Passing by the fight, we reached the garage. It was completely empty…and also lacking in the elevator we’d been expecting. No people. No cars. No access downward. It wasn’t even really a garage, just an empty shell.
“That’s not right,” I said aloud. “The shifters said they smelled an access to the underground here.”
“It might be outside? Or hidden?” Coleman asked.
“No, it’s here,” I replied, stepping into the building and looking around. “Probably half-concealed with tech and cleverness and half-wrapped in glamor. We don’t have time for this.”
“Suggestions?” my subordinate asked.
“Back me up,” I ordered. “It’s time for us to make ourselves a door.”
27
Echoing gunfire reminded us that we didn’t have a lot of time. It was entirely possible that we could take the facility via the not-quite-frontal assaults going on at the other two entrances, but the faster I got my hands on Esras, the better off we were.
I drew the whip and Coleman drew his sword as we faced each other across two meters of bare concrete. There was almost certainly some mechanism that opened the floor or otherwise provided access…but we didn’t have time to find it.
I called faerie fire, green-white flames flickering out from the wooden whipstock and driving deep into the floor. Coleman stabbed his sword into the ground, flame and force flashing out sideways from the strike.
My Gift of Fire normally summoned just that: fire. I could, however, use it as an extension of my senses. Right now, I sent seeking tendrils of superheated flame into the concrete. Dirt and stone alike shattered under the heat as the two of us drove down into the ground, seeking the tunnel I figured had to be beneath us.
After the first two feet, I was starting to worry…and then we broke through a foot later. There was a full meter of concrete and dirt between where we were standing right now and the underground tunnel leading to the true heart of the fortress.
That was no match for the power Coleman and I brought to bear. Fire and force swept out from each of us in laser-straight lines. For a moment, the space between us was framed in glowing-red melted concrete.
Then we both latched onto the chunk of earth with our Gifts and pulled. Four cubic meters of earth, concrete and steel lifted out of the ground, and we threw it to the side. We could see light spilling up from below, and I grinned at the open hole leading deep into the ground.
“Well, that worked,” I said aloud. “With me, people.”
Of the five of us in that garage, I was the squishiest by far. Coleman and the asura could easily jump down the fifteen feet without injuring themselves. I would probably break something.
Or I could use the Gift of Force to control my descent, basically flying down to the ground as my subordinates jumped past me. I was the first into the hole and the last onto the floor of the tunnel beneath us.
“Well, that answers that question,” Coleman told me as I touched down, pointing toward the end of the tunnel. “The actual elevator is in front of the garage.”
“Sneaky buggers,” I agreed. “All right, let’s get to moving. Somewhere down here is the vault MacDonald saw.”
“I don’t suppose you know where?” the Hunter asked.
I started to shake my head, then stopped. There was something tugging at my brain, a direction? A calling? Not quite a presence, not quite a memory, but…
“I think I might,” I admitted. “Of course, there’s only one way down this tunnel, so it’s easy so far.”
The tunnel was intended as a vehicle entrance, not one for people on foot. It wasn’t particularly well lit and it was surprisingly long, but it was also unguarded right now.
After about fifty meters, it gave way to an underground parking lot. Ramps led down to what looked like another four levels below us as well, and there were about a dozen stalls per level. It was an impressive display, ranging from near-junkers that would attract no attention at all to luxury sedans to…
To, well, armored personnel carriers. Those were too big to make it down the ramps to the lower levels, so the two green armored vehicles were on the top level, looming over the regular cars around them.
“Coleman, can we make sure those APCs never go anywhere again?” I asked.
“I think so.” The Hunter walked over to the large vehicles, studied them for a moment, and then used a blade of Force to slash their tracks into pieces.
“They’ll drive again,” he admitted. “If someone puts a few days of work into repairing them.”
“Somehow, that makes me feel a lot better,” I told him. Surveying the rest of the underground structure, I finally spotted a pair of heavy double doors that looked like they led deeper into the complex.
“That way.” I pointed.
My little strike team fell in around me as we moved toward the doors, but I paused as we neared them. The tugging I was feeling, toward the spear, didn’t go through those doors.
It went down.
“Let’s hold off on those,” I said. “Esras is…” I closed my eyes and let my hand follow the tug. “That way.”
I opened my eyes and looked at my own pointing hand.
“I’m guessing on the bottom floor,” I concluded. “There may not be a door on the bottom, but we can make one if we need to—and they won’t be expecting us to cut through a wall.”
“You’re the boss,” Coleman agreed.
“My lord,” one of the asura interjected, pointing at the nearest vehicles—a pickup truck and an SUV that looked like a three-quarters-scale version of my Escalade. “If we want to avoid being attacked from behind, we should hotwire these and blockade the door.”
That was a good idea.
“Do it,” I ordered. “That’ll buy us time if we need it.”
Orman joined the two asura in getting into the vehicles. We weren’t being subtle or gentle—the driver’s-side doors were completely removed, tossed aside like tissue paper as my people forced the cars to start and drove them into the doors.
There was a crunching sound as the pickup hammered into the doors—and a worse one when Orman rammed the SUV into it from the other side. The pickup was crushed into the heavy security doors, covering their entire width with its crushed bulk.
The SUV wasn’t in much better shape, but both of my people were out without injury.
“All right, folks. Down four floors and through a wall, I think.”
Descending down the ramps, I took a few seconds to touch base with Mary by phone. She was basically running the aboveground operation, playing backup as the shifters made sure the two main assault forces had the support they needed.
It was a good thing our phones passed through gnomish hands before they reached ours. They had far fewer difficulties with signal than the regular version.
“How are we doing?” I asked.
“The house is a wreck and the shooting has stopped there,” she told me. “We haven’t run into the Noble or Chernenkov yet, so they have to have been in the fortress. That’s proving a much tougher problem.”
“How bad?”
“Bad,” she admitted. “We haven’t lost anyone yet, but Asi isn’t making any progress. They’ve reinforced the old walls with magic and rebar, and there’s only one way in. That situation is not under control, but no one is trying to run yet, either.”
“We’re going for Esras first,” I told her. “Once you’ve IDed Chernenkov or the Noble, let me know. If everything goes right, I’ll be able to hit them below while you’ve got them distracted.”
“Be careful.”
“As much as I can be,” I said. “I don’t want to lose anyone I don’t have to.”
There was a pause, and then Mary swore.
“Love?”
“Chernenkov just jumped Asi,” she told me quickly. “Move, Jason. He can hold her, but I don’t know if he can beat her.”
I was the only one around who had fought Chernenkov to a standstill, and I had to agree with Mary. Raja As
i could fight Chernenkov. He could hold her off while Riley tried to get at her with the iron spikes, but he couldn’t kill her.
And since we knew Chernenkov had friends…
“We’re moving. I’ll be in touch.”
I put my phone away and looked at the others.
“It’s getting heated upstairs,” I told them. “We need to move faster.”
The only thing really slowing us down was the desire to not run directly into an ambush. Since we now knew that the worst-case scenario for an ambush was upstairs fighting an asura warlord, we could go faster.
Even the physically weakest supernaturals—a category that still included me if I couldn’t use the Gift of Force to augment my actions—still had the fitness and endurance of an Olympic-level athlete.
We’d been heading down the ramps at a brisk walk, and now we started running. I couldn’t let the people upstairs die for our distraction, especially not if I could turn the tide of the entire battle if I got my hands on Esras.
I wasn’t entirely sure how that would work, but everyone around me clearly believed it to be the case. For some reason, if the Spear of Lugh ended up in my hands, that was the end of this fight.
It was no surprise, really, that the lowest level of the parking garage didn’t have an access into the base. It had a stairwell we’d missed in our hurry upstairs that linked it to the higher levels, and that was it.
“Where’s the spear?” Coleman asked.
“There,” I pointed. “Not far, either. Maybe twenty meters. Without knowing where the interior stairwells are, I’d say the other side of that wall is probably the vault entrance.”
“Can you step Between?” Orman said.
“Not without being sure where the open space is,” Coleman replied before I could. “Hole-cutting time. Kilkenny?”
“With me.”
We raised our weapons again, our power fueled by concern for our friends as we unleashed it on the innocent stone and concrete in our path.
A meter of stone gave way. Then another. Then another. We punched through four meters of concrete-covered island bedrock before we hit open air again. Debris filled the hole we’d made and spilled out into the garage behind us and the lobby ahead of us.
“Go!” I snapped. Coleman stepped Between ahead of us and I led the others across the debris field.
Gunfire echoed in the hall as we burst out into open air again. Coleman had dodged their fire, but he was engaged with a half-dozen Unseelie Gentry carrying ugly-looking bullpup assault rifles.
“Take them,” I barked, and my people obeyed. Gunfire echoed in the enclosed space and swords flashed as my asura charged.
The Gentry had reacted quickly to the wall being wrecked and a Hunter appearing amidst them but hadn’t been expecting more. Two went down in a hail of cold iron bullets. Coleman cut a third in half with his sword as they turned to face the new threat.
Force fueled my leap across the room, turning a light jump into a vault that brought me down in front of them. My whip flashed out, fire hammering the closest Gentry’s gun to wreckage as he tried to defend himself with it.
The whip destroyed his gun and then took him down a moment later.
The fifth unexpectedly sprouted a cold iron dagger in the middle of his forehead. Thrown by supernatural muscles and guided by Force, Orman’s dagger would have missed only if he’d reacted.
The last Gentry knew a bad deal when she saw one and tossed her gun to the ground, holding her hands in the air.
“Fuck this,” she said flatly. “I claim the Hunt’s Mercy!”
Technically, very technically, the Wild Hunt were a kind of police. “Hunt’s Mercy” meant she was claiming the ancient right to be tried before a court. It might or might not save the Gentry’s life in the end—Fae Lords were not known for gentle sentences—but she would live through today.
“Understood,” I told her. “Orman, bind her. Coleman, take a look at that vault door.”
The door at the other end of the room was exactly what I’d expected: the massive triple-locked doors of a major bank. I could feel that the spear was on the other side—and from this close, I could tell that Esras was merely the most powerful artifact in the vault.
“I rather think not,” a calm voice told us in a perfect British Received Pronunciation accent. A graying Fae stepped out of the stairwell and shot our prisoner in the head without slowing his step. An iron mask concealed his features as he faced us calmly.
“I’m not going to give you my name,” they continued, tossing aside the gun and producing a gnomish warblade—cold iron blade, protected hilt, enchanted to the nines—from thin air. “Today, I am merely your executioner.”
We’d known the fortress was home to two Noble members of the Masked Lords.
We’d assumed that meant that there wasn’t a true Fae Lord.
We’d been wrong.
28
The Masked Lord gestured with the warblade and it duplicated in the air, a dozen floating blades appearing out of thin air. The new blades were things of Glamor and Force but no less lethal for all of that.
“You know what you have to do,” Coleman told me as he pulled his rifle up on its sling. “Go.”
Gunfire echoed in the hall as my companions opened fire on the Masked Lord. This wasn’t a fight they could win. Two asura and two Greater Fae against a Fae Lord?
The addition of my own powers might change the result, but I knew what Coleman meant and I dodged Between as three glamor-blades flashed at my head.
From Between, I couldn’t follow the fight. I could only hope that Coleman and the others were at least staying alive as I attempted to do something almost as dangerous as it was bloody stupid: navigate through the Between, underground, to a place I’d never been. Navigating to somewhere I’d never been was safe enough in general, except it had a margin of error.
If that margin put me outside my target, that wasn’t a big deal. Except if I was outside my target underground, I could easily end up trapped, unable to escape.
Today, however, I had a beacon. Esras sang to me across the boundary between worlds, and I crossed to it with unexpected ease. I had enough sense of the real world to be sure that I emerged into empty space next to it, and I stepped.
The vault was chilly and the air felt vaguely dry. There was a sterile air to the place, as if every factor from temperature to air mix to pressure had been carefully accounted for and controlled.
It looked like a museum. The vault was a thirty-meter-on-a-side square with a five-meter-high roof, and it was filled with glass display cases positioned around neatly laid-out aisles.
The display cases contained what I’d expected. Row upon row of weapons: swords, spears, daggers, bows, even rifles and handguns. Every one of them a work of art, the result of weeks or months or years of work by expert fae craftsmen.
Every one of them an artifact of power, forged to destroy the enemies of the fae—and stored here to be used against the enemies of the Masked Lords.
The outer walls were lined with safety deposit boxes as well. I didn’t feel power radiating from them, which suggested that they were filled with more normal contents: gems, gold, bearer bonds and other instruments of wealth.
This was probably the most secure secret vault the Masked Lords owned, and they’d stockpiled weapons and wealth there to fuel their campaign—and if everything went according to plan, it was all going to end up being mine.
At that moment, however, my eye finally settled on one thing. In the center of the room, there was a display case on a raised pedestal, one I recognized from MacDonald’s vision. Alarms and tripwires surrounded the bulletproof glass case. Even being allowed in this vault did not mean you were trusted enough to approach Esras.
The wide iron spearhead glittered to my eyes as I stepped onto the dais. I didn’t care about the alarms and ignored them as they started going off. None of the tripwires appeared to be attached to lethal devices, but the bulletproof case itself was locked and
sealed in cold iron.
It wasn’t a foolproof barrier, even against fae, but it would slow most fae down long enough for the alarms to do their work. Unfortunately for the designers, the people responsible for answering those alarms were currently occupied.
Unfortunately for me, if I didn’t get the case open quickly, the people doing that occupying were going to end up dead.
The wizard-forged whipstock was in my hand before I even realized I’d reached for it. Green-white flame answered my call, MacDonald’s gift vastly augmenting my own power as I poured heat into the locks.
The cold-forged iron frustrated my power for a moment, but the orichalcum runes on the wooden stock flared brighter and the lock exploded. Superheated liquid iron smashed into my shields…and while cold iron might have cut through, it was no longer cold-forged iron at that point.
A gesture flung aside the now-loose lid of the display case, and I hung the whip from my belt as I reached for the spear with trembling hands.
I swear Esras leapt into my grip, jumping the last half-inch out of its case to slot neatly into my fingers. The ash wood was cool against my skin but fit perfectly, my fingers wrapping around the wooden haft as if I’d done it a thousand times.
Something woke up. I wasn’t sure if it was in me or in the spear, but a new warmth flooded my body as I instinctively settled into a combat stance I’d never learned.
I didn’t have time for testing or experimentation. With the spear in my hand, I turned back to the vault door and leveled the weapon.
“If you’re half as powerful as everyone tells me you are, let’s see about this door,” I whispered…and channeled faerie fire.
With MacDonald’s gift, my originally green fire had acquired a white core of even further superheated flame. The Wizard’s power had augmented my own but also changed its character.
With Esras, my fire was still faerie fire. It was still mine, a sparkling green color…except now it faded to a pale green so light, it was almost invisible. It wasn’t the white core of the orichalcum-fueled extra energy I’d unleashed before.
Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3) Page 15
