This was my own faerie fire turned up beyond eleven. Green or not, the line of fire I unleashed on the door could have rivaled the corona of the sun for heat as I misjudged the power of the spear.
The vault door shattered. A few moments before, I’d exploded a lock that weighed a few hundred grams.
This time, I exploded a vault door that weighed over three tons. I managed to bring my Gift of Force to bear quickly enough to contain the explosion and channel it, focusing it into a line of superheated debris that went flying directly at the Masked Lord.
He managed to shield himself, somehow, but was thrown backward regardless. The Mask slipped from his face, cracked in half from the force of the blow, and he tossed it aside as he rose to face me.
My subordinates were alive. Coleman and one of the asura were even still up and facing him, though Orman and the other asura were now unconscious against a wall.
The Lord ignored them now, focusing on me as I walked through the wreckage of the door with the spear in my hand.
“Well. It seems that answers the question of whether one of Calebrant’s blood could wield the spear without problems,” they said calmly. Even without the mask, I didn’t recognize them. Without it, I could tell he was a Seelie Lord, but that was all.
“Chernenkov said you would be coming. She’s going to be grumpy she missed you.”
The warblade flashed back into his hand and he bowed mockingly.
“Jason Kilkenny, I presume?” He smirked. “I am Lord Everard Rose. I don’t think that toy is going to make much difference for you, I’m afraid…and I do know that if I kill you while you carry it, the blood bond is broken.”
He was probably right. I certainly didn’t know enough about blood bonds and ancient magical weapons to say one way or another.
I grinned anyway, pointing the spear at him as I returned the slight bow. If my bow was any less mocking than his, it wasn’t due to a lack of effort.
“There is one key criterion to that, Lord Rose,” I reminded him. “You’re going to have to kill me…and you are not the first Masked Lord I’ve faced.”
Rose laughed—and flung a dozen glamor-blades at my face from nowhere.
I blocked with Force…and misestimated the augmenting power of the spear. My intended focused shield turned into a wall of brute force that smashed furniture to splinters and sent Rose flying backward.
His own Gifts flared to life, slowing his flight and pulling him back to the ground. He looked more than a little surprised, but that didn’t stop him from retaliating.
Rose charged forward, glamor-blades flickering into existence around him as he moved. Glamor-forged duplicates of the Fae Lord appeared as well, one man becoming an entire squadron as he lunged for me.
I gripped Esras and dove sideways, channeling force to bring myself out of the path of his strike. More force shielded my subordinates, protecting them as Lord Rose’s power filled the room with death.
It washed over all of us and shattered against the wreckage of the vault door…and then it was my turn.
I kept up the shield over Coleman and the others and channeled fire down the spear, flinging sparks of pale-green faerie fire across the room like stardust.
That…was new. Both parts. I couldn’t usually multitask like that, and that kind of area strike was beyond my power. Even MacDonald’s whip only made what I’d always done more powerful. This was something else.
Rose managed to deflect most of the sparks away, but several struck home. The smell of burning flesh filled the lobby as my power seared his flesh and he swore at me.
He straightened behind his shield, facing me with his sword drawn.
“I know when I’m beat, kid,” he said flatly. “It’s been fun, but we’re—”
Coleman appeared from Between beside the Fae Lord like an avenging angel, his sword flashing around in a brutally powerful strike. The Hunter was no match for a Fae Lord…but he didn’t need to be.
The cold iron sword took off Rose’s head in one swing, and the Masked Lord crumpled in silence.
I exhaled, meeting my subordinate’s gaze.
“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t think I could have stopped him running.”
“We didn’t have the time for our usual grandstanding,” Coleman replied. “Asi’s still dueling two nobles on his own upstairs and that”—he pointed at the spear—“is his only hope.
“So, let’s go.”
29
As we moved up through the interior of the Masked Lords’ bunker, it rapidly became clear that they’d thrown everyone at trying to hold off our attack. They were more desperate than my conversation with Mary implied.
Rose hadn’t been in the basement to fight me. He’d been in the basement to grab the key artifacts from the vault and run. The Lords had already written off this base.
We’d left the conscious asura to hold the vault and watch over Orman and the others, in case someone else tried to finish what Rose had gone down to do. I didn’t necessarily need the contents of that vault, but I certainly didn’t want them in the hands of the Masked Lords.
I wondered if the people still fighting on the surface knew they’d been written off yet.
They certainly weren’t expecting us to attack from behind. The main floor was well set up for this, with firing positions concealed by both mundane and magical stealth and only one access point. A dozen mixed fae were holding those positions, mostly engaging with gunfire.
An occasional fire bolt or similar use of power was showing up as well, but this was the kind of situation mortal humans had invented automatic weapons for, and there were few improvements on them.
I sent fire careening along the room. Green sparks of faerie flame hammered into them from behind, and Coleman opened fire with his assault rifle. Half of them went down, wounded or dying, before the rest realized they were under attack…and threw down their weapons.
It was over in seconds.
“Coleman, bind them,” I ordered. “I need to get outside.”
I could hear the staccato sound of gunfire combined with the hiss-crack of power through the firing slits. We’d neutralized the defenders, but that wasn’t doing my people any good while two Nobles were tearing through their ranks.
Leaving the surrendering fae to the Hunter, I stepped Between and emerged in the middle of a hellzone. The fields surrounding the house were burning, a rapidly spreading grass fire that was threatening everyone.
In the middle of it, laughing as he dueled with two women, was Raja Venkat Asi.
Bloody red lines marked his golden flesh as he danced around the fae with a massive sword in his hand. Chernenkov was half-transformed, long claws flashing out from her hands as she attacked. Her companion was a more traditional Fae Noble, a classical beauty in modern body armor and wielding a glowing white sword.
Riley had started making his move in the moments before I arrived. He stepped Between with a cold iron spike in his hand, materializing behind Chernenkov and driving for her shadow with the weapon.
She backhanded him with a hand full of claws, sending the redhaired Irishman flying with blood spraying from his chest.
I was there before he hit the ground, Esras flashing through the air to block her as she tried to finish the job. Sixty kilos of enraged half-demon-horse, half-fae-woman slammed into the wooden haft of the spear and crashed to a halt.
“No further, Chernenkov,” I told her. “It’s me you want. Think you can do better this time?”
There was a banshee in the area, and Chernenkov’s scream when she saw me was still the loudest sound in my ears. She spun around the spear’s haft and flung herself at me.
My free hand met her in midair, a gauntlet of pure force wrapped around my fist as I hit her. She flew backward, hitting the ground next to her companion and rising instantly.
“I’ve no reason to run now, boy,” she hissed. “You won’t be as lucky.”
Unfortunately, it looked like my arrival had been a near-fatal distractio
n for Asi. The Masked Noble had run him through while I was saving Riley, and the asura stumbled backward.
Then I realized that he still had her sword in him, and suspected it hadn’t been as accidental as it looked. The cold iron couldn’t kill the asura—at least, no more so than a regular sword rammed through his gut—but the same wound would be almost instantly fatal to me.
He’d taken the blow to remove the most dangerous weapon from the fight. Clever bastard.
Of course, that left me facing two Fae Nobles, one of whom looked on the edge of going berserk and another who just looked furious.
Power flared along the length of the spear as I met Chernenkov’s gaze.
I smiled.
She charged.
Esras met her halfway, the ancient spear blade slamming into her chest with sickening ease. Fire and force flashed around the spear shaft as I flung her to the ground, then I threw out a hand.
The cold iron spike Riley had tried to attack her with was on the ground. It resisted my magic for a moment, then came rushing into my left hand as I used my right to pin the Pouka Noble to the ground with the ancient spear.
I slammed it into her shadow before she transformed away. Her body rippled around the blade, claws slashing toward my face only to recoil as the cold iron stabbed into her shade, her true spirit.
She screamed again, recoiling away from me. I tried to follow, only to find a glamor-clad warrior barring my way.
Asi had stolen the fae noble’s sword, but she clearly had the full Gift of Glamor. The arms and armor of a fairy-tale knight covered her now, and she blocked the spearhead with her shield.
The glamor-forged shield flung my strike aside, but it flickered as Esras’s energy interfered with the magic. I dodged backward as she stabbed at me. She nicked me, drawing blood through my enchanted Kevlar regardless.
I brought the spear around as she charged again. She was faster than me, but I was fast enough. Esras flickered from block to block, and her glamor-blade sputtered as it was interrupted again and again.
I focused my energy and pushed against her glamor. For a fraction of a second, her entire glamor collapsed. No sword. No shield. No armor.
I struck. Pale-green flame encased the spearhead as I lunged, and I hammered the tip of the ancient spear into her chest. The faerie fire exploded out as I pierced her heart, and a burnt husk collapsed to the ground.
But the Noble had bought Chernenkov time to regroup. She’d taken on a new form now, one I’d never seen before. She’d gained several feet in height and looked even more like a twisted, nightmarish cross between horse and human than ever before.
Ten feet tall, she towered over me and fire encased her as her claws extended. It seemed that the Pouka Noble still had some tricks left for me.
“For my love!” she bellowed, her voice echoing across the field as she attacked.
Whatever Esras was giving me, it wasn’t making me any faster. I went flying as deadly sharp and brutally strong claws smashed into my armor.
Only the fact that I went flying saved me from being sliced open from stem to stern, and Maria Chernenkov wasn’t giving up. She was on me before I stopped moving, leaping at me as I used telekinesis to bring myself to a safe landing.
I rolled sideways, barely managing to maintain my grip on the spear, as her claws drove into the dirt. A second strike slipped across my shoulder, leaving a burning line where she cut my flesh…and then a sharp-edged hoof slammed into my stomach.
I stumbled and another hoof took out my legs. Claws hammered into my shoulder, pinning me to the ground.
“My lord!” Riley bellowed, the Hunter bursting out of Between with a cold iron spike in each hand.
Chernenkov paused for a fatal second and a burst of gunfire hammered into her chest. She might have me pinned to the ground, but that meant she wasn’t moving.
I grabbed her arm, keeping her claws in me as Mary stepped closer. Her rifle barked again, more cold iron bullets smashing into the Pouka…and while Chernenkov was focusing on my lover, Riley dove in and slammed both spikes into her shadow.
I didn’t know if Chernenkov had managed to get the spike I’d left in her shadow out in the months since we’d last met, but with three cold iron spikes hammered into her tonight, it didn’t matter. She was done.
She screamed—and my free hand brought Esras up from the ground in a sharp stabbing motion my muscles remembered even though I’d never learned it. Fire flared around the spearhead once more, and the Pouka tried to get away.
It was over in seconds, and I slowly pushed her away as I slowly rose to my feet, using one of the most ancient and powerful artifacts in the world as a walking stick.
“Mary,” I greeted her as she stepped over to me.
“Jason.” She looked down at the twisted corpse at our feet, then very calmly shot Maria Chernenkov in the head three more times.
“She’s dead, right?”
“I think so,” I admitted. “Is the rest over?”
“Everybody’s either surrendered or dead,” Mary confirmed. “We control the estate now. At least until the police show up.”
Right. Cops. That was a headache I had forgotten about in the chaos.
30
The grass fire gave us some cover, I realized as I looked out over the wreckage of the estate.
“We need to clean up as much as we can as fast as we can,” I told Riley and Mary. “Get our wounded and prisoners into the fort and double down on whatever sneakiness they’ve got in place there.”
The house was already a wreck, and I shook my head at it.
“Make sure the house gets more wrecked and toss any bodies you can into the fire,” I continued. “The rest we’ll need to move into the fort with us while we clean out the vault.”
“What about the tunnel?” Riley asked. “How obvious is the access from the garage?”
I winced.
“We cut a giant hole,” I admitted. “We need to bring the garage down on top of it, make sure it’s got enough debris over it that the locals aren’t going to realize the tunnel is there for a few days.”
I was continuing to lean on the spear as I gave my orders…and then I realized I didn’t hurt anymore. Looking down at where Chernenkov had dug her claws into me, I whistled silently.
The wound was gone, with only the cuts in my armor above it to show I’d ever been injured.
“Esras appears to accelerate my healing,” I said quietly. “I’ll start moving the wounded if you two get started on making sure that fire spreads far enough to cover our tracks…and not far enough to threaten any innocents, am I clear?”
“We’ve got it,” Mary told me. She kissed me fiercely, then disappeared back into the night.
Riley merely saluted before doing the same. I left the pair of them and walked over to where Asi was carefully removing the sword from his stomach.
“Need a hand?” I asked.
He snorted.
“I’ve had worse, but I wouldn’t mind getting the chunk of metal out of me, if you would be so kind, yes,” he told me.
The sword had been wielded by a fae. The blade was cold iron but the hilt wasn’t. As I grabbed it, I couldn’t help but admire it—sharkskin-wrapped titanium. Decorative, practical…and heavy enough to help balance the unavoidably crudely forged blade.
Asi exhaled sharply as the blade came clear with a gush of blood. He’d already acquired a length of thick cloth from somewhere that he wrapped around his midsection with the ease of practice, binding the wound tightly to keep the blood under control.
“Yeah. That hurt.” He coughed.
“Where’s your sword?” I asked him, studying the blade he’d neatly removed from my fight before it could threaten me. It was svirfneblin-forged hand-hammered cold iron. The hilt was utterly modern, the blade frankly crude. A ring of orichalcum runes were inlaid around the base of the blade, a difficult task for the Unseelie fae who’d forged the weapon.
It was an impressive weapon.
&n
bsp; “Somewhere in the damn field,” Asi admitted. “If we’re in a rush, I don’t think I’m getting that one back. Let the fire have it; that’ll bury it.”
“Take this one,” I told him, flipping the sword around Esras’s haft to offer it to him hilt first. With only thin gloves between my hands and the cold iron, holding the blade itched.
He arched an eyebrow at me.
“You’d trust me at your back with a cold iron blade?” he asked softly.
“Given that you let yourself get stabbed with this particular one to help protect me, I’m going with yes…Raja.”
It was the first time I’d called him by just his first name, and the meaning of that—and of my offering him a sword that could easily kill me—wasn’t lost on Raja.
He took the blade and saluted carefully.
“I swore Fealty,” he said slowly. “It’s…good to have done so to a man who understands.”
We weren’t as practiced in cleanup as we probably should have been. The Wild Hunt would normally off-load that task to the local fae court, but there was no local fae court in the Titaness’s territory.
Mary and her team were more experienced at this than the rest of us, and it showed. By the time the sirens started to close in, both of the modern buildings were aflame and the grass fire was spreading around.
We’d done what we could to clear away weapons and cartridge casings, but the fire was a gift. Anything that we’d missed would be charred into unrecognizability. Questions might be asked…but they wouldn’t be asked today, as we moved deeper into the Masked Lords’ underground bunker.
“I don’t think the gunfire actually attracted attention,” Mary said as we reconvened. “So far, it’s looking like all we’ve got are fire trucks. That won’t last, especially not when they start pulling bodies from the house, but it’ll buy us time.”
“We’ll need to make good use of that time,” I told my senior subordinates. “This was more than just a storage house. A Masked Lord? A vault of weapons and funds? This was a major staging point.
Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3) Page 16
