by Eric Asher
By the time Ward could see again, half the room was unconscious on the ground, and Edgar was breathing like he’d just run a marathon at a sprint.
“Carry this one,” Edgar said, dragging the unconscious gunman up off the ground. “It’s the strongest link I’ve seen.”
“Are they dead?” Casper asked, looking at the soldiers strewn around the room.
“Most of them aren’t. The ones that are were killed by the spies.” Edgar raised a shaky hand to his mouth. “The magic is strong, Ward. I don’t know if I can burn it away from the imposter.”
“If the imposter is Unseelie, you won’t have to. Kill them.”
“Get the medics to the mess hall,” Park shouted into an intercom. When the person on the other end of the line started to ask him why, he cut them off with a commanding, “Now!”
Edgar started to pick the gunman up.
“Leave him,” Ward said. “The glasses will be enough to show you which lines to follow now. If there’s more than one imposter, dragging that sack around with us isn’t going to help.”
Edgar let the soldier crash back onto the tiles.
Ward frowned. “Pretty sure he can still get a concussion, though.”
“We end this now,” Edgar snarled. “These beasts have hounded us long enough. How much time have they been here for their cancer to grow so deep beneath Park’s nose? For them to be able to mimic me?”
“Too long,” Casper said, tying up the spy to a metal chair. “Let’s go.” She looked to Park. “Stay here, sir. If we don’t come back, get help.”
Park nodded and stared down at the dead soldier whose blood had pooled around the door.
“Nudd doesn’t understand the forces he’s awoken,” Edgar said. “The cleansing fires of the Unseelie will burn away far more than the commoners.”
With that, he stormed out the door, leaving his crushed bowler to settle on a mass of blood and broken bones.
Ward and Casper followed at a distance behind the suddenly terrifying Edgar. He didn’t speak as they encountered more soldiers bound by compulsions. Tracers of light simply burst forth from the mage solis, burning up their connections and leaving the rest of the soldiers confused.
“Get them to a medic,” Casper said, and that’s all she would say. Because the medics were in the other direction. It would get as many soldiers as possible out of the way.
The first gunshot was the warning that the imposter knew they were coming. It sailed over Edgar’s shoulder, only to melt into slag as the sun god burst into a beacon of fury. Edgar surged forward like a hawk, crashing into the gunman with the force of a small car. Bones crunched before more lights flashed out, scouring the hall of whatever threads were visible to the others.
Edgar stood, a hulking mass of fire and rage above that wounded man, his head turning slowly until it focused on a spot on an empty wall. An explosion of blinding light burst from Edgar’s hand and shattered the stone in front of him.
Ward tried to blink away the afterimages as he stumbled forward, more following Casper’s footsteps than anything he could actually see. Behind the wall, in a chamber barely large enough to hold the three of them, a Fae sat still on the ground.
It was perhaps the oldest Fae Ward had ever seen. Deep wrinkles shifted around the endless chant as the Unseelie’s head tilted, ever so slightly.
“It’s too much,” Edgar said, pulling off the glasses and handing them to Ward. Ward gave them to Casper and brought up his sight instead. They weren’t simply standing near a ley line, but the Fae was inside a ley line. And it was a trunk at that, giving the spell access to any nearby nexus.
Two thick lines came off the Fae, one that seemed to vanish, likely going back to Faerie and perhaps whatever amplification rune Heather had devised. The other went deeper into the base.
“What is this?” Casper asked. “She’s not an imposter. I can clearly see she’s a fairy.”
“She’s dead.” Edgar reached out and tapped her neck. A brilliant array of wards lit up, carving their way down the fairy’s body until they reached her toes and faded away. “That’s holding her together.”
Ward recoiled. He felt physically ill at the monstrosity Heather had laid upon that fairy. And it had to be her. He recognized the loops and whorls and knots that tied each ward together, every last sigil and rune, until it was a perfect, horrific, power.
“It looks more like the arts of a necromancer,” Edgar said. “Some kind of twisted runic art?”
Ward nodded. “I … I know these symbols. It was Heather, I have no doubt. But you’re right. There’s something more here. More hands than hers made … this.” He made a broad sweeping gesture to encompass the corpse.
“Why isn’t she screaming if she’s dead?” Casper asked. “Every fairy I’ve seen die, well, you know. Oh no, screech, dead.” She made a flailing motion with her hands to accent the death, and Ward almost laughed at the absurdity of it.
Edgar did laugh, and the brightness of his power dimmed a hair with the distraction from his rage. He took the glasses from Casper and studied the lines again. Ward followed Edgar’s gaze to the purple thread that pumped and fluctuated as it trailed away from the fairy.
“This one has more life,” Edgar said as he indicated the thread Ward had been staring at.
“Agreed,” Ward said. “It’s a different color, too.”
Casper looked between the two. “And? Does that mean they’re closer? Or farther away? Or what?”
Ward shrugged.
“That’s helpful.”
“Hey, if you have a better idea—”
“We follow it,” Edgar said, interrupting Ward. “Wherever this leads, we need to kill it.”
Ward blew out a breath. “We don’t know that yet.”
“Make your decision now,” Edgar said, “or your hesitation could kill us all.”
“Shoot first,” Casper said. “We’ve lost enough of our friends today.”
Edgar said no more. He walked back through the hole to the corridor, leaving the dead Fae behind, and followed the thread of magic to whatever and whoever waited at the end of it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The trail took them past the barracks, where Edgar made short work of a few unsuspecting soldiers under the compulsion of the imposter. They never woke from their slumber as he burned the magic away, instead waking only to wonder why they were in their beds when the last thing they remembered was being on patrol.
Deeper into the compound, they ran into fewer and fewer guards. None of them were tainted by the compulsion, and Ward was beginning to hope they’d rooted them all out.
It was a stupid thing to think.
The fairy struck from the corner of a stairwell, slipping past Casper to plant a dagger in Edgar’s chest. But the Watcher was fast. Not fast enough to avoid the blow altogether, but fast enough to take the blow in the meat of his arm instead of his heart.
Edgar raised his hand to blast the attacker into oblivion, but the fairy lashed out with a kick, pushing the sun god away and positioning himself between Casper and Edgar. The sharp grin of the fairy split wide as he drew a blade from either sheath on his wrists, lunging for Casper.
The blade of Casper’s outrageously large survival knife crashed into the fairy, his cuirass lighting up with a defensive ward before it fractured and the knife plunged deep into his chest. Confusion crossed the fairy’s face a moment before Casper’s sidearm blew a hole through his temple.
The Fae screamed, and the sound rebounded off every damned surface around them. If any of the other imposters were in the base, there wouldn’t been any mistaking they’d been found out.
“How did that knife breach the armor?” Edgar asked, raising a ball of brilliant yellow light.
Casper ripped the knife out of the fairy’s armor. “I don’t know. The blade was coated with fragments of a stone dagger. Maybe that?”
Ward nodded. “Definitely that. Judging by the pattern on this armor, it wasn’t Heather’s finest work. Or m
aybe not her work at all.”
Edgar frowned at the empty armor. “You think she’s training the Fae?”
“It’s possible.”
“Then we hurry. The next hall is just storage.” Edgar looked to Casper, and she gave one sharp nod of agreement.
“Stairs?” Ward asked, following the thin trail of purple light.
“Go.” Casper bolted ahead of them, leaving them with no choice but to follow. Edgar took the lead again when they reached the top of the stairs, and a door that led out of the base.
The evening sun greeted them beyond the steel door. Ward blinked in the light, the trail of purple like an afterimage burned into his retinas. He didn’t like leaving his Sight open for such a long space of time, but to do anything else could mean losing their lead. Not that he didn’t trust Edgar’s perceptions exactly, but he didn’t trust anyone’s eyes more than his own.
He glanced back at the brick wall behind them, confused at the absence of the door they’d just come through.
“Aeros,” Casper said, answering the question he hadn’t asked. “The door is seamless in the bricks.”
“How the hell do you open it then?” Ward asked, not really expecting an answer, and Casper didn’t provide one.
They hurried to the south, one block above Main Street, judging by the pockets of tourists and cobblestones Ward glimpsed at each block they passed. Edgar led the way, silent and focused with a kind of unnerving determination that set Ward’s suspicions on edge.
Ward caught sight of a street sign. They were moving along Second Street, and Edgar didn’t slow down until he reached Jackson. Edgar looked to the east, toward the river, and then moved, as silent as a ghost.
They sprinted down Jackson, passing a low white picket fence and homes that were far too old to be classified as modern. Edgar slowed as they came to a dirty mailbox bolted to the ground. It was a dead end, unless you considered the alleys to either side, or the stone path ahead, a throughway to Main Street, flanked by a log church.
“This is it,” Edgar said, tracing the purple glow through the air as if he shared Ward’s own vision.
“The old church?” Casper asked.
“It’s not that old,” Edgar said. “A reproduction, but it draws enough ghosts to make you think otherwise.”
“Not just ghosts,” Ward said. “Zola told me this is one of Koda’s meeting places.”
Casper raised an eyebrow. “If I recall correctly, Koda is a ghost.”
Edgar grinned at Casper and gave Ward a nod. “Regardless. Whatever’s at the end of that thread is inside the church.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“How many is the imposter still bonded to?” Ward asked. “If we take them out, how many lives are we risking?”
Casper pulled the rifle off her back and checked the breach before slamming the bolt home. “It doesn’t matter. It’s a bigger risk if they make it out of here alive.”
“Agreed,” Edgar said. His eyes flickered between Casper and Ward. “It’s not many, though. Three at most, from what I can see.”
Ward couldn’t make out the fainter lines of power without the glasses, but he saw no reason for Edgar to lie. He wasn’t even sure burning out the imposter would kill anyone attached to them.
“They knew the risks,” Casper said. “We all know the risks.”
She led the way over flagstones with her rifle at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground. Casper was ready to breach, and Ward still hadn’t decided if that was their best course of action.
It didn’t matter. Edgar stepped onto the stone, and his body changed. His suit melted into gold, each individual thread changing and morphing until the cast muscles of his breastplate glowed brighter than the dying sun above.
He raised a hand to the church, and the doors swung open, the aged patina of the exterior betrayed by the fresh-looking wood on the interior. Two iron lanterns hung from the front wall of the tiny building, chasing away the shadows inside and casting an eerie blue light on the fairy who sat cross-legged on the altar.
Ward slowed as he crossed the threshold. He’d expected resistance, but Edgar strode unchallenged up past the five rows of short benches that passed for pews. The fairy didn’t twitch, didn’t acknowledge their presence in any way. As if she was so deep in meditation she had no concept of what was happening around her.
Casper raised her rifle. The shot echoed off the walls of the little church, a cry in the shadows of a sun god that left blood strewn across the altar. The room exploded into a fiery sun as Edgar tried to burn away the imposter’s remaining connections.
“They’re fading too fast!” Edgar shouted. “I can’t save them all.”
Ward slid a coin out of his pocket and hesitated for only a second. It was now or never for any commoners on the other end of those bonds. If Edgar didn’t get the connections burned away, the hosts at the end would die just as surely as that fairy.
He slapped the coin down on the breastplate, and the faint purple lines thickened again as if the fairy hadn’t died quite yet. But it would only buy a few seconds, the purple giving way to the brilliant blue of the ley lines as the coin channeled more and more power into the fading incantations.
Ward watched in awe as the sun god worked, delicately snipping and scything while the fairy collapsed into herself, her incantations dying along with her as she drifted back into the ley lines.
The coin spluttered and hissed and finally gave out as the metal failed to contain the heat. The slag dripped off the armor and sizzled when it landed on the altar below.
Edgar lowered his hand, shaking from the effort it took to burn out the last of the imposter’s magic. His brilliant armor dulled until the flawless metal blurred and became an immaculate three-piece suit once more. He reached up to adjust a bowler he didn’t have, and the sun god’s hands clenched into fists.
“A little warning next time would be most appreciated,” Edgar grumbled, wiping sweat from his forehead. “I could have taken my time with those bonds if you’d given some indication.”
Casper shrugged. “And if she’d woken up? Might not have been a fight we’d want.” She walked over to the empty armor and sorted through it until she found the distorted bullet. “We’ll melt it down and reform it. Whatever Mike did to these doesn’t seem to be diminished by fire.”
Edgar looked back at the altar, picking up the breastplate and frowning at the ornate etching across it. “This isn’t Unseelie armor.”
Ward stepped up next to him, looking at the bizarre creatures carved into the metal. Creatures that almost felt alive. One appeared like an oversized rodent, hosting a rider with a great horned helm. Another Ward wrote off as the Wild Hunt, until he noticed the red eyes in the center of it and the grand spires in the shadows beyond, almost hidden by a thin crust of fairy dust.
“Finias?” Ward said.
Edgar nodded. “Casper may have been right after all.”
“Finias?” Casper asked. “The fourth Fae city? I didn’t know they were Unseelie.”
“That’s the thing,” Edgar said, letting the armor drop back onto the altar. “They aren’t.”
“So she stole it?” Casper asked. “Or took it as a trophy.”
Edgar frowned. “I don’t know. Finias closed itself off after the Wandering War ended. It operated more like a nation of commoners for a time, for centuries even, requiring permissions and connections to visit in the aftermath.”
Ward turned back to the entrance to the church. “They always had some of the best smiths, or so Calbach says.”
“Quite a few of the iron-touched spent time in Finias. But what I don’t understand, if this fairy was allied with Unseelie Fae, why didn’t she have any of Heather’s wards?”
“That’s simple,” Casper said, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. “She’s been here longer than Heather’s been working with the Unseelie.”
Ward shook his head. “Not possible. After we fought the basilisk, Heather went straight to the Unseelie.”
Ward blew out a long breath and his words, barely a whisper, were only meant for himself. “Either way, we’ve lost her now.”
* * *
Edgar took the fairy’s empty armor with him, leaving Ward and Casper to brief Park on their own. It wasn’t a conversation Ward was looking forward to, but perhaps most of all, Ward didn’t want to hear how many people Heather’s meddling had gotten killed.
“Twelve that we know of,” Park said. “And possibly more if some of the friendly fire incidents were due to her influence. Earlier, we would have chalked it up to fighting a supernatural enemy. The first time’s enough to rattle the most battle-hardened of us.”
“Where did Edgar take the armor?” Park asked.
“To Morrigan,” Casper said. “He said she knows more about Finias than most Fae. Or at least most Fae he knows personally.”
Park ran a hand through his hair, his voice resigned. “It’s of little consequence to us either way. The Fae are our enemies, no matter which city they came from.”
“Not all of them,” Casper said.
“I know,” Park said. “But it’s good to be cautious.”
“It’s also good not to doubt our friends,” Casper said, a growing edge to her words. “Sir.”
Park crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “I know that Casper. I know.” The dim light of the monitors around them cast the room into a cold blue glow. He looked at Ward. “Can you make more of those glasses?”
Ward glanced at the sunglasses now perched on the brim of Casper’s hat. “I can. But it will take some time.”
“How much time?” Park asked.
“A few hours for each. I’ll need more aviators.”
“You’ll have them,” Park said. “We can’t afford to be caught like this again. What about Morrigan and the others? Are they susceptible?”
Ward let a slow smile crawl across his face. “Morrigan? No. She’s beyond that kind of manipulation. And any Fae who can see line energy is going to notice that odd purple hue following people around.”