What Dusk Divides

by Clara Coulson

  Orlagh tapped on the hilt of her sword. “And who exactly is this phantom?”

  I winced. “Pretty much the last person in the universe I want in my head. So can we please get moving? We’ve got to physically go to the place where the Hunt is forming in order for me to establish the connection.”

  Orlagh didn’t budge. “Whelan, who is the phantom?” she pressed.

  “From where I’m standing, it looks very much like one of the Tuatha is clinging to your soul.”

  “You have a good eye.”

  Boyle placed his hand on the hilt of his own sword. “How can we be sure it’s not the Tuatha who’s in control?”

  “Because that wasn’t an option,” I said with a snort. “Either I won a battle of wills with the phantom, or I ended up dead on the floor, probably at the hands of a catastrophic seizure.”

  Orlagh thumbed the guard of her sword, ready to draw. “Sorry to say, but I am not comfortable taking your answers at face value while you’re wearing the veneer of the enemy.”

  “Ugh, fine.” In a swift motion, I unsheathed Fragarach and tossed it across the space between us. It landed at Orlagh’s feet with a clang. “How about you use the magic truth-seeking sword to double-check my veracity?”

  “Oh.” Orlagh’s face flushed. “Admittedly, I had forgotten we could do that.”

  I held up my hands. “Well, are you going to do it or not? We don’t have all day.”

  Orlagh grabbed the sword and walked over, Boyle hovering a few steps behind her in case it turned out I was indeed a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Using the example I’d provided when I interrogated Vianu’s minion back in Kinsale, Orlagh pressed the tip of the blade lightly against my throat and activated the myriad spells within the metal.

  It was an immensely uncomfortable experience. But since I’d been through it before, when Watchdog R&D had been testing the sword’s capabilities, I suppressed the initial panic response and calmed myself by taking deep, steady breaths.

  Orlagh asked me three questions. One to confirm the identity of the person in control of my body. One to confirm that the person in control now would stay in control for the duration of the mission. And one to confirm that I was telling the truth about what needed to be done from here on out regarding the mission.

  After I choked out satisfactory answers, she released me from Fragarach’s hold. Spinning the sword around, she offered it back to me.

  “My apologies for the indignity, Whelan,” she said. “But we can’t be too careful, given what’s befallen us today.”

  I took the sword with one hand and rubbed my aching throat with the other. “I’m not mad at you. Just annoyed that you believed I could have lost a battle of wills against an asshole Tuatha.”

  Watch your mouth, Nuada warned, or I will start singing again.

  Orlagh hummed. “I noticed you never did specify the identity of this Tuatha.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “I would appreciate it if you did,” she said, eyebrow cocked.

  “Also, I do not see a reason for you to be so reluctant to identify your ‘passenger,’ even if the phantom in question is among the weakest of the Tuatha. Surely you have nothing to be embarrassed about, given your victory against the phantom and your successful bargaining with the Morrígan.”

  I wasn’t sure “successful” was the right term, but there was no need to tell Orlagh that.

  “I’m not embarrassed. I just don’t want to make things awkward.

  If I tell you who’s riding my soul, you guys are going to get nervous, and our teamwork is going to suffer for it.”

  Orlagh and Boyle exchanged curious glances.

  “The success of the mission is paramount,” Boyle said, “so we will soldier through no matter the risks involved.”

  Orlagh nodded in agreement. “But I believe it advisable that we be as well informed as possible about all aspects of the mission, including the nature and identity of the phantom. Even the smallest of details can have a big impact on the outcome of a situation, as you have well learned in recent days.”

  “Okay, okay. If you insist.” I faked clearing my throat. “The phantom is, uh, well, it’s…Nuada Airgetlám.”

  Orlagh and Boyle went unnaturally still.

  Indira and Drake just stood there, dumbstruck.

  Odette pointedly looked at her arm, then at me, and mouthed,

  “Fuck.”

  “There’s no need to panic,” I said. “He’s only a ghost, and I have him under control.”

  Nuada laughed. That is not how I would describe it.

  Luckily, you don’t get a say, I retorted.

  “Are you certain there’s no way he can sabotage our efforts?”

  Orlagh asked.

  I threw up a wan smile. “The only thing he can do is annoy the shit out of me.”

  No one looked entirely comfortable—I couldn’t blame them for that

  —but they took my assurances at face value.

  Odette wiped some newt slime off her metal arm and said to me,

  “So, to be clear, we now have everything we need to take command of the Hunt?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Indira all but shouted. “Let’s get the hell out of this pit.”

  No one could object to that suggestion, so Boyle and Drake heaved open the stone doors, and off we walked through the labyrinthine halls once again. Due to the narrowness of the stone tunnels, we naturally settled into pairs, with Odette and me bringing up the rear.

  My proximity to Odette prompted Nuada to ask, Is that my arm?

  It was, I answered. Surprised it took you so long to notice.

  Forgive me, he said drolly, but I do not expect magical prosthetic appendages once worn by Tuatha kings to wind up attached to human mages. How did that come to pass?

  I told him about the banshee and the plot to obtain the information from the Well of Knowledge.

  He let out a grunt of distaste. While I do not at all blame Abarta for his quest for revenge, I must admit that I question the wisdom of his decision to provide objects of such power to inferior beings. Surely there is no way a lesser fae could make good use of the arm, much less a human mage.

  I wouldn’t bet on that last part, I said. The banshee wasn’t especially skilled at spellcasting, but Odette is another story.

  A human witch she might be, but an amateur practitioner she is not. She’s had that arm for less than a year, and she’s already used it to improve her combat prowess ten times over. Give her another decade, and she’ll be a fearsome thing to behold, even in comparison to the denizens of Tír na nÓg.

  Nuada’s skepticism was palpable, but I could feel him examining the arm, and the spells Odette had built within it.

  There is some skill to be found in the spell construction, he admitted at last. But Dian Cécht and Credne designed it for use in war against the enemies of the Tuatha. The amount of energy it can store is immense, and it is versatile in ways that exceed the capabilities of mortal magic. Your comrade may perhaps use it to her great advantage, but she will never be able to push it to its full potential.

  I grinned. You want to make a formal bet on that? Because—

  A hard metal finger poked my shoulder. “The hell are you grinning about over there?” Odette murmured. “Can’t be a joke, because you don’t have a sense of humor.”

  “I have a great sense of humor. You’re just not funny,” I said.

  “And I’m smiling because Nuada doesn’t think you can master the arm, but I know better.”

  Odette blinked owlishly. “You can talk to him? Like, in your head?”

  “Yeah, he’s a fully sentient entity. Much to my chagrin.”

  “So, is he riding your body like a regular possession? Can he use your senses to observe the outside world?”

  “Sure can. But he’s an observer only .”

  She frowned. “What if he gathers crucial intel from us and hands it over to Abarta?”

  I
shrugged. “By the time we disentangle our souls, all the intel that could aid Abarta in his plot to wake the Tuatha will have soured. And he can’t do anything to contact Abarta during the possession because I’ll catch him in the act.”

  Odette crossed her arms, dissatisfied. “Still don’t trust him.”

  “I don’t trust him either. But we need him, so we’ll have to deal.”

  Nuada cut in with a faint, Ahem.

  Yes? I asked. You have something to contribute to this discussion of your hypothetical treachery?

  No, I do not, he said. I do, however, have some advice I would like to impart on the young witch regarding the arm.

  I was taken aback. Really? You want to help Odette, even though she’s fighting against Abarta?

  If Abarta wants to use the treasures of the Tuatha to further his goals, then he should do a better job at holding on to them. His tone implied he was not at all happy that Abarta was handing out one-of-a-kind power objects like candy. Regardless of who possesses the arm, it would be an insult to its creators if I did not pass on my knowledge of its capabilities to its inheritor.

  Interesting logic, I drawled, but okay.

  I scooted closer to Odette. “Want some tips on using the arm?”

  Odette gave me a suspicious side-eye. “From Nuada?”

  “Apparently, he thinks it would be a shame if the arm went to waste, even if it’s being used by an enemy of the Tuatha.”

  She thought about that reasoning for a second, then threw up her hands. “Why not? Let me have it.”

  Nuada relayed to me a great many interesting details about the arm, and I relayed those details to Odette. Who diligently memorized everything and even did some basic practice with elements of the arm that she hadn’t discovered before now.

  It was a bizarre experience, having a dead Tuatha king wax poetic about the beauty of his old prosthetic limb. But I’d been through weirder. Also, the academic lecture was way more enjoyable than the screeching of the sea shanty.

  Like all good things though, the exciting magic lesson had to come to an end.

  We reached the double doors that let out into the mouth of the cave, where the Ellén Trechend might still be waiting for us. The

  ward array on these doors had been left inactive, same as all the others. So Boyle crept up to one and cracked it open to survey the space beyond.

  Stepping back after a moment, he whispered, “The beast appears to be in a spelled sleep, but the energy store inside the spell is rapidly diminishing. We should be quick.”

  We all scurried through the door and ducked behind a convenient row of stalagmites. Nearby, the Ellén Trechend was roosting like an enormous chicken, its necks twisted around each other to keep the three heads upright. When it didn’t wake from the sounds of our arrival, we hurried onward.

  Once the ground transitioned from slick stone to compacted dirt, we took off at a hard run. We headed back through the little valley, to the boulder where we’d come up with the half-assed plot that cost us Graham.

  Speaking of Graham…

  I glanced over my shoulder and scoured the cave for a body. I spied nothing, however, but a few dark spots that might’ve been blood, and a few more that might’ve been scorch marks. Either the bird monster had burned Graham’s body to ash, or one of its heads had swallowed her whole.

  Or maybe she escaped, I thought, attempting to inject a little optimism into my terrible day.

  I wouldn’t count on that, Nuada said, raining on my short parade.

  The Ellén Trechend is more resilient than you know. Even a sídhe at full strength would have a great deal of trouble getting past it unscathed.

  From behind me, there came a reverberating growl, repeated in triplicate.

  The bird monster was waking from its nap.

  I dove around the boulder, joining the rest of the group. We all took a minute to collect ourselves after the awful things we’d experienced inside the Morrígan’s grim domain. Then we quietly snuck out of the valley and retraced our steps for a few hundred feet. Until we arrived at a small clearing crisscrossed by a few logs sturdy enough to play the role of bench.

  Deciding it was a good time to hash out the specifics of the next leg of our mission, we all sat down.

  “I don’t see any wisps,” Orlagh said, “so I suppose we must find our own way out of the forest.”

  Boyle scratched his chin. “How do we go about that? Location is relative in the old forests, due to the multitude of spatial distortions, so we cannot plot a course using traditional means.”

  Orlagh tugged at her dirty braid. “I assume that McDermott knew how to chart a path to the edge, but…he declined to share any such knowledge before his demise.”

  “See, that’s the problem with you sídhe,” Odette said as the beginning of a rant.

  I tuned the rest out and shifted my attention to our surroundings.

  The wooded landscape stoked in my mind a familiarity it hadn’t before. I experienced a strong sense of déjà vu, as if I’d trekked this area of the woods a hundred times in my life.

  My gaze settled on a tree some fifty feet away, its bark riddled with small indentations. A memory flickered across the back of my eyes: expertly shooting the tree with an arrow from horseback, and in so doing, marking a segment of the path that would lead me back home when I finished my business in the old forests.

  That little memory spurred the remembrance of two dozen more just like it. A mental laundry list of all the trees I had shot to mark my passing. The very first tree designated a point just thirty feet from one edge of the old forests.

  Someone called my name, jolting me out of the deluge of memories.

  A wave of vertigo nearly caused me to tip over the back of the log bench and fall into a muddy puddle. I caught myself in the nick of time and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting until my head stopped spinning before I dared to make any sudden moves.

  “Whelan, are you all right?” asked Boyle, who was seated next to me.

  I cracked an eye open, and when the vertigo didn’t return in full force, I opened the other. “I, uh…” I said intelligently.

  “Something strange just happened.”

  As soon as those words left my mouth, I realized exactly what had happened.

  Those weren’t my memories.

  No, Nuada confirmed, they were mine.

  Did you show them to me on purpose?

  No, I did not.

  My chest constricted, and I suddenly found it hard to breathe.

  Your soul is bleeding into mine because we’re too closely entwined.

  As is the way of most possessions, he said. The longer the two of us remain in this deeply connected spiritual state, the more of me that will permeate you, and the more of you that will permeate me.

  So if we stay like this for too long, I replied, nausea churning in my gut, your personality will start to merge with mine, and I’ll end up permanently stuck with some of your traits.

  Indeed. He sounded as ecstatic about this as I was. So to minimize these effects as much as possible, I recommend you consider the memories you just obtained as a great gift, and use them to leave the old forests as fast as your feeble half-blood legs can take you.

  A whine worked its way out of my throat, and I abruptly lurched off the log bench, startling everyone.

  “Uh, Whelan,” Odette began, but I held up my hand to cut her off.

  “I know the way out. Nuada just supplied it,” I said. Not quite a lie but not quite the whole truth. The perfect verbal balance for a faerie. “He used to leave himself ‘breadcrumb trails’ in the form of arrows, and he ventured into the forest so often that he can recall the exact trees he used to mark. If we follow one of his old paths, we should be able to get out of here in no time.”

  Orlagh dropped her hand to her sword again. “Are you sure he’s not trying to lead us astray, Whelan?”

  “One hundred percent,” I answered with a beaming smile. But oh, how I wish he was.

&nb
sp; Chapter Eighteen

  One Hour Till Dusk

  For about five minutes, as we stood at the very edge of the forest, I thought we were going to have a serious problem.

  We emerged from the omnipresent gloom of the dense canopy to find the sun-kissed field of grass beyond teeming with our enemies.

  Bismarck had retreated after Orlagh’s attack, but she hadn’t called it quits. She’d grabbed more disposable minions and parked them outside the exact section of the forest she somehow knew we’d use as our exit point.

  I still didn’t know where Abarta was getting his minute-by-minute intel from—though I knew for sure it wasn’t Nuada, who made a surprised hum when I first caught sight of the goon platoon.

  Whoever the source, it was clear they were watching our every move.

  A lot of the mooks looked winded, sweat smeared across their faces. As if they’d run here at top speed in order to cut us off in the nick of time.

  I peered back into the shadowy forest. Countless eyes met mine, and I wondered which ones belonged to the Tuatha sympathizer.

  There was no way to tell, and even if there had been, the problem of prying eyes was not one I had the luxury of resolving right now.

  The clock was sitting at a minute to doomsday, and the seconds were racing by.

  Partially shielded behind a wide exposed root, the six of us discussed in hushed tones how to evade or eliminate the small army without losing life and limb in the process.

  Had they been at full strength, Orlagh and Boyle probably could have wiped most of the goons off the face of Tír na nÓg in a matter of minutes. I could have mopped up the rest with some assistance from Odette and Indira, with Drake waiting in the wings in case we needed him to raise some extra bodies for our side. But we’d all been run so ragged by the Morrígan’s trials that seeking a straightforward battle would be a roll of the dice, and there was every chance we’d land snake eyes.

  Ten trolls, twice that many half-trolls, three dozen redcaps, and too many svartálfar to count versus two exhausted sídhe, a possessed half-sídhe with an iron wound, a lesser half-fae who’d been largely drained of magic energy, a human witch nearly running on empty, and a dhampir necromancer who’d already been beaten and captured once today?