Ink & Sigil

by Hearne, Kevin

“Are they gonnay have at us, then?”

  I shook my head. Clíodhna wouldn’t have sent them to do battle after we’d made such an amicable agreement. They were simply here to fulfill their function and herald the deaths of the Fae. [No. They’re just telling us someone is going to die.]

  “Incoming from the crater,” Nadia announced.

  I hurried over to give her the same two sigils and then popped the seal on the last pair for me, plus a Sigil of Feline Vision to help me see in the dark. I spread out to the right side, leaving Nadia in the center of our trio. Three shadowy figures silhouetted in the cloud of debris took shape, and I recognized two of them. The leprechaun’s small stature was unmistakable, and the unsteady weaving of the clurichaun was a calling card. The other was of a height in between the two, perhaps four feet tall, and was most likely the fir darrig. They were rat-faced and rat-tailed bipeds who preferred to wear red coats redolent of hot rubbish juice. Temperamentally they were like football fans who didn’t wait for an excuse to get into a brawl. They had an impressive vertical leap, and they liked to lay about them with a club-like shillelagh.

  As the ol’ cat eyes kicked in and the figures sharpened and brightened, the leprechaun leapt at me, the fir darrig bounced toward Buck, and the clurichaun stagger-charged Nadia in the center. I noticed that he was armed with something besides a gun this time—a hatchet in his right hand and a dagger in the left. (Did he bring the aioli?) Both the fir darrig and the leprechaun had shillelaghs cocked in their hands, which they brought down for an opening strike, and while I’m sure Buck and Nadia successfully dodged their opponents, I didn’t. The burl on the end of the shillelagh smashed into my left cheek—the same one the barghest had shredded—probably because I was worrying about my companions and not paying full attention to the leprechaun.

  But that got my attention.

  Pain exploded underneath my eye, and I nearly fell over but managed to keep my feet by staggering back. The leprechaun landed on the soft turf and spun around, twirling his shillelagh as a manic grin split his face.

  “Evenin’, squire! Hee hee hee! Will ye be havin’ some more?” And he came at me again, on the same side since he could no doubt see that I had my left eye closed and it would probably swell shut soon anyway. I rotated my left side back so I faced him with my right foot forward and my cane held defensively, and when he swung at me I pivoted to the left on that right foot to make him miss but whipped my fist down in that direction at the same time, my cane trailing along the line of my forearm until the end of it caught him high on the left cheek also. An eye for an eye. His appetite for cheery banter evaporated, and he growled at me instead.

  “Oh ho,” he said. “Bad move, me boy. I’ll be eating your liver in a few minutes and feeding the rest of ye to the village dogs.”

  Judging by what Cowslip had told us about the corrupted Fae’s new dietary preferences, that had probably been his plan regardless of whether I fought back or not, so if I was going to fall to this Irish blighter, I might as well go down the hard way.

  I wondered where Cowslip had gotten to but didn’t dare take my eyes off the leprechaun, even to check on the others. I heard some grunts and yelps of pain but had no idea who was making them.

  The leprechaun was watching me move, trying to spot weaknesses, but it was still my left side where he’d initially tagged me. I was showing him nothing but my right side and a cautious defense. I’d opened a gash on his cheek and he had some blood sheeting down there, but his vision hadn’t been damaged.

  My long topcoat did me a service in the sense that it hid my hips and legs; he couldn’t look at them and predict where I’d move next. But he was fast. Even sped up and stronger than usual, I had trouble fighting off his next attack, which involved him leaping at my face and then dropping his shillelagh mid-jump to latch on to my arm and lock up my cane with it.

  I supposed I did not, in fact, fight it off, because he held on tightly to my arm and then swung a chubby and dirty foot at my chin and tagged me. My teeth closed on my tongue and I tasted blood, and the wee bastard cackled. Rather than try to shake the leprechaun off my arm, I simply went horizontal and dropped on top of him. The air whooshed out of his lungs as my full weight plowed him into the turf and the cane pressed into his diaphragm, making sure he was empty. I didn’t want him to refill, so I shifted my weight, dragged the cane across his throat, and pressed down.

  The leprechaun kicked me savagely enough in the ribs that I nearly rolled away, and he socked me good a couple of times in the ear so that I probably did sustain hearing loss after all, but this was going to be my best shot, so I endured it and kept up the pressure until the mad light in his eyes snuffed out.

  The wailing of the banshees changed with his death. It didn’t cease, but the mindless gabble altered to a slightly different mindless gabble. And it changed again as Buck Foi threw up his hands in victory over a still form and said, “That’s right, ya bastard!”

  But Nadia was still locked in combat with the clurichaun and having serious trouble with him. There was blood on her shirt from a stab wound—the first time, to my knowledge, that anyone had ever wounded her. How had he managed that? I hadn’t thought it possible.

  “Do ye need any help?” Buck asked, saying what I was about to say myself.

  “Naw, piss off, both of ye!” Nadia snarled. “I’m gonnay leather this wee dick.”

  I scanned the hillside and the forest and then the sky to make sure reinforcements weren’t incoming. The bean sídhe were circling around the bound tree still, screeching and ululating, and Cowslip was hovering high in the air behind the clurichaun, carefully keeping some distance between herself and the bean sídhe but also wary of what else might emerge from the mountain.

  The clurichaun was cackling and barely upright but still keeping Nadia off-balance and defensive with wild swings of his hatchet and dagger. She kept giving ground, dodging his swings and neglecting to take advantage of several opportunities when his drunken follow-throughs left him vulnerable to a counterattack. Had she lost her gift, I wondered? If so, she could be in serious jeopardy, because she wasn’t an accomplished or disciplined fighter otherwise.

  Taking a few steps closer, I searched my inner pockets and fished out a Sigil of Knit Flesh that she could use on that stab wound. My face throbbed and my left eye was functionally useless due to swelling, but I didn’t think it was time to look to my own relief.

  “I’ll catch y—urp!—eventually,” the clurichaun said, feinting with the dagger and then swinging the hatchet instead, which Nadia ducked. “Ye look delicious, ye know.”

  He swiped again at her, this time a backhand, which left his torso open, and he raised his dagger to parry an anticipated strike from Nadia’s sword. She did begin a swing that would have been blocked by his dagger, except that she rotated her wrist and dropped her arm, pointing the sharp end up, and then lifted it straight up his middle, opening a gash from his belly to his collarbone and even nicking his jawline. He instinctively curled in upon himself at that, and now he was open to attack from the sides.

  Nadia turned her wrist again with the sword high in the air and caught him on the side of the neck with a downward chop. It lodged in his flesh and she let it go.

  “Hurrk,” the clurichaun said, sinking to his knees. He dropped his dagger to grab the sword and keep its weight from making the cut any worse.

  “Looks like I caught ye instead,” Nadia said. He threw his hatchet at her, feebly, which she easily sidestepped, and she hawked up a nice phlegm globber and spat it expertly at his face once he toppled onto his side in the grass. “May Lhurnog eat yer pissed and poxy corpse in the afterlife.”

  I handed her the sigil and she thanked me for it, popping the seal and waiting for the stab wound to close.

  [How’d he get you? I didn’t see it happen.]

  “He was so drunk I couldn’t predict his movements. He didn’t know what he was going to do, so I didn’t either. The agility boost saved me. Thanks for that.”r />
  The clurichaun gasped and died in the turf, and the howling of the banshees changed once again. This time, however, they were synchronized and singing the same nonsense syllables, a chorus of madness.

  “Can ye do anything tae make them stop?” Buck asked. “That really gets on my nerves.”

  I shook my head. [One more member of the Fae to die here yet, if I’m interpreting their behavior correctly. That’s either you, or Cowslip, or the undine hiding somewhere in the hillside there.]

  Buck’s mouth drew into a tight line, and his eyebrows knit together as he thought about it.

  “We’re all changed, is what ye’re saying tae me now. Because the bean sídhe can’t call out our old names anymore.”

  [Aye. It worries me.]

  “Well, it’s fated, in’t it? The bean sídhe have the sight, like Nadia here, but different. If I’m gonnay croak and shite my drawers in the next few minutes, it doesnae matter if I stay here or go inside. Sumhin will get me either way. And if I am gonnay get got, I don’t want it tae be out here tryin’ tae keep ma shorts clean with cowardice. So let’s go, old man. Once more untae the breach, as that English bastard Henry said.”

  I blinked at the reference. [You know Henry V?]

  “Brighid’s a goddess of poetry. We’ve been over this. And ye know I like Shakespeare, except when he killed Rosencrantz.”

  [Okay, if you’re ready, we’ll go. Nadia?]

  “It stings and itches and I’m a bit light-headed, but it’s sewn up, I think. What’s the plan?”

  [If Cowslip is right, there are at least three and maybe up to eight armed agents inside, plus the undine.]

  A low roll of laughter bubbled out of Buck, and we regarded him warily.

  “We can use some evenin’ of the odds, am I right? I’ve got just the thing.”

  He fairly pranced away to where he’d left his bag on the ground and slung it over his shoulder, then waved at us as he jogged toward the cliffside.

  “Come on, it’s time for mayhem and that!”

  CHAPTER 29

  The Dripping Deep

  Nadia and I shrugged at each other and followed. I’m not an excellent cross-country jogger, but the sigils hadn’t worn off yet, so we were able to make it uphill as the dust cloud settled down. I got my first good look at the entrance to the CIA facility.

  The Sigil of Unchained Destruction had punched a yawning black hole through the outer defenses, through which one could walk over pulverized rock. None of it was cement, which Nadia commented on.

  “Shouldn’t there be cement and steel rods and that?” she asked.

  [Clíodhna probably built it all with the help of the local elemental. The rock was reshaped internally. No construction needed except for the electronics and security.]

  There were steel doors, however, bowed and misshapen now and through which we’d have no trouble walking—no retinal scans or swipe cards needed. But there were most likely gun barrels in that darkness, waiting for us to step into their line of fire.

  “That’s a death trap right there,” Buck said, jabbing his finger at what looked more like a mine shaft full of rabid bats than a secure intelligence bunker. “Nae chance in all the hells I’m gonnay walk intae that without knowing what’s in there. So it was nice of Hatcher tae provide us with a bag full o’ disposable minions, in’t it?”

  He upended his bag on the ground, and a mess of painted miniatures tumbled out. There were green-skinned goblins, as he’d remarked upon earlier, but many others as well. Trolls and dwarfs and elves with various swords and hammers and axes. They made a tinkling noise as they crashed into one another.

  “Are those metal?” Nadia asked.

  “Aye. Pewter, I think. Hard enough to put a hurtin’ on and not be hurt by a brush-off.”

  “What do ye mean?”

  “I mean this is how we win the numbers game.” He drew in a deep breath and moved his hands in circles, spreading his fingers out over the figures as he spoke some words in Old Irish. When he finished, a tiny shimmer rippled in the air above the miniatures and they moved.

  They stepped silently off their bases and grouped themselves by species, and Nadia whooped. “Fucking hell, Buck, that’s as creepy as it is cool!”

  The four squads hefted their weapons and stretched, and Buck nodded approvingly. “Time tae throw some magic at their science.” I held up a hand as he drew breath to give them orders. “Wot?”

  [Maybe throw both magic and science at them. Nadia, does your phone have a video-chat app?]

  “Aye.”

  In less than a minute, Buck had a squad of painted armored trolls carrying Nadia’s phone into the yawning mouth of the facility. It had Nadia’s face on it, since we had started a chat outside and Nadia was using my phone. I wasn’t sure how well the signal would carry in the facility, but this would give us our best chance to talk to someone and maybe negotiate a surrender. I’d coached Nadia a bit on what to say and promised her a new phone if they destroyed hers.

  Buck waited a minute, then sent the remaining squads of miniatures in behind the trolls in case they needed “a military solution.”

  “Are ye controlling them individually?” Nadia asked.

  “Naw. It’s an enchantment of autonomous animation with only basic goals given.”

  Nadia began shouting into my phone. Hers was on speaker. “Hey! Any of ya tits still alive in there? We want tae help. Or at least talk if ye don’t want any help. Can we talk? Hello? Hellooooo?”

  We were seeing nothing on the screen, and Nadia shot me a questioning glance. I twirled my finger in a circle to indicate she should keep going.

  “Oi! Ya bastards! Someone pick up. I’ve got recipes. Books full of elf erotica, people just nibbling on pointy ears for pages and pages, and I promise you’ll never think of ear foreplay the same way afterward. I’ve got some fondue in the van. I know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. Elvis too. Mulder and Scully. Cagney and Lacey. Thelma and Louise.”

  I had no idea what tangent she’d gone off on, but Buck chimed in with “Starsky and Hutch.”

  “That’s right, Starsky and Hutch. Turner and fucking Hooch. And, oh, yeah. Hatcher! Simon Hatcher. We got Simon Hatcher. I mean our people got him in Virginia. Don’t ye want tae hear about Simon Hatcher?”

  That got a response, as I thought it might. Someone picked up the phone and said, “Who is this?” The face on the screen was poorly lit, a torch off camera providing the only illumination. It was a white man in his late thirties or early forties, I guessed, with some stubble on his chin and a tie loosened underneath his collared shirt. His accent was American.

  “I’m the one who put down yer clurichaun,” Nadia said. “Time to settle up all his outstanding bar tabs.”

  “Who are you?” he demanded again.

  “Someone who knows exactly what she’s doing,” Nadia replied. “Just wanted tae make that clear before ye say something like, You have no idea who you’re dealing with.” She mocked his accent at the end of that, and I had difficulty stifling a laugh. “I have a really fucking good idea, awright? Ye’re a twat from the CIA doing some illegal shite, and we’re here tae stop ye. But that doesnae mean ye have tae go home in a box. We just need that undine ye’re keeping in there and ye can go home and grind yer naughty bits against the corresponding bits of a consenting partner.”

  “What have you done with our operatives?”

  “We killed them deid. They didnae give us a choice. But we’re giving you one.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just walk away and live to do some more spy shite in the future. Ye’re free tae go but not tae stay. This operation’s over. Cut yer losses and move on.”

  “Well—”

  “Give me that,” a new voice said, angry and male. The picture on the phone changed to an older white man, perhaps my own age, but clean-shaven and with a face twisted with rage and boils and burn scars. He looked like the picture of Dorian Gray, the corrupted one that showed all the sins written on the flesh.
He might have been a handsome blond lad in his youth, but he had clearly been up to some wicked shite since then. Maybe some lab experiments gone wrong.

  “That’s him,” Cowslip hissed, hovering over Nadia’s shoulder. “That’s the bloody doctor who did this to me!”

  “Listen to me, whoever you are,” he spat. “You’ve got maybe three minutes until a drone strike takes you out. You’re outgunned.”

  Nadia checked with me and I shook my heid, pointing to my hat and reminding her that the sigils would make targeting impossible.

  “I rather think it’s you who needs tae be worrying, mate. Ye might have noticed we’ve taken out your gunmen and blown open the door with little trouble, and the Fae you’ve corrupted are in violation of a treaty with humanity.”

  “What treaty?” he spluttered.

  “It’s a need-tae-know thing, and now ye need tae know. The Fae are no allowed tae frolic about here and eat humans, and we’re the folks who enforce that. Hatcher is mince, and yer operation’s tits up. So come on out, eh? First round’s on me after we take care of the undine.”

  “Hatcher is dead?”

  “He’s no deid, he’s just neutralized. And there will be no more Fae for ye tae corrupt. We shut off that pipeline. So give it up.”

  “I can’t give up, even if that’s all true, and I don’t think it is.” The unnamed doctor sneered at the camera, and for me it was disheartening evidence that Saxon had been right: The scientists who willingly work for governments and their agendas might actually be the evil sort. At least this one was. It broke my heart to think of all the suffering and death that could be laid at his door.

  “We will defend ourselves and our assets,” he continued. “If you come in here, you’ll get nothing from us but bullets.”

  “Awright, fine, but can ye let the others make their own decision? We’d rather no kill anyone, but if ye force us tae come in after ye, there will be no mercy.”

  “They’re under oath every bit as much as I am, and they’re also under my orders. If you come in here, you’ll be shot.”