First, I struck him with the memory of the iron-tipped bullet blasting through my back and abdomen. Next, it was the blazing pain of my arm practically burning to ash as I struggled to break Abarta’s shield in Maige Itha. Next, it was the hours of agony I’d suffered after slamming into the dungeon wall. Next, it was the Spear of Lugh shredding my intestines. And after that, the iron hatpin that Bismarck shoved into my upper chest.
On and on it went, until at last, I arrived at my trump card.
The day my own brothers in blue had wrapped me in an iron chain and beat the shit out of me, over nothing but a heritage I could not control.
I let that memory linger, let Nuada feel the brunt of those minutes I lay on the ground. Let him feel the iron eroding my skin and muscle, my broken body too weak to get it off, my screams ignored by all the people I had called my friends (save
one). Let him feel my entire life falling to pieces, so many pieces that I would never be able to fully repair it.
You think you’re the only one who’s been through immense suffering, I thought to the former Tuatha king. Think again.
Nuada hadn’t expected a memory of pain that potent, and it threw him off just a bit. Just enough. I sensed it, that millimeter of retreat, as he shied away from the full and awful experience that was a severe iron burn, the body and the soul degrading together, a sensation that was like no other. I saw him falter, clear as day even in the darkness of my deep soul’s night.
I took the second of vulnerability for what it was: the opportunity to topple a king from his self-declared throne.
Now, I pushed into Nuada the memories I had skipped before. The memories of the purge. The memories of the war. The memories of the collapse. The memories of an apocalypse the likes of which Tír na nÓg had never suffered.
Fire raining from the sky, burning people alive on crowded streets. Whole cities wiped out of existence in a flash that blinded curious eyes. Soldiers armed with guns and worse, mowing down civilians fleeing for their lives, men, women, and children alike. Paranormals of all kinds, beaten and burned and executed with gunshots to the back of the head. Bonfires made of bodies, and ash clouds made of flesh, the scent of cooking meat thick on the air for weeks on end.
I’d witnessed all of those atrocities. I’d witnessed worse.
I made Nuada of the Tuatha Dé Danann witness them too. I made him feel what I felt. Made him feel mortal suffering. The horror of so many lives snuffed out before they had a chance to reach their potential. The grief of families ripped to shreds, whole bloodlines soaked into the earth and left to be forgotten. The everlasting shock of looking out a window and observing a ruin of a world that had once been so full of promise.
I unloaded the last eight years of my life onto Nuada. Because I wanted him to understand what Abarta had done, what nightmare his own kin had set in motion in the name of nothing but revenge. I wanted him to know why I was doing all of this.
Why I had come so far. Why I had tried so hard. Why I would keep on walking until there was nothing left of me, until Vincent Whelan was but a faded whisper on the wind.
I took all of Nuada’s pain. Nuada took all of mine.
I remained standing, even as I choked on the suffering of so many battles, so many grievous wounds, so many comrades fallen at my
feet, so many centuries of warfare, compounded into a seemingly endless parade of death.
Nuada fell to his knees, shaken by the cruel destruction of a beautiful world. A kind of death he had never seen in all the many years that he had lived.
“Oh, Abarta,” he whispered, the sound as loud as cracking ice in the silence of my soul, “what have you done?”
Between heaving breaths, a manifestation of how close my mind had come to breaking, I said, “Hatred transforms people into ugly things. Abarta couldn’t relinquish his grudge against the sídhe, and so he let it turn him into a heartless monster. Now you’re going to help me slay that monster, and then you’re going to get the hell out of Tír na nÓg.”
Chapter Sixteen
Two and a Half Hours Till Dusk
The scene within my soul vanished between blinks, and the dark rotunda took its place. In the time I had spent wrestling with Nuada, the other war phantoms had cleared out of the room. Now that it stood empty, the web of cracks and chips cut deeply into the tiered steps, their crooked fingers creeping up the columns, stood out more starkly, darker lines contrasting the all-encompassing gloom.
It seemed as if the rotunda had aged another thousand years, the time passing me by as I stood still, waging war inside myself.
But it was only an illusion.
As I shrugged off the sense of eeriness that the empty room evoked, I became aware of an odd feeling that permeated every inch of my body. Not quite an itch. Not quite a pain. Rather, it was like an electric charge waiting for an outlet, my hair on end, my fingers tingling, a constant hum running through my bones. An unpleasant feeling, one that set my mind on edge, but a feeling that I could bear for as long as needed.
The feeling of another soul lurking inside my own.
The feeling of possession.
Are you going to stand there all day? came the faint, disembodied voice of Nuada. While I acknowledge that you won our contest fair and square—as much as it chuffs me to do so—I don’t intend to lend you my aid for all eternity.
I wouldn’t want your aid for all eternity, I retorted. I can do without a backseat driver in my own head.
Then get moving, will you?
Rolling my shoulders back, I turned around.
The Morrígan was sitting on the dais, arms crossed, lips downturned, suspicion thick as syrup pooling in her charcoal eyes. “I should’ve known better than to believe Mab would send a simple half-sídhe to tackle a task of this caliber.”
My eyebrows rose. “I am a simple half-sídhe.”
She snorted. “Ah, but the fae do love to lie by omission, don’t they? A half-sídhe you may be, but that is not all you are.”
“Really?” I thought of the funnel to the unknown power source.
“And what else am I?”
She gave me a dismissive wave. “It is not my place to say, and I won’t risk the ire of those beyond me to play the tease. Either you will discover the whole of your nature on your own in the very near future, or someone will finally condescend to explain it to you, given the developments with this ‘Enemy from Beyond.’”
I pursed my lips and asked Nuada, Do you know what she’s talking about?
Your soul possesses an innate connection to a great power, he answered blithely. That is all I know. I suspect the origin of this power came to be after my time, and I suspect it is related to the sídhe. But beyond that, I can tell you nothing of value.
Gosh, everyone was being so helpful today.
“Fine. It can wait.” I pointed at my own face. “I won the challenge. I have the phantom. Now what’s the next step for stopping the Hunt?”
The Morrígan’s wicked smirk returned. “You have to connect your will to the Hunt via the phantom, and doing so requires close physical proximity.”
“Physical proximity?” I stomped my foot, the dull thud resounding through the rotunda. “You mean I have to go all the way there? To the sky above Maige Itha, where the Hunt is currently forming?”
She nodded, eyes twinkling in amusement.
“Can I teleport there from inside the forest?”
This time, she shook her head, still grinning like an asshole.
“Can you teleport me there?”
“No long-range teleporting whatsoever can take place in the old forests,” she clarified. “The giants beneath the trees forbid such disruptive forms of travel.”
That was the second time I’d heard about these sleeping giants. I really needed to find out more about those things.
“So you’re saying we have to schlep back to the edge of the forest?” I said, exasperated. “You’re not even going to give us a lift? No magic carpets? No violent tornadoes?
Not even the horses you stole from us earlier?”
“What, you didn’t enjoy your first walk in the woods?” she mocked. “I thought it was quite scenic myself.”
“Fuck you.” I stared her down. “If you’re not going to be of any more help, then point me to the exit so I can get out of this dump and return to my friends.”
She slid off the dais and came to tower over me. “How do you even know your friends are still alive?”
“Because if they weren’t, you would’ve already gloated about it,”
I snapped. “You don’t strike me as the sort who wastes time when you have something to rub in someone else’s face.”
Her amused expression faltered at the insult. “For someone with the fate of a whole realm lying heavy on his shoulders, you have surprisingly little restraint when it comes to running your mouth against your betters.”
“I have more restraint than you think.” I flashed my own smirk at her. “Thing is, I also have a head on my shoulders. You’re not going to smite me for insulting you. Because one, I’m Mab’s messenger, and people don’t shoot Mab’s messengers. And two, now that I’ve made good on the requirements for taking command of the Hunt, if you kill me, it’ll almost certainly void the favorable terms of alliance laid out in the queens’ proposal.
“Which means that you’ll be left with a couple shitty options: Sit out the biggest war this realm has seen in over a millennium, or join the other side and risk aiding in the destruction of your own home for the sake of sating your incorrigible bloodlust. And if you do the latter…well, you’ll end up being known to the entire Otherworld as the vilest bitch to ever exist since the dawn of time itself.”
The Morrígan observed me in absolute silence for ten whole seconds.
Then she smacked me in the face.
Very, very hard.
My head snapped to the side, neck straining not to break, and the rest of my body got dragged along for the ride. I lost my footing and crashed headlong into the bottom tier of steps, the uneven surface jabbing me in an assortment of uncomfortable places.
Vision full of static, ears ringing on high, I lay listlessly on
the steps for a long moment, trying and failing to make my liquid limbs respond to my commands.
By the time my nervous system rebooted and revealed just how much damage the slap had done to my face—the entire left side was on fire—the Morrígan had made her way to the side of the rotunda opposite of where I had entered.
As she approached the wall, a rectangular section of the stone sank inward and moved aside, accompanied by the flash of a ward array switching various spells on and off. Without breaking stride, the Morrígan closed in on the door to the secret passageway. But just before she reached the threshold, her form rippled wildly. And in a split second, it collapsed from one whole humanoid figure into a flock of cawing black crows.
The crows flew through the door in a chaotic mass of loudly flapping wings and vanished around a bend in the passageway.
Off to see the faerie queens—I hoped.
When my healing factor kicked in, the tinnitus spurred by the slap began to fade, and I found that the ringing had been masking the sound of raucous laughter coming from inside my own head.
Nuada apparently found my predicament quite the riot.
It wasn’t that damn funny, I growled.
On the contrary, it was hysterical , he said between chuckles.
I swore at him, and pushed myself into a sitting position with my elbows. My head swam every time I moved my neck more than an inch in either direction, so it took me almost five full minutes to claw my way back to my feet. Even then, I had to stand still for a while longer, until the broken vertebrae in my cervical spine fused themselves back together.
After that lovely experience, I had to manually wrench my jaw back into its socket. I also had to pick up a couple teeth that had flown right out of my mouth and shove them back into their ragged holes so the roots could reattach.
Hawking a glob of bloody spit onto the floor, I turned toward the secret door, which had been left open. Can that take me back up to the banquet room from hell?
Nuada snorted. I am not your guide, Whelan. You got most of the way here by yourself. Surely you can find your way out.
Are you going to be this contrary the entire time? I said.
Of course, he answered, like I’d asked the dumbest question in the universe. I may have conceded defeat to your admittedly impressive force of will, but that doesn’t mean I like you any
more than I did before. I hate your guts, and I hope you die before the day is out.
Massaging my face, I let out a loud groan—why couldn’t anything about this mission, even the tiniest little part, just be simple and easy?—and set off toward the secret door in a lopsided shamble.
“If you’re not going to help me,” I muttered as I slipped into the passageway that smelled like the kind of mold that contained seizure-inducing neurotoxins, “then how about you keep your metaphysical mouth shut until such time as we part ways? In exchange, I won’t list off all the horrible things the sídhe history books have to say about the Tuatha. I won’t bother you.
You won’t bother me. And everybody will be happy. Hm? How about that?”
Nuada thought about that proposal for all of five seconds.
Then he started singing an off-key sea shanty.
Chapter Seventeen
Two Hours Till Dusk
After a very long ascent up a slippery stone staircase with only Nuada’s awful singing to keep me company, I was just about ready to throw myself at the Ellén Trechend and let it burn me alive.
Thankfully, there was a door at the top of the stairs, and the Morrígan had deactivated the wards on her way out. So all I had to do was give it a good shove to activate the spells that made the door retract.
The door loudly ground open to reveal the banquet room from hell, and all the allies I had left behind.
Stepping back into the banquet room, I catalogued the changes that had occurred since my impromptu departure. The table and most of the chairs, along with their dead occupants, had been overturned. The jagged shards of countless glasses and plates lay strewn across a bed of wood splinters from busted chairs and broken sections of the table. The piles of skeletons in the corners had been similarly disturbed, the bones of the Morrígan’s many victims scattered all across the room.
Mixed in with the thick layer of debris were the remains of the alp-luachra. There wasn’t much left of them. Some deflated skins.
Some mush that might’ve been organs. And the occasional severed leg, still twitching.
The debris field was also dotted with a number of steaming puddles, where the newts’ acid hadn’t yet reached its limits.
My friends sat lined up against the wall beside the doors where we’d entered. The wards on those doors had been deactivated as
well, but since the newts had probably all been killed long before the Morrígan decided to depart her creepy underground castle, the group had decided to stay put and wait for me to return.
Now that I was making my way across the debris field, one crunching step at a time, everybody perked up, stretched their sore limbs, and hauled themselves to their feet.
They were a little worse for wear, all sporting minor acid burns, but no one had been seriously injured. And Orlagh, besides a lingering paleness, looked a great deal better than she had before. The effects of the venom had been fully negated by the antidote, and her sídhe healing factor had fixed most of the damage it left as a parting gift.
Orlagh raised her hand to give me a friendly greeting, but faltered as I drew close enough for her eyes to completely grasp my appearance. “Ah, Whelan, are you well?” she asked warily. “You seem to have been somewhat…changed from your visit downstairs.”
I halted and touched my face, then my hair. Everything felt the same, but that didn’t mean much when there was magic in the mix.
Spying a reflective silver platt
er on the floor nearby, I bent over and scooped it up, holding it in front of my face.
A low current of shock jolted through me at the sight of the face staring back—because my reflection resembled that of a Tuatha far more than it did a half-sídhe.
My blue eyes had gained a gold ring around each pupil, and gold strands were now threaded through my brown hair, which had taken on a more reddish hue. My sídhe marks had vanished altogether, leaving my cheeks bare beneath the smears of blood and dirt I’d accumulated throughout this mission.
Allowing a Tuatha’s soul to occupy a space within my own had temporarily suppressed my half-sídhe nature.
I narrowed my eyes at my own reflection. Did this herald yet another behavioral change? And if so, would it be significant enough to cause me problems?
I’ll take “Things you should have asked the Morrígan instead of insulting her” for five hundred, Alex.
My name isn’t Alex, Nuada said, dropping the shanty at last. And I don’t know what you mean by “taking five hundred.”
Suppressing a sigh, I replied, I wasn’t talking to you. It was a reference to a game show.
Nuada paused for a short moment before earnestly asking, What’s a game show?
Something they had in abundance on Earth before your buddy Abarta decided to set off a nuclear war, I said. Now zip your lips and let me talk to my friends.
He mimicked taking a deep breath, but before he could start the shanty anew, I added, You know, the more you annoy me, the more it’s going to stall my progress. And the more you stall my progress, the longer we’re going to be stuck like this.
The second rendition of the shanty didn’t emerge, and Nuada fell quiet. For now.
With an irritated shake of my head, I returned my attention to my friends. To find them all gawking at me like I’d grown two heads.
I gestured to my face and hair. “I’ve got a war phantom lurking in my soul. This is a side effect.”
“You’re possessed?” Odette squinted, suspicious. “Do we need to perform an exorcism?”
“No. You don’t. I need to be possessed in order to take command of the Hunt.” I ran a hand through my hair. “The negative energy of the phantom will allow me to spiritually connect to the Hunt’s own energy, through which I can hijack its will.”
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