What Dawn Demands

by Clara Coulson

  I pressed my thumb hard against the talisman, activating it, and tossed it at McCullough. The resulting portal sucked him down into the void between worlds—where an intercept spell was waiting for my magic signature.

  The portal closed in a puff of fog, and a stunned silence fell across the roundabout.

  Drake broke it by stage-whispering, “Dude, did you just send him where I think you did?”

  “Yep,” I answered without turning around.

  “Do you think he’ll die?”

  “From hitting the dungeon wall? No.” I cracked a tiny smile. “But if Abarta and Manannán are still there and still angry, well, that’s another matter.”

  “Damn, bro,” Drake replied, “that’s cold.”

  “He’s an Unseelie traitor. Cold justice is the only kind he deserves.” I pulled my gaze from the asphalt now coated in McCullough’s blood and eyed the group of sídhe soldiers standing twenty feet away, still restraining Orlagh and Boyle. “If any of you disagree with that sentiment, feel free to keep holding your immediate superiors hostage. Otherwise…”

  The four soldiers exchanged calculating looks, and released Orlagh and Boyle.

  Orlagh spun around, ripped her confiscated sword from one of the soldier’s belts, and clocked the other in the jaw. Not hard enough to hurt him, but enough to get the point across. Both men backed away from her, dipped their heads, and muttered canned half-apologies that were less about shame and more about covering their asses. Just in case allowing McCullough to proceed with his stupid punishment theater—in the middle of a citywide vampire attack, no less—blew back on them in the inevitable tribunal that would result from this clusterfuck of a mission.

  Orlagh could’ve rightfully reamed them out for following the clearly reckless commands of an overblown narcissist, but she was too good a strategist to resort to petty vengeance. (She would hold their idiocy over their heads until such time as she needed the leverage to accomplish a greater goal.) Instead, she marched over to Boyle, who was still bleeding from a couple deep stab wounds. They had a hushed conversation that ended with Boyle assuring Orlagh he’d heal up shortly.

  Satisfied he wasn’t downplaying his injuries, Orlagh turned to face me. Her light-gray eyes were sharp and probing, dissecting every inch of my appearance. “I was starting to think I’d thrown in my lots with the wrong man, bréagadóir,” she said after a prolonged silence. “But it looks like the rumors about you are true. You never cease to surprise.”

  “What can I say?” I gave her a short, mocking bow. “I’m half fae. I live for good tricks.”

  “I hope you have more up your sleeve then.” She pointed to the smoking husk of City Hall. “Because we’ve got a lot of problems.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. This”—I indicated the fire-plagued city at large—“all of this, is nothing but a distraction.”

  “Meant to obfuscate what?” Boyle asked, finally stumbling to his feet.

  “The summoning of the Wild Hunt.”

  All the soldiers balked, spitting out denials in various faerie dialects.

  Orlagh said, “You can’t be serious. No one in their right mind would summon the Hunt.”

  “I suppose the depends on whether you think ‘upending sídhe domination of Tír na nÓg’ is a logical goal or not.”

  She pursed her lips. “You’re referring to the alleged Tuatha rogue. Abarta.”

  I nodded, and proceeded to explain what nightmare had just transpired in Maige Itha.

  When I finished, Orlagh swore under her breath and stomped her boot against the asphalt so hard it cracked. “We cannot allow the Hunt to ride on Earth. It will decimate what remains of the mortal population, and kill many fae along with them.”

  “Then we need to stop Vianu in short order.”

  Her attention slid toward Drake. “And you’ve promised the dhampir necromancer some kind of reprieve for his crimes if he aids us in stopping the designs of his coven leader?”

  “A partial reprieve,” I confirmed. “Something fair for risking his life in service to the fae.”

  She frowned deeply at Drake, appalled by the idea of working with a necromancer, but eventually relented. “Very well. I will let that agreement pass, as long as he makes a good faith effort to aid us, and does not withhold any pertinent information relating to the vampire lord and his coven.” She raised her voice to address Drake directly. “I reserve the right to thoroughly interview you on the matter of your coven, dhampir. If you attempt to skip town beforehand, I will hunt you down.”

  Drake sent me a nervous glance.

  I responded with a slow nod.

  He cleared his throat. “Understood, uh, ma’am.”

  Orlagh’s arched eyebrow oozed skepticism, but she let the topic go for now. “I assume you have some kind of plan in mind,” she said to me, “for stopping the vampire lord from dooming the Earth?”

  “In a general sense.” I pointed at Kennedy, who hadn’t moved since I let him go. “First, I’ve got to drop off a package at my house. Then I need to get to Watchdog HQ and organize all my available resources, so we can assail Vianu’s staging area, overwhelm the vampire guards, and disrupt the second stage of the ritual. All we have to do is stall out the summoning long enough for Vianu to miss the required time window. We succeed, and the Hunt won’t cross the veil. It’ll probably still ride through Tír na nÓg, but that won’t be nearly as catastrophic—and it’ll have the added side effect of drawing more sídhe to the courts. The exact opposite of what Abarta wants.”

  “Sounds doable, if we hurry,” Orlagh replied. “Let’s walk and talk.”

  We set off for my house at a quick pace, Orlagh, Boyle, and me in front, Drake carrying Kennedy behind us, and the other four soldiers bringing up the rear. Orlagh cast a better version of Drake’s filtration spell to stop the smoke from suffocating us, but the heat from the worsening fires was growing intense, sweat gathering on our faces, soaking our shirts. The blazes weren’t nearly as widespread as they’d been last time, but as we hustled down the blocks, I was disgruntled to find that most of the buildings on fire were those that had already been under reconstruction.

  They specifically targeted the recovery work we’ve been doing since the zombie invasion. Assholes.

  As we turned onto my street, a pensive Orlagh said, “We have a secondary problem to worry about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The vampires have abducted Connolly and his entourage.”

  “What? How?” I snapped. “Weren’t there soldiers protecting them?”

  She looked over her shoulder, at the orange glow of the City Hall fire, so bright that it penetrated even the densest patches of smoke. “When the initial reports of the scattered vampire attacks came in, McCullough dispatched all of us to join the dullahan in the worst-affected areas so we could wipe out as many of the vampires as possible. That the worst attacks were all conveniently located a great distance from City Hall led me to believe they were a ploy, and I told McCullough as much.”

  She let out a deep sigh. “He didn’t listen to me. So we left City Hall defended only by two dullahan and the ward array. Predictably, not ten minutes after we departed, a large group of vampires stormed the building, grabbed Connolly and every faerie in his immediate vicinity, and spirited them off to who knows where. They set the building on fire as they were leaving.”

  I was annoyed by McCullough’s stupidity, but more perplexed at Vianu’s strategy. Why would he choose to abduct Connolly and friends when killing them outright would yield a far greater disruption to Kinsale’s sociopolitical stability? The only practical answer that came to mind—that Vianu was building yet another devious layer atop this already multifaceted scheme—perturbed me. It meant we’d have additional complications to overcome when we attempted to sabotage the ritual.

  As if this situation wasn’t already bad enough…

  “Did anyone try to rescue them?” I asked Orlagh.

  “Boyle and I set out to,” she
answered sourly. “But McCullough stopped us. In the interval between our dispatch and return to City Hall, it just so happened that McCullough finally figured out it was us who subverted his orders to allow you to go through with the raid operation. So, instead of sending anyone to try and recover the important government officials our own court installed in this city, he decided he would rather waste time ‘disciplining’ us.”

  “He’ll get his comeuppance for that. Either the court will crucify him for his unforgivable mishandling of the Kinsale mission. Or, depending on his luck, he’ll get killed by Abarta and Manannán before he’s able to fully heal from my punch—plus his meeting with the delightful wall at the end of his trip to Maige Itha.”

  “About that punch.” Orlagh slowed to a stop a few feet from my front door. “After all the energy you claim to have expended over the last few hours, how did you have enough left to catch McCullough’s sword and deliver such a devastating blow? And further, how is it you still seem to be brimming with energy despite that considerable outlay of power?”

  I dug around in my various pockets and pouches until I found my house key. It was slightly bent, so I carefully straightened it. “Those are both good questions. Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to either, and I don’t have time right now to go digging around in my soul to solve the mystery. So we’ll both have to take a rain check on satisfying our curiosity.”

  Orlagh searched my face for any hint of deception, and found none. “So be it. But bear in mind that I will hold you to the ‘rain check,’ Vincent Whelan. And when the dust of this crisis finally settles, I expect you to host a long and thorough discussion regarding your many eccentricities.”

  I brought down the entryway wards as fast as I could without blowing us all to kingdom come. “You find me eccentric?”

  “I find you many things,” she said cheekily, “‘eccentric’ being the politest way I can sum them up.”

  “Can I take that to mean that most of those ‘things’ are negative?” I shoved the key into the lock and jimmied it around until it caught the tumblers.

  “You may take it to mean that roughly half are negative, roughly half are positive, and the small remainder between the two fall into neutral territory.”

  Pushing the door open, I ushered her in ahead of me. “Any chance I can change some of those negatives to positives?”

  Orlagh flashed me a wry smile as she stepped across the threshold. “There is always a chance of changing my mind on matters of the heart and soul. But such a chance is infinitesimal at best, given that I err on the side of caution when it comes to admiring other people. A side effect of growing up the daughter of a general, I’m afraid. I’ve met far too many sídhe with undeserved praise pinned to their coats and collars for me to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. If you’d like me to view you as a better man, you will have to vigorously prove that you are.”

  “Well, it must be my lucky day.” I shuffled onto the empty show floor and held the door open for the rest of the group. “Since the next hour will be nothing but a string of harrowing trials designed to prove my mettle, and if I fail even one of them, I’m going to die. Along with practically everyone else in this city.”

  “Then I suppose we should both hope you are the good man your friends so staunchly believe you to be.”

  “Personally,” I replied as the others piled into the room, “I think praying would be more appropriate in this case. Because as wily a half-sídhe as I might be, I’m not sure even I can scrape through the rest of this night without a generous helping of divine assistance.”

  “And if there are no gods here?” she asked.

  “Oh, there are. There are many gods here. The important question is whether or not any of them are on our side.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  After setting up Kennedy on my living room couch with a water bottle, some snacks, and a pointless order to stay put, I hustled to my bedroom and swapped out my ruined raid uniform for some intact clothing. Off went the jacket whose right sleeve had been burned away by Abarta’s shield, and on went a leather replacement I’d spelled to be tear resistant. Off went the pants with the broken knee pads and split seams, and on went a faded pair of jeans that had served me well over the years. My boots, thankfully, were in good enough shape to keep on, and I managed to dig from my dresser a lookalike for the glove that had been scorched off my right hand.

  Now appropriately dressed, I headed to my war room to grab some new gear.

  The first thing I snagged was a shield bracelet I’d recently designed that unleashed a targeted force blast whenever a living creature came into contact with the shell. I slipped the gold bracelet onto my wrist and set it on “standby mode” with a muttered activation word. The small silver conduit embedded in the center of the bracelet began to absorb environmental energy, which could be used to supplement my own energy if the bracelet’s internal store ran low.

  The second thing I grabbed was a long wooden chest buried underneath a pile of works in progress. The chest held my favorite spoil from Manannán’s vault: Fragarach. I’d had a simple sheath made for the sword a few months ago, so I secured it to my belt and let the heavy blade hang from my side. I then set McCullough’s pilfered sword in the chest in Fragarach’s place and slammed the lid shut.

  Patting the hilt of the sword, I muttered, “Hope you’re as helpful for me as you were for Abarta.”

  Confident I had everything I needed, I hurried back downstairs to rejoin the sídhe and my new dhampir sidekick. To my amazement, none of the sídhe were at Drake’s throat, though a few were giving him the stink eye, that general fae distaste for necromancy hanging thick in the air between them. I dispelled the tension with a loud announcement I was ready to leave, at which point the soldiers looked to Orlagh and Boyle for instructions.

  “Per Whelan’s advice,” Orlagh said, “we’ll first be heading to the Project Watchdog headquarters. We’ll need to gather a lot more manpower if we want to effectively dismantle an operation involving so many vampire hostiles.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the soldiers all murmured in tandem.

  So out the door we lumbered, back into the churning smoke of a city on fire.

  We made it about ten feet before Tom Tildrum appeared.

  His lithe body coalesced from the smoke itself, and at first, he presented as an eerie silhouette that had half the soldiers drawing their blades. But then his tittering laugh rolled over the dull roars of the distant fires and stopped everyone in their tracks.

  The silhouette gradually took on sharper shapes and detailed colors, until Tildrum’s telltale form resolved, complete with calico hair and acid-green cat eyes. He was lounging along the length of a sharply bent light pole, and he looked for all the world like he’d been napping before we inadvertently invaded his space.

  He let out a wide yawn, flashing his sharp teeth, and said, “Vincent Whelan, how kind of you to reappear in time for today’s festivities.”

  “I wouldn’t have disappeared in the first place if you’d warned me about the bombs,” I retorted.

  “What makes you think I knew about the trap set by the vampire lord?” He cocked one of his motley eyebrows.

  “You have an army of four-legged spies observing every inch of this city day and night, including the now wrecked halls of this city’s seat of government. I know damn well you saw McCullough fumble his handling of the Watchdog report. You’ve known for months that he critically compromised the project’s security, and you didn’t say a word to me about it.”

  I took a step toward him, not to menace him—because no one could—but rather to prove that I’d long passed the point of fearing his mere presence. “I would ask you why you elected to set me and the Watchdogs on the path to disaster, but I know you’ll either give me a vague answer or change the subject altogether. You won’t tell me anything of value until the moment you think it’ll have the greatest impact favorable to your goals. Isn’t that right?”

  Tildrum gr
inned. “You have learned. Very good. I like little fae who learn. That’s how they grow into bigger fae who can do bigger things that effect greater change. Keep learning, Vincent Whelan, and you may just impress me one day.”

  “Is that what you think I live for? To impress you?”

  “I do not care in the least what you want to live for,” he answered, “only that how you live befits the intentions of Queen Mab and the mores of the Unseelie Court, insofar as those are relevant to the tasks my queen has laid before my feet.”

  “That makes you sound a tad self-serving.”

  His pupils narrowed to slits. “I’ll allow you to believe as much, for now, if it makes you feel as if we stand on roughly equal ground, and if that makes you feel more assured in your dealings with a creature that serves the kind of masters whose form and function you cannot fathom. But mark my words, son of air and darkness, one day you will learn what exactly it is I serve, and when that day comes, I expect you to be prepared to handle the heavy knowledge of such profound existence.”

  I rubbed my temples. “You know, on most other days, I would have no issue sitting in my living room and spending hours anxiously contemplating that bizarre spiel. But today, there are some pressing matters I need to attend to first. So can you cut to the chase, please? What do you want? Do you have some intel for me? Some advice? Some kind of magic McGuffin that’ll save the world from the…?” I bit my tongue. “Hold on. Do you even know about the Hunt?”

  “I know as much as you told the soldiers back at the burning ruin of your City Hall. Because I’ve had a few friends on furry feet tailing you since you popped back into town,” he replied. “Everything I overheard has already been relayed to Queen Mab and her advisors, and they are currently taking appropriate actions to prepare for the possible arrival of the Hunt either on Earth or Tír na nÓg, as well as the inevitable arrival of”—he flicked his gaze toward the sídhe—“the supposed Tuatha rogue and his cohorts in Maige Mell.”