Witch-Blood

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “If you could arrange a limo, that would be superb,” said Rufus, rolling his eyes, “but I suppose I could make a sedan work. In the alternative, how about asking your little friends on the ground what we should anticipate?”

  “Call them my ‘little friends’ again, and so help me, I’ll shove a railroad spike up your ass.”

  “Love you.”

  “Jerk,” she muttered fondly over the sound of tapping. “All right…I’ve got a couple of folks online. Let me make some calls, and I’ll get back with you. And you’re still idiots.”

  “Ta,” said Rufus, and she was gone.

  While waiting for Vivi to call, we took stock of our gear. Joey and I had weapons, at least—he’d honed his sword and completed his nail gun, and I’d finally found pockets and belts for the small blades he’d given me—but we weren’t prepared for an expedition. With a little work, Rufus soon had us kitted out with sturdy camping backpacks, sleeping bags, fuel, and even cooking implements. “Aluminum,” he said apologetically. “Light, but not as strong. I’d give you steel, but—”

  “I’m not asking for a miracle,” Joey interrupted as he fit the little pot and plate into his bag, then paused and frowned. “Which I say as you make several thousand bucks’ worth of gear appear out of thin air. Damn.” He looked up from his packing. “When did my standards get so warped?”

  Rufus smirked. “How long have you been living in Faerie, again?”

  “Probably too long, all things considered. Well,” he said, shrugging, “if this is normal, I’m not going to fight it.”

  “That’s the spirit, lad. And how do you like your jerky, bland or insanely hot? I’ve never been good at splitting the baby with that one.”

  By mid-afternoon, our packs were stuffed with the necessities—we wanted to travel light, but with no set timeline for our excursion, we over-prepared. The greatest concern was food; foraging was an option, but there are few prey species native to Faerie, and there was no telling if we’d encounter anything edible that had wandered over from the mortal realm. Rufus did the best he could, filling our packs with dried meat and fruit and homemade MREs, but even that seemed paltry for a trip any longer than a week.

  There was still no word from Vivi, and so I returned to the beach for a little last rest in the waning sunlight while Georgie again tried to talk Joey into letting her come along. I’d just settled into one of the Adirondacks when Rufus approached and handed me a glass bottle. “Take the edge off.”

  I lifted it close and smelled beer. “This is the real deal?”

  “Of course. I don’t do that Natty crap,” he replied, pulling up a chair beside me. “I don’t care how long you live—life’s too damned short for terrible beer.” He sat back, swigged from an identical bottle, closed his eyes, and sighed. “Enjoy this while it lasts, too. October isn’t exactly peak season in the old country. You’ll want that coat tonight if we’re going to skulk around the Tor.”

  “The old country? Thought you were American,” I teased. The beer wasn’t bad—Coileán had been breaking me in with low-alcohol brews, and aside from a slightly stronger burn, I couldn’t tell the difference from Rufus’s concoction.

  “I am. My parents aren’t.” He drank again, deeply, then twisted the bottle into the white sand at his feet. “Brit on both sides. Well, English—there wasn’t a unified Britain back then.” He looked over, saw me watching him, and turned back to the sea. “Born around the start of the fifteenth century, both of them. Mother’s the elder by a few years, but they’re close. Changeling brats, you know.”

  Rufus didn’t have to spell it out. The Arcanum had taught me little in the way of practical magic, but my limited lessons had included a litany of the evils faeries had wrought upon the world. Stealing helpless humans, imprisoning them for decades, and turning them out to die when they tired of them was at least in the top ten fae atrocities.

  Unable to read his expression, I tried to proceed with caution. “When Oberon left…”

  “Oh, they were gone long before he moved away,” he replied. “Half fae don’t always have the best time of it over there, and they decided to get out. Took their parents with them,” he continued, staring at the dusky horizon. “Mother’s father was from Yorkshire, Father’s mother was from Nottinghamshire. They actually considered themselves married.” He glanced at me again, saw my raised eyebrow, and smirked. “Apparently, they got together around the time that their children were developing feelings for each other. No shared blood, no scandal.”

  “Still.”

  “It was what it was,” he replied with a shrug. “Anyway, my parents decided to leave, and they offered to take their changeling parents with them. Father said he thought the four of them might set up house together for a time, at least while everyone was acclimating.”

  “Didn’t happen?” I ventured.

  “Not in the slightest. Everything was great until they got over—they started in York, as I recall—and then my grandparents told my parents to leave and never come back. You know, I’m sure they weren’t thrilled to find themselves suddenly twenty-odd years older, and I suppose being abducted and held against their will turned them slightly against all things fae, but their own children…”

  He let the thought hang, and I nodded to my beer. “Your grandparents and my dad would probably get along well.”

  “If they weren’t five hundred years dead,” he agreed, retrieving his beer. The fine crust of sand around the lower third of the bottle sprinkled onto his khakis as he drank, and he absently brushed his lap clean. “Well, I assume—my parents never saw them again. They roamed, had a son, settled down, had another few sons, moved when the time came, had more sons…tried their luck in the States in 1839, kept moving north and west, kept having sons. The last three of us were born in this country. And Vivi, naturally,” he added, drinking again. “A few of the older boys went back to England, but we talk occasionally. Don’t always have much to say, you know.”

  “You’re not close?” I asked between swigs.

  “Depends. The kids, Harry and Vivi—sure. And my youngest older brother, Leonard, was living at home when I came around, so we’re friendly enough. He’s a painter, our Leo. But, say, Ned? That’s my eldest brother, Ned,” he explained, catching my confusion. “He was five hundred sixty-four last April. Grew up during the War of the Roses. I mean, he’s a good chap, but we don’t have much in common, you understand.” He paused for a drink. “What’s the spread with you and yours?”

  “My siblings? Four and a half years with Hel…seven hundred ninety-seven with Coileán.”

  He grinned. “Did the math, did you?”

  “An approximation. He’s not even sure of his birth date. Tacks on another year when January rolls around and says it’s close enough.”

  “Sounds like my parents.” Rufus closed his eyes again and let the breeze tousle his hair as I drank in silence. After a moment, he murmured, “I was the youngest of our bunch for forty-three years. They’ll stop treating you like a child eventually, but it’ll take some time.”

  I finished my beer and sighed. “Hel still treats me like I need a babysitter. Any idea when that’s going to stop?”

  “Aiden,” he chuckled, turning my empty bottle back into nothingness, “my mother still chides me if she catches me going out the door without carrying a coat, just in case. Some things never change.” He twitched as his pocket began to vibrate, then rose enough to pull his phone out and put the call on speakerphone. “Is that you, favorite sister?”

  Vivi snorted. “I’d better be your favorite sister. And I’ve got news for you.”

  “Took you long enough,” he replied, dropping me a wink.

  “What part of ‘news’ did you not hear?” she snapped.

  Rufus’s expression clouded. “Is everyone—”

  “We’re safe, and Toula’s come over. Someone down south recalled the assassin teams.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got a folder of Arcanum communi
qués right here. There was talk of suspected faerie movement near the silo until this afternoon, and then the lines went quiet.”

  He stood and picked up the phone. “You’re joking.”

  “Not in the least. I’ve got a buddy in Moscow who’s trying to patch us into the silo’s security cameras, but it’s taking time. Bastards do have a few protocols in place, as it turns out,” she muttered. “Anyway, the long and short of it is that something’s going down in Montana, and I don’t have a ton of intel at the moment. All we’ve got is that the other Arcs are on standby.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that if you numbskulls want to go climb the Tor tonight, you might be able to slip in and out without a squad on your heels. Got it?”

  “Got it.” He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Vivian, listen to me. Whatever’s going on at the silo—”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “I’ll be there soon,” he said, and hung up. When he turned back to me, his eyes were worried, and he pointed to the pavilion. “Load up. If you’re going, you’re going now.”

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  “It’s strange, you know.”

  I glanced around at our pack as we trudged across a field toward the night-black hill ahead. Three guys, two loaded down and ready for a stint in the wilderness, and a sniffling girl hugging her arms against the chill, sneaking into a park long past sundown—nothing out of the ordinary, really. Then again, it was nearly eleven on a cold Thursday night in Glastonbury, and not many of the locals seemed to fancy a hike. “What’s strange?” I asked Rufus.

  “The To—oh, shit,” he muttered, pulling his shoe from a pile of partly-hardened droppings. He permitted himself a tiny flame in his cupped hand, which he kept well shielded from view, and held it just long enough to assess the damage and will his tread clean. “Why don’t people clean up after their pets?” he quietly griped as we pushed on. “And I was saying that the Tor is strange. You’ve got a natural gate, a stable natural gate, sitting on top of a substantial iron deposit. Ever seen the Chalice Well? It runs red. Ferrous oxide all through it.”

  “You’ve done the tourist thing around here, huh?” Joey whispered, plodding along a step behind him.

  Rufus grunted. “Interdisciplinary conference in Bristol back in the nineties. One of my brothers was staying in Bath at the time, and he offered to show me the sights before I went home. So we passed through Glastonbury, and he dared me to try the water.”

  “And you did?”

  “He said it would just tingle. Brothers can be real assholes, you know that?”

  “Only child,” Joey replied.

  “Must be nice on occasion.” He paused and pointed to a paved footpath, barely made visible by the waning moon. “Straight up, then. Stay low, stay quiet, and if we have to separate, meet at the top as soon as you’re able.”

  I took the rear, following Georgie to ensure that she didn’t get left behind. The path was smooth enough, and our good luck held—I didn’t see another soul on the hill. My eyes adjusted as I puffed along, gradually revealing to me more than just the clouds of my breath: dormant grasses lining the trail, a red chip bag tossed by the way, the undulations of the Tor’s terraces as we crossed them. After a few minutes of silent hiking, I looked back over my shoulder at the lights of the town below, hearing little besides our footsteps and the distant hum of passing cars.

  Joey was the first to break the monotony. “Looked this place up while we were packing,” he said when we called a quick halt for a breather. “Legend says there’s a fairy king living in the hill.”

  “It would surprise me if Oberon didn’t know about this place,” Rufus replied. “And the gate’s hidden—enough time, enough convolution, and sure, the story makes sense.”

  “Legend also says King Arthur’s buried around here,” he said, and pulled out his phone. “I can show you the page—”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere,” said Rufus with a dismissive wave. “Maybe he’s on the Tor itself, I don’t know. There are bound to be skeletons in any direction if you dig deep enough.”

  I couldn’t quite make out Joey’s expression, but he sounded incredulous when he spoke. “You’re saying there’s really an Arthur?”

  “Fifth- or sixth-century chieftain with great PR, as I heard it. Get a guy with martial prowess, give him a companion who’s half fae and up for a little adventure, add a band of swords, and let it stew for a few centuries. Of course, it’s all tenth-hand by now, so take that for what it’s worth.” Rufus shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets to warm them.

  “But the Grail legend—”

  “Later addition. The Grail makes a nice quest story, but the Arthurian canon is nothing but a patchwork of tales strung together and assigned to a cast of characters. Read the Morte, did you?”

  “Unfortunately,” Joey muttered. “You get stuck with a name like Percival…”

  “Ouch. Family name?”

  “Family of Ren Faire aficionados. And who cares if there’s nothing Arthurian about a Ren Faire? It’s all horses and swords and m’ladies and giant drumsticks, so Mom and Dad got to let their freak flags fly when it came time to name me.” He paused to look at the quiet night around us. “So of course, now that I’m grown and don’t actually have to spend weeks at a time playing at Merrie Olde England, I’m questing around England with a sword strapped on. Figures.”

  “They cursed you,” Rufus concurred.

  The wind gusted on the hill, and Georgie slid closer to me. I hugged her as well as I could, wishing we’d been able to convince her to wear something more substantial than a T-shirt, and she shivered against me even as her midsection burned. Noticing our awkward embrace, Rufus flicked a finger, and Georgie found herself wrapped in a heavy black parka. “Told you,” he murmured, then nodded to the tower at the summit. “Shall we?”

  We trooped the rest of the way up in silence, even Georgie, whose faint psychic wheedling at Joey I’d overheard for the last couple of hours. When we crested the Tor, I took a moment to survey the formless panorama below, a black landscape dotted with clusters of lights beneath a partly-shrouded swath of stars. I could pick distant Arc 2 out of the shadows by the spellwork encasing it, a monstrously large, flickering silver bubble that put Rufus’s beach work to shame. It shone in the night, a lighthouse glowing in the middle of a dark sea, made all the more prominent by the lack of visible light. “There’s the castle,” I said, tapping Joey’s shoulder and pointing, but he could only squint and shrug.

  What castle? asked Georgie, joining us at the edge of the path.

  “Arcanum 2,” I replied, making room for her between us. “See the silver?”

  No…

  “Dragons smell magic,” Joey explained. “She’s as blind as I am.”

  Rufus, who had come closer while we took in the view, offered a quiet snort. “Gaudy, if you ask me. That’s like Vegas popping out of the desert.” He turned and gestured toward the stone tower rising from the top of the hill. “Gate’s in there. Come on, let’s get this over with.”

  I followed him toward the ruined church, a black monolith against the sky. There was little left of it, only a buttressed tower with empty arched doorways, roofless and open to the elements, and I looked around in vain for a hint of a gate. As if sensing my thoughts, Rufus pointed downward, and I noticed a faint trace of magic glowing in the floor. “It’s beneath us?” I whispered as Joey and Georgie wandered in.

  “Exactly. As I’ve heard it told, the architect of the church was an Arcanum plant—they built over the gate to keep idiots from wandering through. It’s never been totally accessible,” he continued, squatting over the stones, “but putting a monastery over it was one way to keep it under wraps.” Rufus spread his hands, frowned, and looked back up at us. “I’m sorry, but this feels like such a cliché thing to do. Open the mountain, send the hapless heroes into Faerie…”

  “Who’re you calling hapless, bub?” said Joey, smi
ling weakly as Rufus’s palms began to glow. “Come on, we’ve all got places to be.”

  His eyes were uncertain in the faint light. “You’re sure about this?”

  “No, but I’m not seeing a better idea right now, are you?”

  “Well, no,” Rufus admitted, “but it’s…you know, I’ve become somewhat fond of you two over the last few days, and—”

  “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”

  He chuckled in spite of himself. “All right, Sir Percival. But you must realize that once you’re through, you’re stuck. I’ll have to put the floor back together, and unless you’re packing a chisel in there…”

  “We’ll manage,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Right, Joey?”

  He nodded. “We’d better.”

  Rufus opened his mouth again, but whatever he had planned died unspoken. Shaking his head, he turned his attention to the task at hand, and Joey and I stepped back as the floor rose in chunks. The outline of the gate glowed purple in the earth, but in the light of Rufus’s illumination, I could see water rippling on the other side—a trans-dimensional lake at the top of the Tor. “How deep does this go?” I muttered, nudging the surface of the water with my toe.

  “No idea,” said Rufus, who held the floor aloft like a Tetris board come to life. “I’ve never been across. You can swim, yes?”

  “Reasonably well,” said Joey, reaching into a pocket of his pack. His hand emerged a moment later with one of Rufus’s homemade green glow sticks, which he cracked and shook to life. “Well,” he said, looking around our little circle, “I guess this is it. Rufus, you, uh…take care of yourself, okay? And Helen. And—”

  Georgie threw her arms around him and squeezed, and Joey hugged her tightly before he pulled away. “I’m coming back,” he told her, stooping to her eye level. “I promise you, sweetie, I’m coming back.”

  Can you keep that promise? she asked as her red eyes welled.

  “Going to do my best.” He hugged her again, then nodded to Rufus and stepped to the gate’s edge. “Come on, Aiden, let’s do this.”