“And?”
His eyebrow arched higher. “And what?”
“Are you going to offer us some kind of aid for preventing Vianu from summoning the Hunt to Earth?”
“Neither I nor Queen Mab nor anyone else of consequence in either court can interfere directly in this matter. For reasons we have previously discussed.”
Tildrum was referring, of course, to the mysterious new enemy whose growing influence the courts were trying to subvert. I knew nothing about this enemy, except that they were actively recruiting credible threats to the fae. If any of the power players from Tír na nÓg acknowledged Abarta’s true significance, this enemy might count him among those threats and attempt to sway him over to their side. If Abarta joined forces with this enemy, it would not only strengthen the enemy’s position, but also give Abarta additional resources he could use in his quest to awaken the Tuatha and reignite their war with the fae.
Thus, the courts were doing everything in their power to frame Abarta as a nobody.
No matter how dire the situation in Kinsale became—even if the full force of the Hunt was bearing down on the city and killing every poor soul in its path—Tildrum would still leave it up to me, a hapless half-sídhe, to kick the legs out from under the Tuatha rogue, his growing circle of minions, and his favorite undead “business partners.”
“Is there any indirect way you can assist me?” I asked.
Tildrum tapped his chin like he was thinking about it, but the sharp glint in his eye made it obvious that the whole reason he’d phased himself into existence in my path was to give me some sort of advantage in the upcoming skirmish with Vianu. After thirty seconds of teasing, running me right to the ragged edge of my patience, he finally responded, “I do have one thing that may allow you to circumvent what I believe to be an important aspect of the vampire lord’s strategy.”
“Well, don’t keep me hanging,” I said flatly. “I hate suspense.”
He wagged his finger at me—tut tut—then abruptly jabbed that finger into my forehead.
Electricity jolted the center of my brain. My senses went on the fritz, causing me to lose my footing and stumble back into Orlagh, who caught me by the arm. I hung in her grasp for a minute, blinking the static from my eyes, shaking my head to clear the feeling of deep water from my ears, swallowing down the taste of metal on my tongue, and prodding the strange seed that Tildrum had just planted in my mind.
The seed seemed to grow roots, the tendrils digging deep into my neural pathways until they were indistinguishable from information that had already been there. Once it was firmly anchored, the seed bloomed into a flower of vast and fearsome information that pushed aside less relevant things until only its many complex petals sat at the forefront of my thoughts.
It was a spell. One whose invocation bore the guttural syllables of a bygone age in Tír na nÓg. One that wove magic into patterns I had never conceived of, to bind nature in a way I had not thought it could be bound. One that captured fire as if it was a solid object to be grasped, as if flames were merely stalks of grain waving in a light breeze. One that trampled the laws of physics, the laws of time, the laws of reality, and laughed as their sparkling dust scattered in the wind.
This was the spell that Tildrum used to pause the explosion that blew up my old house.
Shaking off the shock of the telepathic transfer, I steadied myself on my feet. “I’m all right,” I muttered to Orlagh.
She slowly released her grasp on my arm, checking to make sure my knees didn’t buckle. “What was that?” She glanced between Tildrum and me. “Did he harm you?”
“I suppose that depends on your definition of ‘harm,’ Major Maguire,” Tildrum purred. “Though rest assured my intention was to convey a net benefit.”
I rubbed the sore spot on my forehead where he’d stabbed me with his sharp nail. “He gave me the instructions for casting a high-level spell that manipulates combustion.”
“Why?” Orlagh crossed her arms. “Is the vampire lord planning to set off more bombs?”
“I have caught wind of a burgeoning situation,” Tildrum said, “in which stalling an explosion may come in handy, depending on which goals you prioritize during your conflict with the vampire lord. I anticipate that you will soon learn of this situation, and then you will understand why I thought it prudent to teach you the spell.”
“I’m not sure I’d label your knowledge transfer ‘teaching.’” I blinked away the lingering spots in my eyes. “Stamping a spell’s instructions into my brain doesn’t guarantee I’ll be able to perform it properly on the first attempt. This spell in particular seems extremely advanced, not to mention much older in origin than any of the magic I usually practice. Also, its energy requirements increase proportionally with the size and intensity of the explosion. If the explosion you think Vianu is planning to trigger is too large—”
“You will be able to contain the blast, Vincent Whelan,” Tildrum interrupted. “You have all the power you need.”
My entire body tensed up. “What do you mean by that?”
“What do you think I mean?”
I observed him. His acidic eyes, twinkling with mirth at the sight of my ignorance and confusion. His crooked lips still zipping up a secret he wouldn’t spill until he thought the time was right. His form in general, that disarming petite body riddled with feline features. A form that acted as the container for a force far older and far greater than any average fae could hope to comprehend, and to whom any mortal was like a puff of smoke, short lived and amusing to manipulate.
I looked at Tom Tildrum, King of the Cats, and I knew. Knew that there was more to Mab’s decision to draft me into this shadow war than mere convenience. More to Tildrum’s strangely timed visits and cryptic statements that never quite told the whole of any truth. More to the manner in which this pair of ancient gods had been wielding me as their tool for the better part of a year—and perhaps, for much, much longer.
There was more to me, and my troubled childhood, than the scant details to which I’d been made aware.
I opened my mouth to ask a question I wasn’t sure I wanted answered, but Tildrum brought his finger to his lips to silence me. “Now is for action. Questions can wait,” he said. “Go stop the vampire lord from damning your world, Vincent Whelan. And then we will speak further on this matter of your soul.”
Before I could formulate a response, Tildrum’s body unraveled into a hundred rippling ribbons that fluttered off into the smoke. Going. Going. Gone.
No one quite knew how to react after that bizarre interaction, so silence hung over the street for some time. Until, at last, my faerie logic tapped my mental shoulder and informed me that I didn’t have time to dwell on an existential crisis. Because a physical crisis was currently taking place all around me.
“All right,” I said breathily. “Let’s go on a jog through a burning city.”
The library tunnel to Watchdog HQ was the closest entrance to my house. I pointed the group in that direction and took the lead, using my knowledge of the city’s layout to cut our travel time to the bare minimum. I guided them along a confusing path of tight alleys choked with trash and ash, hazy gravel parking lots where hostiles could hear our steps a mile off, and gutted buildings whose skeletons were liable to collapse at a puff of wind.
As we ran, the soldiers switched off on using the filtration spell to ensure no one person expended too much energy. Some of them were better at that type of magic than others, and therefore, our trip was occasionally punctuated by hawking coughs and watering eyes and the uncomfortable sensation of hot embers licking stripes of skin off your cheeks. Thankfully, we were all quick healers here, so the damage to our health was minimal. But I was still ecstatic when I finally reached the bottom step at the library’s front entrance.
With all my glamours down, fire felt like less of an ally than ever before.
At the top of the library steps, we encountered a Watchdog barricade. A set of hastily erected wards gl
owing bright colors painted the windows and doors, all of them designed specifically to repel vampires. Through the glass front doors, I could see the library’s main room was chock full of huddled humans. Early risers who’d been out on the nearby streets when the vampires attacked. Neighborhood homeowners who’d been fast asleep until their houses were set ablaze. And a random assortment of others who, for one reason or another, had stumbled into the library for refuge from the vicious creatures of the night.
Most of them had had no idea the library was in any way connected to the heavily armed paramilitary police who’d been putting down paranormal threats around town in recent months. Before, I assumed, a group of Watchdogs poured out of the stairwell, barricaded the entrance, and situated themselves between the civilians and the exits. Watchdogs who, upon seeing me standing on the other side of the glass doors, rushed over to take down the wards and let me inside.
Granger was among them.
I hadn’t seen much of the former detective since he volunteered to join our first emergency defense team, but as he waited behind the two practitioners busy stripping the wards, I took a hard look at him. He’d bulked up considerably in recent months, his biceps thicker, his lingering baby fat all but gone, his posture much straighter and rigid, giving him the illusion of being a bigger man than he was. He shot me a smile as the two practitioners opened the doors to me, and I responded with a nod of respect.
I’d gotten a lot of people hurt by roping them into this nasty business. It was a relief to see that someone had wound up stronger.
“Lieutenant,” Granger said as I entered the library, “it’s so good to see you. When you didn’t show up at the rendezvous point after the shit hit the fan, everyone thought you’d gotten caught in the blast at Bowler and Sons.”
“Nope. Just took an unorthodox detour on my trip through the void.” I scanned the rest of the Watchdogs positioned throughout the library, but didn’t see anyone else I was well acquainted with. “What’s our current organizational status?”
“Code Red, I’m afraid.” His smile flagged. “We were still in the middle of regrouping from the portal evacs, assessing casualty counts, and digging survivors out of the blast zones, when the vampires started attacking seemingly random locations all over town. Communication between deployed teams and HQ is sporadic at best, and there are a lot of incomplete and conflicting reports coming in through the Network. The gist of it all seems to be that we haven’t yet suffered heavy losses to the vamps, despite their numbers, and some of the reports suggest they might be playing with us as opposed to seriously fighting.”
“That’s exactly what they’re doing. All this chaos is a distraction.” I raised a finger before he blurted out any questions. “I’ll explain everything once I’ve got everyone I need seated around a conference room table. For now, just take me to Saoirse.”
Granger’s posture suddenly slumped, and he swallowed thickly. “About Captain Daly…”
“What about her?”
“Part of the reason we’re all still in such disarray,” he said, refusing to meet my eye, “is because Captain Daly has been MIA since the bombings. The command center on Gladys was raided by a small group of vampires in the immediate aftermath of the explosions. They killed everyone who engaged them and went straight for Captain Daly. She hasn’t been seen since. We think they abducted her for interrogation.”
A deluge of gory images assaulted the back of my eyes, every awful thing Vianu could have done to Saoirse over the course of an entire night. I clenched my fists so hard the leather of my gloves began to tear, and a cold mist rose from my skin, frost creeping out around the rims of my boots.
“No,” I said calmly, despite the thunderous avalanche charging down from the peak of my soul, demanding I crush that goddamn vampire with every ounce of power in my being—and every ounce I could mysteriously pull from beyond it. “Not interrogation. Leverage. Vianu had her kidnapped for leverage.”
Orlagh stepped up beside me, lips drawn tight, having already connected the dots. “So last night, they took Daly, and this morning, they snatched Connolly and his entire staff. One is a lynchpin for the function of the city’s paranormal law enforcement arm, and the others are vital to maintaining social order across the entire city during times of crisis.”
“How much do you want to bet they’ve already grabbed more during the confusion of the attacks?” Boyle cut in. “More of those people the city needs to respond appropriately to emergencies.”
“More?” Drake peered over his shoulder at the city shrouded in smoke. “The vamps have been at this for hours. They’ve probably snatched most of those people already.”
“I think we’ll be extremely lucky,” I said, accepting with a morbid smile just how thoroughly the vampire lord and his Tuatha benefactor had outplayed me, “if the vampires haven’t already taken them all.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
We sat around the conference table and let the gloom settle between us.
Christie, who had taken refuge at HQ when vampires came knocking at her tea shop, and had then taken over Network operations to help our overworked scribes manage the influx of reports. O’Shea, who’d spent the whole night herding civilians to safe houses until a vampire chucked a brick at his head and sent him to the Watchdog infirmary. Mallory, whose precision strike team had been tirelessly taking potshots at any vampire on the streets for the last several hours, and whose personal vampire kill count had now risen to an unprecedented twelve.
Odette, the field ops commander in my absence, who’d restructured all the raid teams into a regimented fighting force that had successfully beaten back the vampires from the most heavily populated neighborhoods in the city. Indira, who was working as Odette’s second in command, and whose bright pink fires had been lighting up the night as they burned vampires to ash.
Tori, who had relocated from her research lab to the infirmary to use her vast potion knowledge to help heal the grievously wounded, and assuage the pain of those who couldn’t be helped. And finally, Granger, who I’d just learned had taken command of all the emergency defense teams after our lead sergeant, an army vet named Max Barrens, experienced an unfortunate decapitation.
These were the people who remained after Saoirse and I had fallen into Vianu’s traps. And they’d done a remarkable job in our absence, better than I ever could have hoped. I wished I had the time to commend them all for their achievements. But we had more pressing matters to attend to than a round of pats on the back.
I sat at the head of the table, in Saoirse’s usual chair, with my Watchdogs lined up on either side, the sídhe soldiers leaning against the wall, and Drake squatting unobtrusively in the corner, all of us tightly packed into the narrow room. In the span of five minutes, I summarized all the key details that everyone needed to know, including the fact that if we didn’t stop the summoning, we could kiss this entire city goodbye.
Once I finished my rendition of events, I gestured to Odette, who was sitting to my left, and asked her to relay any pertinent details she’d come across. She obliged, filling in some minor gaps in my knowledge about the city’s current state, then passed the torch to Indira. The train of grim stories carried on around the table, until we all had a very clear idea of how far Kinsale had slid toward the brink of absolute destruction.
“Well,” Odette drawled, “we’re doomed.”
“Not if we can disrupt that summoning ritual,” Indira countered. “But to make that happen, we first need to find the real staging area. Even with the full-blooded sídhe, we don’t have enough manpower to overrun three vampire-held locations in a timely manner.”
“That’s what I grabbed this for.” I tapped the hilt of Fragarach, which I’d set on the tabletop, and turned my chair toward Drake. “You can identify the vampires, the non-practitioner vampires, who most likely helped Vianu plan this entire scheme, can’t you?”
Drake considered the question for a moment. “Pretty sure I know most of them, yeah.”
/> “Can you draw, by any chance?”
“A little. I’m not some master painter or anything though.”
“We just need basic sketches of their faces.”
“I can give you that.” He pushed himself off the floor. “Got some paper and a pencil?”
Mallory produced the supplies from one of the cubbyholes built into the underside of the table. Drake collected the goods, plopped back down in his corner, and got to work.
“So, here’s my idea.” I swung my chair back around to face the table. “Using our knowledge of where the vampires have been congregating in the largest numbers, we’ll initiate a mass scrying initiative to hunt for one of the vampires in Vianu’s inner circle. One who is likely to know which of the staging areas is the real deal but who won’t themselves be present there. After we locate one such vampire, I’ll head out with a team to subdue that vampire and utilize Fragarach’s truth-seeking magic to force them to reveal the correct staging area.
“The moment I know the location, I’ll relay it back to you all, and you will dispatch every able-bodied fighter you can scrape up to that staging area. My snatch-and-grab team will then rendezvous with the main force en route to the staging area, and together, we will assail the staging area with everything we’ve got.”
Odette whistled a low note. “We launch an offensive that unwieldy, there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage.”
“Considering the alternative is the absolute destruction of Kinsale,” Orlagh started, “and Vianu’s subjugation of any and all humans who survive the Hunt…”
“Any collateral damage that doesn’t knock the whole city down will have to be considered acceptable,” finished Boyle.
“There is no scenario here that ends well for this city.” I slowly shook my head. “We’ll just be trying our best to avoid the worst case.”
What Dawn Demands Page 25
