“Ended this,” said Colby.
“They’ll kill us all, you know.”
“No. We have a deal. I know what they want now. And he’s standing right there.” He pointed to Knocks.
The two remaining angels helped Bertrand to his feet. Bertrand turned, looking at Colby, a broken arrow sticking out of one eye. He shook his head sadly. Then the angels took to the sky, carrying Bertrand away with them like a banner fluttering in the wind. Only the Sidhe and Knocks remained in the street now, staring toward the approaching rumble.
The Sidhe scattered and the hunt split up to run them down. Few got far before axes cleft them in two, clawed hands grabbing them by their hair, dragging them through the streets. Ruadhri ran, blindly firing arrows over his shoulder, looking for some sort of cover. As he rounded a corner, he saw two beasts bearing down on him. Then he turned to see two more coming from behind.
The clawed hands each grabbed a chunk or a limb before Ruadhri was torn completely apart, his head carried off by one rider, his torso by another.
Knocks looked down at Ewan, taking a deep, relaxed breath. “You don’t want to kill me yourself?”
“No,” said Colby. “You’ve damned yourself. They’re here for you now.”
Knocks looked up at Colby, smiling. He could hear the thundering hooves rumbling toward him. The ground shook, the heavens wept. For Knocks, it was all so perfect. “I was born in the rain, you know. On a morning a lot like this.”
“Enjoy dying in it, you son of a bitch,” said Colby, backing away, giving the hunt a wide berth.
Knocks nodded, looking up at the sky. “The legacy of a storm is not in the measure of its rainfall or the sound of its thunder, it is in the devastation it leaves behind. I’ve had a good run.” He cast his arms out wide, smiling broadly at Colby. “I wonder if my hand will be waiting for me in Hell.” He turned his head, staring at the oncoming stampede, thinking about the last lesson his mother ever taught him.
The front-most hoof of Tiffany Thatcher’s goat tore a hole in his head, splattering his brains across the pavement, each remaining hoof trampling his torso in half. The Wild Hunt roared past Colby without giving him a look, each carrying off a piece of Knocks with it. Once they all had passed, there wasn’t a spot of Knocks left in this world to remember him by—not so much as a single drop of his blood staining the pavement.
The riders continued on, but their hounds came to a stop, raising their heads into the air, letting out a soul-chilling howl, turning and racing off to catch up with their masters once more. And as quickly as they had entered this world, the hunt was gone, closing the gate behind them, leaving only the waning rumble of rolling thunder to signal their departure.
Colby kneeled down beside Ewan, the red puddle beneath him grown wide, thinned by the rain. There was little life left to leak out of him. Ewan stared up at the sky, unable to focus his eyes on anything.
“Ewan,” said Colby, putting his hand on his shoulder.
“You can’t see me,” said Ewan with a weak smile.
“Yes I can,” said Colby.
“No you can’t. I’m invisible.”
“You’re not invisi . . . ,” he said, then the memory caught up with him. Tears trickled down Colby’s face. Beneath him, Ewan died.
Colby could feel the swift tendrils of Hell closing in. Cold. Black. Angry.
“You can’t have him,” he said. Then he put a second hand on Ewan, evaporating every last bit of dreamstuff, sending it off into the city. No flower petals dropped to the ground; no smell lingered in the air; only his cap remained, staining the rainwater around it. “Go find her.”
Colby looked up, the streets swollen with fairies, approaching cautiously.
He turned to Yashar. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“There’s little left to say.”
“After a thousand cursed wishes, I guess you get used to this sort of thing, huh?”
“No,” said Yashar. “You never get used to it.”
“Nor should you,” said Bertrand, flapping above them. He looked down upon Colby with a bitter sadness. “You unleashed Hell. You shouldn’t have done that.”
“We were losing,” said Colby. “I had to do something.”
“No,” Bertrand said. “We weren’t losing. We lost. Hell got everything it wanted today. What did you get?”
“Wait, I was just doing what you said was right.”
“You were damning yourself?”
“Yeah, for all the right reasons.”
“That may be,” said Bertrand. “But that doesn’t make us friends, compadre. The truly damned have few friends, especially among the angels. I may understand why you did it, but we’re done, you and I.” Bertrand raised a hand, delicately examining the shaft sticking out of his eye. He shook his head, disappointed. “You were on the right side of this for so long.”
Flapping his wings harder, he flew off, drifting drunkenly into the rain.
Slowly the fairies closed in.
Colby looked up. “What?” he asked loudly of them. “What do you want?”
Amassed before him was a full half of the Limestone Kingdom, Sidhe and salgfraulein, pixie and troll. Overseeing them was the remainder of the Five Stone Council, Meinrad taking the lead.
Colby clenched his fists.
“There will be no need for that,” said Meinrad, his voice deep and booming.
“Not if you turn around and leave, there won’t.”
“This fight is over,” Meinrad continued. “The boy is dead and all offense ended. There is no more need for bloodshed.”
“So why are you here?” asked Colby.
Meinrad stepped close to Colby, looming over him. “You are henceforth banned from the Limestone Kingdom. All rights of safe travel are revoked. You have until noon to gather your things and make your way out of Austin.” He poked a rocky, moss-covered finger into Colby’s chest. “There needed to be only one death today. You should not have interfered.”
Colby nodded, the last pieces of his heart breaking. “I’m sorry.” He turned, taking a step to walk slowly home.
Then he stopped.
And he turned.
“No,” he said, his eyes cold, bristling with anger. “The time for me to respect the will of the fairies ended with the death of my friend.”
Colby raised his arm and evaporated Meinrad where he stood.
The energy released was massive, the resulting boom echoing for miles, shattering windows, spraying limestone and leaves everywhere within a thirty-foot radius—debris embedding into surrounding walls but bouncing harmlessly off Colby, who bore neither a scratch nor a speck of dust despite his proximity to the explosion.
Colby walked slowly toward the fairies.
Once more he raised his arm, this time pointing a stiff finger at the crowd, fairy after fairy exploding into a burst of flowers and smells. The mob panicked, fanning out like a bursting dandelion.
While others scattered, Rhiamon stood still, unafraid. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m taking back what’s mine,” said Colby.
“What do you think makes this place yours?”
Colby paused for a moment, allowing the fairies a moment to take cover. “You just did; you and your ilk. I’m done playing with you; I’m done kowtowing to you. If I am to be damned, then let me be damned with purpose. Austin is off-limits. No fairy may walk here. You may have the plateau, but Austin belongs to man.
“And the Tithe—the Tithe as you know it is done. For every child taken to pay it, I will take two of yours. I will come at night and snatch your young from their cradles and I will scatter their essence to the wind. From this day forward you pay your Devil’s due with your own blood—or I will see to it that the price doubles. Now, go and find yourself a new king.”
The scampering stopped, fair
ies standing silent in the face of Colby’s decree.
Colby looked around. “How many more of you need to die before you get the picture? Get. Out. Of. My. City.”
The fairies exchanged troubled looks and, with mouths agape, began their slow, wordless retreat from Austin. Coyote smiled at Colby, winking, before making his way with the rest of them.
Rhiamon looked old, older than anyone had ever seen her. She nodded emotionlessly. “As you wish,” she said. Then she turned, taking her leave with the rest of the court.
And with that, the city emptied, its magic slowly walking out with its head held low.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
WHERE WE ALL, AT LAST, BELONG
Yashar stood behind the ramshackle bar top, drying glasses with a fresh rag. The Cursed and the Damned was open, but empty, much of the city’s fairy population evacuating in the wake of Colby’s murderous rampage. The stories grew, as did the legend, and by the time Yashar had heard tell about what he’d seen with his own eyes, they hardly seemed to be about the same morning.
The door opened, Yashar holding his breath, half hoping it was Colby walking through—for better or worse. Instead it was worse. Much worse.
Coyote.
The old man grinned, poking his head in playfully. “Truce?”
Yashar sighed deeply. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I heard this place was under new management and I wanted to check out the specials.”
“Someone had to keep the place going. For Scraps.”
“Probably,” said Coyote through a squint. “Though I can’t imagine the wine selection being as good.”
Yashar shook his head. “The man had a gift. What can I get you?”
Coyote walked in, closing the door behind him. “A few minutes of your time.”
“That, it would seem, we won’t run out of for a while.”
“And, uh”—Coyote looked both ways, whispering—“did Scraps leave around any of that really, really good bourbon?”
Yashar smiled broadly, pulling a weathered old bottle from under the bar. “That he did.”
“Line ’em up.”
Yashar set down two glasses and poured three fingers in each. “So why’d you do it? Really, I mean.”
“Do what?”
Yashar scowled.
“You want the truth?”
“Unvarnished,” said Yashar.
“Nobody likes the truth.”
“I want the truth.”
Coyote nodded soberly, sipping his whiskey. “Most people can’t read the writing on the wall even when it’s screamed at them. They hate the truth. The truth makes them angry. The truth is heartbreak and poverty and unhappy endings. They believe there is power in numbers, no matter how dumb the numbers. They believe in one true love. They believe that living well pays off in the end. They believe in the magic of childhood. The truth is, we’re all alone, even when surrounded. The truth is that someone’s one true love ended up a thirty-euro whore in an Amsterdam brothel. The truth is that people die old, unrewarded and unloved. The truth is, children get hit by cars and don’t come home. So you have to lie. They like lies. It helps them cope with the truth. And if you lie just right, you can get them to do what they have to do to find their truth.”
“So, you lie.”
“When it doesn’t pay to tell the truth. You told Colby the truth when he asked for his wish, but it took me to show it to him. You showed him the world, but I showed him how the world really worked.”
“And what did you get out of it?”
“Colby Stevens. It started out about ending the Tithe, but what I got was Colby Stevens. With the blood of a few I made him the man who would protect many. You’re too close to him. You can’t see his destiny, can you? What he could become, given the right poking and prodding? You helped make a great man. But he needed to do this first.”
Yashar slammed back the bourbon, pouring himself another three fingers of it. “To watch his friend die? To become a killer?”
“A killer, pfff.” He shook his head, sipping his drink. “I am life’s hard lesson, Yashar. The source of man’s humility. Colby needed to learn something, the fairies needed to learn something, those two kids needed to learn something. Everyone had a lesson waiting, and they learned it with blood. Sometimes that’s how it goes. People learn from failure and tragedy, not success.”
“Well, if you’re the source of man’s humility, what does that make me?”
Coyote winked from behind his glass. “His road to hell, paved with good intentions.”
Deflated, Yashar quickly finished his drink and immediately poured himself his third.
Coyote continued. “You know better than anyone that nothing lasts. Nothing good. Nothing bad. Everything lives. Everything dies. Sometimes cities just fall into the sea. It’s not a tragedy, that’s just the way it is. People look around them and see the world and say this is how the world is supposed to be. Then they fight to keep it that way. They believe that this is what was intended—whether by design or cosmic accident—and that everything exists in a tenuous balance that must be preserved. But the balance is bullshit. The only thing constant in this world is the speed at which things change. Rain falls, waters rise, shorelines erode. What is one day magnificent seaside property in ancient Greece is the next resting thirty feet below the surface. Islands rise from the sea and continents crack and part ways forever. What was once a verdant forest teeming with life is now resting one thousand feet beneath a sheet of ice in Antarctica; what was once a glorious church now rests at the bottom of a dammed-up lake in Kansas. The job of nature is to march on and keep things going; ours is to look around, appreciate it, and wonder what’s next?”
“Not everything dies,” said Yashar.
“Everything. One day even you.”
“And you?”
Coyote nodded, a wistful, sad look in his eye. “Even me. Coyotes are not long for this earth. Within a century man will have wiped out every beast that walks that poses any sort of threat to him. One day my people will be gone and there will be no more need for me. Then I’ll get to see if there is some great reward for the burden I’ve borne. Perhaps I will see my friends Mammoth, Dodo, and Saber Tooth again. I miss them.
“The mortals live lives so short that they hail us as timeless beings; after a while we begin to believe it. I look at you and see someone weighed down by the thought of living forever and think, Oh, he’s just a baby. He has no idea what eternity even is. I surely don’t. But I know how long fifteen hundred years can feel.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because your story isn’t over. You’ve much more yet to do and none of it involves being cooped up in a bar, serving drinks to shadows. Colby has a long road ahead and he needs a guide.”
“I thought you said I was the road to hell.”
Coyote nodded. “I didn’t say he’d like where he was going.” The two shared a moment of quiet understanding, each sipping his bourbon. “You know the kids’ funerals are tomorrow.”
Yashar nodded. “Yeah. I do.”
“And you know Colby’s going to need you there.”
“He doesn’t want to see me right now.”
“No, he doesn’t. But he needs to.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
ON GHOSTS AND THINGS OF THE PAST
An essay by Dr. Thaddeus Ray, Ph.D., from his book The Everything You Cannot See
There are no such things as ghosts. Every place has a memory. Just as a rock may carry a scar from a scratch, so too can a field of energy. When powerful enough energies or emotions affect a field, it can warp or distort those of the surrounding area for years, even decades. If, however, those scars are fueled by dreamstuff, especially the dreamstuff of the thing that caused that scar, the result is a shadow.
This shadow is nothing mor
e than energy reflected through warped space. It is a hologram. It can interact with other energy fields around it, but it does not think or feel. Shadows cannot be reasoned with or express themselves in any way outside of the emotions that created them. If they were born of malice, they will be cruel. If they were born of love, they will be joyful. While they can share the information stored on the scar, they cannot collect anything new or possess any memory outside of that which made them.
Haunted houses are often the result of space warped by emotion over time. Sometimes this can occur from sudden, massive damage, like a traumatic event or even a particularly joyful one, but more often than not it occurs naturally, like water eroding rock to form a riverbed. The energy left behind will often express itself by passing through the cracks and fissures in the field. Scars found in particularly dreamstuff-rich areas will often see more activity as additional energy flows through them, keeping a shadow active far longer than it ordinarily might be.
But ghosts as untethered souls unable to find rest? They don’t exist. The Devil catches every crumb that spills off Heaven’s plate.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
TWO IN A FIELD
The sonorous melancholy of the fairy dirge carried for miles through the woods. Even as far away as Colby and Yashar stood from the singing, the tinkling of instruments and the magic of the voices still resonated. They were in the Limestone Kingdom, standing just outside the field where Colby, Ewan, and Mallaidh had once played—just beyond the point where once they had escaped a pack of redcaps. The whole of the kingdom had gathered to say good-bye to the dozens of fairies they’d lost. Colby, Yashar, and the golden retriever Gossamer stood together to say good-bye to just two.
A pair of gray stone monuments, each one carved in the likeness of his friends, stood overlooking two small dirt mounds, beneath which lay the scant remains of Mallaidh and Ewan, a handful of flower petals under one, and a dried red cap under the other.
“Is this how I’ll end up?” asked Colby, breaking a long, strained silence.
“Only if you keep making enemies,” replied Yashar.
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