Ink & Sigil

by Kevin Hearne

  “Aye. Pewter, I think. Hard enough to put a hurtin’ on and not be hurt by a brush-off.”

  “What do ye mean?”

  “I mean this is how we win the numbers game.” He drew in a deep breath and moved his hands in circles, spreading his fingers out over the figures as he spoke some words in Old Irish. When he finished, a tiny shimmer rippled in the air above the miniatures and they moved.

  They stepped silently off their bases and grouped themselves by species, and Nadia whooped. “Fucking hell, Buck, that’s as creepy as it is cool!”

  The four squads hefted their weapons and stretched, and Buck nodded approvingly. “Time tae throw some magic at their science.” I held up a hand as he drew breath to give them orders. “Wot?”

  [Maybe throw both magic and science at them. Nadia, does your phone have a video-chat app?]

  “Aye.”

  In less than a minute, Buck had a squad of painted armored trolls carrying Nadia’s phone into the yawning mouth of the facility. It had Nadia’s face on it, since we had started a chat outside and Nadia was using my phone. I wasn’t sure how well the signal would carry in the facility, but this would give us our best chance to talk to someone and maybe negotiate a surrender. I’d coached Nadia a bit on what to say and promised her a new phone if they destroyed hers.

  Buck waited a minute, then sent the remaining squads of miniatures in behind the trolls in case they needed “a military solution.”

  “Are ye controlling them individually?” Nadia asked.

  “Naw. It’s an enchantment of autonomous animation with only basic goals given.”

  Nadia began shouting into my phone. Hers was on speaker. “Hey! Any of ya tits still alive in there? We want tae help. Or at least talk if ye don’t want any help. Can we talk? Hello? Hello-oooo?”

  We were seeing nothing on the screen, and Nadia shot me a questioning glance. I twirled my finger in a circle to indicate she should keep going.

  “Oi! Ya bastards! Someone pick up. I’ve got recipes. Books full of elf erotica, people just nibbling on pointy ears for pages and pages, and I promise you’ll never think of ear foreplay the same way afterward. I’ve got some fondue in the van. I know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. Elvis too. Mulder and Scully. Cagney and Lacey. Thelma and Louise.”

  I had no idea what tangent she’d gone off on, but Buck chimed in with “Starsky and Hutch.”

  “That’s right, Starsky and Hutch. Turner and fucking Hooch. And, oh, yeah. Hatcher! Simon Hatcher. We got Simon Hatcher. I mean our people got him in Virginia. Don’t ye want tae hear about Simon Hatcher?”

  That got a response, as I thought it might. Someone picked up the phone and said, “Who is this?” The face on the screen was poorly lit, a torch off camera providing the only illumination. It was a white man in his late thirties or early forties, I guessed, with some stubble on his chin and a tie loosened underneath his collared shirt. His accent was American.

  “I’m the one who put down yer clurichaun,” Nadia said. “Time to settle up all his outstanding bar tabs.”

  “Who are you?” he demanded again.

  “Someone who knows exactly what she’s doing,” Nadia replied. “Just wanted tae make that clear before ye say something like, You have no idea who you’re dealing with.” She mocked his accent at the end of that, and I had difficulty stifling a laugh. “I have a really fucking good idea, awright? Ye’re a twat from the CIA doing some illegal shite, and we’re here tae stop ye. But that doesnae mean ye have tae go home in a box. We just need that undine ye’re keeping in there and ye can go home and grind yer naughty bits against the corresponding bits of a consenting partner.”

  “What have you done with our operatives?”

  “We killed them deid. They didnae give us a choice. But we’re giving you one.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just walk away and live to do some more spy shite in the future. Ye’re free tae go but not tae stay. This operation’s over. Cut yer losses and move on.”

  “Well—”

  “Give me that,” a new voice said, angry and male. The picture on the phone changed to an older white man, perhaps my own age, but clean-shaven and with a face twisted with rage and boils and burn scars. He looked like the picture of Dorian Gray, the corrupted one that showed all the sins written on the flesh. He might have been a handsome blond lad in his youth, but he had clearly been up to some wicked shite since then. Maybe some lab experiments gone wrong.

  “That’s him,” Cowslip hissed, hovering over Nadia’s shoulder. “That’s the bloody doctor who did this to me!”

  “Listen to me, whoever you are,” he spat. “You’ve got maybe three minutes until a drone strike takes you out. You’re outgunned.”

  Nadia checked with me and I shook my heid, pointing to my hat and reminding her that the sigils would make targeting impossible.

  “I rather think it’s you who needs tae be worrying, mate. Ye might have noticed we’ve taken out your gunmen and blown open the door with little trouble, and the Fae you’ve corrupted are in violation of a treaty with humanity.”

  “What treaty?” he spluttered.

  “It’s a need-tae-know thing, and now ye need tae know. The Fae are no allowed tae frolic about here and eat humans, and we’re the folks who enforce that. Hatcher is mince, and yer operation’s tits up. So come on out, eh? First round’s on me after we take care of the undine.”

  “Hatcher is dead?”

  “He’s no deid, he’s just neutralized. And there will be no more Fae for ye tae corrupt. We shut off that pipeline. So give it up.”

  “I can’t give up, even if that’s all true, and I don’t think it is.” The unnamed doctor sneered at the camera, and for me it was disheartening evidence that Saxon had been right: The scientists who willingly work for governments and their agendas might actually be the evil sort. At least this one was. It broke my heart to think of all the suffering and death that could be laid at his door.

  “We will defend ourselves and our assets,” he continued. “If you come in here, you’ll get nothing from us but bullets.”

  “Awright, fine, but can ye let the others make their own decision? We’d rather no kill anyone, but if ye force us tae come in after ye, there will be no mercy.”

  “They’re under oath every bit as much as I am, and they’re also under my orders. If you come in here, you’ll be shot.”

  Nadia sighed. “I do no like killing people who are trapped in a hierarchy, but you are different. Ye’re a fucking bastard. Remember that I gave ye a chance and ye said no, and I’m very sorry about the others.”

  She switched off and handed the phone to me. I immediately launched my text-to-speech app and typed, [Activate your minions, Buck. Do whatever you had planned.]

  The hobgoblin nodded once and then stretched out his right hand toward the facility, chanting some words in Old Irish.

  “There. That should do it.”

  “Do what?” Nadia asked.

  “Since it worked so well with the troll, I commanded them tae seek out the humans inside and gouge out their eyes. How they do that is up tae them. I assume they’re going tae have tae climb up, and that’s why it’s good they’re made of metal. The humans will slap them away, but they can fall down and just keep coming.”

  Nadia’s jaw dropped. “That’s bloody terrifying.”

  [Uh. Buck? Does that mean if Nadia and I go in there, your little minions will go for our eyes too?]

  The hobgoblin blinked. “Shite. I didn’t think that one through.”

  Nadia caught my gaze and shook her head, hooking her thumb at Buck. “I’m no gonnay be blinded by this wee man’s wee men. Can we no just use another sigil tae blow the place up?”

  Panicked screaming and gunfire alerted us that the miniatures had found some targets inside.

  “Christ! Get ’e
m off me! Get ’em off!” a man screamed faintly. “Augggh!”

  The hollering continued and intensified, and when one said, “My eye!” we knew that they had been at least partially successful.

  “Awright, new plan,” Buck said. “I’ll go in there now that they’re busy and get the guns. I’ll have the wee folk stand down, then ye can follow.”

  The bean sídhe continued to screech out someone’s garbled name, and I told him to be careful.

  “Ye told me bein’ in yer service would be dangerous, MacBharrais, but ye didnae say I’d be walkin’ intae a hole full of guns. I want proper chocolate-covered marshmallows after this.”

  He crouched down and crept into the facility, conserving his strength, heading toward the gunfire and shouts. It wasn’t a minute later that he popped into view next to us with a gun in his hand and dropped it at my feet.

  “That’s one,” he said, and popped away again. He repeated the process twice more but brought phones back with him too, including Nadia’s. He said, “That’s all of them, I think, on the top floor. One of the humans is deid—fell down some stairs and broke his neck, but I couldnae tell if it was the doctor or not because I didnae go down tae check. I suppose there could be more people hiding downstairs. The other two I found are half blind—lost one eye but not the other—and they’re trying tae call in backup and discovering that nothing works because that sigil of yours knocked out the power. I took their mobile phones tae be sure they couldn’t make any calls that way. The wee men are comin’ out, and they’re gonnay get back on their stands and go tae sleep. Ye can come in now, but it’s darker than a king snake’s arsehole.”

  I picked up the guns and stashed them in my coat; I didn’t want to leave them behind, in case someone else came along to investigate.

  [Want to come with us?] I asked Cowslip.

  “If ye don’t mind,” she said. “I don’t wanna stay out here with the bean sídhe.”

  That was a good point. There was no telling what they might try once I was out of sight; best not give them an opportunity.

  The fighting sigils faded away and my muscles and joints complained, but I doubted I’d need the boosts now. I offered Nadia a Sigil of Feline Vision and she took it.

  [Need to renew the other ones?] I asked.

  “I think I’ll be fine without them. No drunk people inside, right?”

  We followed Buck and Cowslip into the facility, Nadia using the torch she’d had Buck take out of her van earlier. It would reveal our position to anyone lurking in the dark, but we also didn’t want to fall down a flight of stairs or feel our way by touch. The halls of the facility were the sort a fantasy author might say was hewn from the living rock, since they actually had been. The wailing of the bean sídhe continued outside, but they didn’t follow us in.

  Instead, we heard some cursing ahead.

  “There’s a room full of computers and that ahead on the left,” Buck said, pointing. “That’s where they are.”

  “Right. I’ll get them sorted,” Nadia said in a low tone, and she crept ahead, pulling a couple of zip ties out of her back pocket. There was no need to do anything but restrain them, and she had them bound and cursing us in a couple of minutes.

  [Was the doctor in there?] I asked.

  “Naw. My bet is that he’s downstairs.”

  There was nothing to learn from the computers, since they were all powerless, so it left us with a single goal.

  Buck exhaled slowly. “So. The undine.”

  [Where is she, Cowslip?]

  “Down those stairs that Buck mentioned. It goes down for a while. There’s a lake. Or a pond, maybe. She’s in there, and she’s scary. I don’t wanna go.”

  [Okay. Stay here with Buck and guard the humans. Buck, please search them for ID and take it.]

  “Got it.”

  Nadia and I went down the hall in search of the staircase. When we found it, the human that Buck had mentioned was sprawled motionless on the first landing, neck twisted unnaturally out of shape, and it was the doctor, doubtless on his way down to warn the undine of our approach or else to set up some kind of ambush. One of his eyes was missing, but the torch he’d been carrying still rested on the landing. Perhaps his depth perception had been thrown off and he slipped. Or perhaps he’d had one of Buck’s little elves or goblins on him when he tried to take the steps and tumbled down in his panic.

  I knelt down next to him with my creaky knees and fished in his lab coat until I pulled out an ID. His name had been Dr. Alex Larned, and I was grateful that the stairs had ended him. If he’d been alive, the treaty would have required me to hand him over to the Fae for punishment. They would have drawn out his death for a very long time. I pocketed the ID and left the torch where it lay.

  The stairs kept descending for several flights down a chimney of rock. The two of us went down slowly, Nadia taking the lead, listening for anyone approaching.

  The air grew colder and damper as we went, and soon the torch was the only light penetrating an absolute darkness, and I began to regret leaving Dr. Larned’s torch behind.

  “What do undines look like, Al?” Nadia whispered at the third landing. We still had several flights to go from what we could tell by the cone of the torchlight.

  The light of my phone joined the torch as I typed a reply. [They’re like naiads.]

  “What’s that?”

  [They’re like dryads, but moist.]

  “Less of yer cheek, Al. What am I facing? Because this is not a negotiation for surrender, right? She’s a pure monster, a people-eater?”

  [If Cowslip is to be believed, aye. I had no trouble believing that the others had eaten people. The leprechaun told me he was going to snack on my liver.]

  “Aye, and the clurichaun said I looked delicious. So what can an undine do?”

  [I’m not sure, really. I haven’t had this problem before. But I wouldn’t go in the water.]

  “Thanks for yer expert advice.”

  [Sorry.]

  “Gimme one of those agility sigils at least. I cannae see fuck-all even with this enhanced vision, and I might need to move fast.”

  I gave her one and she absorbed it with her eyes before rocketing down the stairs, leaving me behind with only my phone for light. I followed at a much slower pace but soon heard her call up, “I cannae tell how big this pond is. And there’s no anything much here at the bottom of the steps. A tiny beach and then it’s a spooky Gollum grotto, in’t it? If undines turn out tae be lamp-eyed motherfuckers eating raw fish and talking about their Precious, I want another raise.”

  I didn’t answer, concentrating instead on not falling down the steps. But I did wonder what we could do if the undine didn’t show herself. We didn’t have any harpoons or tridents or even so much as a fishing pole. There was just Nadia’s sword and my cane, and while I did have some confiscated guns with an unknown number of rounds in them, firing blindly into a rocky space was probably unwise.

  My manager was right: There was hardly anything at the bottom of the steps. Just three or four feet of rocky sand and then black still waters stretching into more darkness. It was silent except for our breathing and the creak of Nadia’s leather. I remained on the bottom step because otherwise I’d be crowding her.

  “What do I do?” she asked.

  [Stand there and smell tasty. You’re bait.]

  “What, she’s gonnay come out o’ there like an alligator or sumhin?”

  [Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.]

  “How do I speed things along? Give her a whiff?” She had the torch in her left hand and held her sword in the right, and she waved her hands forward as if to waft her personal aroma over the waters.

  [Aye, if there was an undine fishing show on the telly, I’m sure that’s how’d they do it.]

  “Well, I suppose this beats crouching over my desk doing the quart
erly profit-and-loss statement.”

  I let the comment go unanswered for a while, and silence settled in. It occurred to me that if we were dragged into that water, no one would ever find our bodies. [Spooky as fuck, though,] I finally observed.

  “Aye, I was just about tae say. Ye can meditate down here or go mad, and there’s no much in between. But it’s good. When I get home and Dhanya asks me how was work today, I can say it was all the weird shite ye promised me back in Tchai Ovna and then some, because I got stabbed by a faery whose veins probably contained more cabernet than blood, then watched a bunch of painted miniatures come tae life and hunt down secret agents in the dark, and now I’m undine fishing with my boss and might die. This is so much better than invoicing. So much.” She chuckled. “I think this is ma favorite day of work ever. Thanks, Al.”

  I heard a swirl of water somewhere ahead and perhaps some light bubbles popping; in an area of water and rock walls, sound carried fantastically well.

  “Whoa, hold on now…” Nadia said. She played the light over the waters in front of her, and I saw some swirls on the surface where it had been perfectly calm and glassy before.

  “Duck low!” Nadia shouted, and I crouched down as deeply as I could even as she did, because her warnings were not to be taken lightly. There was a whoosh of sound like a tide hitting shore, and something took off the top of my hat and sheared straight through the steel handrails of the staircase.

  “What the fuck?” I said aloud, for it was a spontaneous thing I wasn’t going to type into my phone, and I stayed down in case whatever that was struck again. I had no idea what kind of weapon had done that, but I was wet now with water from the pond.

  “My hair!” Nadia cried, and something inhuman screamed in response and launched itself out of the pond, half-seen in the light of her torch. Mostly I saw a gush of water and teeth, with some pale, gaunt arms ending in clawed hands stretching out for Nadia’s throat. She fell away from it onto her back and bunched her legs up to her chest, successfully denying the attack by extending her legs and tossing the shrieking undine over her heid.

  Said undine landed right on top of my heid, and I slammed painfully into the edges of the stairs, dropping my phone but not my cane. I instinctively slipped the cane in front of my throat to protect it and grabbed the other side with my left hand as the undine twisted and writhed until she faced me. Nadia swerved her torch around in search of her quarry and illuminated the creature from the side, a visage marred by pain and madness and teeth like scissor blades flashing at me. I pushed the cane away from me like a bench press, thinking it would prevent her from opening up my carotid and that I’d surely be able to fend off such a slight creature, which weighed no more than ninety pounds.