What Fate Portends

by Clara Coulson

  “Not so much ridiculousness as effectiveness.” I dropped my hands and tucked them into my coat pockets. “Barghests are determined bastards, even when they’re not being driven by a blood contract. That thing’s not going to leave me alone until its master either dissolves the contract, which could mean forfeiting his own life, depending on the terms, or gets killed some other way.”

  “You’re in real danger then.” Saoirse drew her brows together, troubled. “Can the dog monster be killed?”

  “Everything can be killed, even the so-called immortals.” I pulled away from the wall and let out a frigid white breath into the humid air. My unglamoured magic was still bugging me, a low buzz deep in my bones. It was vexed I hadn’t used it to wrestle with the barghest and had instead fled like a wimp. “The real question is ‘Can I kill it?’ and the answer is, ‘I’m not sure.’ Maybe if I go all out, but that’s a dangerous proposition in and of itself.”

  Saoirse eyed my breath in the air. Hers wasn’t turning white. “I’m not sure what ‘go all out’ entails for a half-fae. Does that have something to do with, uh, what’s it called? A glamour? The magic mask thing you use to look more human?”

  “Glamours are a tad more complex than masks. But you’re on the right track.” I reached under my shirt collar and tugged out my necklace, shaking it to jangle the charms. “Half-fae like me have six glamours. Each one conceals a different part of my faerie side. Usually, when I get into a fight that requires more than human ability, I strip off glamours one, two, and three, which correspond to senses, physical performance, and magic energy. I never drop four, five, and six, however, because those cause more…fundamental alterations to my person.”

  Saoirse tugged on a damp curl of hair. “But if you did drop those, you would gain enough power to defeat the barghest?”

  Definitely. “Perhaps.”

  “Hm.” She tapped her thumb against her flashlight. “But if glamour three gives you access to your magic, why is that not enough to fight the barghest on its own?”

  Ah, Saoirse. Always so perceptive.

  “Because faerie magic isn’t human magic. My ability to use magic is limited, even with my energy technically available, as long as my three base glamours are intact.”

  “Interesting.” She skewed her lips to the side, a sign that she was making a mental note to do more research on this topic later. Which was not something I wanted her to do, but arguing with her about it was pointless. Saoirse went wherever the clues led her, an aspect of her personality that applied to her personal life as well as her professional one. Some people called her nosy for it, but I’d once thought it an endearing trait. Then the purge started and anyone who got outed as a paranormal ended up on the government’s kill list.

  The possibility of my own partner finding out what I was became considerably more unnerving after that. (Though in the end, it wasn’t Saoirse who found me out.)

  “Okay,” she finally said, “let’s leave you unleashing your full power to kill the dog monster as the last-ditch option. We’ll first aim for capturing—and perhaps killing, if it comes to that—this partner of Bismarck’s who wants to cast the threatening spell tonight.”

  “You’re all right with working off the books, Lieutenant?” I asked, genuinely curious. Saoirse had been a stickler for the rules back in the day. I had continually exasperated her by ever so slightly bending them whenever I had the opportunity.

  Hey, I was part faerie.

  That’s how we rolled.

  Saoirse swept up her foot and sent a wave of water at me, drenching my pants legs yet again. “Oh, please. ‘Off the books’? There are no books, Vince. You know as well as I do that the police are just following the equivalent of a taped-up instruction manual someone dug out of the trash. We have no constitution to follow, for god’s sake, much less a set of criminal laws, or judicial precedents, or even an approved set of procedures and regulations. All that went out the door when the great Queen Mab snapped her fingers and wiped DC off the face of the Earth.”

  I roughly cleared my throat. “Don’t say her name out loud. Not here. Not now.”

  Saoirse cocked an eyebrow. “Why? You hate her too?”

  “While I do indeed despise that woman with all the fury in my frozen half-fae heart, that is not the reason you shouldn’t say her name out loud,” I answered. “You shouldn’t speak her name because she can hear you say it. She can hear every utterance of M-A-B.”

  “You…You’re joking, right?” Saoirse’s eyes grew wide as saucers, and she glanced around, suddenly paranoid. “That sounds like a god-tier power. Omniscience or something. She can’t really do that, can she?”

  “Saoirse,” I said, “she could wipe all life off this planet if she wanted to. There is absolutely nothing beyond belief about her being able to hear her name when people use it aloud.”

  Saoirse was starting to look a lot paler than normal. “Fucking hell. I’ve been saying it all the time. I’ve been swearing at her all the time.”

  I snorted. “If it’s any consolation, I can assure you she doesn’t care about all the nasty things humans have to say about her. Or anything most fae have to say about her. Because you’re not threatening to her in any way, shape, or form. You’re, well, irrelevant.”

  “I’m an ant, you mean,” Saoirse said flatly, “yelling at a boot hanging over my head.”

  “Yeah, that’s about the gist of it.”

  “Well, that’s a nice blow to my ego.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “But if she doesn’t give a shit about what anyone says, why shouldn’t I say her name now?”

  “Because we’re currently discussing a problem that would legitimately piss her off and bring her wrath down on Kinsale.”

  “Oh.” Saoirse winced. “Got it.”

  “So, you want to move on from this riveting discussion about our beloved faerie queen and discuss the plan for stopping Mr. Harp Buyer from putting Kinsale in the line of fire?”

  “I’m not sure it’s a matter of desire so much as one of necessity, but okay.”

  We spent the next thirty minutes hashing out the first stage of our plot to foil a far worse plot. After which Saoirse plodded off with only an awkward wave for a goodbye so she could get ready to sneak into the auction tonight in my stead. Having my old partner put herself in the hot seat to get me out of a bind wasn’t my favorite idea in the world, but at the same time, it was kind of nice to be working a “case” with Saoirse again. Even if we still couldn’t bring ourselves to touch each other, or make eye contact for more than half a second at a time.

  But what’ll happen after this is over? I wondered. We go back to the cold shoulder?

  Saoirse certainly seemed willing to speak to me in the same snarky manner we used to in the good old days, but how deep did that camaraderie run? How deep could it run after we’d parted on such awful terms? There was a massive gulf between us, a fracture that had cleaved the earth wide open on my last day as a cop, so vast and deep that I wasn’t sure it could be crossed, much less mended. Even if we did somehow manage to stitch the damn thing closed, it wasn’t as if the scars would disappear. The real ones or the emotional ones. No, the scars would always remain.

  But did that mean it wasn’t worth it to re-forge our friendship?

  Ah, hell. After seven years of practical isolation, I’m even worse at this relationship crap than I was before.

  I pushed all my concerns to the back of my mind for the time being. If I spent the entire evening staring at wet tunnel walls while torturing myself over the sins of the past, I was going to lose my mind before Saoirse returned with the ledger. And being insane was not conducive to saving the city from a looming doom.

  Plus, there were other topics that I needed to dwell on. Like plotting a continuous maze-like route through the tunnels that would keep the barghest baffled until Saoirse met with me at our next rendezvous point so we could head to the buyer’s home.

  I glanced left. Gurgling water and an endless tunnel that s
tretched into the abyss.

  I glanced right. Gurgling water and an endless tunnel that stretched into the abyss.

  It was going to be a long evening. I needed to start keeping snacks in my pocket.

  Chapter Eleven

  At the appointed hour, I changed my route through the tunnels, found my designated exit point, climbed a ladder back to the surface, and punched open a grate that let me out in an alleyway between two abandoned buildings on Third Street. The night was damp and dark, no streetlights, electric or magic, to keep the shadows at bay. I stole through the darkness, eyes and ears alert, hunting for any signs of the barghest, and made my way down the empty street to the park bench across from a gutted Five Guys where Saoirse and I had eaten many a lunch way back when.

  Saoirse wasn’t at the bench when I arrived, and I didn’t want to sit there alone and draw attention in case anyone walked by. So I hunkered down on the stoop of a nearby brick building that had once been a dentist’s office, according to the curling, browned sign in the window. From there, I scoped out the entire neighborhood, made a list of all the places a paranormal hostile might lie in wait, and put a mental highlight on all the entry points to the street big enough for the barghest to navigate.

  I wasn’t exactly nervous—Saoirse knew what she was doing—but I kept counting down the minutes until the “split and run” deadline she’d given me. She’d explicitly told me not to wait if she didn’t show on time, because she didn’t want the barghest to track me down and use me like a chew toy. While I appreciated the concern, Saoirse showing up late, or not showing up at all, would mean something had gone horribly wrong. Because Saoirse Daly had never once, in all my years on the force, ever shown up late to the precinct, to a crime scene, or even to a colleague cookout in the boonies. She didn’t do late. Unless she was dead or dying. Unless someone or something had—

  A shadow fluttered in a nearby alley.

  I snapped out of my reverie just in time to see Saoirse dart out into the street full speed. A messenger bag slung around her shoulder. A slinky black dress fit for a fancy function riding up her thighs. Her bright red hair coming unwound from a complex coif. At some point, she’d lost her shoes, probably a pair of heels she couldn’t run in, and she was treading rough pavement that was bound to have torn her skin. But if she was in pain, she didn’t let it show. What she did let show was the terror.

  The terror of being pursued by creatures of the night.

  Out of the inky darkness of the alley emerged ten black-clad shapes wielding various pointy weapons. The humanoid creatures had washed-out gray skin, jet-black hair woven into elaborate braids, and eyes with black irises and silvery sclera that resembled liquid mercury, gleaming even in the perpetual gloom of a cloudy night. They snarled at Saoirse’s hustling form, flashing shark-like teeth and releasing loud hisses that seemed to wrap around everything they touched and squeeze, a silken noose.

  Svartálfar. Dark elves.

  I was so shocked to see them on a random street in Kinsale, I just sat stupidly on the stoop, jaw hanging open. Dark elves rarely left Svartalfheim, their ancestral home realm, and even more rarely did they leave the Otherworld. Dark elves had what was practically an allergic reaction to direct sunlight—ironically, they fit the vampire mythos more than the actual vampires—so Earth, with its nice yellow dwarf hanging in the sky every day, was not a popular vacation destination for the meaner cousins of the common elf.

  They also hated humans, more than most paranormal creatures. I’d encountered a dark elf exactly once before tonight, and he’d immediately tried to chop off my head with an axe for the mere insult of wearing a human glamour.

  Yet here was a horde of them chasing a cop down a city street.

  They can’t be working for Bismarck, I realized with a sinking feeling. They’d never make a deal with a human. That means they’re working for Bismarck’s partner. And that means Bismarck’s partner isn’t human.

  Just what I needed. A powerful nonhuman adversary.

  I yanked myself back into the moment as Saoirse slipped on a slick patch of asphalt, nearly throwing herself into a nasty fall. She recovered but lost her lead on the dark elves, who hissed in anticipation and raised their weapons as they closed in on the cop still struggling to regain her footing. Saoirse knew she’d lost the chase, so she didn’t try to keep running. Instead, she stuffed her hand into the messenger bag and tugged out a handgun, flipping the safety off with a swift flick of her thumb. Then she took a defensive stance and let the elf bastards have it.

  The first bullet nailed the closest dark elf in the face, and he went back spewing blood from the socket where his eye had been. The second bullet caught another elf in the neck, and he spun around in a dancer-like manner, a fountain of blood spurting from a severed vessel. The third elf in the lineup wised up and raised a quick shield, but Saoirse’s third bullet plowed through it like glass and plunged into the elf’s chest with so much force he was actually flung backward. He collided with two of his friends, who were bowled over onto their asses.

  The whole time this onslaught was occurring, Saoirse’s gun was faintly glowing green.

  Charmed. By a fairly powerful practitioner too, judging by the strength of the shots.

  (I had a funny feeling that wasn’t a standard-issue PD weapon.)

  But it wasn’t going to be enough. The elves had been holding back when they thought Saoirse wasn’t a threat. They’d been treating her like helpless prey, thinking if they followed her long enough she’d eventually run out of stamina and become easy pickings, a fragile thing they could torture to their hearts’ content. The joke was on them, and they’d now realized it. The sight of their fallen comrades spurred their fury, and they amped up their magic energy. Dark, mist-like auras coalesced around their bodies. A tangible taste of magic, thick and pungent, hung in the air.

  Saoirse’s fourth bullet ricocheted off the next elf’s shield and ate into the pavement.

  That was my cue.

  I leaped from the stoop, held up my hand, and released all the energy I’d been gathering in my palm. It blasted outward, shrieking like a brutal winter gale, and struck the three elves at the head of the charging group with the force of a speeding train. One of them was flung straight through a window and crashed into a pile of furniture in a defunct living room. One of them slammed into the brick façade of the same townhouse, breaking half his bones. And the third, who was caught at an awkward angle at the edge of the magic blast, rammed headfirst into an old metal USPS mailbox. His skull didn’t survive the impact.

  The four remaining dark elves skidded to a stop and whipped their heads toward me.

  “Unseelie half-blood,” one of them said in a raspy voice. “You’ve made a grave mistake.”

  “I’ve made a lot of grave mistakes, pal.” I subtly tapped the fingers of my left hand against my thigh in a pattern I hoped Saoirse remembered. Fall back on my word. “Have yet to end up in a hole I can’t dig myself out of.”

  He hissed, flashing those creepy teeth. “There always comes a day.”

  A curved ice dagger formed in my outstretched hand, and I pointed the tip at the elf’s face. “You think that day is today? Prove it, bucko.”

  At the word “bucko,” Saoirse turned on her toes and sprinted down the street. The dark elf who’d spoken to me immediately launched into another pursuit. A dark cloud of magic energy built up around one hand, his arm poised to throw a deadly spell at my old partner’s retreating form. But before he made it three steps, I slung the dagger at him. It whizzed by his face, cutting through his now fully powered shield in a way Saoirse’s charmed bullets couldn’t dream of, and took off the end of his nose.

  He staggered to a stop as blood ran over his lips and chin, dripped onto the asphalt at his feet. He prodded the wound, perplexed, then followed the trajectory of the dagger—and found it lodged inside the skull of the elf who’d collided with the brick façade. The other three elves, who’d made to follow their de facto leader after S
aoirse, now stood stock-still, glancing between the dead elf with the ice blade sticking out of his head, and the half-fae who’d dared to throw it. Until de facto leader elf made a slow, counterclockwise turn toward me and said, “Kill him.”

  In the corner of my eye, I caught Saoirse darting into an alley, safe from any direct lines of fire. I wanted to tell her to keep on running, because this was about to get nasty, but there was no point. Saoirse wouldn’t leave me in the middle of a fight. Even if she was hurt. Even if she was dying. And I wouldn’t leave her either.

  Except for that one time, said a derisive mental voice, you left her for seven years.

  I shook off the guilty thought as the four dark elves dashed toward me, and summoned another surge of power. My magic, having tasted the blood of an enemy paranormal, was all too happy to comply. It practically giggled as it flooded my entire body, urging me to fight, kill, destroy, annihilate. It rose from the surface of my skin like mist rising from the earth in the wake of a damaging storm. When I exhaled a string of words, sharp and cold, ice crystals crackled in the air around me and formed a field of spinning blades even sharper than the one I’d used before.

  I snatched a blade from the space beside me, locked eyes with the elf missing the tip of his nose, and attacked. Surging forward, I mentally pushed the blades around me into a whirling tempest. They arced through the air, coming at the elves from all directions. Two of the elves broke off from the oncoming group as they struggled to dodge and parry so many projectiles at once, but the leader and one other, a female elf, expertly avoided the blades and countered with spells of their own.

  The woman vanished in a puff of black smoke, only to reappear behind me, her short sword already swinging toward my neck. I dodged the blow by a hair and swung my ice dagger at her abdomen, only for the blade to shatter before it made contact. It was struck by rigid black strings crackling with electricity, which stretched from the fingernails of the lead elf. The strings suddenly cut a hard left and shot toward my chest, and I had to drop to my knees to avoid getting skewered. Which put me directly in the downward arc of the woman’s next swing.