Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  “Oh,” Ray whimpered. “Oh, God. Oh, God, I think I broke.”

  “Broke what?”

  “Everything.”

  I felt similarly, but the fey had vessels, too, and they would undoubtedly follow us. I rolled to my hands and knees and peered outside the door. But all I saw was darkness.

  I switched to night vision, and made out a forest of massive stalactites daggering down from above, the smallest of which was as tall as a redwood, and the largest may as well have been an inverted mountain. I looked down, and still could not see the bottom of the chasm, but there were a few places where a stalagmite had shot up high enough to connect with a stalactite, forming giant pillars in the darkness.

  Comparatively, we looked like a gnat next to an elephant, or maybe a mammoth, because the chamber had a very lost world feel to it.

  No, not a lost world, I thought.

  Just an alien one.

  “The damned fey!” That was Ray, struggling back to his feet and grabbing the central pole for balance. That did not help as it rotated when he touched it, slinging him about.

  And when it moved, so did we.

  The entire little craft spun like a top, throwing me into the door frame and almost outside. It stopped after a moment, leaving me dizzy and Ray clinging to the floor as if waiting for the next shock to the system. But I did not think that this one had been random.

  I noticed some small flanges sticking out of the central pole. I staggered over and grabbed one and pushed it very slightly to the right. The capsule turned right. I pushed it down, and the capsule went forward a few yards. Huh.

  “Ray,” I began. “I think—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it,” he said, jumping up and staring at something past my shoulder. “I’ll drive. You do something about them!”

  I did not know what he meant, but then I turned around to see another stalactite detonate in front of us. It was a huge one, and watching it crack and slowly slide away was like observing a glacier calve. Fully half of it dropped off, disappearing into the darkness below.

  It concerned me how long it took before I heard it hit down.

  But by then, we were already speeding ahead, with Ray cursing and staring at something else, this time above us. I followed his gaze and saw what appeared to be fireworks, but which I realized after a second were more exploding stalactites. The fey were coming, dodging the huge impediments and simply blowing the smaller out of the way with their energy weapons.

  “Dorina!” Ray said urgently.

  “I’m still thinking.”

  At least there was only one ship, not two. Perhaps the other was waiting at the cliffside, to make sure that we didn’t double back? It seemed plausible, which meant that we might only have to deal with one.

  “Think faster!” Ray yelled, staring around. “How do we close the damned windows?”

  I assumed he meant the shutters, but I didn’t know. What I did know was that a fey was leaning off the side of his capsule, targeting us with one of those energy spears. I threw the wrench, hoping for the best but not expecting much. Hitting a moving target when you are also moving is not easy.

  But a second later, he was picked off and went sailing into the gloom.

  The others did not go back for him. They did not even pause. What they did do was to send a barrage of energy bolts, exploding enough of the cave formations around us that it looked like we’d been caught in a blizzard. I hit the floor to avoid the stony shrapnel bursting through every window, but Ray was not as quick. I heard him scream in pain, and the sound sent what felt like an electric current through me.

  How dare they hurt him, for no more than the crime of helping me?

  How dare they?

  The fey craft appeared out of the fake blizzard, screaming toward us, and I screamed back and jumped for it. They did not seem to have expected that, and abruptly veered off. But not before I landed on their ship, pulled three of them overboard, sliced another’s throat with my tiny knife, and plunged my broken sword into a fifth’s abdomen.

  That did not stop him, however. Armor must not have fit under the Anubis costumes, as those fey had not been wearing any. But these had on full plate. They also had swords, maces and knives in addition to the energy weapons, although I did not see why.

  Those were more than sufficient.

  I discovered the truth of that when one was jammed against the bottom of my spine and activated. I assumed they must have had different settings, or the entire lower half of my body would have been blown away. As it was, it just felt as if it had.

  My legs gave way and I collapsed to the floor, a leering, too-white face above me, which did not leer for long. I cracked his neck, saw his eyes turn up in death, and started to kick him off of me. Only to discover that nothing below my waist still worked.

  I had no way of knowing if that would be permanent, but right then, it didn’t matter. Right then, all that mattered was killing fey. And the one who had collapsed on top of me had a spear in his hand.

  There was nothing to show me how the energy weapons functioned, but it had a wickedly sharp tip so I shoved it through another fey’s eye. The rest had not seemed to realize that I was still conscious until then, but at that point, they all started piling on top of me. I suppose the idea was to immobilize me with the weight of their bodies.

  Their armor covered bodies.

  I tested a theory and pressed down a little flange on the side of the spear, which looked something like the steering mechanism on the capsule. And, oh, yes, that worked, I thought, as what felt like a lightning bolt tore through me. But it tore through them first, starting with the one on top of the pile that I had targeted and spreading downwards.

  And I was not wearing a metal suit.

  I must have upped the voltage when I played with the flange, or else dhampirs were partly immune. Because some of them were screaming and some were flopping and some had gone limp. I started to smell the unmistakable stench of burning flesh, which would have been more gratifying had I been sure that it wasn’t mine. I tried to let go of the trigger, but my fingers were no longer following my commands. Nothing was. My head had rolled to the side, my tongue had begun to loll, even my eyes were determinedly staring into those of a dead fey instead of at anything useful.

  This . . . might not have been my best plan.

  I finally felt the spear be ripped away from me, yet the removal of the problem did not help much. My teeth were chattering as if I was cold, my heart felt like it was skipping every other beat, and my body was trembling except for my legs, which had never even moved.

  But my eyes were back under my control, and when I told my hand to flex, it actually worked. Even better, there was a sword coming within reach, as one of the fey clawed his way out of the pile. I managed to grab it from its scabbard and shove it at him. It missed by a mile: my aim was terribly off, but there were so many other fey close by that it hardly mattered. I stabbed another in the arm pit, and the wickedly sharp blade pierced his chain mail.

  He screamed, and the fey whose sword I had taken turned around and tried to belt me in the face. But he seemed as rattled as I was and also missed, although the action brought him close enough to kiss. Or to bite through his jugular, so I did, feeling his death throes above me while his warm, wet blood cascaded over my face and breast and hair.

  I laughed; I didn’t know why. I had meant to roar instead, hoping to disorient my attackers further, and buy myself a few more seconds. But what came out instead was wild, almost hysterical laughter.

  But it seemed to do the trick.

  The fey who could still function began getting off of me. They began getting off of me quickly. But, ironically, that left me more vulnerable than before, as those who had not been injured started poking at the diminishing pile with swords and spears, trying to skewer me.

  They hit their friends half the time instead, but the other half they hit me, resulting in both of my legs taking wounds. I did not feel them, but they were there, and th
ere are plenty of arteries in the legs. I needed to retreat before I bled out, but . . .

  I did not know how.

  I tried my stun scream, but it did not work, possibly because my brain was still jittering around in my cranium. It left me wailing like a banshee for no apparent reason, on an enemy vessel surrounded by foes who did not seem to recall that they were not supposed to kill me. To make matters worse, there was nothing close enough to jump to, even had I been able; my spirit form persistently refused to manifest; and I was having difficult thinking straight, which made formulating a plan virtually impossible.

  But then something strange happened.

  “Augggghhhhh!!! Motherfuckers! Come at me, bra!”

  I looked up the sound of a familiar voice. It was distant, yet rapidly getting closer. The still conscious fey looked up, too, seemingly confused.

  And then Raymond kamikazed their ship.

  The smaller vessel did not have the heft of this one, but he was going full out when he hit. The crash sent us slamming into a massive stalactite, and suddenly, I wasn’t sure where one vessel started and the other ended. But I was sure of one thing.

  I had until the fey recovered to get off this ship.

  So I did, slithering out from under the remaining pile, many of whom had been helpfully thrown into their friends by the crash.

  “Hurry up!” Ray yelled. “What are you doing?”

  “My legs no longer work,” I said thickly, although my elbows were pulling me along pretty quickly.

  That was just as well, because my words seemed to utterly incense Ray. “Sons of bitches!” he screamed, and suddenly, the whole capsule was filled with jumping, blue white fire.

  I had just rolled back onto ours, which was looking a little worse for the wear, with black impact marks on the metal and a missing shutter. But it was not dented, surprisingly. Although the interior was alarmingly full of rocks.

  And so was the side of Ray’s face.

  He had clearly taken the brunt of the last barrage, but he was a vampire. He remained on his feet, furious and functional. And he looked better than most of those on the now fiery hulk beside us.

  “What did you do?” I asked Ray, as the fey screamed and burned, some of them jumping into the darkness, others leaping for us—

  And missing, because Ray was backing us up, and backing fast.

  “Found these,” he panted, pointing down at a trio of nodules sticking out of a panel below the door. They looked like the ends of the fey’s spears, only blunted. I supposed because they weren’t intended to stick into anything. Instead—

  “Oh, you want some more?” Ray screeched at the fey ship, which was now pursuing us. “You want some more? All right, have some more!”

  The darkness lit up with a triple blaze of blue white energy, which smacked into the fey’s craft like a fist. I doubted that it would make much of a difference, as the vessel was already burning. I was wrong.

  The fey’s craft exploded, like a brilliant supernova in the darkness, sending fiery shards and smoldering bodies everywhere. It was so bright that it lit up a huge swath of the cave, causing reflected flames to leap on walls of what looked like ice, but were probably just coated in more limestone. Because the stalactites looked like they were boiling, too.

  The fey’s craft plunged into darkness, dragging flames behind it, and was soon swallowed up, leaving us all alone in the big, echoing, empty space. Only not entirely empty. There was something . . .

  “What is that?” I asked Ray, peering into the darkness.

  His eyes narrowed, but they probably had the same problem with leaping aftereffects that mine did.

  “I dunno. Gimme a sec.” He did something to one of the flanges, which abruptly caused all of our lights to go out.

  And made those in the distance, approaching from all sides, seem that much brighter as a result. They looked like car headlights, getting closer. Because that’s essentially what they were, I realized. Only instead of cars, they were affixed to the sides of the feys’ strange crafts—what looked like dozens of them.

  All of which were converging on our location.

  “Well, fuck,” Ray said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dorina, Faerie

  Our second waterfall was green. Or perhaps that was a trick of the light. There wasn’t much of it, even to my eyes. But some crystals in the side of the cliff where we’d taken refuge shed a faint, emerald glow.

  I almost wished they hadn’t, as it allowed me to see Ray’s pinched and worried face as he examined me.

  Outside the curtain of water, which was less dense than the one in our first cave, I could see the fey vessels patrolling. They knew we were here, as we had not had enough time to escape. They just didn’t know where.

  But they were searching.

  We had slipped behind the waterfall, into a slight depression in the rock, before they arrived, not having any other choice. It made us hard to see with our own lights extinguished, but hard was not impossible, and the fey seemed to have realized that we must be hiding nearby. Their lights had swept past us once already, but the falling water seemed to have confused them. I didn’t know how much longer it would do so, however, and I could not walk, much less fight.

  This . . . was not how I had envisioned my end.

  “It’s not your end,” Ray said harshly, reading my thoughts. “Stop it with that shit, okay?”

  “I did not mean to distress you.”

  “I’m not distressed!” he snapped, which might have been more believable if I couldn’t see his expression.

  He scowled, which dislodged a pebble from beside his mouth. It wasn’t the only one. The fey’s blast had peppered him with bits of limestone, to the point that he’d resembled a rock more than a man. That was why he’d taken a few moments to rescue me; he’d been all but immobilized by the sheer amount of the weight that he’d suddenly taken into his body.

  His system was still expelling pieces of it as he healed, leading to occasional plink, plonk sounds as his flesh pushed out yet another pebble, before closing up again behind it. He still had a way to go, however, leaving him looking like he’d been dragged along a gravel-filled road for a few miles. It upset me to see it, but I looked no better.

  We made quite a pair.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my expression!” he informed me. “It’s exactly what it should be seeing as how I’m stuck in Faerie, got a fuck ton of murderous fey on my ass, and—”

  “And are partnered with a cripple.”

  His head came up at that. He’d been bandaging my wounds, using pieces of a blanket he’d found under one of the seats, but now I had his full attention. And he did not look pleased.

  “Okay, first of all, nobody uses that term anymore—”

  “Partnered?”

  “Crippled! It’s not PC, okay? It’s not even accurate. Just ‘cause part of your body don’t work anymore—”

  “Ray.”

  “—doesn’t mean you can’t be useful. You can pilot this thing while I fight them, for instance—”

  “Ray.”

  “—‘cause I’m not so bad at it myself, you know? You think Dory would have promoted me if I couldn’t throw down? I can throw down!”

  “I’m sure you can. But there are so many of them—”

  “So, what? We’ve had bad odds before.”

  “Not this bad.” I looked at him seriously. “I have counted at least eight ships. If there are twenty warriors per ship—”

  “There ain’t eight ships. You counted some of them twice—”

  “There are eight. And possibly more on the way. You must leave me—”

  “Bullshit—”

  “Listen.” I caught one of his hands. “I am lame. My hands have stopped shaking, but my legs are useless. I have no idea if this is permanent, but it doesn’t matter. It is the case right now, and that means I will only be a drag—”

  “Damn it, Dorina!”

  “—on you and your chances o
f escape. But we have one advantage: the fey want me, not you. If they capture me, they won’t look for you. You can get away, possibly even get back to Earth. But if we stay together—”

  “What?” It sounded like a challenge.

  “Then they will get both of us. And they have no orders to keep you alive.”

  Ray just looked at me for a moment. What I could see of his face looked gaunt and hollow in the strange lighting. It made him look older than his usual youthful appearance, highlighting planes and angles that were not normally visible.

  “Cause I’m not young,” he said, reading my mind again. “I got four hundred years under my belt, okay? So how about you stop treating me like some kid you need to protect?”

  “I would never do that,” I told him seriously. Disrespecting a warrior who had fought at my side was unthinkable. “But if the choice is between one of us getting away, and neither—”

  “Okay, how about you listen, for once?” he said, cutting me off with a furious whisper. “It’s always me listening and following orders, but you know what? I ain’t some flunky, some errand boy. I’m a master vamp and I’m your Second. And you know what a Second does when his master is injured and exhausted and talking crazy?”

  “I am not—”

  “If you’re talking about me leaving you to those murderous things, then yeah, you’re talking crazy!” His voice had gotten a little loud, so I put a hand over his mouth. He left it there for a moment, his eyes glimmering at me angrily over the top. Then he removed it, hesitated, and then kissed the back of it defiantly. “This is me taking over, all right?”

  I blinked at him, more than a little nonplussed. But the truth was, I had no other ideas. I did not know how to get us out of this.

  I nodded.

  “Good.” Ray went back to fussing with the bandages.

  I did not know if the fey had bad aim, or if a few of them had still been trying to wound instead of kill. But no major arteries had been severed in my legs. That was good in the sense that I would not bleed to death, but it did not help with the fact that I remained paralyzed. I concentrated everything I had on trying to move something, even just a toe, for a long moment.