What Man Defies

by Clara Coulson

  Ahead, Odette screamed.

  Hurry up, Whelan! I berated myself. She can’t beat that thing on her own.

  Of course, I wasn’t sure we could beat it together either. It was like the barghest all over again.

  Forty steps farther on, the tunnel began to widen, until the walls turned outward and curved around to join each other at the back of what I could only describe as a den. The enormous chamber was humid and smelled strongly of excrement and urine, which told me the lindworm had been lying in wait here for some time. Through the vibrations in the ground, it must’ve heard Odette crossing the game board, at which point it slithered up to the top of a tunnel that almost reached the surface. All it had to do was punch through to surprise whoever was crossing its territory.

  My flashlight wasn’t bright enough to cut through the darkness of the entire den, so I swiveled my head from side to side until I caught the lindworm’s head in its beam. The monster’s yellow eyes narrowed, pupils retreating to slits, and it growled so loudly my organs rattled around inside my ribcage. Odette was still hanging from the lindworm’s mouth. Its teeth, each the length of my forearm, pinned her leg. She was covered in dirt and bleeding from more than a few places, but she was still moving.

  I crouched and slipped out the knife strapped to my left shin. I couldn’t launch an unfocused attack against the lindworm with Odette in the way, so I had to make an effective precision strike. And I knew I’d only get one chance to do so before the creature killed Odette or lunged at me, or both. So I met the creature’s wild eyes and stared it down. For ten seconds, twenty, thirty. Both of us totally still. Nothing moving in the space between but the whorls of musty air stirred up by the lindworm’s entrance.

  My mental count reached sixty.

  I spat out the flashlight.

  It bounced across the floor, the light beam rapidly swinging to and fro. I reeled back my arm and waited a breath, the world seeming to slow down as the beam arced to the left yet again, cutting a swatch of white light across the lindworm’s head. The instant that beam centered on the lindworm’s face, I threw the knife. It sang through the air and pierced the creature right between the eyes. Nothing but a pinprick to a beast so large and thick skinned.

  Then I activated the pain spell.

  The lindworm reeled back and screamed, its jaws wrenching open to let the shrill sound rock the walls of the den. Odette fell and landed with a thud on the compacted earth, but by the time I recovered the flashlight, she was already on her feet, darting toward me. I met her halfway and took up a position a step behind her as we sprinted for the den’s exit. She was going fast, faster than any mundane human could go, one of her spells enhancing her legs. But a glance behind us, at the lindworm that was already shaking off the pain spell, told me it wouldn’t be enough.

  “Sorry about this,” I said to Odette. As I grabbed her by the knees and slung her over my shoulder. My bad shoulder. Which hurt. A lot. And was made much worse by Odette trying to wriggle free.

  “Hey!” she squawked. “Cut it out, Whelan. I’m not your damsel in distress. I’m—”

  The entire tunnel shuddered as the lindworm adjusted its gargantuan body so it could slither after us.

  “Uh, never mind,” Odette picked up after a startled pause. “Just run, Whelan. Run!”

  I ran. Odette was heavier than I’d imagined, but she wasn’t even close to the kind of weight that would slow me down while unglamoured. I added an extra dash of magic to my step anyway, because the lindworm was so huge that it could cover a lot more ground than me in a lot less time. There was also the issue of the hill approaching. The hill with no footholds. I needed to ascend the steep side quickly and then descend on the other side even faster if I wanted to avoid the lindworm simply flying over it and crushing us under its bulk.

  Either that, or I needed to stop the lindworm from…

  “Odette, that spell you used to punt the redcap into the cavern ceiling, can you do it again?”

  “I don’t think it’ll do much damage to the dragon thing.”

  “That’s not what I want you to do. Just prepare it. I’ll tell you when to let it fly.”

  She hesitated, then let out a resigned sigh. “Okay. Doing that now.”

  As we neared the hill, I stuck the flashlight back between my teeth and pointed my hand forward. Mouthing a few sentences around the plastic in my mouth, I shot a blast of energy at the hillside. Chunks of ice sprouted from base to peak, stubby and rough, a modified version of the spell I’d used on the banshee earlier. I hit the hill without slowing down, and used the chunks, anchored deeply in the earth, to bound upward at a steep angle. I reached the top of the hill in five jumps, and leaped off.

  Hand outstretched again, I let loose another blast of energy. This time, I covered the earth in a thick sheet of smooth ice about one yard wide. I hit it feet first, dropped to my knees, and slid down the sheet like I was sleighing down a mountainside. At the bottom, I pushed myself back to my feet and scrambled forward—just as the lindworm barreled over the top of the hill.

  “Odette, punch the ceiling!” I yelled.

  Odette did exactly that. She threw a punch in the air, and a green streak shot away from her hand and slammed into the unstable ceiling of the tunnel, where its energy discharged outward in all directions, green ripples humming through the dirt. The entire tunnel rocked from the impact. And the ceiling came crashing down.

  A thousand tons of ashy earth rained onto the lindworm, and it was buried before it could even release a shriek of defeat. That wave of dirt, roaring like a train, then charged forth unimpeded. With Odette and me in its sights. I pumped as much energy into my legs as I dared and sped off toward the end of the tunnel. Odette’s pulse raced alongside my own, her breath coming in spurts, a whine in her throat as the black ocean drew closer and closer, nipping at my heels. But up ahead, the beam of my flashlight reflected off a dirt wall. The entry tunnel.

  “Hold on,” I called to Odette. “This is going to be a bumpy ride.”

  The moment I cleared the overhang and crossed into the entry tunnel, I spouted a clipped string of words and haphazardly funneled a large pool of energy down to the soles of my feet. The resulting spell was less levitation and more booster rocket. I shot off the ground like a bullet and hurtled upward. The wind resistance was so intense, Odette couldn’t keep her neck up. She lay flat against me, her head plastered to my back, her legs dangling in front of my chest.

  I didn’t fare much better. My heart sputtered. My eyes watered. A headache burst onto the scene, knocking at the back of my skull. I was pretty sure we took around five g’s before we cleared the top of the tunnel. Said top of the tunnel zipped past in a blur, and we kept on going, and going, and going, and going, and…We finally lost momentum less than twenty feet from the ceiling of the cavern.

  Yeah, I might’ve overshot that a bit, I thought with a grimace as we began to fall.

  “Holy hell,” Odette groaned against my back. “Did you catch the number of that space shuttle?”

  “Sorry,” I replied. “I’ll try and make the landing a bit softer.”

  “You better make it quick, whatever you do. I’m about to upchuck.”

  I let us free fall until we were fifty or so feet above the game board. Then I caught myself with another air spell and brought us down gently. We hit the ground with a small puff of dirt. Odette clambered off my shoulder and staggered away to throw up behind a statue that looked like a cross between a bear and a vulture. For a brief moment, I was worried it might come to life and attack her because she was in such close proximity, but it remained unmoving stone. Odette reemerged a minute later, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Big fan of roller coasters, are you?” I asked.

  Odette glared at me. “Fuck you. My chest hurts like a bitch. I think I cracked a rib.” She hunched over, hands on her knees, breathing stilted. “Also, you almost got us buried alive, and all I can taste is dirt.”

  “Better than b
eing eaten alive by a lindworm though, right?”

  “Is that what it was?” She gingerly prodded her ribs, and winced. “I thought it was some kind of dragon.”

  “Kind of a cross between a dragon and a snake.” I squatted beside her and examined the tears in her pants. I didn’t see any blood, which was odd. “Your leg okay?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Odette tugged up her pants leg. On her ankle, sitting just above the top of her boot, was a black band of fabric with two zinc-plated flat washers attached. Both washers were glowing bright red, and a field of magic energy spread outward from their centers, encapsulating Odette’s leg in a thin shield. Her leg was bruising from the lindworm’s powerful bite, but the teeth hadn’t broken her skin. She’d be black and blue for a while, but she could still walk. She wasn’t out of the game yet.

  “Red energy,” I muttered, eying the washers with interest. “Your magic aura is green.”

  “Sure is.”

  “Ha. I see. Those washers are conduits, and you’ve got them loaded with alternative energy.” I couldn’t help but grin. “That’s why you asked if the banshee had a conduit strapped to her arm. Because that’s what you do.”

  “Guilty.” She rolled up her coat sleeve to reveal a similar bracelet on her wrist. “I carry six small conduits at all times. A reserve for when I run low on my own fuel. I’ve got them set with ‘default spells’ too, so I can loose them on the fly. The ones on my legs are spelled to shield me. All I have to do is say a single activation word. I expected to use them here when being attacked by dark elves making literal low blows. Did not foresee using them to ward off a giant dragon monster.” She shrugged. “Still worked though.”

  “That they did.” I stood up and observed the crack in the ground. No sound emerged from within. “That thing’s not dead. It’ll burrow through the cave-in eventually. We need to collect the rest of the group and get out of here before it does. As for how we’ll avoid it on the way back…” I glanced at the ceiling. “Well, if the game board’s inactive, then I guess we can fly over.”

  “Oh, great,” Odette grumbled, “just what I need. Another trip to the moon with…” She straightened up, tense, dread overwriting her annoyance. “Uh, Whelan? Think we have a problem.”

  “We have a lot of problems,” I said. “To which are you referring?”

  She pointed behind me. “Isn’t that where you left our team?”

  I spun around. At the far side of the game board, near the end of the first stretch of path, where Saoirse and the others should’ve been waiting…was no one. There was, however, a prominent spatter of liquid in the general vicinity of the spot, and though it had soaked into the dark earth, I had no doubt it was blood. Numerous scuff marks dotted the spaces around the blood, along with footprints from several identical pairs of boots and a few prints with treads that must’ve been made by our people.

  While Odette and I had been down in the tunnels, our team on the surface had been attacked.

  “The svartálfar?” Odette said.

  “Had to be,” I answered. “They were lying in wait nearby. After the two strongest members of the team were distracted by the lindworm, they swooped in and grabbed the rest. Goddammit, they—”

  A sharp whistle cut across the expanse of the game board. No pattern. A non-signal.

  “Looks like they missed one.” Odette scanned the tree line.

  “Mallory,” I said.

  “Why isn’t she coming out though?” She scratched the back of her neck. “It’s safe, isn’t it? I don’t see any other threats.”

  I gestured to a particular spot in the tree line. Several broken branches were hanging by a thread. “Because they didn’t take her captive. They took her out of the fight so she’d stop sniping them, and then made off with Kennedy and Saoirse.”

  “Shit. How bad do you think she’s hurt?”

  I didn’t want to imagine all the things a well-aimed blow from a dark elf’s blade could’ve done to Mallory. “No clue. But we’re going to find out. And then we’re going to find Saoirse and Kennedy.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Mallory was pinned to a tree.

  We found her after five minutes of searching. Twenty feet off the ground, she was sitting with her back against the trunk, a sword sticking out of the same shoulder that had taken the pike blow earlier. The dark elf who’d thrown the weapon had obviously used their full strength. The sword had gone clean through Mallory’s shoulder blade and several inches into the tree trunk. The detective couldn’t wrench it free without causing more damage, if she could pull it out at all, since one of her arms was out of commission.

  “How’re you doing, Mallory?” I called up to her when Odette and I reached the base of the tree.

  She lethargically rolled her head around and replied, “Apparently, I have an unlucky shoulder.”

  “You in pain?”

  “Trying not to think too hard about it.” She took a shaky breath. “I’ve been playing my favorite songs in my head to drown out the burn.”

  “Hate to say it, but there’s going to be more pain yet.” I hopped up and grabbed the lowest-hanging branch on the tree. “We can’t leave you sitting up there. Something might come by and see you.”

  “Like that dragon thing?” she asked. “Or did you kill it?”

  “Oh, how I wish.” I pulled myself up onto the branch. “Odette and I stalled it. It’ll be back soon enough. We need to get going before then.”

  “I don’t think I’m going anywhere, except maybe the afterlife.” She closed her eyes and pressed the back of her head against the petrified bark.

  “Don’t say that. You’re going to be just fine.”

  God, I was a shitty liar.

  Her brown skin was washed out, and with each shuddering breath she took, more blood dribbled from the entry wound visible through her torn sleeve. She was worse off than Granger. She was in shock, and we had no access to a hospital or anyone with real medical training. And in the time it would take us to transport her back to Earth then make a return trip to the cavern…

  “Don’t tear yourself up,” she said in a commanding tone, briefly overpowering her fatigue. “Stash me somewhere and leave me behind, like we did with Granger. Swing back around and pick me—or my body—up, if and when you can. If I die, I die. If I live, I live. The important thing is for you to rescue those kidnapped people. More of them have probably died since we arrived. Don’t let that casualty list get too long. Please.”

  I swallowed the knot in my throat and replied, “I’ll do everything I can to save them.”

  I shouldn’t have brought these people here. Humans have never fared well in Tír na nÓg.

  “And who would you have brought instead?” Odette asked as she clambered onto a nearby branch. She gave me an unimpressed look that said my thoughts were written all over my face. “You needed a team, and you didn’t have time to strike bargains with any other fae, or recruit any non-feral wolves, or dig out any ‘nice’ vampires from their coffins. You got a witch and four mundanes, three of which possess reasonable combat skills. It was more than you could’ve hoped for, given the circumstances, and all but one of those mundanes gave it their best shot. They helped us get this far. Without them, we might’ve been overwhelmed by the redcaps.”

  “I know.” I grasped the next branch up and started my climb toward Mallory. “I just had a vain hope most of them would be able to walk out of here by their own volition. Now I’m thinking most of them won’t make it out of here at all.”

  “It was their sacrifice to make, and they chose to make it. Respect it, accept it, and move on.” She hauled herself up past me and perched on a branch beside Mallory.

  “You’re right,” I muttered, “but it still feels fucked up that I’m letting them drop like flies.”

  “Me, on the other hand,” Odette continued snidely, as if I hadn’t replied, “I’m here because I owe a debt. And that really sucks balls. Not only because I might lose my head trying to save some people I do
n’t even know. But also because I feel like a massive asshole for not volunteering like the rest of you.” She leaned close to Mallory and scrutinized the sword. “So get up here and witness this sweet trick I’m about to do to free this lady from the tree. And when I’m done, tell me how much of a hero I am for saving her from the grim fate of becoming the lindworm’s next snack.”

  I hung on a branch below her for a moment and attempted to figure out whether Odette’s words reflected her current feelings on this situation, or whether she was suffocating her real emotions behind a veneer of snark. Thinking back on her general attitude since we first met in the market, I determined it was probably both. She was shaken up by everything that had happened since we stepped into the cavern. But more than that, she was irritated, and a touch guilty, about being relatively unharmed while almost everyone else was suffering.

  I wouldn’t call Odette good people, like Mallory, but she wasn’t that far from it.

  Swinging up onto the branch opposite Odette, I reached over and took Mallory’s hand. “Hey, you hang on for a few more minutes, okay? We’re going to get you down.” I glanced at her lap, then at the surrounding branches. “Say, where’d your rifle go?”

  She slipped her good hand out of mine and pointed with a quivering finger. The rifle was hanging from a low branch of an adjacent tree. “Dropped it there when the sword hit.”

  “Still loaded?” I asked.

  She nodded slowly, her head sagging. “Only popped off three shots before that bastard caught me. Nailed two of those freaky elves center mass, but they kept on trucking.”

  “Yeah, but they felt it.” I patted her shoulder with a light touch. “I assure you of that. They felt it, and they’re still hurting.”

  “Good.” Her breath was coming in shallow spurts now.

  “How long will your ‘sweet trick’ take?” I asked Odette.

  The witch cracked her knuckles. “No time at all. Watch.”