What Fate Portends

by Clara Coulson

  What made it worse was that I couldn’t just run to the dullahan, or any other fae authority in Kinsale, and tell them what was happening. Because that would bring their wrath down on the city—they didn’t give two shits about collateral damage; as long as there were some humans left alive, that was good enough for them—and severely damage what little civilization had been rebuilt here since the collapse. The fae always used “the big guns” when they moved against a potentially serious enemy. All that subtle mischievous manipulation endemic to the faerie myths and legends was reserved for when the fae didn’t think you could actually harm them.

  They liked to tease the weak.

  They loved to annihilate the strong.

  Squatting in the middle of a busy restaurant full of oblivious rich people who had no clue their city was on the cusp of destruction yet again, I could only curse myself for falling into “Tom’s” trap, for letting myself get blinded by the prospect of a fat bank account. I knew that in the world of the fae, anything that seemed too good to be true always was. But seven years after the end of the life I’d lived for over two decades, I was still stuck in the mindset that Earth was a human world, and such idiosyncrasies did not apply.

  Foolish little half-fae, I spit at myself, this world doesn’t belong to the humans anymore.

  O’Shea was spot on. This was a brave new world. And I wasn’t nearly as ready for it as I’d been pretending. Now my lack of preparation had bitten me in the ass so hard I wasn’t sure I’d be able to walk out of this situation alive.

  I couldn’t go to the fae leaders to stop Bismarck’s partner. I couldn’t go to the cops, because many of them were in Bismarck’s pocket, and plus, they hardly had the power to challenge her large supply of nonhuman goons. I couldn’t go to my friends, like Christie and O’Shea, because they were only human, and not the soldiering sort, and would end up dead long before I did. I would have to go this one alone, and I would have to drum up the courage to do so now, if there was any hope of stopping Bismarck and her partner from sending another massive quake through this already cracked and broken world.

  Sure, I could’ve chosen to retreat to my store full of shit and keep my head down and let the world burn down around me. Sure, I was tempted to do just that, because in many ways and for many reasons, I hated this world and the people in it. And sure, I had no obligation whatsoever to be the big hero, save the day, and defeat the dastardly villains.

  But I chose to try anyway. Because once upon a time, that had been my job. And though I would never admit it out loud, I missed being a detective.

  Well, I suppose getting killed by an asshole with a harp is better than getting eaten by ghouls in the stretches. So at least there’s one “pro” to pit against a thousand “cons.”

  Yay?

  Chapter Nine

  I spent the next half hour wandering aimlessly through the crowds of the market, occasionally ducking into tents and discreetly attaching myself to groups of people to better blend in. Bismarck had said something about a “hound” being sent after me, which could refer to any number of paranormal creatures. Hellhounds, for example, were sometimes used like police dogs, to hunt down and subdue fugitives on the run—or to pin your enemies so they couldn’t escape. Regardless of what type of paranormal dog it was though, I doubted it could be easily deployed in a heavily populated area. And the central market was the busiest place in town.

  While I wandered, I contemplated how to approach the recovery of the harp now that I knew its buyer was a man who commanded considerable magic. If not his own, then the magic of someone under his employ. But after using a fair amount of brain power to tackle the problem from every conceivable direction, I ended up right where I’d started: I needed the buyer’s name and address. There was no other way I could track him down. And getting those meant retrieving the auction ledger.

  That was a problematic proposal, however, because Bismarck and company would be on high alert after my escape, and she knew that I knew the guy in possession of the harp had bought it via a fixed auction. So she would beef up security, using her elf lackeys, to make sure I couldn’t sneak into tonight’s auction and snatch the ledger with all the incriminating information inside.

  Either that, or she would straight up destroy the page of the ledger that contained the damning info. But I doubted she’d go for that option. Since I hadn’t been caught at Raphael’s, she had no reason to believe I was sneaky enough to evade her hired elves. And Bismarck was far too proud to admit her operations were vulnerable to a “mere” half-fae without irrefutable proof. I would bet money on the ledger still being intact.

  So I decided to stick to my original plan. I would attend the auction and grab the ledger.

  Except I now needed a better strategy than waltzing in and taking it while throwing a few puffs of magic to daze and confuse the human mooks. I’d be up against the serious mooks now. The elves. The half-trolls. The human magic practitioners. And whatever else Bismarck had on her payroll. In order for me…

  Something growled. Loudly. Behind me.

  Which should’ve been impossible. Because right now, as I stood between a booth selling hot soup and a tent selling rain coats, both of which were booming, nothing large enough to produce a bone-shaking growl would’ve been able to fit among the throngs of people tromping around me. Unless…A faint childhood memory flitted around the periphery of my mind, teasing me. Unless…What was it? I knew the term. I’d heard of this creature before. I’d seen it before, I was sure. What the hell is it? What is it called?

  It growled again. Even louder. Even closer.

  With immense trepidation, I peered over my shoulder.

  And the memory slipped into place with all the grace of a lightning strike.

  The “hound” was called a barghest, and to summon one from the Otherworld to Earth required a blood sacrifice and the signing of a magic contract that basically said your soul was forfeit if you were unable to pay an “adequate fee” for the creature’s service. On the surface, a barghest was not unlike a hellhound, in that it could track its prey by even the faintest scents and never tired, never slept, never slowed. It was the same color as a hellhound too, black as night with red, glowing eyes, and teeth so sharp they could flay the skin from your muscles.

  But there were a few key differences between a barghest and a hellhound. The first was that a barghest was far more intelligent than a hellhound. It was a fully sentient creature with its own will. The second was that a barghest had the quirky ability to be intangible, inaudible, and invisible to all except the contract holder—and the person whose scent it was following. In other words, here in the market, no one but me could see it, no one but me could hear it, and no one but me could touch it. And third, the last difference, and perhaps the most subtle and nuanced difference of them all:

  A hellhound was the size of a large dog, and a barghest was the size of a large car.

  I made eye contact with the barghest standing ten feet behind me, and involuntarily let out a whimper. In response, the barghest roared like an enraged lion and pounced.

  And did I run away screaming like a small child?

  Yes. Yes, I did.

  During my life-or-death sprint through the market, I mowed down about twenty people, ripped straight through the backs of four tents—because the barghest couldn’t phase through unattached objects, only living things and the objects in their spiritual fields—left the market, crossed the street, and finally crashed headfirst through the glass door of a small shop selling homemade soap and shampoo.

  The customers and employees shrieked as a wall of fragmented glass sailed across the room, but I didn’t have time to apologize, because the barghest was seconds behind me. Ignoring a dozen bleeding cuts on my face and neck, I flung myself over the checkout counter, barreled through the door into the employee-only area, and hightailed it down a narrow hall that let out into a wide back alley between two rows of stores. Then I fled down said alley as fast as my legs could take me
without ripping the limbs from my body.

  The barghest, which was too bulky to fit through the shop’s door, had to choose to go over or around. It chose over. It leaped onto the roof, cracking the material beneath its massive paws, raced across, and dove off the back end, landing on the ground about fifty feet behind me. It quickly sighted me again, snarled, and took off, its claws leaving deep gouges in the concrete as it tried to thrust itself forward fast enough to catch me and rip me clean in half with its powerful jaws. And it would’ve succeeded too, if I hadn’t lived in Kinsale for most of my life.

  At the very end of this alley was a metal grate that covered an access shaft for the city’s underground flood diversion system. Back when I’d been a detective, I’d caught a serial killer in one of the flood tunnels after Saoirse and I figured out the man was using them to sneak into residential neighborhoods unseen during the day, where he could easily abduct children from their yards. As part of our plan to invade the tunnels in force and head the perp off before he could strike again, I’d memorized the locations of most of the entry points to the system.

  Including the one right in front of me.

  I shot a cold blast of energy at the grate, which sheared through the locks securing it and flipped it open. Then I dropped into an angled slide, ignoring the rough friction of the concrete on my clothing and skin, and slipped over the lip of the hole that dropped off into absolute darkness. My body sensed the ground approaching before I could see it, so I righted myself and splashed down into about six inches of water, what remained of yesterday’s storm.

  Above me, the barghest skidded to a stop in front of the opening and peered down, growling and spitting at me, shoving its head through the gap and snapping its jaws. I waved at it and said, “Better luck next time.”

  Then I ran away again. Because barghests were scary.

  About a mile later, I came to a halt at an intersection that was a good distance away from any points of egress. It was impossible to escape from a barghest indefinitely, as it could pick up even the faintest scent using its preternaturally powerful nose. But as long as the creature couldn’t get to me, I was safe. Now if only I could live in the tunnels beneath Kinsale forever, with no food or other supplies. And if only I didn’t have to get the ledger from tonight’s auction. And if only I didn’t have less than twelve hours to stop someone from casting a spell with precarious aftereffects.

  I paced back and forth, kicking up water in frustration, as I tried to figure out what to do. The barghest would catch up to me again if I spent too much time trying to infiltrate the auction, and the location of tonight’s auction was nearly half a mile from a tunnel entry point. If I unleashed my full power, I might be able to kill it, but not without causing a massive ruckus that would alert every cop, mobster, and nosy citizen in town. Plus, I hadn’t released my fifth and sixth glamours in almost twenty years, and the last time I’d done so, it had been to…less-than-stable results.

  My faerie side got a tad manic after being cooped up behind so many glamours for years on end.

  No, I needed a better plan than a slugfest with the barghest.

  More than that, I needed help.

  The mere idea left a bad taste in my mouth. During the purge, asking for help, from either humans or other paranormals, had meant putting them on the chopping block with you, if you were caught by the military or the militarized police who’d prowled the streets. Since that was the sort of guilt that would gnaw at your heart, most people who were purge targets learned to fend for themselves. They learned how to hide, how to gather supplies without being noticed, how to keep their families and friends safe from persecution.

  It had been almost seven years since the purge ended, but old habits died hard.

  Although, if I was being honest, my biggest problem was who I had to call for help. Because, again, I couldn’t just drag O’Shea or Christie or some other noncombatant into this mess, and there was only one person with significant combat experience and undercover experience who I knew would help me if I asked. There was no contest, nothing to debate. I had to call her. Yet I still spent a whole ten minutes biting my thumbnail bloody before I finally had the guts to pull my cell phone from my pocket and find the right number in my contacts.

  Bafflingly, my cell phone had nearly full bars right now. All that time I spent waving the damn thing around on rooftops, when I could’ve stuck it down a sewer drain. Stupid cell network. Stupid… I shook my head. Stop stalling and hit the call button, you coward.

  My thumb hovered over the green button.

  Do it!

  I pressed the button and held the phone to my ear.

  She answered on the second ring. “Lieutenant Daly, Kinsale PD.”

  I took a stilted breath and replied, “Hey, Saoirse. Guess who?”

  “Vince?” she said quietly, sounding alarmed. “What are you calling me for?”

  “What? I can’t call my old partner for a chat?”

  “Of course you can, but you haven’t.” The sound of a chair rolling on worn wheels came across the line. “You hadn’t spoken to me for seven years until this morning, and now you’re casually calling me on the phone?”

  “Or not so casually.” I injected an ounce of exasperation into my voice. “I’m in a bit of a pickle.”

  “The last time you said that to me”—her voice dropped an octave—“was just before you got kidnapped by the leader of a drug cartel. So what the hell have you gotten yourself into this time?”

  I sighed. “I’m being chased by a paranormal dog the size of a Ford F-150 because someone is trying to prevent me from saving the city from disaster.” Saoirse inhaled sharply and started to respond, but I cut her off and continued, “And that’s all I’m going to tell you over the phone. Because people could be listening in, using a variety of spells, or a variety of totally mundane spying equipment.”

  “Vince,” she said. “I swear, if you’re going to tell me I can’t—”

  “You can’t say anything to any of the other cops. They could be on the payroll of somebody involved on the wrong side of this mess.”

  Something clunked on her end. I thought it might’ve been her head smacking her desk. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  “If you agree to help me, that is not out of the realm of possibility.”

  “Jeez, you really know how to entice a girl.”

  “That particular skill has never been in my repertoire, as you well know.”

  “For the love of…” She groaned. “All right, fine. I’ll listen to your explanation of this zany situation you’ve tangled yourself up in, and then I’ll make a decision on whether or not to ‘participate’ in whatever perilous role you’ve got planned for me. I assume you want to meet in some clandestine location?”

  “You think right.”

  “Where?”

  “Well, you remember that case with Frankie Dillinger, the child killer?”

  Silence. For a literal two minutes. And then, “You don’t mean you want to meet in the…”

  “I’m already there.”

  “Oh, fuck me.” Her chair flew back on squeaky wheels and slammed into something. “I’m going to need my rain boots, aren’t I?”

  I stared at the half foot of water soaking my pants. “That would be advisable.”

  Chapter Ten

  Saoirse and I rendezvoused in the tunnel where I’d once tackled a serial killer, and neither of us were happy about it.

  The barghest had tracked me down again when I was halfway to my destination, sniffing my scent out even through the deep earth that separated me from the surface. I’d had to take a roundabout path through the tunnels, and shed several pieces of my clothing, letting them float away atop the rushing water, in order to confuse the creature’s tracking and get it off my tail. If it found me while I was talking to Saoirse, she could end up a target as well, depending on what orders the barghest’s summoner had given it.

  The source of Saoirse’s irritation was more mu
ndane than mine: She’d slipped at some point while walking through the tunnels and fallen flat on her ass, and she was soaked from the hips down, her rain boots full of water. When she caught me in the beam of her flashlight, leaning against the wall, missing my belt, both socks, and the tie I usually wore to look “professional,” she huffed angrily and squelched over to me. The moment she reached spitting distance, she said, “Next time, I get to pick the location of our secret meeting.”

  “You’re a lot more optimistic than me if you think there’s going to be a next time.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Enough with the apocalyptic cynicism. We’ve been there. We’ve done that. The nuclear war already happened.” She deliberately shined the flashlight into my eyes. “Tell me what nonsense is happening now.”

  I squinted and pushed the flashlight away. “Honestly, I don’t know all the details yet, but…” I recounted everything from my meeting with Tom up until the point where the mystery buyer’s barghest found me and chased me through the market. “And that’s how I ended up hiding in these dark, wet tunnels, slowly getting poisoned by mold inhalation.”

  Saoirse paced around in a circle as she processed my words, sloshing water to and fro. After another lengthy silence, she said, “Leave it to you to get chased by the most ridiculous monsters.”

  “That’s a feature, not a bug,” I replied.

  “A feature of what?”

  “Being half fae.”

  She stopped pacing. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if I was human, do you really think this buyer would’ve used dangerous blood magic to summon a creature from the Otherworld to hunt me down and kill me?” I raised my arms in an exaggerated shrug. “My guess is no. He probably would’ve hired a hitman to snipe me with a high-powered rifle from a distance. Or, were I a magic practitioner, a practitioner hitman to snipe me with a high-powered spell from a distance.”

  “So the ridiculousness of the tool used to kill someone is proportionate to how much nonhuman blood they have. Is that what you’re saying?”