by Stark, Jenn
And slowly, oh so slowly, they took a step back.
Outside the canopy of my barrier, the earth suddenly came to life with a furious, frightened rebuke. Storm clouds built in the space of two breaths and broke with a tumultuous rage, rain pelting the areas of the green not protected by my fire. Trees erupted into white flames, crackling and spitting, while the wind howled and moaned. I couldn’t do anything else but hold the line—the cross that bore Death’s form with one hand, the barrier above us with another. At my feet, Armaeus’s eyes remained closed, but still the ancient song was pulled from him, as if he was merely another instrument carefully and skillfully played by Death.
The ancient gods of Ireland took another step back.
More storms broke throughout the world, lashing at the mobs and driving them asunder, both Neo-Celts and spectral opposition warriors alike scrambling away from the onslaught. The earth cried out for the Tuath Dé not to abandon it a second time, but the Tuath Dé had no choice. This was no longer their world. This would never be their world again.
They took another step back toward the glowing doorways of the In Between.
The cadence and energy of Death’s music picked up then, the impact swift and harsh. The creatures of the In Between went first, tumbling and rumbling and screaming with fright and rage, flying back into the doors from which they’d been disgorged. One by one, those doors disappeared, until only one remained. But it wasn’t the door the Tuath Dé had come through, and they seemed to realize it. They turned as one and regarded that gateway, even as it seemed to grow larger and draw them closer. One door, shimmering with ancient runes and symbols, the magic of a people long since dead, the music of a priestess long since turned to other horizons.
“You will go.” Death spoke above the strains of her harp, her words as low and melodic as Armaeus’s, a higher counterpoint to his low and steady chant. “Back to the lands of your people, to the emerald hills and the shining shore. The call of this world a whisper fading evermore. Your time is over here. Your path is now the stars.”
The first of the golden people stepped back through the gate.
“No.” This time it wasn’t Conal who spoke, but Niall. I turned, feeling the crimson smoke spilling off me, snaking across the ground toward him through the high grass. I didn’t know if I had anything else to give him, but apparently, he brought out the best in me.
His words had a galvanizing effect on the golden Tuath Dé, though. They stopped and turned toward him, and Niall pointed at me—no. Not at me, the miserable sexist fuck.
At Armaeus.
“He is your enemy, the enemy of earth, the breeder of insurrection and doubt. He is who keeps you from your doors. He, not a priestess overreaching her station or a usurper challenging your power, he. You kill him, you break them all.”
A sudden move from the Tuath Dé was all it took. As I sensed them turning and directing their focus to where Armaeus still lay defenseless on the ground, I expanded once more.
My wings exploded with crimson fire, smoky flame that somehow was both liquid and fire at once, but they swept over Conal and Niall, consuming them both in a conflagration intended not to kill, but to contain. Though I really wanted to kill something, and I felt that rage burn clear through me, scorching the earth at my feet. I danced back from Armaeus, desperate not to cause him any more pain, but he seemed oblivious to the world around him, so deep inside his mind that I suddenly wondered if he would come out again. Shoving that thought away, I turned back to the Tuath Dé—
And realized they were staring now at me—me, not Armaeus. Not even Death. Their eyes shone with surprise and recognition, and I heard once more the chittering of the darkness. Not the language of the Tuath Dé, but the language of the watchers in the In Between. Only now it was clearer, truer. I still couldn’t quite make out the words, but the panic resurfaced again, so strong it almost buckled my control. I glanced down more sharply at Armaeus, and realized he’d stopped chanting. Which in and of itself wasn’t a bad thing—but then I realized he wasn’t breathing either.
Armaeus!
Death’s song rose again, covering my words while the cadence of her playing changed a second time. But my resolve was breaking as fear leapt within me, and suddenly, Kreios was on one side of me, Eshe on the other, both of them holding my arms locked in position. Death’s music grew and spun around us, and as I stared out at the Tuath Dé, willing them to leave, I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. They hit the ground with a shuddering hiss, and I realized I was completely surrounded by a sea of crimson, smoking fire. Conal and Niall were nowhere to be seen.
The last of the Tuath Dé disappeared through the door, and it shimmered out of sight.
I yanked myself out of Kreios’s and Eshe’s arms and lunged for Armaeus.
“Sara—” Kreios pulled me back before I could reach him, and lifted me easily off the ground, my legs kicking fruitlessly in the air. “Your fire, Sara! The barrier!”
I realized instantly what he meant. With the shattering of my focus, the barriers that had blocked the green from outside entry had completely disintegrated. Though the storm that had broken over the city of Dublin had done a fair job of driving people away, there was still a throng hunkered down beneath the trees. When I dropped the barrier, they spilled out onto the green and started racing forward, only to stop abruptly when there was nothing to rush toward. Conal and Niall were gone. Death was gone. The Council members other than Eshe, Simon, and Kreios were gone. Dozens of agents, police officers, and the Neo-Celts were sprawled on the ground as if they’d been leveled by a sonic boom. So, as the last people standing, we suddenly became the eye of a hurricane, and I whirled on Kreios.
“What’s happened to him?” I demanded. “What were they saying, that what was lost can now be found? What does that even mean?”
Kreios looked at me as if I had three heads, pushing past me to reach Armaeus. He knelt over the Magician’s fallen, broken body, and gathered him up in his arms. Then looked at me again, his face tortured and his eyes panicked. “This isn’t right. But we’ll make it right.”
And they vanished.
I gasped, lurching forward as if I could follow them wherever they’d gone, but now it was Eshe and Simon’s turn to lock their hands on me. “Your work isn’t done here, Sara. You know that,” Eshe hissed.
“What’s going to happen to him?” I demanded of her. “What can you see?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“It damn well can, Eshe. You know that as well as I do!”
She looked at me sharply, blinking in shock, then her eyes turned milk white for the barest second. She jerked as if she’d been electrocuted, her hands lifting to her face—and she disappeared too.
“No!”
I whirled around, my hands breaking free of Simon’s hold, looking for someone to incinerate, but the first person I connected with was a whirling dervish of flying emerald robes and bright red hair.
“Dollface!” Nikki said, tumbling with me to the ground and then bringing me right back up again, her face next to mine. “You need to keep your head in the game. The Garda wants to arrest you, and ain’t nobody got time for that. But if you’re here, you’re arrestable, so you need to make like you’re two people and have one of you run off and the other one—poof.
I stared at her. “I can’t…” But of course, I could, and Nikki more than anyone knew I could. She’d been there in the In Between with me. She’d seen me do the impossible six times over.
I twisted away from Nikki and started running, barely acknowledging that Garda officers were running toward me as I burst in flames. For just a second, I hung in the cosmos, not knowing where Kreios had taken Armaeus, not knowing where I was going. The result was me hanging in space, watching the illusion I had created.
I was running across the green, immediately drawing the attention of the authorities. Nikki had been right, and several Garda took off after me with decided intent. Even as I started to fade, th
e chaos reached Simon and Eshe, everyone seeming to realize at the same time that the Wonder Twin brothers, Conal and Niall, had disappeared.
I searched the grounds for Death, hoping, praying that she was all right. If not…
Tears sprang to my eyes as my rabbiting brain bounded back to Armaeus. The price here had been too great—too great!
Then I pictured Dr. Sells’s clinic as clearly as if it’d been telegraphed to me, and I hurtled through space, desperate to reach Armaeus. He had stepped in front of the firing squad one too many times for me, and that crap had to stop right now.
It had to. And he needed to be alive for me to yell at him about it.
I stifled the sob building in my throat.
He had to.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I reappeared in the lobby of Dr. Sells’s clinic, instantly recognizing the surroundings, from the bustling staff and the high-tech equipment at the intake station to two familiar figures huddled together in the reception area. There was something universally familiar about frightened souls in a clinic, but my eyes snapped straight to the figure in front of me, clearly there to greet me. Kreios.
“What is it, what’s happening, where did he go, what?” I demanded as the Devil lifted his arms as if to fend off my verbal attack.
“He’s not here. But he told Dr. Sells you would most likely return here.”
“He did?” I pulled up short. “So he’s okay enough to be communicating. That’s good.” I scanned Kreios’s face. “That’s good, right?”
Kreios grimaced. “It is what it is. Armaeus is stable. You can go to him, but first you have another problem to address.”
Something in Kreios’s voice made my stomach cramp. “What are you talking about?”
He gestured to the reception area. “Go and find out yourself. When you’re finished, Armaeus is in his conference room at Prime Luxe.”
“Conference room.” I straightened, feeling inordinately better. You didn’t put trauma victims in a conference room. That would be like double jeopardy. “Okay. I’ll see—”
But Kreios was already gone. Rolling my eyes at the fact that every single member of the Council who’d mastered teleportation seemed inordinately fond of disappearing midsentence, I turned and trudged toward the reception area, straightening with a sad smile as the smaller of the two figures, the German shepherd Night, turned his muzzle toward me.
“Lainie,” I said.
She turned as well. “You came,” she murmured, sounding so much like Seamus McCarthy when he’d first seen me, I drew up short. “I didn’t know if you would.”
“Of course I came.” I moved toward her and settled on the seat beside her, taking her hands in mine. “Why? What’s happened?”
“It was something I saw,” she said, her voice halting. “You, and those you work with, all of you such bright lights. But you’re being tracked by shadows. Like you, but not you. I didn’t understand, but I knew this wasn’t right. I knew I had to tell you.”
“Shadows,” I echoed.
She nodded. “Like your seconds, or your doubles, but not quite that close. Still, they were very strong. And wherever they went…” She looked away, swallowed. “There was so much death.”
I blew out a long breath, my mind scrambling through all the possibilities. I knew about Connected syndicates, of course. I’d been briefly part of one of them as head of the House of Swords, and the history of organized crime stretched deep into Connected history. It was only natural for people with unusual gifts to figure out a way to profit from those unusual gifts. Humans were nothing so much as human, and power…what had Death said? Something about power in the wrong hands being dangerous? Especially power that makes you feel like a god.
“You were right to come,” I said. “And to warn me. We’ll find these others and stop them. I promise. But right now, we’re going to have to protect you too, Lainie. You and your family.”
She nodded, dropping her hand to Night’s back. “Mr. Kreios said the same thing. He said there would be a limo to take me…somewhere. At least for a few days. Until we can sort everything out.”
“Good.” I looked up, and sure enough, there was a sharply dressed chauffeur now standing at the entryway to the clinic’s waiting room. He wasn’t as fabulous as Nikki had been when she’d been pulling chauffeur duty, but then again, who would be?
Speaking of Nikki, I realized that in my shock and fear for Armaeus, she was still halfway around the world. And that…simply wouldn’t do. I’d spent far too long these past few days without her by my side. I was done with that.
I helped Lainie to her feet, and the moment she was safely bundled into the limo, destined for Prime Luxe, I poofed back to St. Stephen’s Green and found Nikki. Death was still MIA, and Simon had left the green, but I’d locate both of them later. For now, I returned with Nikki to Armaeus’s conference room via fireball express.
The smile of relief and excitement I’d been busily composing on my face as I thought about reuniting with Armaeus, however, was wiped clean away the moment I stepped into the room.
Nikki’s arms immediately wrapped around me, holding me upright when my knees buckled. “What’s this?” I gasped, recovering quickly to stride to the sickbed set up in the middle of the room, a sickbed clearly constructed for some kind of alien life form.
Or the Magician, in this case.
Kreios and Eshe stood at either end of the hospital bed, their eyes locked on one another, their hands outstretched. Electricity arced between them while Dr. Sells stood off to the side, her hands racing over a keyboard as data streamed across a portable monitor. Armaeus lay on the bed, or what I assumed was Armaeus, but skin no longer draped his body, and neither bones nor muscles nor veins made up his form. He was a pure mass of energy in an only vaguely humanoid form.
“What the hell?” I tried again.
“You need to tap into the vagus nerve,” Dr. Sells snapped at me, her tone causing me to whip my head around. Naked fear rang in her voice. “You can see it, even in his current form. It’s a nerve that stretches from the brain to the abdomen, contributing to all human function in a way we have not completely figured out. It’s—it’s the part glowing crimson.”
“Okay,” I said as I stepped forward again. “What’d he do to the nerve? Why is it so bright?”
“We don’t exactly know. The Magician didn’t make his intentions clear when he advised me this procedure he’s directed me to perform had a success rate of 98.3% with 84.7% likelihood of unexpected complications that may result in a variance to the successful outcome that was, in short, unpredictable though with a greater likelihood of a positive than a negative result. He declined to give me exact numbers on that final percentage.”
I blinked at her, my head spinning. “Of course he did. When was this?”
Kreios cut in. “When he told me you would be arriving at Dr. Sells’s clinic and I should be there to greet you. That was two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks ago?” None of this made any sense, but none of it mattered either. I could see the vagus nerve pulsing with crimson heat, and I lifted my arms, my hands igniting with my own combination of blue and red flame. “What is it exactly that I’m doing?”
“Vagus nerve stimulation,” Dr. Sells said flatly. “This is completely uncharted territory in someone with the Magician’s unique bodily makeup, so—”
So she had no better idea than I did, in short.
I didn’t wait to hear more. I plunged my hands into the medical cocoon that Kreios and Eshe were maintaining, and reached through the faux body form of the Magician. Operating purely on instinct, I wrapped my hands around the vagus nerve and held on tight—
As I was electrocuted.
The explosion that racked my brain and body felt like every one of my molecules was being blasted into the stratosphere. I thought I heard screaming, I definitely smelled burning, but the overwhelming sensation I had was of the Magician flicking open his eyes, connecting to me with a wild untrammel
ed joy that I’d never seen in his face before. And I realized I was looking at a…fuller version of the Magician, a Magician who was complete, who was true and powerful and mighty and complete.
Agony ripped through me, an entire section of my body being torn away, sundered from the whole as a sense of deep and powerful loss and loneliness rocked me, the sensation so profound, I jerked my hands off Armaeus’s vagus nerve and immediately slumped to the floor.
“Dollface,” Nikki gasped. She rushed to my side, hauling me upright again, but my eyes were only for Armaeus. With her help, I staggered back to the bed, but Armaeus was there, he was there with a body and a face and hair and eyes. He looked up at Kreios and Eshe and at Dr. Sells, his brow furrowing only when he swung his gorgeous golden gaze to me. I sagged to Nikki’s side, tears welling in my own eyes, so damned grateful that he was alive, that he was here, that he was back, that I could help him—
And then the Magician opened his mouth, his focus fully on me. When he spoke, his words were elegant, rich, and harrowingly succinct.
“Do I know you?”
Chapter Thirty
I roused myself from the pane of glass, straightening as the door opened behind me. In the room beyond, nothing had changed. Armaeus still lay in a hospital bed, an entire fleet of monitors and machines whirring around him, a perfect symphony of data trackers and energy modulators and systems analyzers. According to Dr. Sells, Armaeus had ordered this suite custom-made for him…five years earlier. Long before he’d even met me.
Much longer still before he’d forgotten me.
No sooner had he recovered from the jolt back to a sort of awareness I’d made possible than he’d passed out again, his body shutting down everything but the most vital processes. Dr. Sells had ordered him moved to this suite, which Kreios and I had facilitated. Once connected up to every monitor known to man, technology I couldn’t even hope to understand, he’d dropped even deeper into a coma. Kreios had departed immediately to brief the Council, but I’d remained here, sequestering myself in this dark observation room, my head against the glass.
