by Izzy Shows
“Would you shut up and fight the damn things?”
I whipped my sword up in an arc at the first spirt in front of me, clashing with the claymore it held two-handed. It was strong, surprisingly so, and I put my will into the sword so that it would hold steady against the attack. We held like that for a moment, each pushing against the other in attempt to break through. I feinted, drawing my sword back and leaping backwards myself before I brought the sword up in another arc to the other side this time. My blade found purchase in the soft spot where the metal met by his shoulder joint.
The spirit howled and thrust its claymore forward at me, intent on spearing me straight through.
I had to leap away without a returning attack. I spared a glance at the rest of the room to see if the Fae needed my support.
Nuala had called two swords of ice to her hands, each wrapped in a dark substance. I suspected it was the mental energy given to the Winter Fae that gave them their abilities to warp the mind. It would work against spirits, or at least that was the hope.
Aisling had opted not to call a weapon to hand, and instead was blasting energy from her hands as she leapt from corner to corner in the room, never once staying still for a spirit to turn their blade to her.
It was a truly awesome sight to behold, watching the two Fae engage in combat. They are uniquely graceful beings, faster than any other creature I had come upon in the several millennia I had roamed the Earth, and every movement they made appeared as a choreographed dance.
I turned my attention back to the spirit in front of me, taking a cue from Aisling and releasing a torrent of malevolent energy from my left hand while I brought the sword up again with my right. It had been a good idea, the spirit was too busy blocking the energy to focus on my sword, and its head fell to the floor and dissipated soon after.
I then moved on to the next spirit, parrying the blow it would have dealt to my head, and dealing a nasty blow to its groin. I was single minded in my attack, not taking in the number of enemies we had to contend with, but focusing on each one as I encountered it. There was no use in overwhelming the mind with the concept of how much we had to deal with, I could only deal with one or two at a time and I intended to do just that.
The fight raged on for several minutes, I could hear the light grunts and battle cries from the two Fae as they fought on around me, and released my own grunts into the chorus.
Who knows why we make such noises during combat, it certainly doesn’t help you to swing your blade faster, to hit harder, to focus more, but I suppose it serves more of a mental support. The reminder of what you’re doing and the effort that it costs you.
Perhaps it does help to focus after all.
I heard a different shout from the other end of the room, not a noise of combat, but one of shock. I ran the spirit I’d been toying with through and jerked my head around to see Bastian having solidified in front of Aisling. His shoulder was currently serving as sheath to a spirit’s blade.
The damn fool had taken a hit for Aisling, who probably could have dealt with but now had to worry about him. I cut my way through to them, destroyed the spirit that was draining Bastian, and promptly knocked him back into the wall before turning my back to him.
It was a defensive stance, standing guard for his body like that.
“You’re a goddamn idiot, and I hope you appreciate how rare it is for me to use that phrase,” I snapped over my shoulder at him. “Aisling can take care of herself.”
“Of course I can,” she joined in. As if to demonstrate that point, she promptly leapt away from the two of us and rejoined the fray, no longer concerned with Bastian and his stupidity.
“They were going to kill her.” The boy’s voice was weak, and I knew we were going to have to spend a good bit of time patching him back up once all was said and done.
I gritted my teeth. I hated playing defence. It was in my nature to attack, to destroy those in front of me, to wreak havoc and pain. And here I was babysitting the fool of a child that didn’t know any better than to trust in his comrades.
His misogynistic need to protect women was going to be the death of the group.
Aisling and Nuala were more than capable of combat, I wouldn’t have brought them in if they weren’t. And I hadn’t met a single Fae who couldn’t properly engage in battle. Humans may have set up a system where they tricked their women into thinking they couldn’t do anything to protect themselves, but the Fae had no qualms about raising their women to destroy any enemy that presented itself to them.
For what felt like the thousandth time, I dearly wished I had been able to find an older vampire that would have been interested in the mission. An older vampire would not have been so concerned for the life of any of us, but would have instead focused on whatever task they had been given. That was the upside to them having forgotten their humanity, though the downside was in fact what had prevented me from finding one that would come with me.
I watched as Aisling and Nuala wiped out the last of the spirits, joining hands in the center of the room and breathing words out to one another. A wave of energy—beautiful colors of wintery blue and autumn yellow—rushed out from underneath them, dissipating the spirits as it touched them. The energy lapped benignly at my feet as it hit the walls and diminished.
Fae. Whenever they do something, it has to be fancy.
I dismissed the sword in my hand and turned around to yank Bastian to his feet.
“How are you feeling? Regretting your stupidity yet?” I smiled tightly at him. “All you had to do was mist out and stay misted out. But no, you think you need to swoop in on a girl who, by the way, kicked arse and doesn’t have a scratch on her.” I gestured behind me towards Aisling. “She didn’t need your help.”
“Malphas, I understand he was foolish, but is this necessary?” she said, coming up behind me and laying a hand on my shoulder. “Shouldn’t we just move forward. We have his room next. He can redeem himself.”
I glared down at him for another moment before shrugging her hand off my shoulder. “Fine. Patch him up and let’s get moving.”
The statue had disappeared, now that I could take a moment and look at the exit. I looked over my shoulder just to make sure I hadn’t been turned around, but no, it was missing. I heard Aisling chanting in the background as she healed the vampire, and Nuala’s footsteps as she came up at my side.
“That riddle at the end, did it make you think—”
“No. It didn’t,” I cut her off before she could say another word.
“Well, clearly it did, or you wouldn’t have known what I was going to say.”
“Fine. I thought it for exactly one minute, or second, or whatever. And then I remembered that these wards were laid eons ago and couldn’t possibly be referencing that event.”
“Except for what it said at the beginning. Fell out of time. Have you moved beyond this time since it happened? Is it possible that she is missing at every point in time?” she asked, refusing to let the topic die like I clearly wanted it to.
“What are you hoping to get from this conversation, Nuala?” I asked, my tone mild. It was a fight to hide my annoyance, but I did it.
“I thought we could…I don’t know. Maybe figure out something. Somewhere to look.”
“You seriously think I haven’t scoured every edge of the universe looking for her?” I asked, turning to look at her sternly. “She’s just…she’s gone. She isn’t dead, she’s just…gone.” I sighed.
“I’m sorry.” She sounded sincere, her voice was quiet, respectful.
I didn’t respond, I just moved forward.
1924, The Compound
Turning left down another corridor, silence laid heavily in the air between the lot of us. No one said anything. I don’t know if Nuala had told them I’d snapped at her, if they’d picked up on my bad mood, or if they were all just concerned that we were going to screw up this room too.
And by we, I meant Bastian. Because apparently Bastian sucks at ev
erything.
Why did I bring him again?
This was all supposed to be a fun game for me, a distraction from other things going on in my life. And here I was, stressed out for every part of it. I just wanted to get to the fun part.
“All right, Bastian. Time for you to shine,” I said as we neared the door. “Don’t fuck this one up.”
Bastian walked towards the door, shoulders hunched. I hoped he was aware of just how disappointed in him I was.
It wouldn’t do a lot to help with the confidence thing, but maybe it would stop him from doing something stupid and getting the rest of us killed.
Well, the rest of them. I doubted there was anything in this compound that could kill me. Maim me, certainly, and keep me tied up so that Riordan could catch me down here and torture me a good bit, but nothing would kill me.
The door swung open and revealed a much larger room than the last one, it looked to be about square in layout and roughly the size of a great hall.
It was supposed to be empty, but it wasn’t.
In the center of the room there were four clay mounds, each about the length of your average person, and a bit cylindrical.
Bastian glanced at me over his shoulder. “This isn’t what you described.”
“I’m sure they’re just the triggers. When we pass them, the sensory mask will drop. Just be ready,” I said with a shrug. I didn’t know what I was talking about, but everyone responds well to confidence.
We walked into the room, Bastian a little bit ahead. I gasped at the same time as the rest of them did, feeling a prick at my neck that I immediately swatted at.
“What was that?” Nuala asked.
“Probably nothing,” Bastian said.
“Right. Nothing. Except for how it happened to all of us at the same time.”
The mounds moved when we were a quarter of the way through the room, halfway to them. Stretched, bubbled, and gave birth to four bodies.
Our bodies.
I was staring down my clone.
I allowed myself the briefest moment of appreciating my own form. He was dressed exactly as I was, black suit with a red shirt underneath, hair slicked back with one strand curling down onto his forehead. Golden eyes gleaming back at me that promised death.
“Do you think we get to sleep with them?” I asked, turning towards the others. “I want to sleep with mine.”
“Oh, grow up,” Nuala snapped. “That’s clearly not what’s going on here.”
I’d have to agree with her, but of course I wasn’t about to tell her that. She wasn’t allowed to be right.
We were supposed to fight ourselves. I didn’t know how we had taken a wrong turn and ended up in a wrong room like this, or if perhaps the rooms had been changed since the information I had been given. Regardless, this shouldn’t be too hard, right? I knew my own weaknesses, after all.
Then again, the only real weakness I had wasn’t around to be used against me, and that wasn’t really a weakness to be used in combat, but rather to stop combat from ever having started…
I shook the thought away and called the energy sword to hand, starting towards my doppelgänger. He did the same thing, though he smirked at me as he did so. I frowned. What kind of advantage did he think he had?
We clashed together and I quickly discovered the advantage—he was a hell of a lot stronger than me. I didn’t know how that was possible, unless the room itself had weakened me. I pulled my left hand back and slugged the ganger in the face, glad that when I connected his head knocked back.
Good. So, it could be beaten then.
He let go of the sword he had called, dissipating it immediately, and seized me at the waist, pumping malevolent energy into my body.
I groaned, yanking back from him and lifting a leg to stomp into his chest, knocking him back several feet. I brought my sword down towards his head, but he rolled to the side and jumped back to his feet, slugging me across the face.
I tasted blood in my mouth and spat it out onto the marble floor. I wiped my hand across my mouth to clear the blood, glaring at him as I did so. “You’ll pay for that,” I growled.
“We’ll see.” He smirked at me.
I’ll admit, I was surprised. I didn’t think the gangers had brains or were capable of speaking or anything like that. I’d assumed they were pale imitations, programmed to fight and nothing else.
That pinprick had to have been something taking a DNA sample, to generate a full version of ourselves.
I didn’t have much more time to think about it before the ganger grappled with me again, continuing to opt for not having a sword—he didn’t really need one. His fists blurred as they pummeled my stomach, tearing apart my insides and leaving me gasping for breath.
When was the last time I’d felt this much pain? The Fall? I don’t know. Probably, since that was the last time I had fought one of my own, and that was basically what was going on here.
The last blow flung me across the room, slamming me into the wall and creating a bit of a crater there that I sprawled in for a good moment or two. The vantage point gave me a good look at the rest of the battle—and how badly we were doing. Everyone was fighting their own counterparts, and it didn’t look pretty.
Then again, how would I really know? There was one Nuala on the ground, with the other Nuala bearing down on her with their twin sets of blades locked together as the one on the bottom desperately tried to keep the top one off her. The Aisling’s weren’t quite so obvious in their arse kicking, but one of them was sporting several burns and sweating badly, chest heaving with every breath she took, she was also slowing down. That was a bad sign. One of the Bastian’s had just been flipped over the others head and had landed very badly on the ground behind him.
Judging from how I’d had my own arse kicked by my ganger, my money was on my team losing. Speaking of which, he was advancing on me again. I struggled back up to my feet and danced away from him, continuing to focus on the scene while keeping an eye on him. This wasn’t working and we needed to figure out an actual fucking tactic.
“Nuala! Take mine!” I shouted over the din of battle. “I’ll get yours. Aisling, Bastian, you switch!” I jogged towards the pair of Nuala’s, jumping up and aiming a flying kick at the one on top’s chin. I really hoped I’d been right about them getting their arses kicked. I connected and my momentum carried both of us to the ground. I rolled and jumped back to my feet, facing her again.
The bottom Nuala scrambled to her feet. “Thanks,” she gasped. “What makes you think I can take yours?”
“I really don’t. But I know we can’t take on our own, it just isn’t working. If this doesn’t work, we all just die.” I shrugged, it was the best I could offer right then.
She stared at me for a moment, shook her head, and turned to focus in on my own ganger. I took a moment to observe that Aisling and Bastian had heard me and were following orders before I focused in on my new target.
I was much more confident in my ability to take down a Nuala clone than I had been about my own. And if I could take her down, and Aisling could take down Bastian’s, then we could in turn help the other’s take down the remaining two.
Yeah, my money was on the two of us being the strongest in the group, but the other two didn’t need to know that. It just wasn’t good for morale.
Ganger Nuala faced me, smirking—what was it with the gangers and smirking at us? Did they think they’d win with sheer brute strength?—and flipping her daggers around.
“Do you know how she thinks of you?” she asked, her voice sugary sweet as she glided towards me, hips swaying. “She wants to give herself to you.”
“That’s cute. Doesn’t do much for me,” I replied, calling my sword to me again and gripping it with both hands. “I’m still going to beat you.”
She pouted. “That’s too bad. I could show you what she’s like, with none of the consequences that would come with enjoying her. I know you don’t like her mind, well, she knows. She’s so awar
e of your disgust that it causes her pain on a constant basis. But I’m not her.”
“Yeah, well, neither of you are who I want.”
“Oh, yes.” She chuckled. “That didn’t stop you from enjoying Aisling’s body, did it? Poor Nuala was so hurt by that.”
I rolled my eyes. I don’t know what she was hoping to get out of this little display, because the last thing I was ever going to feel for Nuala was pity. And besides, the real Nuala was a much better seductress than this poor imitation was ever going to be.
I kicked her legs out from under her and swept down with my blade, which she blocked with her own. That was OK, I didn’t really expect her to go out that easily. So instead I gave her a well-aimed kick to the head, and then another to the ribs.
You know, it was a little cathartic. I wouldn’t say that I wanted to kill Nuala, not really. She was annoying, and maybe it would be funny to play with her like that, but it wasn’t something that I really wanted. Besides, her Queen would be out for my head if I killed her. You should be careful about harming Fae that belong to Courts, it’s usually taken as a personal slight.
For example: if Nuala were to die by the hand of one of these creatures, or if she had in the other room, then it would be Riordan’s fault. I’m sure he’d thought that through when he created his wards, but no one really knows what they’re taking on when they gain the ire of a Fae Court.
Well, I did. And you don’t see me plucking their wings off, now do you?
See, that’s a joke. The Sidhe don’t have wings, they are just for the pixies.
Ganger Nuala was glaring up at me from the floor. I contemplated kicking her again, but she acted before I could, kicking out at my knees to knock me down onto the ground. She climbed on top of me as soon as I was down, straddling my hips in a provocative style.
I quirked an eyebrow up at her. “Lady, can you not take a hint?”
She didn’t answer, just reared back and slugged me across the face with the hilt of one of her daggers. I opened my mouth and stretched my jaw to reduce some of the residual pain. “Well that was just rude. And not helpful for you at all,” I said, critiquing her technique. I punched her in the gut, bringing my sword up as she doubled over at the sudden whoosh of air from her lungs, and I stabbed her in the throat.
