What Man Defies

by Clara Coulson

“No,” I said, dragging myself into a sitting position that nearly popped a kidney out of the hole in my gut. “She’s a friend of mine.”

  Bismarck turned, shock crackling across her face at the fact I was still breathing.

  I raised my hand and released what little magic I’d managed to gather in my palm.

  It blew a hole out of the ground beneath Bismarck’s feet.

  Bismarck stumbled to her knees, nearly dropping the spear. Saoirse heaved herself forward with a battle cry and struck out with her sword. The blade met Bismarck’s neck but glanced off, leaving only a scratch, as Bismarck activated what must’ve been the grand finale of her wards. A field of golden energy encapsulated her entire body. After two heartbeats, it exploded into a vortex of fierce, shrieking winds.

  Saoirse was flung across the room. She landed in a hard roll, something in her leg snapping in half, and came to rest near the front wall. Her sword was lost to the wind, her tenacity to the broken leg. She was out of the fight, and she knew it, and she cursed herself in shame even as the intense gale buffeted her again and threw her against the wall.

  Most of the people in the room were toppled by the vortex. Kennedy was lifted from his resting place and tossed like a ragdoll against the prism ward. He bounced off and was drawn toward Bismarck by the back end of the wind funnel. He landed with a thump beside her, and she immediately pointed the spear at him before realizing he wasn’t a threat.

  As the vortex died down, Bismarck, curious, reached out and prodded Kennedy’s arm. He didn’t respond. Bismarck learned something anyway: Kennedy was wet. She tracked Kennedy’s path back to the well, and her mouth dropped open in understanding.

  In that moment, I knew I should’ve let Kennedy die.

  “What do we have here?” Bismarck said, turning Kennedy over. She slapped his cheek a couple times, and when he didn’t acknowledge the pain, she smirked. “Decided to go for a little swim, huh? Looks like that didn’t work out so well for you. For me, on the other hand…”

  Something on Bismarck’s hip started buzzing. She tugged a small metallic rectangle that vaguely resembled a phone from a clip on her belt and tapped one corner before holding the object to her ear. It must’ve been a magic-based communication device.

  “What have I told you about being so impatient?” she said without a greeting.

  Someone responded on the other end. I had a feeling it was Abarta.

  Bismarck frowned. “There was a complication. Its name was Whelan.”

  This time, I heard Abarta’s rumbling bass shout across the connection.

  “Yeah, he restored the ward around the well. It’s blocked. If you give me about half an hour, I might be able to get the ward down again. There are enough people left alive to fill all the circles…”

  Bismarck’s pause lasted for over thirty seconds, and as Abarta spoke, the color drained from her face.

  “How close are they?” she finally hissed when he was done.

  Abarta answered.

  “Shit!” Bismarck slammed the end of the spear into the ground. She scanned the room. The huddled people. Christie, still clutching the arm and trying to get to her feet even though she was battered and bruised, willing to go yet another round. Saoirse, who was well and truly out of the fight but whose glare could’ve withered a field of flowers, indicating she’d still struggle until her final breath. Me, partially disemboweled and shaking like a leaf, nearly blinded by pain, but with just enough magic left in my system to refuse a quick and quiet death. And finally, Kennedy, the only person in the entire room who’d actually made contact with the well water.

  She took a frustrated breath and said, “Luckily, I may have an alternative. I’ll be at the rendezvous point in twenty minutes with a package. Be there, or go fuck yourself.” She hung up her magic phone and shoved it back onto her belt.

  Next, she rolled up one of her sleeves to reveal a gold band on her bicep. She tapped it twice, and a flash of gold energy shot across her torso. She bent down, grabbed the limp Kennedy with one arm, and picked him up with ease, using far more strength than she naturally possessed. She slung the man over her shoulder as if he weighed no more than a child’s backpack.

  Once she had him situated, Bismarck cast a fleeting scowl my direction. “Consider this a reprieve, Whelan. If I had it my way, I’d kill you right now. Ram my spear through your skull and scramble your brains.” She practically spit the words. “But I can’t risk being caught after killing a sídhe scion with a Tuatha weapon, and the cavalry is almost here, so your date with death will have to wait a little longer.” She turned toward the exit. “Mark my words though. The next time we meet? I’m going to kill you nice and slow. And I’m going to make it hurt.”

  With that, Agatha Bismarck darted off into the corridor, vanishing into the shadows. And Nolan Kennedy, imbued with all the knowledge from the well, left with her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Seelie stormed the fortress of thorns.

  They arrived five minutes after Bismarck left, while everyone was still holding their breath at the expectation of another onslaught. What little energy I’d wrung out of my body had faded by that point, and I was lying on my back, staring at the ceiling again, blood still oozing from my gored abdomen. So when they entered, seven sídhe on horseback, armed to the teeth, my only response was to roll my head to the right and take a good look at the assholes who’d finally been dispatched to handle the break-in at a highly secure and secret vault.

  All damn day, I thought bitterly as they began to dismount. You had all damn day to stop Abarta’s crew, and you didn’t show up until the battle was over.

  I wished I could’ve said that out loud, but my mouth wouldn’t work.

  There were four men and three women, all wearing the slim leather battle gear common in their court. Their brown clothing was accented with the lush colors of summer, pops of red and pink and blue and violet, frilly bows and delicate ties and complex laces meant to evoke a sense of growth and beauty. All of them had long hair tied back into braids, except for a dark-skinned woman whose hair was styled into voluminous black curls threaded through with colorful flowers. Each one also had unique markings visible on their face and neck. Some were gold. Some were green. Some were orange. All designated them as higher fae of the Seelie Court.

  The woman in charge of the group, who was six-foot-something and had eyes like molten rock, stepped ahead of the rest and said, “If any of you are enemies of the faerie courts, speak now and we will take you prisoner under the rules of engagement. Hold your tongues, and we will cut them out when we discover you for the rats you are.”

  What a nice way to start a conversation.

  “We’re all humans here. Except one,” a weak voice said from behind the fae contingent. Saoirse. She couldn’t get up, but she’d managed to prop herself against a section of wall that didn’t have too many thorns. When the fae turned to observe her, she continued, “Those people there”—she gestured to the survivors huddled against the wall—“were kidnapped by a group of dark elves and a banshee working for Abarta of the Tuatha Dé Danann. I was part of a team from Earth that came to rescue those people, a team led by him.” She nodded to me. “Vincent Whelan. He’s half fae.”

  The sídhe warriors all whirled around to face me, surprised. The leader made a quick hand signal, and the dark-skinned woman broke off from the group and walked over to me. She knelt beside me and took a good look at my blood-streaked face, then scrutinized my gaping gut wound. She called over to her comrades, “He’s sídhe born. Unseelie. Seriously injured, but not by iron.”

  The leader tapped the shoulder of a man standing near her. “Aodhan, do what you can.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Aodhan joined the dark-skinned woman at my side. He peeled what remained of my shirt away from my abdomen and gathered various supplies from his belt pouches as he determined the best course of treatment. “There’s significant damage,” he said, “but I can stop the bleeding, stitch your or
gans back together, and sterilize everything so you aren’t at risk of infection. For the rest, you’ll have to find a more experienced healer. Or, I suppose, just bide your time. Since there was no iron involved, you should fully heal in a matter of weeks.”

  I tried to say, “Yeah, I know that, pal.” But it came out unintelligible, so I gave up on talking while Aodhan worked his magic, and focused my attention on the others.

  Over the next twenty minutes, Saoirse explained everything to the fae, from the start of the disappearances in Kinsale to the moment Bismarck ran off with Kennedy. One of the men jotted down the key details of her retelling in an actual notebook he’d had tucked in his pocket, like he was a cop interviewing an eyewitness while canvassing the area around a crime scene. When Saoirse finished speaking, the leader, who was addressed as Brigid, ordered the others to give the human survivors the bare minimum of first aid, then escort them all out of the fortress of thorns to wait while the fae finished picking through the room.

  Apparently, they were planning to shoo us out of the cavern.

  They weren’t aggressive about our removal, however. None of them pushed or shoved any of the survivors, or said anything particularly cruel or threatening, beyond Brigid’s initial proclamation. In fact, when they weren’t ordering the humans around, they seemed downright friendly to each other, cracking jokes or grumbling about having to travel all the way to the Divide. It was almost like they didn’t care about the stakes involved in Abarta’s ongoing schemes and his grand plans for the eventual conquest of Tír na nÓg. That or they didn’t truly grasp those stakes.

  Something was off here. I couldn’t put my finger on it though. So when my mouth finally decided to work again, I started to chat up my medic. “Out of curiosity,” I said, “did you guys run into a lindworm on your way here?”

  “Lindworm?” asked Aodhan as he shoved his hand into my magic-numbed abdomen to stitch a few more pieces of my colon back together. “What’s that?”

  “I think that was the dragon creature Brigid decapitated,” answered the dark-skinned woman, whose name I’d caught as Cara when she engaged in a brief exchange with one of the others a minute before. “Not a creature from this realm. The svartálfar must’ve brought it with them from elsewhere. What an ugly thing that was.”

  “Ah, so it’s dead then?” I pressed. “You didn’t have any trouble with it?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that.” Aodhan grimaced. “It took our second in command, Lorcan, for a wild ride across that field of statues and nearly ripped his leg off in the process. It took three of us casting a paralysis spell to stop it from bucking around, and then Brigid cut its head off in a flurry of strikes. Left quite the mess. Blood everywhere.” He clicked his tongue in annoyance. “I got it all over my boots.”

  The sense of wrongness in my disturbed gut was growing stronger with each word these faeries spoke. A group of full-blooded sídhe should’ve been able to handle a lindworm far more easily than that. Unless…

  “This is an extremely ragged wound. It looks like you were stabbed multiple times.” Aodhan pulled out another length of stiff thread and slid it through the eye of his needle on the first try. “What weapon did your opponent wield? Some kind of spear?”

  “The Spear of Lugh,” I said.

  Aodhan froze. “What?”

  Cara sputtered out, “You lie.”

  “Nope. Not lying.”

  “How do you know it was the actual Spear of Lugh?” She crossed her arms, skeptical. “It could’ve been a replica. Anyone can make themselves a fancy gold spear with the right tools, or purchase one for the right price.”

  “Can anyone acquire a gold spear that never misses its target?” I lifted my ruined left hand, showcasing the huge hole where my palm had once been. “Because this thing was pretty damn insistent about hitting me. You’d think a replica wouldn’t try so hard to act like the real deal.”

  Cara took my hand and inspected the wound. “There are a lot of charmed weapons floating around, many of them forged by expert craftsmen and imbued with powerful magic. This spear could’ve been one of them.”

  I snorted. “Look, if Abarta could steal the harp of the Dagda right out from under the noses of the Unseelie palace guards, I’m sure he could also snag the Spear of Lugh from wherever it was stashed after the Tuatha fell.”

  Cara and Aodhan exchanged disconcerted glances.

  “So this Abarta fellow,” Aodhan said after a lengthy pause, “he’s a master thief of sorts?”

  The gears in my brain ground to a halt.

  “You…” I gawked at him. “You don’t know who Abarta is?”

  “We’ve heard of him, sure.” Cara shrugged. “He was mentioned in last month’s general missive. Caused some kind of ruckus on Earth, right?”

  “He’s one of the Tuatha Dé Danann.” I emphasized their name. “You know, the old rulers of Tír na nÓg? The old gods? They were here for over two millennia before the aes sídhe pushed in? Had a bunch of wars with the sídhe? Before they were defeated like, oh, fifteen hundred years ago?”

  Cara and Aodhan gave me blank looks.

  Sheepish, Aodhan said, “I must admit, I wasn’t very attentive with my history lessons.”

  “Me either.” Cara grimaced. “I got my knuckles whacked by the headmistress all the time for falling asleep in class.”

  Utterly flummoxed, I blurted out, “Wait, how old are you?”

  Cara raised an eyebrow. “In Earth years? I don’t know exactly. Around twenty?”

  Half the answers I needed suddenly fell into place, and I understood what was wrong here.

  These sídhe were not the ancient, immortal warriors of great power and wisdom I’d assumed they were when they first rode in on their beautiful steeds, looking ready for a fight. They were kids. They were young soldiers from the Seelie army who’d been redirected from their usual job—border patrol, maybe—to investigate a break-in at a weird vault in the middle of nowhere.

  Working on minimal intel, they’d arrived to find a bunch of dead humans caught in the vault’s traps, and at the end of the road, more humans plus a single half-sídhe and a dead banshee. Saoirse’s story about the kidnappings and our team’s attempt to rescue the victims from Abarta’s henchmen had likely been the first time these soldiers learned anything about what was actually happening.

  Even now, they didn’t truly understand.

  Judging by their lack of a solid education, they were low on the pecking order of the Seelie Court. The children of those sídhe who sat only a peg or two above the lesser fae in the general hierarchy. The “barebones gentry.” They weren’t born into families of wealth and influence, whose patriarchs and matriarchs were hundreds or thousands of years old and had the clout to show for it. They were the children of those who barely had enough to keep up the appearance of high class. They’d gone to underfunded public schools, or had shoddy part-time tutors. And they’d joined the army not because they were glory seekers of awesome strength but because it was the best job opportunity they had.

  These kids had almost no knowledge of their people’s history. I knew more than they did.

  And yet, the Seelie Court had sent them here to take on Abarta’s crew? They’d put the fate of Tír na nÓg in the hands of a small group of ignorant children, who were so weak and inexperienced compared to their elders that they couldn’t even handle a single lindworm without a group effort? What if Abarta himself had been here? He could’ve slaughtered every one of them with ease. Why would their queen risk that? Why would the court make such a boneheaded move?

  The answer was, they wouldn’t. Neither of the faerie queens would ever miscalculate to such a degree. So why send the kids to tackle the break-in? And why send them so late, after the bulk of the action had already wrapped?

  Unless they hadn’t been sent to stop Abarta’s crew in the first place.

  Oh, fuck me sideways.

  I had been sent to stop Abarta’s crew.

  It was the harp incident all
over again, except this time, Tom Tildrum didn’t need to use a ruse to lure me onto the case. The fact that the banshee was abducting people from Kinsale was enough to spur my involvement on its own. Tildrum, and by extension, Mab, knew that when the victims started dying and showing up as the Sluagh that I would ramp up my efforts to find the brains behind the operation. They also knew that when I uncovered evidence Abarta was those brains, I would act accordingly to stop his scheme from unfolding and attempt to rescue the remaining prisoners. Because I was a goody-two-shoes like that, and I wanted to keep my city safe, as I’d proved three weeks ago.

  All Tildrum had to do was keep an eye on me and report to his queen when I left Earth. Once I was firmly engaged in fighting Abarta’s crew in the vault, Mab had sent word along to her counterpart in the Seelie Court, to distance herself further from direct involvement with Abarta’s plots. Her counterpart, in response, had watered the intel down to present the break-in as an annoyance instead of a major threat to the realm, and passed it along the chain of command until it reached some outpost captain in the boonies. Who assigned this ragtag group of woefully uninformed kids to check out the vault and kick out anyone who didn’t belong.

  This whole convoluted puzzle was about plausible deniability.

  Mab didn’t want to be seen directly confronting Abarta in any way—due to those “factors” Tildrum mentioned last month—so she was pulling only the subtlest strings. No one would guess these lowborn Seelie soldiers would’ve been bumped off patrol to investigate a disturbance in the Divide as a result of Mab’s actions. No way. As far as the courts were concerned, Mab had nothing to do with any of this, and the Seelie queen’s only traceable involvement was a single whisper in the ear of one of her trusted minions: Send a team of nobodies to the vault to clean up the mess. Make sure they’re in the dark about Abarta.

  What the heck was going on in the upper echelons of the courts that would drive the queens into pretending Abarta wasn’t a clear and present danger to Tír na nÓg? To the point where Mab expected me, an exiled half-fae of little consequence, to carry out her will to stop him in her stead? Was there some wrinkle in the fabric of the courts that would bring the whole institution crashing down if they publicly acknowledged Abarta’s plots? Some threat to the realm itself that was worse than the possibility of a new war with an old enemy? Some—