Bastion of Magic (The Sidhe (Urban Fantasy Series) Book 4)

by S A Archer

  That name slammed into London. Rico had been the Sidhe to enchant her. He’d been the reason she couldn’t live without the frequent infusions of Touch magic.

  And from the way Peyton dropped that name on her like a bomb… he knew all about her and Rico. That had been one point she’d been careful to conceal. Working for Manannan was one thing. Being an enchanted human bound to serve the Sidhe was something else entirely. It meant that she was anything but an ally to the wizards.

  “Interesting how things turn out, isn’t it?” Harsh meaning barbed each of his words.

  London didn’t even blink. How fast could she go for her gun? How fast could he go for his?

  But instead of calling her out right then and there, Peyton’s intensity eased off. He tilted his head back toward the elevator. “Come on, recruit. I’ll give you the rest of the tour.”

  London followed him slowly, not at all certain what game Peyton was playing at.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Malcolm knelt in the grass in the small backyard. A privacy fence closed off the rest of the world, even though he could hear life go on beyond its protection. A dog barked endlessly, like it enjoyed the echo it could make. Now and then an engine cruised past the corner lot. Two ladies chattering on about nothing important passed by just on the other side with the rattly noise of stroller wheels on concrete accompanying them. None of it disturbed the frozen death that sprawled beside him.

  The bloke had been in his forties, Malcolm guessed. And from the toys on the lawn and the feminine decorative touches inside the tidy home, he’d been married with kids. He’d also been a pervert. Malcolm remembered him well, since he’d come to the goblin caves nearly every month that Malcolm was kept there. When he’d seen Malcolm at his door, the shock hadn’t been as intense as his excitement. He’d invited Malcolm in without even asking him why he was there, and then led him to the backyard just in case someone came home. Malcolm guessed it was to give him a quick getaway so no one would know Mr. Perfect wasn’t so innocent.

  The death had come quickly, now that Malcolm knew how to do it. He’d twisted his fist into the fibers of the Sidhe magic and yanked it out of the guy so fast that he’d barely made a gurgle before collapsing on the ground. He stayed as he’d fallen, his knees bent under him at an uncomfortable looking angle, and his hands clutching his chest. His eyes were wide and stared at the sky. A look of pain and horror froze on his face.

  The pervert didn’t deserve a quick death, but Malcolm had come to learn there was no joy for him in making it linger. Making them hurt didn’t make him hurt less, it just made him feel sick inside.

  Kneeling on the grass, he fingered through the wad of magical threads he’d collected. Some were his own, the remnants that hadn’t yet faded completely away. None of the others belonged to the kid from Rand’s latest hideout. None of the ones he’d found since the concert, anyway, had the boy’s threads. Just those humans that had been at the farmhouse with Rand, and the human child that was inside the cave.

  “So who was it that Touched you, perv?” Malcolm asked the body in the awkward yoga pose. Probably should have asked him that before killing him. Next time, he needed to make sure to do that.

  Malcolm studied the threads, so he’d know them when he found them again. Shifting through the magic, he found three other types of strands. All more recent than Malcolm’s and still bright.

  It didn’t seem right, just to leave the pile of magic threads just laying about, even if no one else could see or feel them. But it wasn’t like he could save them and someday return them to the Sidhe that created them. It would be like trying to stick a feather back on a bird. Once the threads were shed, they would Fade. They would die. At least, that’s how he figured it. On Earth, the fey replenished themselves from the ley lines. And when the magic was shed, it would drain back into the ley lines. The cycle of magic.

  Best Malcolm could do, was give the threads over to the ley lines.

  So he made a coaxing, scooping gesture towards the ground. Not far below him, a tributary of the ley lines surged through the soil. It bent up towards him, like a curving beam of light, until it bulged up from the ground.

  Malcolm didn’t even have to feed the threads into the flow, it sucked them right in and carried them away in the rush.

  He’d seen the ley lines up close before, beneath the artifact puzzle just before the new realm was created, but he’d never really gotten a chance to look at it up close. All the colors blending and twisting. The whoosh of whispers, like lost snippets of conversations. And, oddly though it might sound, it smelled like the forest after it rained. Wet, and full of clean scents that mingled into an odd, yet beautiful harmony.

  Carefully, Malcolm caressed his fingertips across the surface. Smooth and wet. Like the surface of a flowing stream of water. As the moist magic soaked into his skin, Malcolm lifted his face. He didn’t see anything of the house or yard where he’d knelt. Instead, it was as though he flew across the landscape, bodiless and free. Ireland was aglow with fey magic, chattering and bright. But in the distance he heard the sounds of weeping, punctuated by wails of pain and anguish. Lifting his gaze towards the sounds made him fling ever faster towards the source. Across the sea… Outside the Great Veil… To a city on the water just beyond.

  A great building rose up before him, and from inside, the tormented fey cried out. Malcolm didn’t slow down, but smashed through the wall. Only the wall didn’t give way, his bodiless form just phased right through it with a painful sizzling sound that made every bit of him buzz with a strange pain. Like the pins and needles when his foot went to sleep, only it was all over him.

  Coming to a sudden stop, Malcolm dropped from the air to crouch invisibly on the floor. Slowly he raised his face to the sight before him. The great room he was in seemed to stretch off to the distance like a warehouse. And within, stacked in cages one atop another, was fey of all kinds. Their magic dripped from them like blood, carrying their cries into the ley lines.

  Worse… So much worse… than any goblin cave had been.

  “I see you,” a voice as wicked as the hiss of a snake whispered.

  Malcolm twisted about, still in a crouch and ready to attack with his magic and his ghostly body, if he had to.

  The man that towered over him was human, Malcolm could tell because he looked older in the way the fey never were. He was broad in the chest and in the belly, hidden within a loose fitting suit that glowed to his senses with magic embroidered throughout the fabric. The bloke looked every bit like the wizards Malcolm had heard about, right down to the staff he raised.

  Leaping forward with more power and strength than Malcolm would have thought from a human, he swung the staff at Malcolm.

  He jerked back, and the moment he thought about getting away from the wizard, Malcolm felt a great yank. He slammed back into his body before he could catch his breath. The force pummeled him to the ground, landing squarely on his back with an ‘ooph’.

  As he sat up, Malcolm checked himself. He was all the way back inside himself. “Did you see that?” He asked the yoga corpse.

  The ley lines sank back into the ground, without his magic drawing it up towards him. The sounds of the neighborhood, with the dogs and the cars and the birds, were so not like where he’d been a moment before. It was almost like he’d woken from a nightmare. Only it had been real.

  Too real.

  The vibration of his cell phone in his pocket jolted him like something jumping out in a haunted house. He snatched it up, saw the caller ID, and then answered it. “What’s up, Kie?”

  “We need to talk,” he said, all serious, which wasn’t how Kieran usually was, unless something was really bugging him. “Can you meet me?”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Deacon crouched in the tree with a spear clutched in his fist. His
other hand gripped the branch between his feet as he leaned to watch the fairy beneath him. She’d strayed from the others, from the protection of her grove. On the Isle of Fey, she’d assumed that she was safe from the likes of him.

  The wide, Changeling grin spread across his face. That grin was usually his giveaway and he loved it. He could mimic any person or creature perfectly, but when he grinned it always gave him away. The innocent would see in that grin the evil he intended and the delicious fear would ignite in their eyes.

  How he enjoyed toying with his prey. Especially, now that the dark enchantment washed away everything but his passion for killing. But this wasn’t just a hunt to collect the fey creatures the wizards wanted him to bring. This mission was much more delectable.

  Just as the fairy bent over to examine the flowers growing at the base of the tree, Deacon dropped from the boughs above her. Driving the spear straight down, he slammed it through her back so fast that she didn’t even have the chance to fall.

  Death took her instantly, which was a bore. But he’d manage to aim his strike perfectly between her wings. The spear drove through her body and into the ground such that she was suspended just like a giant butterfly in a collector’s display.

  Deacon crouched next to the dead fairy, who still reached for the flower, her open, dead eyes seeing nothing else. “A work of art,” he told her, amusing himself. “Don’t you think?”

  The shadows around him shivered in the night breeze. Deacon raised his head, listening to them gasp.

  She was near.

  As he rose, his form shifted. When he stood fully upright his features mirrored perfectly the darkest Sidhe he’d ever known. Crom, the Dark One. He who was the antithesis to Lugh, the Shining One. Long ago, Deacon memorized every detail of the Sidhe whose power ran so pure that he put all other Unseelie to shame. Long black hair and obsidian eyes. Skin as coppery as a dark elf’s. Tall and cruelly handsome. Merciless.

  In this form, the girl of shadows found him. She failed to remain silent in her rush as she flicked the new leaves of a sapling in her haste.

  Deacon glared, knowing he appeared dark and beautiful to her. The enchantment deepened his own dark nature to a boiling tar black, almost as much as the potion he carried in his back pocket. If a fey could be in love with a thing, then he was in love with the enchantment. Each drop of the potion expanded the viciousness within him to an eternally dark power, as living as a serpent. He craved the fangs that pumped the poisoned cruelty into his soul.

  For an age, he’d served Crom. Hating him and honoring him in equal measures. All the Sidhe, with their power to dominate the lesser fey, were worthy of the hate all Changelings harbored for them. But the darkness… oh, the darkness…

  Deacon faced the Unseelie girl whose power barely cast a shadow in comparison to the great Crom. Filled as he was with the enchantment fashioned from Crom’s dark well, Deacon overshadowed her. Drawing back his shoulders, he drew up the magic within. The serpent inside him hissed, ready to strike.

  Any fear or protest died on the girl’s parted lips. Her eyes widened, witnessing the power that Deacon commanded. The power to kill a Sidhe, as he had done to Rico. The power to corrupt a Sidhe, as he had with Lugh. The power to dominate a Sidhe, as he would with this Unseelie girl. “Don’t run,” he commanded, his voice as deep and compelling as Crom’s had once been.

  She stopped her retreat. The shadows expanded around them, circling them with her magic. Although the tendrils of shadow clutched at Deacon, they passed through him with no substance. “Don’t come any closer.”

  Of course, he closed the distance in long strides. Dark though her magic was, she possessed no power to compel him. She was nothing but a child compared to the dominion of Crom.

  Deacon snatched her by the throat. Her tapered fingers dug at his hand, but with laughable effort. And this girl called herself a Sidhe? His grip closed tighter over her airway, not fully closing it, but making her fight for every breath. “Look into my eyes.” Crom had said those words so many times, as he pressed his will into the lesser fey he commanded. Even the resistance of many of the Sidhe crushed beneath his power. He could have destroyed this Sidhe girl and remade her into his minion. As he’d remake Rhiannon into his lover and death maiden whenever the mood suited him. Fixing his stare upon the Unseelie girl, he growled, “You will serve me.”

  The impact of a blow slammed into Deacon’s side, throwing him and the girl to the ground.

  At last, the fight he’d come for.

  Deacon spun, coming up with hands transformed into long, clawed fingers more deadly than any werewolf’s. He sliced them at the dark elf, who dodged back out of range. “Cormac!” He hissed the name.

  The dark elf crouched over the Unseelie girl, protecting her as she coughed and rubbed at her bruised throat. His glowing blue eyes blinked at Deacon. “You dare take the likeness of Crom, Changeling scum!” He spat his distaste.

  “Bite me!” Deacon grinned, knowing his too-wide smile ruined the mimicry of Crom, and finding a perverse pleasure in that thought.

  The Changeling tumbled through the air, even more nimble than an elf. Cormac flung himself at him, his knives in a reverse grip so that as his fists drove downward the blades led.

  But Deacon twisted into a kick such that his feet snapped around and smashed into Cormac’s wrists. He failed to knock the blades free, but he sent the dark elf spinning away.

  A stabbing pain rammed into him, arching Deacon’s back. Glancing over his shoulder, he snarled at the girl. Then he slammed back an elbow that caught her in the cheek and snapped her head to the side.

  As soon as she dropped away from him a wall of fire burst up from the ground. Deacon shielded his face, spinning to find the fire Sidhe.

  But another body blow knocked him through the flames and slammed him onto his side on the ground. Cormac wrenched the blade from Deacon’s body, tearing a scream of pain from him. Then he rammed him down onto his wounded back. The punches rocked Deacon’s head back with each blow until he could see nothing but the stars from the impacts.

  “Don’t kill him!” The girl cried.

  Deacon had to laugh. Only a few fey could stomach killing each other. It was a weakness the Changelings so often exploited. Licking at the split in his lip, Deacon looked up at them. His left eye was swollen shut. He could just imagine what Crom might look like, beaten like that, but Deacon had lost his shape.

  Cormac gripped the Changeling’s collar, seeing him for who he was now. “Deacon! You filth! What are you playing at?” He slammed Deacon’s head to the ground again.

  Bloody hurt, too. But Deacon laughed at him anyway. The dark elves bowed to Crom’s power as much as the Changelings had. Only the dark elves revered the Unseelie for his black dominance, where the Changelings despised the Sidhe they served. Just as he despised Manannan. And most especially the wizards, and the humans who delivered him into their power, London and Peyton.

  Deacon hated them all.

  Which made his job that much more delicious.

  The red-headed Unseelie lad knelt by his head, and pressed a knife to Deacon’s throat as if he had the guts to use it. “Why are you here?” He demanded.

  “Do I need a reason to kill?” Deacon started to laugh again, but Cormac’s punch to his gut drove the mirth out of him.

  The girl pushed at him, half-rolling him to his side, even with Cormac straddling his chest. “He’s carrying something!” She snatched away the bottle of the potion. “It’s pulsing with dark magic!”

  “Give it back!” Deacon swiped at it, but she jerked it away and the males both shoved him back down hard. “That’s mine!”

  “I feel it, too.” Cormac grabbed at Deacon’s wrists and forced his hands down on the ground at either side of his head. Getting in Deacon’s face, he demanded, “Water from Crom’s
well? Where did you get it?”

  Deacon snapped at him, his suddenly needle-sharp teeth trying to bite the dark elf’s face. “It’s mine!”

  “Tell me!” Cormac shouted.

  “No!” Deacon bucked his body, unbalancing Cormac. When he teleported, because of the grip Cormac had, he took the dark elf with him. Reappearing high in the trees and falling, Deacon spun so that Cormac took the brunt of the unexpected impact with the branches. When Cormac’s grip faltered, Deacon teleported again. He reappeared behind the girl and swept her legs from beneath her. When she hit the ground, he pounced on her, claws raised to slice at her face and throat.

  The sound of sizzling flames reached Deacon as the fireball blasted through his shoulder. He teleported away again.

  When he landed on the beach, bloody and hurting, he quickly snatched a silver charm from his pocket and dropped the necklace over his head. With the silver upon his skin, not even the dark elf’s eyes nor the shadow girl’s senses could find him.

  Losing blood fast, and unable to shift to close the wounds, Deacon’s shaky hand reached into the front pocket of his trousers. The orb he withdrew had been nothing more than a gum ball until recently. The candy and gum exterior sealed a sweet powder within. He jammed the ball into his mouth and began to chew.