by M. D. Massey
Colin perked up at that. “Any last words of advice?”
Finnegas touched his index finger to his chin, and looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose I should tell you what you’ll be facing. The Avartagh is crafty and he has the power to disguise himself, which is how he was able to fool everyone when he first arrived. He is also quite strong and quick, although he prefers to use trickery to defeat his opponents, instead of sheer strength. Oh, and he bites, so don’t expect a fair fight.”
“Sounds tough. I suppose I have some sort of super-warrior powers that I can break out at just the right time to defeat the Avartagh. Am I right?”
Finnegas started laughing, and laughed so hard he bent over in two and slapped his thighs. “Oh, that’s a good one, boy.” He wheezed out a few more belly laughs, and wiped his eyes. “Ah, you’re a funny one, but you watch too much television. No, you won’t manifest ‘super powers’—at least not at your age. The fianna train for years to learn how to channel their talents, and you haven’t even started your training yet. No, you’ll have to defeat the Avartagh on surprise and luck alone—well, and that club you’re carrying.”
Colin rolled his eyes. “Great, some motivational speaker you’ve turned out to be.” He turned to Jesse and motioned her to follow. “C’mon, Jesse. Let’s go get this over with.”
Jesse gave the old man a mean look and whispered under her breath as she passed. “You could have just lied to him, you know.”
The old man managed to look mildly offended. “What, and give him false hope? There’s enough of that in the world these days, I can tell you that. No, he needs to go into battle knowing that he wins or dies today based on his own will and wits.”
Colin put his fingers in his ears. “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA! I’m not listening to you right now! LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!”
Jesse pushed him out of the tunnel. “Oh, let’s go, you big baby. I mean, how tough can a three-foot tall vampire be?”
15
They had no trouble finding the entrance to the maintenance tunnels below City Hall. Once they were in, they found the exit to the building and took a peek down the hallway. “I seem to remember that the mayor’s office is on the top floor,” Jesse said. “That means we’ll have to sneak past them.”
Colin peered over her shoulder to see what she was referring to. “All I see are a bunch of cheerleaders. They’re kind of cute, but they don’t look so tough.”
“Um, Colin? Look at their feet. Somebody seriously needs a pedicure.”
Colin looked down, and at first all he saw were normal feet in regular old tennis shoes. But, something was off about the way the cheerleaders were walking. He blinked, and then he saw that instead of human legs and feet, the girls had goat’s legs and hooves.
“Ugh, that’s gross! I’m going to have nightmares about this for weeks.”
“Yeah, well don’t sweat it, slugger—I think those girls are out of your league, anyway. For one, they look varsity squad to me, and second—oh crud, one of them saw me!”
One of the cheerleaders shook a pom-pom covered fist directly at Colin and smiled a wicked smile at him. “There you are! We’ve been expecting you.” Dance music with a strong bass line started playing, and the girls began doing a cheer routine in the hallway. “Colin, Colin, he’s our man, come on over, yes you can!”
Colin’s eyes glazed over, and his club slipped out of his fingers as he began walking toward the unseelie cheer squad. A goofy smile spread across his face, and he plodded slowly down the hallway.
Jesse stepped out in front of him, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “Colin, snap out of it!” She slapped him, at first lightly, and then hard across the face, to no effect. Then, she turned and fired a crossbow bolt at the head cheerleader, but the girl deftly batted it aside as she cart-wheeled in front of her squad.
Jesse turned to face Colin again and tried to push him back down the hall. Unfortunately, he was too strong for her, and continued his slow march toward certain doom. Throwing her hands up in the air, Jesse reached up, grabbed Colin on each side of his face, and kissed him, right on the mouth. She stayed there for a moment, until Colin’s eyes turned inward to focus on her lips, plastered to his own.
“Mrrrph!” was all he could manage to say. Jesse backed off, breathing heavily, while Colin stood in stunned silence.
She cocked her hip against her right hand, and tossed her hair back, pointing down the hall with her other hand. “You can thank me later. Now, would you please go kick some cheerleader butt?”
Colin blinked his eyes rapidly, then turned to pick up his bat. “Uh, sure thing. Um, yeah – getting right on that.” He walked past Jesse a few steps, then turned back to her, shook his head, and ran after the cheerleaders. He had no words for what had just taken place.
Jesse bit her lip and sighed. “Aw, man, I hope this doesn’t complicate things,” she mumbled, under her breath.
Once the cheerleaders saw their spell was broken they scattered to the four directions, wanting no part of Colin and his war club. After watching the fae cheer squad flee, Jesse and Colin found the stairwell that led up to the executive offices.
Colin chuckled and nudged his best friend playfully. “That was quick thinking, back there. Um, thanks?”
Jesse looked down at her crossbow, failing to make eye contact with him. “Yeah, well—I didn’t want you to get eaten by the psycho cheerleaders from hell. I don’t know if you noticed, but that one in front had a seriously messed up grill. It looked like she might have been taking vampire lessons from this Avartagh character.”
Colin grinned. “Well—thanks. I owe you one.”
She smiled and nudged him back, hard enough to push him into the wall. “You owe me tons. And don’t forget it.”
“I won’t—but you know this breaks our agreement, right?”
Jesse threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “Argh! I knew you were going to make this weird.” She stomped off up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
“Jesse, wait! What did I say? I’m just kidding—honest!” As she ducked around the corner out of sight, he sighed and took off at a run after her. He caught up with her as she reached the second floor landing, and pulled up behind her as she stopped dead in her tracks. “Why are you stopping?”
“I think we have a problem, slugger. You’re up to bat.”
Colin looked around her and saw what she was referring to—it was the red caps from his house and the tunnels, and they looked pretty hacked.
One of them began licking his lips. His teeth were coated in yellow-green filth. Their hats looked wet, as if they’d been recently soaked in dye… or blood. “Finally, a decent meal. I call dibs on the girl’s drumsticks.”
Their leader slapped the one who spoke up. “Silence! I called dibs already. And besides, there’s plenty to go around. So long as we get them to tell us where the book is, the Avartagh says we can do with them as we want.”
Jesse started to go after the red caps, but Colin held her back. She shook a finger at them while she strained to get past Colin’s arm. “Now look here: first off, no one is having my ‘drumsticks,’ and second, we’re not telling you squat!”
Colin stage whispered to her. “You can start shooting these guys at any time now.”
Jesse stage whispered back, “Oh, yeah—I forgot I was holding this thing.” She shot the one that had called dibs on eating her, right between the eyes. The thing toppled backward, kicked its foot a few times, then went still.
As the other red caps looked on in shock at the fate of their former partner in crime, Colin leapt forward with a war whoop and batted them both into the wall, where they crumpled in a heap of splayed arms and legs. He chuckled to himself.
“Nice shot,” he told Jesse.
“Nice swing,” she replied. “Ready to go take on the mayor?”
“Ready when you are, but I have a sneaking suspicion he knows we’re coming. So, as soon as you see him, shoot him—alright?”
“You got
it, chief.” Colin pushed open the door to the second floor, and Jesse followed him through.
16
As they exited the stairwell, there were elevators to their left, and a frosted glass door that said “Mayor’s Office” directly in front of them. Colin pushed through the door with Jesse not far behind.
Having decided the time for subterfuge was over, he walked boldly down the center of the hallway with his bat held over his shoulders, one hand resting on each end. Jesse took up the rear, crossbow reloaded with a bolt at the ready. They approached a reception area that was backed by a wall, with two entrances on either side. The wall obscured the view beyond, so Jesse tapped Colin on the shoulder to get his attention.
“You go left, and I go right?” she suggested. Colin nodded, and they positioned themselves with their backs to the wall at the corners of the entryways. Colin silently counted with his fingers to three, and on three they both burst around the corners of the wall, ready for whatever might pop out at them.
Fortunately for them, nothing waited to jump them here. The second floor of City Hall housing the mayor’s office was deserted, and the desks and chairs that littered the long open work area before them appeared to have been disused and abandoned for weeks.
“Wow, I guess not much work has been getting done in the mayor’s office recently,” Colin said.
“According to my dad, that’d be business as usual,” replied Jesse. “Since the recession hit, he’s not too keen on politics in general and politicians in particular.”
“Well, now that I know the mayor is actually a vicious, blood-sucking dwarf, I’m not so keen on politicians, either.” Colin picked his way through the mess as he walked toward the large frosted glass door at the end of the room labeled “John Boynton, Mayor.”
As they approached the door it slowly creaked open, and there was the mayor sitting behind his desk, staring at them with a blank-eyed expression.
“Shoot him!” Colin cried.
“But he’s just sitting there—I don’t see any red glowing eyes or fangs!”
“It’s a trick! Just shoot him already!”
Jesse hesitated, then raised her crossbow. “Oh, alright,” she replied, and with a twang a crossbow bolt appeared in the mayor’s right shoulder. He slumped down in the chair and out of sight behind the desk.
“Well, that was easy,” Colin stated.
Jesse waved him forward with her free hand. “Go make sure he’s out of commission before he gets back up!”
Colin entered the mayor’s office and slowly tiptoed around his huge mahogany desk with his club and shield at the ready. As he peeked around the mayor’s desk, a confused expression crossed his face. “He’s out cold. Huh. I’d expected more of a fight from him than that.” He waited for a reply from Jesse, but instead heard nothing but silence.
“Jesse, I said he’s out cold.” All he heard in response was silence.
Colin peeked up over the desk, and saw his friend walking toward him from the reception area. At first she looked angry, for some reason. Then she smirked and made a ‘hurry up’ motion with her hand. “Well, if he’s out cold it’s our lucky day—finish him off!”
“I don’t know—it looks like he’s out of it, and to tell the truth, he seems pretty harmless.” Colin looked at the mayor again, and doubt began to settle in his gut. He turned back to his friend to gauge her response.
Jesse frowned and shook her head. “You don’t know that, Colin. It could just be the yew crossbow bolt that knocked him out. Didn’t Finnegas tell you something about it weakening him? He might wake up at any moment and kill us both. I know it seems cruel, but you have to do it.”
Colin looked at the mayor. “I don’t know Jess. It just seems wrong somehow.”
She looked a bit more irritated this time at his insistence that they spare the mayor. “Of course it seems wrong, because he looks like the mayor. But he’s not! And, if you want to save the town, us, your mom, and everyone else who lives here, you have to kill him. Now!”
“Maybe I could just tie him up—”
Jesse’s voice got two octaves deeper and a whole lot louder as she replied. “I said, finish him off!”
Colin wasn’t sure what to make of his friend and ally, the girl who had saved him from bullies and playground tyrants more times than he cared to count.
“Jesse, are you okay? You don’t look so good—in fact, you don’t sound so good either. Maybe you should just sit down while I tie Mr. Fake Mayor here up.”
Then, he looked more closely at his friend… and that’s when Colin realized that Jesse wasn’t Jesse at all.
17
Jesse threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. Her voice took on an even deeper timber as she spoke. “Argh! By the burning eye of Balor—do I have to do everything myself?”
At that moment, her eyes rolled back in her head and the whites of her eyes turned red as the fluorescent lights overhead began to flicker. Her eyelids and eye sockets began to bruise and darken, her skin became so pale it was nearly transparent, and veins popped out on her forehead and arms. Her hair began billowing around her face, although there was no breeze in the building.
Colin shook his head in disbelief. “You’re not Jesse.”
She replied in a deep, maniacal voice. “And what gave you that idea—boy?”
Not-Jesse spat the last word out as an accusation, and to Colin it seemed to carry all the hatred and venom of a decade of playground and schoolyard teasing and taunting.
“I search halfway around the world to find the heir of Finn McCool to take my revenge on his progeny, and all I find is a scared, pudgy whelp who sucks him thumb. Imagine my disappointment.” The not-Jesse thing looked at him and tsked in a mockery of pity.
Colin was angry, but frightened as well, and felt as if he might bolt at any moment. It was an unnatural fear, almost overwhelming at times. But soon he realized the fear wasn’t coming from him, but instead from the not-Jesse thing in front of him. He clutched his bat in both hands, still hesitant to strike his best friend should she turn out to be herself and under the influence of the Avartagh. He steeled his courage and spoke.
“What did you do with Jesse?”
“Are you worried about your friend—or perhaps merely frightened that she’s not here to save you? Poor, little Colin. How you shame your ancestors. You’re nothing more than a fat, scared boy who is still frightened to be alone, such a far cry from the warriors who once stood against me and my kind.”
Not-Jesse examined her nails while she feigned boredom and sighed. “Since it appears I won’t be able to frame you and your friend for the murder of the mayor, the least I can do is take her away from you—and sadly, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Colin’s hands turned white as they gripped his war club tightly at waist level. He hissed out the words as they escaped his gritted teeth. “Where—is—Jesse?”
Not-Jesse laughed and tossed her hair back. “Oh, she’s here somewhere—and I’m sure she’s having a splendid time with my baobhan sidhe, whom you’ve already met. You see, they don’t like to lose their prey, and when she spoiled all their fun they decided they didn’t like her very much. And although they’re partial to young men, they shouldn’t have much trouble draining her pretty veins dry before we’re finished here. So, I can still kill the mayor and make it look like it was you.” Not-Jesse looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose I can even pin Jesse’s death on you, too.”
Colin screamed, and it was a primal sound that drove up from his gut, through his lungs, and out his mouth like the roar of a lion. He charged the not-Jesse thing and swung with all his might, only to have her disappear like a wisp of smoke as his club passed harmlessly through empty space.
He heard a wicked laugh from behind, and then he was struck violently across the arm and shoulder. The impact tossed him like a rag doll, across the room and into a desk and chair. As Colin landed he lost his grip on the war club, and it went clattering across the floor.
He lay there stunned for a moment, then struggled to get up as he looked to see where the evil not-Jesse had gone. It only took a moment to spot her advancing on him from across the room. She’d take a slow step, then she would blur and move several feet toward him in an instant, just like in his dream.
Colin was petrified, because without his club he had no means of protecting himself. Then he remembered the shield Finnegas gave him, and fumbled around in his backpack for it. No sooner had he got it on his arm had the thing that wasn’t Jesse appeared in front of him. Not-Jesse immediately began hammering him with blows that felt like jackhammers, and he was barely able to block them all with the little shield.
The thing’s face was sculpted in hate, and it shouted angrily with words that punctuated each blow.
“For centuries I rotted in the ground, all due in no small part to your ancestor, that treacherous Fionn MacCumhaill! Then, I emerge to find a world where the Fair Folk are no longer feared and respected, where people use machines instead of magic, and where the line of McCool has abandoned the Isles and escaped to the New World. But I had vowed revenge, and revenge I’ll have, even if it’s on the miserable little shadow of a MacCumhaill that stands before me.”
Finally, Colin managed to get some space and rolled away from the Avartagh. He was bleeding from a split lip, had at least one loose tooth, and was having a hard time hearing from his right ear. Colin doubted he could withstand another attack like that, and searched the room for his club. Looking around frantically, he saw his bat was on the other side of the room from him, directly opposite and behind the ghoulish imitation of Jesse that stood in his way.
