“I don’t get it.” Saoirse cocked her head to the side. “Why won’t they acknowledge Abarta as a major threat? I know I’ve asked you that before, Vince, but you’ve always brushed the question aside.”
“And I’m going to brush it aside again,” I said flatly. “Because if I answer it, Tom Tildrum will slit my throat with one of his pointy cat claws. And probably mount my head on a wall somewhere, above a plaque that warns people about the punishment for disobeying the King of the Cats.”
A grim silence filled the room.
Odette broke it. “Gee, Whelan, you sure do know some nice people.”
I flipped her off.
“ Anyway ,” Saoirse said, “we were discussing, what was it,
‘control factors’ or something?”
“Yeah.” Drake rubbed his hands together, fidgeting. “The first stage of the ritual should’ve given Abarta the ability to control the Hunt with his will. But Whelan wrecked that part of the spell, so now, when the Hunt finally arrives on Earth, it’s just going to do whatever it feels like doing.”
“But how can we use this information to stop the Hunt?” Orlagh asked. “We can’t recast the control factor by itself. Summonings don’t work that way. You have to ca
st the whole set of parameters at one time.”
Drake snatched the paper back from me and folded it up into some kind of origami animal, ostensibly to give himself something to do so he didn’t have to look anyone in the eye while he spoke.
“Here’s the deal, as Wikipedia man explained it: The control factor in the Ritual of Hollowfiends was based on a previously existing phenomenon, whereby a select group of powerful entities in Tír na nÓg would occasionally hijack the natural will of the Hunt to become what was historically called the ‘King of the Hunt.’ Apparently, these entities had the ability to pass on the status of ‘King’ to anyone they chose, thus allowing less powerful people to take control of the Hunt for the duration of its ride.”
“So if we can find one of these ‘entities,’” said Orlagh, “some of which presumably still exist, we may be able to commandeer the Hunt’s will and prevent it from damaging the protected cities until it runs out of energy and dissipates.”
“Are the queens counted among these entities?” asked Boyle.
Drake shook his head. “Afraid not. The entities in question predate the sídhe occupation of Tír na nÓg. We’re talking ancient beings here.”
“Most of whom have long retreated into the old forests or the long waters to live in solitude, because they want nothing to do with the fae.” Orlagh ground her boot into the carpet, thinking hard. “Did the, ah, ‘Wikipedia man’ happen to mention any of these entities by name?”
Drake grimaced, flashing his tiny fangs. “Well, he did mention one person. The person who was best known for hijacking the Hunt way back when.”
“And who was that?” I asked.
He hesitated for a long moment before he said, “The Morrígan.”
Chapter Two
Nine and a Half Hours Till Dusk
The Morrígan, also known as the Queen of Phantoms, was an ancient goddess born amid the bloody wars between the various native factions of Tír na nÓg several millennia before the arrival of the sídhe. The Morrígan was imbued with, and perhaps herself was, the essence of war. Her power peaked during times of great conflict and waned during times of peace, and she was well known for exploiting political tensions between rival factions in order to usher in new eras of war.
After the Tuatha fell to the sídhe, the Morrígan retreated into the old forests of Tír na nÓg. Presumably because her intuition told her that there would be no more great wars in the realm for many centuries to come, as the sídhe had all but eradicated every possible enemy strong enough to challenge them.
But before she vanished into the cloying darkness beneath those towering, ancient trees, before the blood of the Tuatha had even cooled in the earth over which they had once ruled, the Morrígan made a public proclamation to the faerie queens on the very battlefield upon which the Tuatha fell: she vowed that she would make a grand return to the world only when a threat to sídhe rule finally invaded Tír na nÓg.
The Morrígan had not been seen in fifteen hundred years.
Now, as the upper echelons of the faerie courts sought to wage a secret war with an enemy that, according to Tom Tildrum, was unlike any they had faced before, a reason to seek out the elusive Morrígan had coincidentally presented itself to us.
I couldn’t help but think that was an ill omen.
“The Morrígan?” sputtered one of the sídhe soldiers, his mask of bravado bending under the mere idea of pursuing a being of such power and infamy. “Out of all the ancient beings of Tír na nÓg, she is the last one we could safely approach. Everyone who has sought her out over the past thousand years has vanished into the ether, never to be seen or heard from again. We step foot into the old forests in search of her, we’ll be added to that number.”
Another soldier shook his head emphatically. “He’s right. The Morrígan may not hold the same degree of power as Queen Mab, but she is not that far beneath. According to the old tales, she commands the loyalty of the dead and the obedience of the dying, and she spurs in even the calmest souls intense feelings of hatred and fear, driving people mad.”
“She’s some sort of primordial force,” a third soldier said,
“like the King of the Cats. Something birthed from the very fabric of Tír na nÓg itself, a personification of the realm’s war-torn history. How could we ever hope to acquire legitimate aid from a being like that?”
I was about as enthused at the prospect of approaching the Morrígan as the soldiers. But unlike them, I had a vested interest in protecting the Earth from a force of mass destruction that would wipe out what little civilization remained in the wake of the collapse. “While I would like to take some time to compile a list of applicable figures from Tír na nÓg’s history who might be able to take control of the Hunt, we don’t have enough time to go deep diving into the historical record.
“We have less than ten hours not only to figure out an actionable method by which to stop the Hunt but also to successfully implement that method. If we fumble our first attempt, we won’t get a second, and Kinsale will be a pile of rubble come sunrise tomorrow. So unless anyone has a viable alternative to the Morrígan, we’re going to have to go with her.”
All the soldiers, save Orlagh and Boyle, swore in various faerie dialects, and one of them spit at me, “You can throw your life away if you want, bréagadóir, but I am not venturing into the old forests and throwing myself to the mercy of the monsters that live in the darkness.”
“You’re not invited,” Orlagh said harshly. “None of you are.
After your poor decision to submit to McCullough’s extreme disregard for army policy and refusal to abide by any modicum of logic during a dangerous insurgent situation, I do not believe you can be trusted with matters of great importance. And since this matter is of the utmost importance to the people of Earth, and to our queen, who seeks to protect these people, I will be assigning you to alternate, easier tasks that will not be so affected by your deep-rooted inadequacies.”
The four soldiers were split between being relieved that their lives wouldn’t be put on the line to save us petty mortals and being deeply offended by the resounding slap in the face from their superior officer. With McCullough out of the picture, the responsibility for conduct reports would fall to Orlagh, who’d developed a very dim view of her colleagues after they’d restrained her and Boyle, and then allowed McCullough to rough the duo up for helping the Watchdogs launch that disastrous large-scale raid operation against the vampires.
An operation that had only ended in disaster, it turned out, because McCullough himself leaked vital intel about Project Watchdog to Vianu months ago.
The failed raid operation had incidentally revealed his critical gaff and exposed him as the incompetent fool he was desperate to pretend that he wasn’t. Consequently, everyone who sided with McCullough up until the point where I broke his face and sent him portaling off to Maige Itha—that being all the sídhe soldiers besides Orlagh and Boyle—now had egg on their face. And when the higher-ups caught wind of McCullough’s serious negligence and unforgivable breaches of policy during a major combat situation in the city he’d been assigned to protect, all those eggs were going to boil.
How badly the soldiers would be punished depended entirely upon Orlagh’s benevolence…or lack thereof.
One of the soldiers swallowed his pride and said, “What are your orders, ma’am?”
Orlagh pointed at Saoirse. “Don’t ask me. Ask her. Until I return from Tír na nÓg, or, if I fail to return, until another commanding officer takes my place, you will follow the orders of Captain Daly and help Project Watchdog reestablish control of the city. And then you will generously offer to help with any and all of the cleanup and recovery efforts.”
The four soldiers looked ready to hurl at the thought of obeying a human, but Orlagh had them by the balls. If they disobeyed her, their careers would be forfeit.
With pinched faces, they all turned to Saoirse and asked her what she wanted them to do. Saoirse contacted Geraldine at Watchdog HQ
using my yellow walkie-talkie. Geraldine reported the latest updates on the citywide vampire attack to Saoirse: Most of the vampires had run for the hills after the news about Vianu’s death began to spread. But there were still several ongoing battles between groups of cornered fledglings and Watchdogs with dullahan support. Additionally, a large number of buildings were still on fire, and since all the emergency services had been thrown into disarray when Vianu abducted their
organizational leaders, many civilians were in imminent danger and required assistance ASAP.
Saoirse gave the sídhe soldiers a faux smile and dispatched each one to a different location from the list of neighborhoods that Geraldine had passed on, instructing them to subdue the last of the vampires, put out the fires, and rescue any civilians in danger.
Begrudgingly, the soldiers accepted the orders and trudged out of my living room in a downtrodden line, like they were a chain gang of prisoners heading to the gallows.
When my front door slammed shut a minute later, Odette sneered,
“Well, now that we’ve trimmed off the fat, maybe we can get something accomplished.”
“They aren’t unskilled,” Orlagh countered, “merely unwise.
Playing the game of fae politics is difficult at the best of times, and most never win a single significant victory. Today, they played a terrible hand, and it will cost them dearly for some time.”
“Let’s hope we play the next round better than they played the last,” I said. “I’m sure I don’t need to point this out, since we all look and feel like shit, but we haven’t exactly won the jackpot today either.”
“The difference between us and them is that we still have a chance to do so,” she replied. “Let us grab that chance, however slim, by the reins.”
“Agreed.” Saoirse clipped the walkie-talkie to her belt. “So what exactly are we going to do, in regards to this Morrígan character and ‘hijacking’ the Hunt?”
What Dusk Divides Page 2