Orlagh and I approached the veil of leaves and moved just a few strands aside to peek at the scene beyond.
The clearing turned out to be another crossroads, where the path we were on bisected a similar path that ran north and south. The pavement was just a circle of stones set between four weeping willows that bordered the paths. At the base of each tree was a wooden bench that had been fashioned from the bulbous roots.
It was a rest stop. A place weary travelers could nap or lunch or work out the kinks in their muscles in the middle of a long journey.
At some point in history, likely before they were dubbed the
“old” forests, people had traversed this place often enough to need such a rest stop. In the many intervening centuries since that time, this stop, and presumably others like it, had fallen into disrepair. But there was no severe weather in the forest, especially this far in, so the stop had decayed at a snail’s pace.
You could tell what it had looked like in its heyday: a comfortable, enchanting space tucked within the privacy of the willows, an almost storybook quality to its design.
For a moment, I was consumed by an intense, childlike wonder, as I imagined the many hundreds or thousands of people who’d visited this rest stop throughout the storied history of Tír na nÓg. Gods could have sat on those benches. Monsters could have stood at those crossroads. Powers the likes of which I could barely fathom
could have run their fingers through the willow curtains, as I was doing now. The very essence of—
“Well, it’s about damn time,” said an irate voice, breaking me out of my reverie.
Orlagh and I looked to the left as a woman who’d been lounging on one of the benches, hidden from view by some extruding roots, sat up, stretched, and pointed an accusatory metal finger at us. “I was starting to think I was the only one still kicking,” Odette continued. “What did you two do, stop at the mall for a shopping spree and a mani-pedi?”
“I wish,” I said, slipping through the curtain of leaves onto the pavement. “Would have been a lot more relaxing than what actually happened.”
“Tell me about it,” Orlagh muttered, trailing behind me.
Odette scoffed. “Unless you had to deal with a bunch of giant motherfucking snakes, I don’t even want to hear it.” She suppressed a shudder, and I got the distinct impression she’d had a flashback to her misfortune with the lindworm during whatever ordeal the Morrígan had thrown her way.
Leave it to a goddess of war to make you relive your worst experiences. She probably won’t judge you worthy unless you can swallow the bitterness of PTSD like it’s made of pure sugar.
“I would have much preferred snakes,” Orlagh said, “to the creatures that accosted me when—”
Indira Sanyal abruptly staggered through the willow curtain from the south and collapsed to her knees, gasping for air. She was soaking, dripping wet and shivering uncontrollably, her lipstick washed away to reveal lips tinged blue from hypothermia.
Before any of us could react, she spat out a fire spell that formed a whirlwind of pink flames. The flames rapidly spun around her, caressing her skin without ever touching her long enough to burn. In less than a minute, she was bone dry all the way to the roots of her hair, and her shivering had settled into a slight tremble.
Shoulders slumped, she let a deluge of complaints in rapid-fire Hindi spill from her lips, and it was only when Orlagh cleared her throat that Indira finally realized she wasn’t alone. She snapped to attention, loose strands of staticky hair clinging to her cheeks, and produced an embarrassed chuckle. “Oh. Hi there. I didn’t see you guys.”
Odette rose from the bench, rubbing at her right hip like the joint was stiff. An injury from her encounter with the
motherfucking snakes, I assumed. “You okay?” she asked Indira.
“Look a little chilly there.”
“I almost drowned in freezing water.” Indira smoothed back her frizzy hair. “I woke up in some kind of ice cave and had to swim out through these really narrow tunnels.”
Orlagh raised an eyebrow. “Where are there ice caves in this forest?”
Indira threw up her hands. “Beats me. When I finally reached the end of the maze, I found myself in the hollowed-out trunk of a tree, no ice caves in sight. I would’ve thought it was some kind of illusion if I hadn’t been cold and wet.”
“Seems like the Morrígan was playing on our fears.” Odette rapped her shoe against the broken stones. “Some kind of test to see if we’re made of stern enough stuff to be worthy of an audience with the mighty god of war?”
“That was my impression,” Orlagh said.
“And mine,” I agreed.
Indira shakily stood up and smoothed out the wrinkles in her clothes. “I would’ve preferred a written exam.”
“Wrong god for that.” I glanced at each stretch of path leading away from the rest stop. “Say, were you two also led here by will-o’-the-wisps?”
“If that’s the name for those little blue lights, then yeah,”
Odette said.
Indira jutted a thumb over her shoulder. “I followed a line of them up the hill from where I stumbled out of the tree.”
“So if you succeed in the challenge the Morrígan lays against you,” Orlagh put together, “she will have the wisps lead you to this rendezvous point.”
Odette dropped back down onto the bench. “Guess that means we need to wait for Boyle, Drake, and the three stooges to show up, after which the Morrígan will tug our strings in some other terrible direction.”
“That’s a good bet.” I trudged over and sat down beside her. “But we can’t wait here all day. We’re down to, what, just under six hours to stop the Hunt?”
Orlagh, giving Odette a rebuking glare for the “three stooges”
insult, said, “If the four of us managed to prove ourselves, then I’m assuming the others can as well. And as the Morrígan has doubtlessly been listening in on our conversations, she is almost certainly aware we are on a tight deadline. I’m sure she will
move things along at a pace just fast enough for us to reach the
‘finish line’ on time.”
“But just slow enough to make us persistently anxious,” Indira countered.
Orlagh frowned. “Yes, she does strike me as rather vindictive.”
“By the way”—I wiped the blood from the ant antenna cut off my cheek, the wound having already healed—“what happened to your horse?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.” Orlagh sighed and shuffled over to another bench, checking the seat for any potential dangers before she sat down. “When I came to after the tornado, my horse was nowhere to be found. If it was not killed outright by the high winds, then I imagine it was deposited elsewhere.”
Odette scoffed. “Maybe the Morrígan’s collecting ‘donations’ for a petting zoo.”
“Petting zoo?” Orlagh scrunched her nose. “What is that?”
With a humorless chuckle, Indira sank down next to Orlagh on the bench and gave her a quick rundown of the joys of petting goats and horses and other relatively docile fluffy creatures.
“Hm.” Orlagh twirled a lock of her hair as she considered the concept. “I can see how that would amuse small children, though I can’t help but feel the animals should be placed in positions where they can lead more productive lives.”
I snorted. “Ah, got to love that utilitarian Unseelie mindset.”
“And what’s wrong with being practical?” Orlagh said.
“Personally, I…”
The north side of the willow curtain rustled, and Boyle slipped through, with Graham a few steps behind him.
Boyle’s clothing was streaked with black singe marks, some of them still steaming. His face and neck were marred by a smattering of small, half-healed burns, patterned as if hot grease had been splashed right in front of him.
Graham, on the other hand, was covered in thick mud, the hardening glop peeling off her skin in chunks that thudded to the gro
und with each step she took.
Neither of them looked happy, though Boyle’s expression verged on anger while Graham was green around the mouth, as if she was about to upchuck. Both of them paused a few steps past the willow curtain, taking in the scene of the rest of us waiting patiently on the benches.
Boyle’s anger evaporated at the sight of Orlagh, and he moved to take a seat on the bench across from hers. Graham followed his lead, but just as her butt was nearing the bench, she finally lost her hold on her stomach contents. She leaned over the side of the bench and threw up three times, her vomit landing somewhere out of sight behind the knotted roots of the willow tree.
When she finally managed to sit down, breathing hard, Orlagh said, “Are you okay, Lieutenant?”
“I apologize for the indiscretion, Major.” Graham gagged again, but nothing came up. “I swallowed something rather vial a few minutes ago.”
“It’s quite all right.” Orlagh patted a first-aid pouch on her belt. “Do you need medical attention?”
Graham shook her head. “My healing factor has it covered, I think. I’m starting to feel better now.” A huge glop of muck fell out of her hair and landed on the bench seat beside her with a wet plop. “Though I could desperately use a washing. Next time we come to a stream, please do let me stop for a quick scrub.”
“Of course.” Orlagh gave her the most sympathetic nod that was appropriate for a soldier. Addressing Boyle, she added, “Have you seen heads or tails of Major McDermott, Captain Kavanagh, or our dhampir companion?”
Boyle rubbed at a raw patch of fresh skin on his chin. “I have not. Though as it seems we are all being herded to this resting area, I figure they are likely to appear in short order.”
“You figure correctly, at least on one count,” said McDermott’s deep, accented voice, just before the man himself strode through the willow curtain.
He looked even worse than Graham and Boyle. One of his uniform sleeves had been sheared off at the elbow. Blood was speckled across every exposed inch of skin, as if he’d walked through a crimson cloud sprayed from a paint can.
He limped slightly as he shuffled over to the one empty bench, a tear in his left pants leg revealing a deep, jagged laceration in his thigh. At one point, it had been bone deep, I could tell. As even now, his fat tissue was poking out of the top of the wound.
Something had nearly cut his leg clean off.
“Do you need assistance, sir?” Graham said, hopping to her feet.
McDermott waved off her concern. “I need only a few minutes more to heal up. And it seems I will have it, since two of our party are still missing in action.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that.” Odette pointed at the eastward path, and we all turned to look.
Another will-o’-the-wisp had appeared at the edge of the pavement, its blue flame somehow caressing the willow leaves without setting them alight. Through the tiny gaps in the willow curtain, I could just make out the blue glow of several more wisps, the trail leading down the east path for about fifty feet before it veered off to the left at a fork.
The glowing beacons eventually vanished behind a low rise of earth, but the trail presumably continued on for some distance.
Imploring us to head to whatever destination the Morrígan had chosen as either an appropriate meeting place, or the site of a second test.
“We’re supposed to leave now?” Graham asked. “But what about Captain Kavanagh?”
“Guess he didn’t make it,” Boyle answered gruffly. “Him or the dhampir.”
I groaned inwardly. Please don’t tell me I spent the last twenty-four hours dragging Drake through countless life-or-death situations, just for him to die alone in the middle of the woods.
Indira cleared her throat nervously. “Should we look for them?”
“We don’t have the time or the manpower necessary to comb the whole forest for them,” I said. “And if we poke any of the forest inhabitants too hard during a mundane or magic search, we might end up in a position that costs us our chance to meet with the Morrígan. Even two people down, we’re still a strong group with the skills necessary to overcome most obstacles. So I think it’d be best if we continued toward our goal.”
Odette shot me a hard look. “You want to leave them behind?”
“Want to? No.” I sighed. “But there’s a lot more at stake here than two people, and both Drake and Kavanagh knew what they were getting into by stepping foot in the old forests. If they’re still alive, maybe we can find them after we succeed in doing what we came here to do. If they’re not, well, then debating what to do about them is pointless.”
“And if they die in the interim between now and then?” Odette pressed.
I slapped my hands against my pants. “What do you want me to say?
That I’m willing to weight their lives more heavily than the lives of everyone in Kinsale? Because I’m not. Even if I still had my mind glamour on, I wouldn’t do that. This isn’t the zombie invasion, and I’m not running past innocent civilians getting torn to pieces by vicious monsters.
“Everyone here volunteered to be here, on some level or another.
So if we lose people, that sucks, but we can’t let that loss hold us back. We have too many lives counting on us, along with the fate of Kinsale itself. If the Hunt hits Kinsale, there won’t even be a city anymore.”
As the finality of my declaration set in, Odette’s tough exterior cracked for just a second, and I saw in her eyes the true depth of her emotional exhaustion. Over the past two days, she had lost more people than she’d lost since the purge eight years before.
Subordinates she had trained up from hapless civilians to top-notch fighters. Comrades at arms with whom she’d forged strong bonds during the most dangerous of missions.
She’d spent six laborious months of her life whipping the Watchdogs into shape, and many of them had gone up in smoke when Vianu set off those bombs. More had died in the hours since, as what remained of the Watchdogs desperately tried to defend the city from the vampire incursion that once again sent Kinsale up in flames.
Odette was tired of losing allies.
I was too, and I keenly wished I could commiserate with her about all we’d lost and start to heal the holes those losses had torn into our hearts. But neither Odette nor I could yet lay down our burdens.
Just like Saoirse, who had to wade through the muck that was depression in order to prop up the Watchdogs until the danger to the city had passed, we had to soldier on until we accomplished our goals on this side of the veil. Or all of Saoirse’s hard work, along with the efforts of everyone else still toiling in Kinsale, would wind up being completely worthless.
I looked into Odette’s haggard eyes and silently passed that message to her, tacking on an oblique apology.
Grumbling, Odette hauled herself to her feet. “All right.
Whatever. Let’s follow the blue flame road to this bitchy war god and get this negotiation over with. I’ve had enough of hiking through the woods of death for one day.”
“I’ve had enough for a lifetime,” Indira muttered. “But what’s a few miles more?”
Orlagh padded over to the first wisp, which disappeared when she crossed into its personal space. Pulling the willow curtain aside, she eyed the trail of wisps leading ever farther into the darkness. “From this point on,” she said solemnly, “I think it would serve us well to try and stay together at all costs.”
“We can try all we like”—McDermott limped up behind her—“but attempting to bend the will of the Morrígan is just as futile as
attempting to bend Queen Mab’s. She will pull our strings however she pleases, because to her, we are no more than puppets dancing for her amusement. We must simply hope our performance is entertaining enough for her to decide to lend an ear to the entreaties we have come to make.”
“I’m nobody’s plaything. I have earned the right not to be, after all that Mab and Tildrum have put me through over the past year.”
I marched by McDermott and stepped onto the beginning of the path. “The Morrígan will listen to what I’ve come to say, even if it’s the last goddamn thing she wants to do.”
Incredulous, McDermott asked, “And how, pray tell, will you force a being of such power to listen to a being of so little?”
“The same way I took Abarta’s eye and repeatedly foiled his plans. The same way I blew up Manannán’s house and stole all his precious treasures.” I cast a vicious, bitter smile over my shoulder. “With a little bit of fae wiliness, and a whole lot of human stubbornness.”
Chapter Ten
Five and a Half Hours Till Dusk
The will-o’-the-wisps led us to a killing field.
At the muddy base of what had once been a wide streambed lay a sprawl of nude, emaciated corpses. Dry, leathery skin and all but the barest hint of body hair indicated the shriveled bodies had been here for some time. That impression was furthered by the fact that many of them were coated in dried mud, having already been present when the stream had last been filled by the runoff from a rainstorm. All the bodies lay face down, and they were all similar in size, so it was difficult to gauge the exact species of the bodies.
That more than fifty had been killed indicated they were likely lesser fae—it was rare these days for sídhe to die in such large numbers, even in a place as dangerous as the old forests. But what a group of lesser fae were doing traipsing through the stomping grounds of the most ancient creatures in Tír na nÓg, I couldn’t even begin to guess.
The trail of blue lights continued down the streambed for about a quarter mile, until it took a hard left up the steep embankment and vanished around the side of a tree.
“Um,” said Indira, “can we maybe take a detour around the creepy graveyard?”
McDermott grunted. “I dare not challenge the will of the Morrígan. If we deviate from the set path, she may punish us.”
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