by A. E. Lowan
Jessie looked away from Erik, to Winter who nodded encouragement, and then up at the faerie king, who was even taller than Erik. “We were figuring out how to help.”
He blinked. Once. “I see.” He looked at Winter as if he might bail, but then he seemed to reconsider. “Then everyone sit down and we will come up with a plan.” He lifted the spell of silence and the vines receded.
Vivaine stood naked and pissed in all her brown-skinned glory while ignoring Darian who was trying to hand her his shirt. “And who the hell are you?”
The faerie king rose to his full, considerable height and met her fierce gaze. “I am Ceallach, the king who is going to help you misfits save your city.” He turned away, summarily dismissing her, and addressed his soldiers in the hallway. “If you can separate the injured from the able-bodied, we can begin.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Had they been fighting for an hour or an eternity? Cian was sweating beneath his borrowed helm in the cool night, rain running in rivulets over the matte black metal. Etienne had threatened to lock him up in Mulcahy House unless he promised to stay away from the fighting and so here he was, in the back of the battle with the magicians and the healers. Watching Etienne weave through the battlefield with his insertion team towards the tower’s side door.
Watching with his frantically beating heart in his mouth.
Winter’s team was already out of sight, their goal the utility access tunnel leading in from the edge of the corporate reserve to the subbasement where the rift lay. Not being able to see them only served to feed his anxiety, though, filling his mind with frightening visions. He wished she could be back here with him, fulfilling her role as healer, but she was needed more as a wizard tonight. She was needed to seal Midir’s rift. Jessie had never sealed a rift by herself before, and they needed Winter’s expertise down there in case something went wrong.
On the battlefield knight clashed with knight and lesser fae fought in packs to bring the mighty sidhe lords down. On their own side, Erik’s vampires fought with blade and gun, while therian of all shapes and sizes fought in bodies both furred and clothed. Vivaine and Darian had finally made the joint decision to bring their wolves in on Seahaven’s side, single-handedly swelling the army’s numbers by well over two hundred bodies.
Etienne dove into the gap between combatants and made for the tower’s glass doors, trusting his party to follow. He could hear Lana’s soft cursing just behind him and the rhythmic, metallic steps of Scoithín, King Ceallach’s champion in his heavy armor, who now bore Keeper at his lord’s order. Unseelie, both. Wonderful. Behind them were nine warriors comprised of therian, vampire, and more Unseelie sidhe. Twelve in all.
An auspicious number to take down a great prince, or so Ceallach thought.
Etienne would have liked to have been anywhere else.
But no, here they were with two missions. Find Senán and draw Midir away from the rift so Winter could seal it before it blew open at midnight. They knew based on Cian’s brief time here that Senán was probably being kept somewhere in the penthouse.
Midir, however, could be anywhere in the building.
The glass front of the building was in sight as they ran, and through the glass, armed guards. Which was to be expected. Perhaps not so many, though. Midir had prepared.
But it was too late and they had been seen. Bullets created spider web patterns in the glass and one of the wolves yipped in pain, his steps only faltering for a moment, the wound already healing. It took more than a single bullet to the body to stop a therian in full charge. Etienne, on the other hand, was not a therian.
Not for the first time Etienne wished he did not have to wear Agmundr’s rig to have access to his full strength and speed. To access its magic, he needed it in contact with his body through no more than fabric, so he was unable to wear it over armor. As a result, his torso was protected only by his clothing and brown leather jacket, while his legs, arms, groin, head, and shoulders sported light sidhe steel protection.
There was no point in pulling the bullet-damaged doors open. Etienne leapt at full speed, curling and twisting sideways to protect himself from broken glass, shattered the door with his body, and landed lightly on his feet on the other side as he skidded a bit on shards, Glock already drawn. A bullet caught him in the shoulder, sparking off his armor and spinning him to one side, numbing his arm for a moment. Someone was sporting something high caliber.
But so was he.
Ambidextrous as any sidhe, he switched hands and took aim. Thirteen bullets per magazine. Whole lot of guards. Each round needed to count. His targets were human security guards, paid to be here he imagined, but he had neither time nor inclination to sympathy. They were trying to kill him.
He would return the favor.
It was impossibly loud within the echoing confines of the marble and glass lobby, gunshots rendering all other sound useless. Lana slid into position on Etienne’s numbed side and raised her own gun, a .45 just barely small enough for her hands. The vampire who landed at Etienne’s other side took a bullet to the head before the glass hit the floor, blood spraying Etienne’s exposed cheek as she dropped like a stone. Time seemed to slow down as Etienne leaned further into the gun rig’s magics, drawing on all the power it had to offer, and his first victim was the vampire’s killer.
These humans were firing out of fear, not training. They were not soldiers. They stood in a ragtag line to keep from hitting each other, but neglected to use the central desk as cover to protect themselves. Using the preternatural speed of the sidhe, Etienne shot them without mercy, without pity, as the rest of his team came through the glass. He knew there would be no reasoning with them, no talking them down. There was only death.
Scoithín burst through a window, glass shards exploding around him and pattering against Etienne’s jacket and helm like rain. His longsword was drawn, a named blade Etienne had not been introduced to, Keeper still sheathed on his back. Keeper was not a blade for this sort of fight.
The Unseelie champion landed with one foot on the floor and with the other launched into his sword dance, heedless of the gunfire, bullets striking his sidhe steel armor with little more than scorch marks. Even as Etienne was calling for their side to cease firing Scoithín reached the unarmored guards with preternatural speed and what amounted to a three-foot-long razor blade.
It was over in seconds.
They left the vampire where she lay and headed for the stairs. The time to gather the dead would come after the battle’s end. The power had been cut to the building, which rendered the elevators useless but it did the same to the door locks. The building was wide open to them.
Etienne’s ears rang like cathedral bells as he looked up the stairwell, lit only by emergency lights. The remaining two vampires, both soldiers before their transformations, moved past him, their eyes infinitely better in the near-dark than his. They slipped by in what Etienne had to assume was silence up the twilit stairs a level before one of them made some sort of hand signal Etienne did not recognize. His mouth tightened with irritation. Those signals hadn’t made any sense during the war, either, when Arthur and his fellow soldiers had used them. He’d simply mimicked their movements.
Scoithín hooked his thumb into his belt and looked up the stairs at the two vampires. Etienne was unable to make out his expression through the champion’s heavy helm, but his dark eyes glittered through the eye slits. “What in Dagda’s name are they doing?” he asked with bullet-deafened volume.
Etienne winced. It was loud even to his deafened ears. Idiot Unseelie.
The vampires and therian with their highly sensitive hearing flinched and looked up the stairs, guns drawn.
But there was nothing there.
Sighs of relief went all around, and Etienne scowled up at the Unseelie champion. “Perhaps next time you should think before bellowing like a cow in heat.”
Scoithín narrowed his eyes at Etienne. “You are beneath me, half-breed.” And with that he began
to climb.
Lana made a face at the champion’s back. “Pleasant, isn’t he?” she said to Etienne in soft English. She was difficult to understand with his returning hearing.
Etienne wanted to forcibly bounce a bullet off the back of Scoithín’s helm, but it would be a waste of good ammunition. “A joy.”
As they climbed the stairs he ejected the empty magazine from his Glock and pulled a fresh one from his jacket pocket, sliding it home, grateful to Erik for providing replacements. He had loaded the six-shooter Agmundr with six of its remaining seven companion bullets, each a small, lethal work of dwarven art and magic designed to bring death to the sidhe. Seven remaining, representing four dead sidhe lords and one bullet lost under… ignominious circumstances.
Just then sound erupted into the stairwell from two floors up and through the ringing in his ears Etienne heard raised voices. He kicked open the closest door and pushed the therian nearest him through it, funneling their team out of the stairwell.
They found themselves in a huge, open space, broken up only by low, fabric-covered walls forming endless squares. It reminded Etienne of some sort of simple labyrinth. Across the space from them a red sign glowed in the darkness: Exit. There was another stairwell. Etienne jerked his head that way and dropped low, using the fabric walls for what little cover they offered. The team followed suit, following the faerie knight along the narrow path towards the other stairs.
The door behind them opened and Etienne looked back to see more human guards pouring out into the fabric labyrinth. A hue and cry went up and bullets chased them across the space, Etienne cursing vehemently. They could not risk returning fire without giving up their position.
The squawk of shoulder mics announced the return of Etienne’s hearing as well as another group of guards bursting through the stairwell door on the other side of the office space. They were being boxed in! Now they had no other choice than to shoot their way out of a crossfire with minimal cover. Etienne crouched low and turned to his own shoulder mic. “Etienne here. Erik, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear. What’s your situation?”
“We’re pinned down on the fourteenth floor. Could use a little assistance if you can spare it.”
“I’ll send someone right away. Hold on.”
Etienne blew out a breath. Hold on. Assuming the lobby was still clear, and there really was no assuming that given the guards on this floor, it could take another team maybe fifteen minutes to cross the battlefield, and another five to get up the stairs. Twenty minutes, if all went smoothly.
It was a fucking eternity.
Etienne checked the slide on his Glock and nodded to his team.
Someone screamed.
Etienne whipped his head around. It hadn’t been one of his people, but rather a human guard. What the fuck…?
“Summer’s Get!” The voices were thick with mucus and gave Etienne a terrible urge to clear his throat. “My dread lord Midir desires your presence.”
Fuck. Etienne raised his head to look. He couldn’t not.
Tall enough to brush the ceiling with its head – the humanoid one – a nuckalevee advanced towards them. An unholy, skinless nightmare of horse and rider fused together at the rider’s naked, legless hips, the veins across its crimson, glistening shoulders were open to view and pulsing with effort. Exposed muscles flexed and contracted over white bone and tendon and each skeletal, eyeless face spoke in unison. Drying seaweed and slime dropped from its haunches to leave a trail behind it. What the hell was it doing here? Waiting to be turned loose in the Pacific?
The human guards were scrambling away from the Unseelie horror and converging on their position. Scoithín drew his sword.
Etienne laid a hand on the champion’s wrist and earned a dirty look for his trouble. “Wait. We can always shoot them in a minute.”
“I’d rather kill them now, half-breed.”
Etienne watched the humans approach. “I’m in charge here, by your king’s command, Unseelie. I’m responsible for your, and everyone else’s, life. My charge is to get you to Midir so you can skewer him… and keep you alive until then. I say stand down.”
Scoithín frowned, but lowered the tip of his blade.
Etienne figured it was as good as he was going to get and did not argue the details. The other three Unseelie would follow their champion’s lead and that was what mattered.
The first of the human guards came close, gun drawn but pointed at the nuckalevee. He took in their team, the three therian in fur form and two remaining vampires, the Unseelie in their matte black armor, his eyes showing white around the edges. “What the hell is that thing?”
Etienne took a calculated risk and put his gun up. “Your boss has interesting pets. That’s one of them. It’s a nuckalevee.”
“A nut- what?” The human looked from the approaching fae with horror and confusion back to Etienne. “What are you doing here?”
Etienne’s mouth pulled into a reckless grin. “We’re here to kill that thing, and then your boss. And then save the city. Maybe the world.”
“Save the city? From… from things like that?”
“That’s it exactly.”
The human nodded, perhaps a little too fast, but he nodded all the same. “All right. I’m Chuck-”
“Summer’s Get!”
Chuck crouched low at the nuckalevee’s bellow, as did his fellow guards. “Who’s that supposed to be?”
Etienne reached for his sword hilt. “That would be me.” Much as he hated that name, he hated “Queen’s Son” more. If Midir wanted to needle him he’d have to get to know him better. He put one hand on the fabric wall and prepared to leap over.
“How can we help?”
Etienne looked over his shoulder. “Shoot it, not us. Don’t die.”
Chuck smiled for the first time. “Deal.”
Etienne’s grin widened. “Then let’s kill a monster.” With that he leapt over the low wall, drawing his sword as he cleared the partition, flickers of movement on either side telling him that his team was moving with him.
The nuckalevee was ready for them. The rider snapped a webbed hand out and a wickedly barbed trident appeared in its grip, the spreading tendons of its double skeletal grin drawing Etienne and his companions up short. This was no average nuckalevee. “You will come with me now, Summer’s Get,” it said in its strange double voice.
Etienne narrowed his eyes. “Not a chance.” He drew the new handgun that Jessie had acquired, this potion-shooting paintball thing, and pointed it at the Unseelie monstrosity. Time to-
The stairwell door opened and this time a handful of fae soldiers came spilling out. “Sidhe, stay behind me! Watch that trident!” Etienne pointed the paintball gun and fired at the oncoming fae. A small surprise of bright blue exploded across the point man’s breastplate and with a billow of smoke he was gone. Etienne grinned and shot down the others, watching the clear tube on top of the gun empty until he had only a few potion balls left. That was fine. He just needed one to send the nuckalevee back to whatever hole in Faerie it had crawled out of.
Scoithín was toe-to-hoof with the creature, dodging the horse head’s vicious, pointed teeth, his longsword locked with the trident. The nuckalevee landed a bite on the champion’s arm, denting his heavy armor before he was able to wrest himself free.
Lana vaulted over the back of one of the wolves as he bit at the thing’s legs, a dagger in each hand, and landed on the horse’s neck, sinking blades deep into flesh. The nuckalevee screamed with both voices and grabbed Lana by her hair, throwing her hard into the cubes.
The nuckalevee reared up and kicked Scoithín back.
Etienne brought the paintball gun up, aiming for the bulk of the creature’s body. It didn’t have to be a killing shot, just a sure one. He pulled the trigger.
Click.
What the fuck? Etienne frowned and had just enough time to notice the slight offset of the gas canister before the nuckalevee’s hoof dealt him a glancing bl
ow to the hand, crushing the barrel and numbing Etienne’s arm. He dashed backwards, cradling his useless limb.
Lana came crawling out from the cubes, looking a bit worse for wear but carrying some sort of small cylinder… thing. She came to a crouch and then darted between snapping wolves, slashing blades, and flashing hooves, only stopping when she was directly beneath the belly of the beast. Between her teeth she held a lighter. What was she going to do with tha-?
Lana leaned back on her knees, flicked the lighter, held up the cylinder, and engulfed the drying, skinless nuckalevee in flames.
It shrieked and shrieked and tried to get away, but the rest of the team held it in reach, its flesh crisping and curling away, until it was clawing at itself to escape the pain of its charring bones. Scoithín hacked at the burning body with his longsword, until the trident lay on the carpet beside its twitching arm, and first the rider and then the horse were deprived of their heads.
Silence descended on the fabric labyrinth, broken only by the dull popping of flames.
Chuck appeared with another canister, this one red, and used it to spit white foam all over the nuckalevee’s remains. The security guard shrugged when he realized everyone was looking at him. “No reason to burn down the building with us inside, right?”
Lana smiled at him, looking pleased for some reason.
And then fae soldiers came pouring through the stairwell doors.
Perfect.
Etienne drew his gun and began firing.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Cian overheard Etienne on Erik’s shoulder mic and his heart tried to leap from his chest. He needed to help! But how? He rounded on the Vampire King. “Send me to Etienne with that team.”
Erik’s eyes never left the battlefield. “Boy, even if I were to risk getting shot by that crazy faerie knight for sending you in, I can’t get a team through, yet.”
“But you just said–”
“I know what I said and I have all intentions of sending a team up the instant I’m able. But our forces are barely holding on to what ground we currently have. The only way I can get a team in that tower is if we punch a fresh hole through their lines and that’s going to take time and energy.”
