What Man Defies

by Clara Coulson

  Then she got a good look at my face and realized what I’d done.

  “Well, well,” she said, pretending she was undaunted, “aren’t you a pretty boy?”

  She snapped her fingers, and three back-to-back waves of force shot out of her hand. They barreled toward me, too tall to jump, too low to duck. So I didn’t attempt to dodge. Instead, I raised my right hand and snapped back, and my own magic punched out three identical waves. The first waves collided and canceled each other out with a sharp clap of thunder, and the next two sets crashed together the same way, damaging nothing but the ground.

  I started walking toward the banshee. One step. Two steps. Three steps. A slow, deliberate march, my face set in stone. Visible energy gathered around my fist with nary a mental push. Four glamours down, it took less effort to summon power from my soul, but the magic still wanted more leeway. Still begged for me to drop my remaining base glamours. Pleaded with me to let loose with my full strength, exude the whole and awful wrath of a sídhe scion of the Unseelie Court. And for the banshee’s crimes, I was tempted to do it. Tempted to crush her, to render her nothing but dust in the wind.

  But I wouldn’t. I wanted to defeat her as me, Vincent Whelan, former cop. I wanted to show her I didn’t have to be a predator to soundly win this fight. That I didn’t have to be a monster like her. That human blood was more than an expendable resource she could use to grease the wheel of this sick game to reach the well.

  I wanted her to fall in humiliation. Like I’d fallen back in Kinsale.

  The banshee cursed in a fae language at my menacing approach. “You’re not as scary as you think you are, bréagadóir.” The conduit arm began to glow as it absorbed the energy around her. The muscles in her throat tensed at the same time. She was gearing up for a supercharged shriek. One that would overpower my earplugs.

  Fool me once…

  As she opened her mouth, I drove half the energy around my arms down into my legs, bent my knees, and leaped forward. The ground exploded behind me from the force, flinging dirt. The banshee, caught off guard, fumbled the shriek, and instead of a damaging scream, only a choked noise emerged in the quarter of a second it took me to cross the distance between us. I spun around in midair, feet pointed at the banshee’s chest. She raised the conduit arm to shield herself, and to her merit, that almost worked.

  But not quite.

  One of my feet slammed into the conduit so hard it nearly shattered all the bones in my leg. My other foot rammed into the woman’s upper chest. The impact crushed her collarbone and partially collapsed her trachea, and the force sent her hurtling backward into the wall of the prism ward. She hit with a dull thud and rebounded, her head snapping back. To my disappointment, the whiplash didn’t break her neck, and she landed on two feet. Wobbly. Disoriented. Unable to speak.

  She opened her mouth and only a wheeze came out.

  It wouldn’t last though. She was full fae. She’d heal in a matter of minutes.

  Finish it, my riled-up magic commanded. Kill her. Crush her. Destroy—

  A sword cut into my field of vision. I jumped back in the nick of time, avoiding a blow from the dark elf that would’ve taken my head off. He slid to a stop in front of me, blocking my access to the banshee, and raised his hand, a black sphere of magic resting within. “Not so fast, half-blood,” he hissed. Then he shot the sphere at my abdomen.

  I dodged right, but the sphere brushed my hip. My world went white, and I lost all sensation.

  Some indeterminate amount of time later, the world faded back in, and I found myself hanging from a tangle of thorns. My entire body hurt. My hip was on fire. My bad shoulder throbbed with each heartbeat. My limbs were spasming so badly I couldn’t make a fist. And my lungs felt like they were working at half capacity. I could barely hear anything over the ringing in my ears, which was weird since I didn’t think the banshee had screamed at me. And even if she had, that wouldn’t explain why I smelled the unique scent of burning flesh.

  Burning. Shock. Lightning.

  Oh, hell. The sphere was like that fingernail trick that one elf used back in Kinsale.

  I’d been electrocuted. No wonder it felt like there was an elephant sitting on my chest.

  I lifted my head and found the battlefield I’d just been blasted away from. I hadn’t been out for more than a minute, it looked like. The banshee was still rubbing her damaged throat and testing her voice, while the elf was stalking back toward the prisoner lineup. I glanced at the well and found Studebaker had been lucky. She was now sitting inside a dim ring, the elf having made the correct selection. Only two bright rings remained.

  The elf had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right. And if he did, he’d have the ward down in a matter of minutes.

  I had to get back on my feet. Now if only my legs would obey my commands.

  It took me two whole minutes to tear myself free from the wall of thorns, during which the dark elf grabbed an unlucky man and hauled him toward one of the remaining circles. I hit the ground groaning, burns and bloody cuts firing volleys of pain up my spine. I was already beginning to recover from the elf’s spell, but it’d be hours before I was fully healed. Whereas the banshee was now shrugging off my kick and working out the last few cramps in her vocal cords. She’d be ready to shriek me unconscious again in a matter of seconds.

  As I pushed myself back to my feet, wavering side to side, I slipped out my remaining knife from its sheath on my shin and gripped it tight. One chance to get this right.

  With a deep breath, I coaxed my magic out once more, and it emerged from my soul like a cautious animal, unsure whether an adversary was waiting nearby to attack. I surrounded myself with the power, a shifting blanket of white mist, and focused its attention on the banshee. She’d turned toward me, once again wearing that smirk I wanted to rip off her face and crush in my hand. She took a few steps in my direction, licking her lips.

  “You’re not going to win,” I said.

  “Yes, I am,” she replied.

  She funneled the stored magic in the conduit into her body, and opened her mouth.

  I threw the knife—at the elf.

  It shot past the banshee at supersonic speed, a boom in its wake, and struck the elf in the back of the skull. He died instantly. I was a fraction of a second too late, however, to stop him from pushing the man into the circle. Luckily for the man, it was the right circle. It dimmed as he stumbled inside, and he didn’t get brutally killed. Unluckily for me, that left only one circle, one more warm body required to break the well ward. And the banshee, mania dancing in her eyes, was invigorated by the brush with victory.

  She shrieked at me with all the power from the conduit.

  But I was ready.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The shriek hit like a bullet train. A directed funnel, unlike the generalized version she’d used in Kinsale. More concentrated. Designed to kill from sheer force of sound. It struck the cloud of energy I’d built up around my body, and the energy responded as I’d directed it to: by creating an insulated bubble nearly three feet thick.

  It was the same sort of trick I’d used on the earplugs, but on a much grander scale. And on its own, it wasn’t enough. The banshee’s shriek cut through the bubble and pummeled my ears. But it was muffled. To the point that the earplugs protected my eardrums from the worst of it.

  The shriek still damaged my eardrums and rattled my bones, but it didn’t take me down. I weathered thirty full seconds of the sound, and with each passing heartbeat, my bubble degraded that much more. But the banshee finally ran out of conduit power—and air—and had to end the shriek before she passed out from overexertion. Which left me standing there inside a fragmented misty bubble with my ears bleeding and my balance ever so slightly off.

  The banshee curled her lips up in disgust. “You little shit.” She yanked a knife from her belt. “Think you’re so damn smart.”

  “Less smart in this case,” I said, wincing at the sharp sting in my ears, “and more persis
tent.”

  “Persistence doesn’t last.” She activated the arm again, drawing more energy from the air. “You won’t be standing after round two. Then I’m going to take my sweet, sweet time flaying you alive. And when the Tuatha Dé Danann break down the doors to Mab’s palace and slaughter everyone inside, I’ll hang your guts from the chandeliers like streamers and make a toast to your eternity in hell.”

  “You have a morbid imagination.” I pulled my spare switchblade from my belt and flicked it open. “Has anybody ever told you that?”

  She flashed sharp canines. “Might’ve come up a few times.”

  There was a movement, one I recognized, in the corner of my eye. I didn’t respond to it.

  “You should’ve tried therapy instead of joining a league of villains.” I pointed my switchblade at her face. “Would’ve ended better for you.”

  “It’s going to end just swell for me, bréagadóir.”

  “If you think death is swell”—I shrugged—“well, that’s none of my business. To each their own.”

  The banshee launched herself at me. She covered half the distance between blinks, knife poised to slit my throat. I stomped my foot and released the energy I’d been building up. Ice spikes shot up from the black earth, each of them two feet tall and sharp as a razor. The banshee dove to the side, like she’d done in Kinsale, and this time, I didn’t wait for her counterstrike. As she threw the charmed knife at me, I loosed my switchblade and shot it around in a tight arc. Her knife zinged by my shoulder, slicing my skin and lighting me up with yet another wave of intense pain. My switchblade, on the other hand, struck her in the back—right at the junction where her flesh met the silver of Nuada’s arm.

  She lost control of the arm. The magic she’d been collecting discharged wildly, blowing a crater in the ground ten feet away. She stumbled to one knee and grabbed for the hilt of the blade, but by the time she managed to pull it out, I had closed the gap between us. I brought up my knee and rammed it into her jaw.

  Her teeth clacked together, and two of them popped out of her mouth in bloody pieces. She jerked upward, dazed, but I didn’t hesitate to swing my magic-powered fist, now coated in a block of ice, at the center of her chest. It hit with a resounding crack, and her sternum gave way. The ice block then shot away from my hand, mimicking Odette’s signature move, and the banshee flew across the room and crashed into the wall of thorns.

  She quickly clambered out of the wall, covered in weeping lacerations, red-tinged saliva dribbling from her ruined mouth. She stumbled a few steps forward, anger in her unfocused eyes. With the switchblade gone, she’d regained command of the conduit, and she was already sucking in as much energy as possible, as fast as the arm could work. She slurred out, “If you think that’s all it takes to beat me, you stupid fuck, you have no idea—”

  “Oh,” I interrupted, “I’m not the one who’s going to beat you. She is.”

  I pointed to the space behind her.

  With her injuries, she was too slow to respond.

  Saoirse, armed with one of the dark elves’ swords, heaved the blade down with all her might. The banshee’s weakened shoulder gave way under the force, and the sword cleaved the conduit clean off the woman’s torso. Its gathered energy discharged again, knocking Saoirse back and bowling over several other people. But the only one who suffered real damage was the banshee. The arm had been melded to her flesh. With it gone, there was nothing left but an empty, mangled socket spurting blood.

  She collapsed in a heap and screamed. It was loud enough to hurt human ears, but it was directed at the ground, and the nearest people were able to shuffle away from its area of effect before they suffered any hearing loss. The scream died out with a whimper less than ten seconds later. The banshee was left rolling back and forth on the ground, clutching her ruined shoulder, cursing and snarling, red spittle spewing from her lips.

  Saoirse pushed herself back up, sword still clutched in her hand. She held the tip near the banshee’s neck. “Don’t move. And so help me god, if you scream again, I’ll ram this thing through your throat.”

  The banshee met Saoirse’s stern and steady gaze with a pained and mortified one of her own. But she didn’t try to attack. Didn’t try to get up. She was beaten, and she knew it.

  “Kennedy,” Saoirse said, not looking away from the banshee, “how are we on the restraints?”

  “Done,” Kennedy mumbled.

  The movement I’d seen earlier had been Saoirse signaling me. With no more svartálfar playing guard, she’d pulled a hidden knife from somewhere and cut the ropes binding her wrists. She’d freed Kennedy as well and tasked him with subtly passing the knife along to the other prisoners in the lineup while she recovered the sword from the body of the elf whose neck I’d slit when I first entered the fortress. She’d done all of this without catching the banshee’s attention, using our positions on the battlefield to calculate precise movements that wouldn’t cross into the banshee’s field of vision. And she’d managed to clue me in on her plan at the perfect moment.

  “I’d call you a genius,” I said as I shambled over, “but I don’t think that’s a strong enough word.”

  Saoirse grinned and took her eyes off the banshee for a split second to crack a witty reply.

  An opportunity the banshee used to roll over and make a last-ditch grab for the detached conduit lying four feet away. Only for the arm to be snatched up by the quick hand of someone else.

  Christie. She loomed over the banshee, her wrists rubbed raw from being bound, both of her eyes partially swollen shut, her entire face black and blue. She scowled down at the banshee and hefted the arm, which had gone stiff as a board, like a baseball bat. “You still want this, do you?”

  The banshee sputtered, “No, wait—”

  Christie swung the arm down and bashed it against the banshee’s head. Five times in a row. When she was done, the once pretty, angular face of the banshee was a gory mess, her nose crushed to a pulp, seven more of her teeth knocked loose, and her skin split in too many places to count.

  Christie rested the arm on her shoulder and snorted. “If we didn’t have a traumatized audience, I’d keep on going until your skull was nothing but mush. It’s the least you deserve, you bitch, for all the shit you’ve pulled today.” She lifted the arm again, ever so slightly, and the banshee recoiled in fear, moaning something indistinct that might’ve been a plea for mercy. “Yeah,” Christie added, “not so tough without your special arm, are you?”

  And that, friends, was why pissing off Christie Bridgewater was a bad idea.

  The banshee beaten and under Christie’s guard, I finally began to relax and take stock of the battlefield. None of the elves from outside the fortress of thorns had wandered in, and I didn’t know whether that meant Odette had somehow won, or if the survivors had taken off upon realizing the jig was up and they wouldn’t be winning the well today. I wanted to check on Odette as soon as possible, but the fight with the banshee had left me winded and hurting, and my magic was whipped up into a frenzy. I needed a break before I risked walking into a brawl. It was hard enough to keep my thoughts straight just standing here staring off into the distance.

  “Vince,” Saoirse said, “you okay?” She still had the sword in her possession, and with her gun nowhere to be found, I didn’t think she’d be letting it go anytime soon. “You look a little muddled.”

  “I need a nap.” I closed my eyes as my shoulder throbbed again. “And some aspirin.”

  “Don’t we all?” She rubbed her wrist. It was inflamed from the friction of the ropes. “But we can’t rest quite yet. We have to get these people back to Earth.”

  “Yes, I know.” I opened my eyes. My eyelids were heavy. “And it’s a long trek back.”

  “Back? To the cavern entrance?” She frowned. “We can’t open a portal here?”

  “I seriously doubt it. In the case that someone actually managed to penetrate the vault locks, the builders would’ve wanted a security team to have enou
gh time to arrive before the intruders left. That would mean blocking all outgoing portals. I mean, I can double-check, if you want, but I have a feeling we’re in for another hike.”

  “Great.” She huffed. “Just what we need. A trip back through no man’s land, complete with the bodies of the fallen.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah, some of those were…pretty brutal.”

  “That’s a nice way of putting it. I think—”

  “Uh,” said a hesitant voice I wanted to ignore on principle. “We have a problem over here.”

  Saoirse and I turned to find Kennedy standing next to one of the prism ward’s occupied circles. Lucy Studebaker was worriedly pacing in place inside the circle, her arms wrapped around herself, a threadbare security blanket. As we watched, Kennedy reached up and tried to push his hand past the boundary of the circle, but he was rebuffed by an invisible force. The dimmed circled pulsed slightly at his attempted intrusion, which indicated the ward was at fault. There must’ve been some kind of security measure coded into the construction that prevented the “keys” from leaving the “locks” until all nine had been successfully filled.

  “Oh, there’s another wrench we don’t need,” I groaned.

  “Can you get them out?” Saoirse asked.

  “Without breaking the ward altogether?” I blew air through my teeth. “I’m not optimistic, but I’m going to try anyway. We need to keep that ward operational. If we take it down, any one of Abarta’s goons can swoop in and snatch a bottle of well water. And if that happens, we’re screwed. And by ‘we,’ I mean everyone on Tír na nÓg and Earth who isn’t one of the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

  “I’m guessing the well grants people some kind of special power?”