What Man Defies

by Clara Coulson

  “It’s the Well of Knowledge. It gives people access to information.”

  She furrowed her brows. “What kind of information?”

  “Every scrap of written information in Tír na nÓg.”

  Her lips parted to form a tiny O. “That would not be a good thing for Abarta to have.”

  “Understatement.”

  Saoirse leaned closer to me and spoke quietly, “So what if you really can’t free those people without breaking the ward?”

  I sighed. “I guess we’ll have to break the ward and pray we can bring it back up afterward. I didn’t come all this way to leave half the survivors to starve to death. Not to mention that since all the other vault locks have been deactivated, anyone could come along with a single human in tow, throw them into the last circle, and deactivate the ward. So we’ve got to do something to get the people out, and to make sure no one can access the well afterward. I’ll take a hard look at the ward’s construction, see if it’s something I can manipulate in any useful way. I’ll tell you what I find out, and we’ll plan from there.”

  She nodded and glanced at the group of freed prisoners huddled near the wall, most of them rubbing their wrists and mumbling to each other. “I’ll go keep them calm while we wait, using my best authority figure voice.”

  “While you’re at it, keep an eye on the door.”

  She looked to the shadowy corridor. “We expecting company?”

  “Don’t know. I had to leave Odette to fight the svartálfar guards.”

  “All of them?” Saoirse hissed.

  “Most of them. I had no choice. I could hear all the screaming…” My gaze drifted to the pile of bodies.

  Saoirse winced. “You think Odette’s still standing?”

  “I doubt it, but she might’ve taken all the elves with her. She was in berserker mode. I’ve never seen someone use magic like that. Serious skill and technique. She was a good choice for our strike team.”

  Saoirse hung her head. “I wasn’t planning on getting her killed.”

  “She could’ve split and run after you got grabbed. She chose to continue and fight for the victims anyway. Flaws she might’ve had, but she had a good heart where it counted.” I inhaled deeply. “She’s probably still kicking ass in the afterlife anyway. I don’t think even death could conquer her attitude.”

  “You’re right about that.” Saoirse let a ghost of a smile cross her lips. “All right. Do what you can with the ward.” She backed off toward the group near the wall. “If you need me to do anything, just say—”

  A pulse of magic lit up my periphery.

  I spun on my toes, but it was too late. While Christie, who had no magic sense, had been watching the banshee for any sudden moves, the woman had been subtly building up a charge of energy in her remaining hand. She now wrenched that hand up, and though Christie quickly swung the conduit arm at her head again, the spell discharged from her palm before the makeshift bat connected.

  A ball of force shot through the air. Not at me. Not at Saoirse. But at Kennedy, who was walking around the perimeter of the ward and testing each of the occupied circles. The spell hit him in the shoulder at the exact moment he passed in front of the last empty circle.

  Kennedy stumbled into the circle and smacked into the wall of the prism. The circle dimmed in response to his entry, and before anyone could react, the prism simply…evaporated. One second it was there. The next it was gone. And there was suddenly nothing supporting the unbalanced Kennedy. He let out a panicked yelp as he fell backward. Right into the Well of Knowledge.

  He hit with a splash and sank into the water.

  He didn’t come back up.

  “Shit!” I dashed to the well and peered over the rim. The water was dark as night. I didn’t see Kennedy anywhere, even though my fae vision should’ve been able to pierce straight through to the bottom. Where the heck is he? Does he not know how to swim, or is the water doing something to him? Dread flooded my gut. If he ingests any of the water, what’ll happen? He’s only human. He can’t possibly…

  Behind me, the banshee, despite taking another blow to the face, started cackling wildly. “Told you so, Whelan,” she slurred. “I told you so. Told you I was going to win. Ha!”

  Christie let out a furious bellow and brought down the conduit as hard as she could. The shoulder of the metal arm hit the banshee square in the forehead, and the woman’s skull loudly cracked. The banshee’s laughter cut out, and her head lolled to the side as her eyes slid closed. She wasn’t dead, to my ire, chest still rising and falling, but a head injury would keep her down until we could properly restrain her and toss her into an appropriate cell. Preferably one of the dank, dark, dirty dungeon cells in the basement of Mab’s palace.

  The surface of the water in the well rippled again.

  I turned back toward it as a curled-up body breached.

  Kennedy, floating like deadweight.

  Cursing under my breath, I sank to my knees and tested the stability of the rim of stones. It didn’t budge, so I grabbed it tight and leaned over the edge, reaching out for Kennedy. I managed to tuck two fingers under his shirt collar and fish him out of the water. I dragged his limp body onto the ground and rolled him over, revealing a slack, lifeless face and a distinct lack of breathing.

  I smacked him a couple times, but he didn’t stir. I was baffled as to how he had drowned so fast. He’d been in the water for less than a minute. The well must’ve done something. Did it force him to take in the water?

  Saoirse rushed over and sank to one knee. “Is he gone?”

  “I think his lungs are full of water. We need to do CPR.” I paused. “If we want to bring him back.”

  “Vince!” She smacked my arm. “Don’t say things like that.”

  I stared at her, steady as stone. “I’m being serious, Saoirse. He’s more than a pain in the ass. He’s a danger to you and everyone at the precinct. Hell, he’s a danger to everyone who relies on the police for protection. And you know it.”

  “Well, that’s…” She bit her lip, wavering. “You’re right. He’s a complete and utter bastard, a prejudiced jerk, and he almost certainly has a narcissistic personality disorder”—she sucked in a sharp breath, and I could see the moment where she decided to hold firm to her morals—“but if he’s going to be tried for his behavior, it should be in a court of law.”

  “You’re a good person, Saoirse. Don’t forget that.” I ripped open Kennedy’s shirt and dug out my rusty knowledge of CPR. “No matter what he tells you, or what he tells anyone else about you.”

  “A small consolation. He probably won’t even be grateful.”

  I pressed my hands to Kennedy’s chest and started compressions. “Don’t worry. After I finish breaking all his ribs, he won’t be able to complain for a while.”

  I worked Kennedy’s chest as hard as I dared, feeling his bones gradually give way under my strength. For about three minutes, I was sure he was a goner, because he didn’t respond at all to the CPR. Not a twitch. Not a cough. No miraculous inhale like you see in all the movies.

  But then, as if someone had decided to send the asshat back from the afterlife for kicks—I was primed to blame Manannán—Kennedy experienced a full-body spasm before he projectile vomited grayish water. When he finished purging the water from his body, he coughed hard enough to eject a lung.

  Once that episode passed, he did…nothing.

  He just lay there, staring blankly.

  I had a bad feeling about that.

  I shook his arm. “Kennedy, can you hear me?”

  He didn’t respond. He blinked rapidly, but his eyes didn’t focus.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What is it?” Saoirse asked. She waved her hand in front of his face. It remained vacant. “What’s wrong with him? Brain damage?”

  “Not the kind you’re thinking.” I peered over my shoulder at the well. “Some of the water must’ve been absorbed by his system as soon as he swallowed it. The vomiting and coughing didn�
�t get it all out.”

  “So what does that mean? He has all that knowledge you were talking about?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “And what? He’s practically comatose because…?”

  “It’s too much.” I ran a hand through my dirty hair. “It’s too much for the human brain to handle. He just had multiple millennia’s worth of information rammed into his brain at once. History books. Court records. Millions of other documents. He can’t process it all. It’s overwhelmed his mind. His consciousness can’t function.”

  “Jesus. Do you think he’ll eventually be able to work through it?”

  I slowly shook my head. “This well wasn’t made for humans. It’s a repository of information designed to be used by the greater beings of Tír na nÓg.”

  “Can the information be removed?”

  “Maybe. But not by me.” I rose, contemplating possible solutions. “I only have rudimentary knowledge of mind magic like this. We’d have to go to the fae to get something that would have a definite impact, and, well, they’re as likely to simply kill him as they are to put effort into removing the information. It all depends on the mood of whoever ends up in charge of solving the problem. And you know as well as I do that most fae don’t give a crap about individual…”

  A figure stood in the shadow of the entryway to the fortress of thorns.

  At first, I thought it might be Odette. But then, as I watched in confusion, wondering how Odette could’ve survived the elf onslaught, the person raised something long and slender that glinted gold beneath the light spilling in from the well room. Something that looked distinctly like a spear.

  I reflexively raised a shield.

  I might as well have done nothing.

  The spear blasted out of the corridor, as if shot from a cannon, whistling through the air. It reached me in the blink of an eye, sheared through my shield like it was tissue paper, and only missed impaling me dead center through the chest because I raised my left hand in the nick of time. The spear pierced my hand, burst out the back in a spray of blood and bone and shredded tendons, and continued forward, now heading for my neck. I instinctively grabbed the shaft with my right hand, and using both hands, despite the searing pain in my left, wrenched the spear away from my body and let it fly. It went all the way through my hand and continued going until it struck the wall on the far side of the well.

  The force of the blow sent me sprawling, and I landed so hard it knocked the air from my lungs. Coughing and choking, I clutched my ruined hand to my chest, a scream stuck somewhere in my throat. The spear wasn’t made of iron, so the injury didn’t hurt as badly as the hatpin had. But for some reason, I couldn’t dampen the pain like I usually did with lesser wounds.

  When I regained enough of my bearings to roll over and examine the spear hanging from the wall, I immediately understood why. A wave of nausea overtook me.

  It was the Spear of Lugh.

  One of the Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann.

  I recognized it on sight because I had seen it before, like I’d seen Tom Tildrum and the barghest and the harp of the Dagda and Nuada’s arm. Sometime during my early childhood, the spear had crossed my path. Either the weapon itself, or a rendition of it. And as the recognition set in, the lore surrounding the weapon also drifted back to me in bits and pieces of partially memorized text:

  The Spear of Lugh was renown for its ability to always strike true. In the centuries that Lugh wielded the weapon in the great wars of the Tuatha Dé Danann, it never once missed its intended target, and roughly eighty percent of the time, its first strike was fatal. This made Lugh practically invincible in battle.

  The spear began to vibrate. As I watched with growing horror, it shook itself free from the wall of thorns, hung in the air for a moment, and finally shot backward along the same track it had taken across the room. The person in the corridor caught it with ease. Then she stepped out of the darkness and into the light.

  Agatha Bismarck. The Duchess of Crime.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Bismarck was burned.

  Pale scars stretched from her neck down into her collar and emerged from her sleeves, wrapping around both wrists. Those glimpses of damaged tissue hinted at a much more horrifying sight beneath her clothes. A field of skin that had been melted off and grafted back together with a generous helping of magic. The harp had taken its revenge against Bismarck as it burned in that basement, the woman too injured by Saoirse’s bullets to pull herself away from the gorging flames. Were it not for Abarta, she would’ve been reduced to dust in the explosion.

  Why Abarta had chosen to rescue her, I didn’t know. Her mob network couldn’t have been but so useful to him. Then again, perhaps “saving” her was more a punishment for her mistakes. She was permanently disfigured, and recovering from extensive burns was notoriously painful. Death, by comparison, would’ve been a sweet relief. Bismarck could’ve skipped on to the afterlife and left Abarta to clean up his own mess. Maybe the trickster god hadn’t been willing to let her off the hook that easily.

  Whatever the case, she was here—and she was wielding the Spear of Lugh.

  “When I got the SOS from the svartálfar,” she said as she sauntered toward me, “I asked myself what in the world could have happened that would make dark elves, of all spiteful creatures, turn to a human for help.” She aimed the spear at my face. “Why am I not surprised to find the answer is you? The meddling sídhe bastard who fancies himself a big hero, saving the innocent and stopping the nasty villains.”

  I sat up, biting my tongue as intense pain lanced up my arm. My left hand was totally unresponsive, all the primary tendons ripped clean out. Another wound that would take weeks to heal, due to the sheer extent of the damage.

  Gathering the shattered pieces of my composure, I replied to Bismarck, “Well, maybe if you’d stop committing heinous acts, I’d stop sticking my nose in your business.”

  “Oh, please.” She snorted. “The only reason I’m helping that ass Abarta commit ‘heinous acts,’ as you put it, is because you ripped the easier victory out from under my feet. Now that the fae are aware of my role in recovering the harp, I can’t show my face anywhere on Earth without risking retribution. Can’t do business. Can’t sleep in my bed. Can’t even breathe the air.”

  She clicked her tongue in disgust. “Since the only way to rectify that situation, and get the additional payoff I was promised, is to aid Abarta in waking the Tuatha and starting his new war with the fae”—she pointed the tip of the spear at the well—“a war they can only win with certain advantages, here I am. In this literal hellhole. Talking to the last person in the world I want to see.”

  “Poor you.” I forced myself to my feet, jaw clenched. “Maybe you should’ve reconsidered your career choice as a mob boss before it bit you in the ass.”

  She laughed. “Oh, you’re a trip, Whelan. Throwing banter at me while you’re barely able to stand up straight. That takes some kind of balls.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Or are you just stalling for time while you fruitlessly work to figure out a way to beat the spear?”

  I didn’t react, but she knew she had me. I’d been racking my brain for a way to evade a spear that couldn’t miss. Given its historical kill rate, I likely wouldn’t survive a second toss, and because Bismarck could recall it to her hand at will, using myself as bait for the spear while Saoirse attempted to kill Bismarck wouldn’t work either. Saoirse looked my way, her expression on the edge of panic, waiting for a signal for how to approach the situation. The only signal I sent her equated to: No sudden moves.

  We were in a bind. There were innocent bystanders spread across the room. The well was uncovered and ripe for the pillaging. Kennedy was down with the well’s knowledge jammed into his head. I was injured and exhausted from the combined exertion of the day’s battles. And Saoirse had only a sword, a weapon she had little experience using. The only one with a remotely viable weapon was Christie, who was standing too far away to throw t
he conduit arm to me in time.

  “Let me help you end your quandary,” Bismarck continued with a smirk. “And by that, I mean your life.”

  She reeled back the spear and hurled it at me again.

  I wasn’t any more prepared the second time around. Thinking on the fly, I erected a wall of ice between myself and the oncoming spear, forcing as much energy as I could pull from my beleaguered soul to continuously thicken the barrier. The spear drove into the ice as if it was hot as a soldering iron. Steam erupted from the hole it bored into the bulk. The more ice I formed, the more ice it ate. Once it “realized” I was subverting its ability to hit me, it started pushing the ice faster. Like it literally had a mind of its own.

  Think, Whelan. Think!

  Abandoning the reinforcement, I vaulted over the ice and came down on the other side, grabbing the shaft of the spear like I’d done before. This time, I tucked it under my arms for extra leverage, and as it reversed direction and backed out of the ice wall, I pushed it sideways with all my strength and attempted to drive it into the ground. Instead, the spear bucked wildly, as if I was riding a bull, flipped me over onto my back, and then plunged toward my face. I yanked my head out of the way at the last possible microsecond, and the tip of the spear sliced across my jaw and the top of my neck before burrowing into the earth.

  It stopped moving. It had technically struck me, so its job was done.

  Until Bismarck recalled it again.

  I hastily pushed myself back up and made to lunge for Bismarck, only to find Saoirse already there. She swung the elf sword at Bismarck, again and again, but the woman was dodging swiftly. Too swiftly. I spotted glints of gold jewelry beneath her loose sleeves as she gracefully evaded the blade. She’d come to this fight with more than a weapon. She was loaded with offensive and defensive charms to ensure she couldn’t be beaten easily in combat with a paranormal.

  “Saoirse, watch out!” I yelled.

  Bismarck lashed out with her right hand and punched Saoirse in the gut. A charm discharged its payload and threw Saoirse ten feet backward, where she crashed into the thorn wall. The force charm wasn’t strong enough to drive her into the wall, but the thorns tore at her skin anyway, blood oozing from two dozen cuts. Saoirse collapsed to her knees and vomited uncontrollably, her abdomen stunned by the strength of the blow. She’d also lost her sword in transit, and it now sat on the ground, hopelessly out of reach.