Soul of Fire tp-2

by Laura Anne Gilman

  They stared at her, not uncomprehendingly, but with an odd sort of pity or grim humor.

  “If they come down here, we’re dead,” Apple said.

  Glory snorted and kept looking for something she could use as a club.

  * * *

  “Fall back.” AJ’s muzzle was sore, and his gums itched from the gnome-blood caked around his teeth, but his gaze was still alert and his thoughts were clear. Meredith, still at his side, made an interrogative whine, not questioning but requiring more explicit instructions.

  “They’ve paused, when they should be pressing us. That means they’re about to try something else. If the house falls, we need to be ready to evacuate. You have to get the human and her team out of here.”

  She might have argued, but here and now, he was alpha, and his word ruled. She ducked her head and loped away.

  One of the kiyakii slid into position where she had been, covering his flank. AJ nodded his thanks, then refocused his attention on the field in front of him. There were more gnome bodies there than anything else, ripped apart until they could no longer re-form and regroup. But nearly a third of the defenders had paid the cost, and he could only assume that it was the same where he could not see. He scanned the field, seeing numbers, not faces, not names. He couldn’t think about the friends who had doubtless gone down. There would be time to mourn individuals when this was done. If they lived long enough to mourn. The line had not broken, but it was ragged and weary. If the turncoats had aid...

  So far, the others he had scented had hung back, not taken part in the battle. But they would; he knew that. It was how he would have played it out, sending in the shock troops first, then the smarter, savvier fighters to mop up—and search the buildings.

  Preters, in his den.

  AJ bared his muzzle in a defiant grin, even though the enemy was too far away to see. They might find the scent, but there were other scents laid down, too, trails leading to dead ends and pitfalls, tangled in with the truth. He, AJ, could untangle them, but no one else.

  “They’re moving forward,” one of the splyushka told him, fluttering down to land a few feet away. It was young; its hard, narrow mouth clacked nervously, and its feathers fluttered, but it stood its ground. Feathered, yes, but not flighty. AJ felt a surge of pride.

  “Then let’s shove them back,” he said.

  * * *

  The sharp, cracking noise was a shock, after what seemed like hours of muffled silence. Glory got to her feet, the two-foot-long piece of planking she had found clutched in her hands like a baseball bat. Odds were it would splinter the moment she brought it down on anything hard; at least she’d have that one chance.

  Oak stood up when she heard the sound, and reached down to scoop up some of the dirt from the hard-packed floor, cupping it in her hands. Glory nodded approval.

  “You blind ’em and I’ll bash ’em,” she said in a low whisper and then glanced at the remaining four. “And you guys just sit there. Or you can run, if you get a chance.”

  The door swung open, and there was the sound of surprisingly heavy steps on the stairs. Glory tensed, but the voice that came out of the dark was a familiar one.

  “Come on.”

  “Elsa?” Apple practically flew up the stairs. “Did we win?”

  “No.” The jötunndotter wasn’t any grimmer than usual, but the exhaustion in her voice came through clearly. “But we haven’t lost yet, either. Gloriana, you need to go.”

  “What?” First she had to hide, then she had to run.... Her pacifistic tendencies be damned, caution boiled over into frustration, and she gripped the piece of wood more tightly. “I want to—”

  There was a yelp and a growl at the top of the stairs, then the sound of something heavy being knocked over. Elsa swore in some language Glory didn’t know, and suddenly Apple was falling back down the stairs as though she’d been pushed, landing on her backside with an expression of shock on her round face.

  And then something leaped from the shadows of the stairway, something not-Elsa, moving too fast to be the troll, too fast and too sleek, arms reaching, elongated fingers grabbing at the air, and Glory didn’t think, didn’t ask, but stepped forward and rather than swinging with her makeshift weapon, stabbed straight ahead with it, the broken tip meeting a sudden resistance, then giving way, sliding into something, the weight on the end heavy enough to bring Glory’s arms down in shock.

  She pulled back, and something came back with the club, something that looked like an oversize frog with a human head and smelled like... She gagged and dropped the wood, backing away.

  “Gnome,” one of the wraiths said, its voice even more fading away.

  “And more coming.” Elsa took another step down, dropping another gnome to the ground, its neck clearly broken. “No humans can be taken here, not with the knowledge you have. You need to get out another way. Apple. Take her.”

  “What?” Apple was still on the dirt floor, although she had scuttled back away from the two gnome bodies.

  “I’ll do it.” Oak raised her hand to volunteer. “Come, human. See how the other half grows.”

  “What?” Glory had a moment, much like when she woke up to a strange man in her bedroom watching her, that something was about to happen that she wasn’t expecting, that she wasn’t going to like, and she was about to say no when Oak took her by the hand and put the other one over her mouth, and they stepped into the dirt wall.

  There was no air, only pressure on all sides, and the stink of wet dirt and mold and cold against her skin, pressure building in her lungs and against her bones, fingers stretching, toes stretching, seeking nourishment, air water food survival, and then there was air in her lungs and Glory inhaled and coughed, almost dropping to her knees in relief. Oak’s hands fell away, and she opened her eyes...and then wished that she hadn’t. They were away from the main building, within reach of the tree line, but around them were torn and bloodied bodies, all still, all dead. Most of them looked like the gnomes that had attacked them, but in the face of so much death, Glory couldn’t bring herself to be pleased.

  And not all of them were gnomes. Her mind tried to sort them out, looking, against its will, for a familiar face, something that might identify the bodies as someone she had known.

  “Don’t look,” the dryad said, her voice stricken with pain. “Don’t look. Come.”

  “I can’t....”

  “I know. But you must come.”

  Glory closed her eyes and thought about Jan, who had gone into another world because she had to. About Tyler, who had escaped what sounded like an utter horror of brainwashing, taking it one step at a time. Because the only way to survive and not lose your mind was to go forward, not back.

  “All right.” She lifted her gaze from the ground, shaking off the dirt that still clung to her skin—don’t think about it, don’t think about what you’ve done—and walked on, heading for the trees.

  * * *

  “Gone.” It was a faint whisper, but a familiar one. One of the wraiths. He had told them to go to the basement; they would be more useful after the battle, if there was anyone to succor. Gone where? Who had gone? Where? There was no clarification, and AJ snarled, picking his way through the bodies, his gaze never wavering from his goal.

  It stood there in the middle of the field, standing as if it didn’t even notice the corpses around it. It probably didn’t. Between one step and the next, AJ changed, spine elongating, fur sloughing off, claws retracting and pads forming into fingers. He stood in front of the preter, skin naked in the cold air, and did not flinch.

  “You are not welcome here,” he told it. “Your pawns are dead, your game revealed, and the next move will put you into check. Concede and retreat.”

  The preter probably didn’t have a clue about chess, but since AJ didn’t expect they would give in, either, it didn’t matter. His tone sent the message.

  “We have no grief with you, creature,” the preter said. Its voice was smooth and sweet, its expression
composed of a mix of curiosity and compassion. It was an excellent presentation, but AJ was old, bitter, and not falling for it.

  “No grief, no,” he agreed. “You barely notice us, save to swat us out of your way. But the obstruction bit back this time, didn’t it? And we have more teeth and claw, waiting for you. Concede and retreat.”

  “Where are the humans?”

  AJ held himself perfectly still, save a slight cock of his head, as though he were wondering if he’d heard correctly. “Humans?”

  “The humans. They belong to us. Give them back, and we will leave your enclave be.”

  So that was what this was all about. AJ wasn’t sure if he should be insulted or not.

  “The human male was won from your court, by means your consort agreed to. There is no claim to him, nor the woman.”

  AJ mostly didn’t care about humans. He would have handed the male over without blinking if he thought it would win them anything. But the thought of giving them Jan made a growl form in his chest. She had become pack, and he would not give her up.

  He couldn’t, anyway. They weren’t on the Farm. But this preter didn’t seem to know that. Good.

  “You will give the humans to us. Or you will all die.”

  AJ had heard more impressive threats before. He didn’t discount this one for being issued in a bland monotone, though. Far from it.

  There was only one human on the Farm. The Huntsman, who was his friend, had sent him Glory, who was Jan’s friend. That meant that she, too, was pack.

  “I am lupin,” AJ said, smiling. “You have forgotten what that means. Let me teach you.”

  * * *

  The woods were thicker than Glory had thought, not just a border line but an actual thicket, the trees taller and wider than any she’d ever been close to.

  “I’m to take you to the Center,” Oak said. “But I’ve never gone from here. It’s going to take me a minute to find my bearings.”

  “All right,” Glory said. She wasn’t really in a position to say anything else. She had no idea what the Center was, but anywhere was better than here. Leaning against one of the trees, she watched the dryad turn slowly, her eyes closed. There was noise coming from behind them, where she thought the farmhouse was, but within the copse it was almost silent, just the occasional creak or rustle to indicate that they weren’t alone. Glory, used to the noises of a major city, would have been nervous—all right, she would have been terrified, after everything that had happened—but instead all she felt was a numb sort of calmness. It was less shock, she decided, than a weird sense of the inevitable. She was in shock, and no fucking wonder. She’d never seen anything die in front of her before. Not even a pet. She had only ever killed spiders before, and even then reluctantly. The fact that those things back in the basement had been trying to kill her, that she had only been defending herself...it made no difference, she realized. They were still dead, and she couldn’t be pleased.

  Pacifists get killed in wartime, her dad used to say. But so did warriors.

  She had known when she’d gotten that frantic phone call from Jan and heard about what had really happened to Tyler, when she’d agreed to help rather than hanging up or trying to get her friend sectioned, that life was never going to be the same. She just wondered now if there was going to be a life at all, however changed.

  “All right. This way.” Oak still had her eyes closed, but she was facing Glory, and the expression on her face was calm, almost happy, if she was reading it right. She might not have been; supernaturals were a few degrees off the norm to her still.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I told you. To the Center.”

  “Oh.” All right, then.

  When Oak held out her hand, Glory took it, even as there was a larger, louder rustle in the trees and a smooth, even-toned voice, dripping with malice, said, “There you are, human.”

  Chapter 13

  “They’re not coming,” Jan said, chewing at the cuticle of her thumb. “If they were, they would be here by now. AJ wouldn’t leave us hanging. Something went wrong. Maybe the messages didn’t go through or...”

  Or the Farm wasn’t under AJ’s control anymore.

  It was late at night, the three of them in Jan and Tyler’s room, the first time they’d been able to gather. Today had been the worst day yet; the queen agitated, and the brownies had been everywhere, their ears twitching, snapping orders at everyone else. Patrick’s wooden sculpture had been shattered during a fight, and the human had disappeared; nobody had asked after him, either not caring or too afraid. They’d escaped as soon as possible, hoping the chaos would keep Nalith from noticing they’d gone.

  Jan sat on the bed with her arms around her knees, Tyler in the single chair, while Martin paced, hemmed in by the size of the room. They were both making her dizzy, in different ways: Martin with his movement and Tyler with his too-tight stillness. She felt the tension in her chest that usually heralded another asthma attack and scanned the room until she found her inhaler, sitting on the dresser.

  Something in the house itself seemed to inhibit her asthma attacks, the same way she’d felt Under the Hill, in the preter court. But the sensation remained, like something pressing at her lungs, trying to steal her ability to breathe. Between that and the dizziness, it was hard to concentrate. She wanted to kick them both out of the room, crawl back under the covers, and go to sleep. Maybe forever.

  Jan was pretty sure it was just depression talking, depression and maybe a touch of Nalith’s glamour weighing on her. Today had been the worst, but ever since she had questioned the queen, the preter had kept her close at hand, nearly two days of constant attendance, from early in the morning to late at night. It had created a situation where the three of them had not been able to talk freely or even at all. When Tyler finished singing, the queen sent him off to work with Wes, the technician. They were setting up the entire house with cabling that didn’t seem to be connected to anything in particular but had to be set just so, matching one of the blueprints Jan had seen her going over with the brownies. Outer courts, Nalith called them. Homes, emptied, ready to be filled with more supers, more humans sworn to the queen. Homes...oh, god, homes where the murders had happened? That moment in the witch’s living room seemed impossibly far away now, but Jan could remember the woman’s face when she’d talked about the dead. Entire families.

  And Martin...

  Nalith kept making Martin fight. Never to the death, always calling them back before anyone was permanently damaged, but each time Jan felt her stomach twist a little harder, her lungs squeeze a little tighter. Worse, Martin seemed to enjoy it. He never said anything, but he didn’t hold back when she summoned him, either. Jan wanted to believe that it was just playing the role, making the queen believe that he was a willing subject but...she knew him too well. He liked hurting...well, she was having trouble calling them people, and the time Nalith had set him to fight the pack of gnomes en masse, Jan had quietly cheered him on as well, but still. It was a side of Martin she didn’t like.

  You can’t know us.

  Martin is...dangerous.

  Words of advice from people who knew the kelpie better than she ever could. Words she needed to remember. But Martin was her only lifeline here, Martin and Tyler, and she was afraid that she was losing both of them.

  She wanted to ask them what they thought had happened to Patrick. She didn’t want them to answer.

  “Do you have any idea what all those cables are for?” she asked Tyler, trying to stay focused and practical.

  “No, and neither does Wes. She gave us the schematic, told us to get the equipment and do it.”

  Wes was allowed off the property. Tyler wasn’t. None of them were. And Wes was so deep in thrall, he would cut off his own hand if Nalith asked it of him. They could not trust him, even a bit. They couldn’t trust anyone.

  “She does nothing without a purpose,” Martin said. “Those cables have to do with her protections, somehow. Something tied to t
he new form of magic. The more she fortifies this house, the harder it will be to get her out of it, like a spider in its lair. We can’t stay here any longer, not without being trapped ourselves.”

  Jan licked her lips, tried to force her heartbeat to slow down. “We still have no idea how to bind her.”

  “I told you,” Tyler said, impatient. “We need to use her obsessions, her desires, her weaknesses. They’re as weak as we are. Maybe weaker, because they see no reason to deny themselves, expect no cost to their indulgences.”

  Jan flicked a glance at Martin, who had finally stopped pacing, staring out the room’s single window, his hand on the curtain. The fabric was a deep blue, and his hand seemed to almost disappear against it, the pale brown skin overwhelmed by the weight of the drape.

  “You’re not as useless as you look, human,” the kelpie said, still looking out the window, and Jan bristled on Tyler’s behalf.

  Her boyfriend—was he still? They had never broken up, but he hadn’t touched her since they’d gotten back, had barely acknowledged what they’d had before—grinned tiredly, his face for a moment again the familiar, mocking Tyler she had fallen in love with. “Not entirely, no.”

  “So, we know why it would work, but not how to actually spring the trap,” she said, focusing on what she could do something about, not what was out of her control. “What do we have to offer them?”

  “The Farm.”

  “What?” She couldn’t have heard Martin correctly. Even Ty looked surprised.

  “We offer her the Farm. Everyone in it. An entire enclave of supers, already trained to work together, turned to her purposes. We came from there, so she will think she can take them as easily as she took us. And if we tell her we were fighting against the ones who are trying to take her back...”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” Tyler was running over the possibilities in his head; she knew that look.