Dark Glitter

by C. M. Stunich

  I was no better than the Swamp Witch.

  Hell, I was worse.

  #

  The first thing I noticed as we navigated the narrow streets of New Orleans on our way to the Saint Louis Cemetery, was the lack of people. Humans. They were nowhere to be seen.

  Of course, it was several hours before dawn yet, but this was NOLA, a city which took ‘never sleeping’ to whole new heights, so the eerie lack of drunken humans was both a relief and a concern.

  Could they feel the danger? I wouldn't have been surprised if they could … it was thick in the air like an impending hurricane.

  From inside the walls of the burial ground, screams of dying fae echoed out to us, rattling my body and making me tense.

  Not your body, not your pain, not your fear, Ciarah. You're strong. Powerful. They will not win, not this time.

  The words repeated over and over in my head, and I wasn't even sure who spoke them. Me, or one of the previous Keepers. Whoever it was, I was thankful.

  Those words helped me cling to sanity. They were the life raft I needed to keep my focus and do what needed to be done.

  Killian rolled his bike to a stop alongside Arlo, and I swung my leg off without waiting for his assistance. He was furious with me, and I didn't blame him, so I wasn't going to push the issue until we were safe.

  “These creatures,” I started, in a low voice intended for the ears of my Hunt only, “feed on fear. They cannot be harmed with human weapons, so do not waste your bullets shooting them.” I eyed a couple of the older bikers who were loading and checking their handguns. “They will stop at nothing to make you afraid, and then they will prey on that emotion. Don't let them.” I wove the magic of command into my voice once more. Whether it would work, I had no idea, but I had to hope.

  Because without hope, those bastards may as well have won already.

  The cemetery walls stretched out on either side of us, giants made of stone and topped with barbed wire. I remembered from my life as a human that there were numerous break-ins at this particular cemetery, looters and hoodoo practitioners defiling the sacred tombs of the dead. The city had this place on fucking lockdown.

  As I stood there and peered up at the bright silver eye of the moon in the sky, my nostrils flared with the distinctly metallic scent of blood. Glancing to my left, I found the body of a policeman with his heart torn out, red splattered across the white walls of the cemetery and just barely visible in the shadows cast by the street lamps.

  I remembered that, the sensation of having my beating heart torn from my chest. As the Veil Keeper, an immortal and invincible goddess of Faerie, it wasn't a death sentence … but it was pain. A heart is more than just an organ that pumps blood. It's the core of a person's being, the place where all their hopes and dreams, their love and their hate, their fears and their desires coalesce.

  It was even worse than having my voice stolen from me and that was almost insufferable.

  I glanced away from the comatose police officer. He was already dead, his soul gone, his flesh a shell of meat and blood that could do nothing for us now.

  “The Wild Hunt rides,” I snarled and the men rushed the gate, snapping the heavy chains on the front with a pair of bolt cutters and pushing their way into the cemetery. I lagged behind, unfurling my wings from my back and tasting the air.

  They were here.

  They were fucking everywhere.

  My body is unchained from the wall for the first time in months and I drop to the floor on my knees, weeping at the blessed feeling of being able to cross my arms over my chest, duck my head, curl my legs close.

  It doesn't last.

  The shadows swarm around me, dragging my head back in a fistful of claws, laying my body out on the floor with sheer force. They don't know the meaning of rape nor understand the appeal, but they fill every orifice I have with iron. It scalds and burns, makes my skin bubble and my body convulse.

  I can't breathe; I can't speak; I can't even remember my own name anymore.

  Blinking the vision away, I swiped my palms over my face and shook my head to clear it. Fuck. I'd been there all of two minutes and they were getting inside my head, summoning my worst nightmares to the surface.

  “Psychological torture,” I whispered as the boys followed me into the cemetery, weaving through the mess of mausoleums.

  The pain of the fae wracked my body with violent tremors, made my teeth hurt, my throat tight, my muscles sore. But I was having a hard time finding anyone but the members of the Wild Hunt.

  “They're here somewhere,” I promised as I felt my men getting tense, amping up for violence that wasn't coming. They were dangerous beasts, these bikers at my back, dark fae with a thirst for blood. Once promised, it had to be sated. “I promise you—they're here.”

  I continued on, looking at all the locks, feeling the key in my hand and wondering which one. Because the sooner I could solve this puzzle, the sooner the spear was mine, and the sooner we could leave. My captors, they weren't the type to be easily conquered. I knew right away that we'd be better off running.

  The men might not like it, but once I gave the order, they'd have no choice but to submit.

  I kept walking, my Lords to my right, my left, one of them behind me. In the front, I had Fionn and his officers to guard me. Franky, I didn't care what happened to my physical body so long as I got the spear. Pain was nothing but currency to me now, and I could horde it like the world's richest businessman.

  Rounding a corner, I felt my heart contract in my chest as I gazed up at an angel statue with a spear clutched tight in her stony hands, face raised to an unhearing god.

  Hah.

  What a concept.

  There were no gods above, only those that walked amongst men.

  Nostrils flaring, I continued forward as if I hadn't seen a damn thing, as if any stone weapon in that cemetery—and there were lots of them—would do to satisfy me.

  As we approached the base of the mausoleum, I turned and abruptly flapped my wings behind me, rising into the air and finding myself face to face with a lock made of iron. Fuck. But I wasn't about to give up now.

  Instead, I thrust the key into the lock and turned it, freeing the stone hand from its eternal grasp as my right hand lashed out and curled around the base of the spear.

  “Seems we didn't condition you quite enough,” a voice said, but before I could even recognize who it was that was speaking, a wave of power washed over me, hot and scalding, like tiny fires were melting my skin like wax.

  I fell from the sky, wings curling around me in pain, the spear rolling across the grass. I glanced up as Killian lunged for it … and found himself wrapped in talons. A massive spread of dirty wings filled the sky as my Lord of Winter was lifted off the ground and tossed across the cemetery, his body slamming into the stone wall of a crypt, blood spurting from between his lips.

  It was a fucking harpy.

  Rolling onto my stomach, I pushed to my feet as shadows danced around me, not memories this time but the creatures from my endless torture, my captors, my jailers. Their voices so foreign, they may as well have been alien, these strange scraping sounds like nails on the inside of a coffin, like a corpse being dragged across cement.

  Clamping my hands over my ears, I struggled to fight back the rush of emotion, bile rising in my throat as shadowy fingers played over the curve of my wings, tugging and threatening, bringing to life memories of them being rent from my flesh.

  With a gasp, I shifted them off and fell forward onto my knees. Those shadow creatures wasted no time swarming me once more, kicking me while I was down. The only advantage was that they needed to take physical form to attack me, even if it was only their limbs and teeth.

  Gritting my teeth, I steeled myself against the fear of memories and focused on the fight at hand. There was simply too much at stake to let these bastards win.

  The next time one of them swiped at me with razor-like claws, my hand snapped out and I seized its wrist. They
had no genders, no individual identities, or at least not so far as I could tell. They were all simply it, so when I grabbed it by the wrist and slammed my magic into it, I was shocked to hear the almost feminine scream that tore from the hood shrouding its face.

  The surprise was just enough that I loosened my grip for just a second, allowing the thing to wrench free and another of them to sink a long, dagger-like claw deep into my side.

  My scream echoed through the night, in harmony with the grunts, curses and cries of the battling fae around me.

  So far as I could tell, there were only a handful of the nightmare creatures here; the rest were all harpies. Good, in a way. Harpies could be hurt, killed. If only my Wild Hunt weren't so outnumbered …

  Some distance from me, at the base of the mausoleum which I had just liberated my Spear from, Arlo was locked in a bloody fight with three harpies and bathed in blood. Desperately, I hoped it was harpy blood, but in my heart I knew it was his.

  My men were being overpowered by sheer numbers and I could do little to help them while being attacked by the five nightmares who'd come to retrieve what they failed to extract from me for so many years.

  “Who is behind this?” I demanded of the creatures, as I clutched my bleeding side and rolled to dodge another knife-sharp claw swipe. “Who is pulling your strings?”

  “I think we liked you better without that tongue,” a hissing, raspy voice replied from one of the shadows, and I just barely reacted quick enough to avoid my throat being sliced. “Stand still and we can rectify that.”

  “Not on your fucking life,” I growled, letting my instincts take over as I conjured a ball of burning magic and lobbed it straight into the black, moth eaten fabric that clothed a nightmare.

  The thing screeched, but evaporated into smoke, only to reappear some dozen or so feet away. Judging by the heavy wave of fear it hurled back at me, it was pissed.

  My jaw clenched hard, my teeth grinding together as I steeled myself to weather the onslaught of memories. Some real, some fabricated. That was how this torture worked: they took your worst fears, your worst terrors, and made you relive them over and over, each time making them worse.

  Not that my memories needed any enhancement. The torture I'd endured at the hands of these creatures was as bad as it could physically get, and I really only remembered a fraction of it all.

  Sharp needles of iron littered my naked flesh as I hung useless from the wall shackles. Glancing down at my body through heavy, pain addled eyes, I saw them bristling from my skin like some sort of sick porcupine.

  “This is just the beginning, Keeper,” a smoky, raspy voice hissed at me from the depths of a black hood. “We do not age, we do not die, we do not measure time in the ways of your people. This pain will be forever lasting, and this is just a mere taste. It will become worse. Oh, so very much worse for you … just wait until we start on those pretty, pretty wings of yours.” The laugh the creature barked out was pure sadism and I was powerless to prevent the wash of fear flooding through me.

  Not my wings! How can I survive if they harm my wings?

  “Mmmmm,” the creature moaned, “sweet, sweet fear. This will be fun for us, until you hand over the information our mistress requires.”

  The memory faded out as I fought back, blinking my eyes rapidly to regain my vision of the cemetery. The battle still raged, but my men were alive—for now—so it can't have been more than a split-second.

  That particular memory had been an early one, from not long past Gràinne's initial capture, but it had given me a little clue …

  “Your mistress,” I panted, climbing back to my feet and narrowly avoiding another nightmare creature. A small part of my brain told me they didn't have very accurate vision so if I kept calm, I should be able to avoid their attacks for the most part. It was why they kept their captives bound so tightly.

  “Who is she?” I demanded, but got nothing back except maniacal laughter.

  This battle needed to end, I couldn't allow it to continue any longer for fear of losing any more fae. None of my Hunt were dead—yet—but I could sense several of them were injured badly and around a dozen fae had been slaughtered here before we arrived.

  My men fought in the narrow corridors between above ground burial sites, so I couldn't see them, but I could sense them. More than that, I could sense my Spear.

  Now that my hand had come in contact with it, it was bound to me and I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that I could not let these bastards hand it over to their mistress, whoever the fuck she was.

  Ducking and weaving between shadow creatures, I made my way back to where I had last seen the ancient artifact and sucked in a gasp when I found it.

  “Drop that Spear immediately,” I bellowed at the harpy who had it clutched in her claws and was using it to stab Reece repeatedly in the gut.

  My Autumn Lord was pinned to the ground between two crumbling tombs with a harpy on each arm while the third was perforating his torso with the Spear of Lug. Blood was everywhere, but I could still sense his light. It wasn't as bright as it had been but it was still there.

  Distracted as I was by the sight before me, I wasn't paying attention to the shadows which had followed me, and I cried out when five deep gashes opened down the length of my back, slicing through my fragile wings.

  It didn't matter though. This was an immortal body and would heal in time, and with enough power from the souls of sinners. Their attacks no longer meant anything to me, all I needed was to retrieve my Spear, and save my Lords.

  Sucking a deep breath into my lungs, I gathered magic into my core, then sent it snapping out of me in a pulse which threw the shadows a good distance away from me and would hopefully leave them stunned for long enough.

  The harpies paused when my magic pulse washed over them, and looked up at me in terror. It had only been designed to take out the shadows, so hadn't thrown the winged bitches in the same way but it was enough to give them pause.

  “I said, drop that damn Spear,” I ordered them, my voice booming through the cemetery and shaking some bricks loose. To my satisfaction, they seemed afraid.

  Chittering something in their own language, the two holding Reece down took to the sky and quickly disappeared, leaving the one clutching my Spear to face me alone.

  She froze under my glare, holding her twisted claws in the air and releasing the Spear, which dropped to the ground with a metallic sounding clang. She chittered something that was probably along the lines of “please don't hurt me” but this bitch had been stabbing my Lord of Autumn and that did not go unpunished.

  Letting my wings flap painfully, I closed the distance between us in the blink of an eye and seized her ugly face between my palms.

  “You have been found guilty of the most heinous crimes against Fae. The attempted murder of the Keeper's Knight is a crime punishable by death and consumption. May your soul never find peace.” My voice was that of the Keeper. Ancient and powerful.

  Placing my lips close to her bloodied fangs, I ignored her frantic thrashing and screaming as I sucked her soul straight from her body without first killing her physical form. This was the worst pain a fae could ever endure, and a skill I alone possessed.

  Within moments, her thrashing ceased, and her body fell limp in my grip as I consumed every last scrap of her rotten soul and let it fuel my own healing. Once finished, I tossed her empty husk aside and watched it crumble to dust against Jean Baptiste Arlington's burial plot.

  “Ciarah,” Reece gasped, blood bubbling from his lips and I crouched over him.

  “Shhh, love,” I whispered, not allowing myself the tears that I cried on the inside, “I will help you soon. First we must end this fight.”

  I could feel waves of terror flooding the cemetery and knew the shadows had recovered from my magical pulse. But I had a feeling I also knew what would beat them.

  Wrapping my bloody fingers around the Spear of Lug, I stood and turned to face them as they approached, rushing down the narrow co
rridor of crypts.

  Maintaining my calm, despite my almost overwhelming fear for Reece, I hefted the Spear in my hand and let my magic trickle down its length. My eyes narrowed, and I took aim at the shadow closest to me … then threw.

  The Spear of Lug, shimmering with the magic of the Keeper, flew true and impaled the nightmare creature, pinning it to a concrete wall.

  It did not matter that they were made of mist and shadow, of fear and death. The Spear of Lug transcended the laws of physics and when combined with my own ancient magic … the shadows stood no chance.

  The empty looking black robe howled and thrashed against the tomb wall where it was pinned, the sound of its death grating against my ears like nails down a chalkboard until eventually … it died.

  “Not possible,” one of the other creatures hissed, but every one of them had frozen to watch their companion expire.

  “And yet …” another whispered.

  I raised an eyebrow at the remaining creatures, daring them to try me again, but as one, they faded to smoke and disappeared completely from the cemetery, taking their oppressive fear magic with them.

  A long, loud howl rose up from somewhere nearby, followed by several more. The wolves were here, and in perfect timing to help us dispose of the harpies.

  The shadows may have left, but we still had several dozen of those vicious winged bitches tearing into my men and they required sentencing. Fae law was brutal, but necessary. Each and every one of them had broken that law when they sought to harm The Wild Hunt, and each and every one of them would pay the price in blood.

  Not one would leave the sacred burial grounds alive.

  “Were you looking for backup by chance?” Rafe asked, kneeling on the top of a nearby crypt. My gaze flicked to him and I frowned slightly. I wasn't going to forget what happened in the swamp anytime soon. Even if he had heard my call, that didn't give him the excuse to watch me. Papa Cocodril and Rosinée hadn't come running. If he'd had needs to take care of, he could've taken care of them without watching me.

  “I'm not in the mood to see or talk with you right now,” I said, turning back to the open space in the center of the tombs, this grassy area that gave us a battleground amongst the dead. Bitching at Raphael LeRoux sounded like a good time, but I had more important things to worry about.