by Alan Baxter
Jarrod held out a sandwich. ‘Here, you need to eat. Think you’ve got a way to fight?’
‘Thanks. Yeah, maybe I do. It’s hard to really understand, let alone use, but I think I have it. We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.’ He began to eat, realised he was ravenous and moved in for more sandwiches.
Silhouette stood, put her arms around him. ‘You okay?’
‘Not really, but yeah, kinda.’ He laughed at her frown. ‘I want to fight, Sil. I will fight and I want to win.’
‘That fucking Parker was ready to throw you to the wolves.’
‘She has a job to do.’
Silhouette made a noise of anger. ‘Fuck that. Where’s the loyalty to the team?’
Alex crammed food into his mouth, hugged Silhouette in return. ‘The only team that matters is you and me and Jarrod. You come through for me again and again, and I can never thank you enough. I’d be done in without you, a long time ago.’
She kissed him. ‘Yeah, well I’m a bitch to get along with and you’re the first to put up with me in an age. And not piss me off doing so. You, me, Jarrod. We’re deadly.’
‘Yeah, and I think Jean is too. Where is she?’
‘At the command centre. She’s a tech whizz and one hell of an organiser. Has them very impressed apparently. I think she’s found a new job.’
‘She deserves it,’ Jarrod said. ‘She’s amazing.’
They all shared a smile and Jarrod actually blushed.
Alex clapped the big man on the shoulder, turned back to Silhouette. ‘We’ll be okay, Sil. Just remember, Emma is here to help us, but not at the cost of anything else. She’ll help the bigger picture at our expense every time if she sees it that way. Don’t hate her for it, just accept that’s her role.’
Silhouette shook her head, a frown creasing her brow again. ‘I suppose. But I don’t like it. Having said that, they’ve set up something damned impressive here and they’re definitely planning to work with you to get this thing won.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Come on, I’ll show you around. We got the guided tour while you were reading.’
Alex grabbed another couple of sandwiches and Silhouette led him away. ‘How long do we have?’
Silhouette pulled her phone out, checked the time. ‘Less than two hours till the realms thin. Parker seems to think the Lady will be frothing at the mouth and hammer through immediately.’
‘You don’t agree?’
‘Who knows? Who can fathom the mind of the Fey?’
Alex had to concede the point. ‘Emma has a pretty good handle on Fey thinking.’
‘Maybe. Certainly better than any other human, but I think we should prepare for anything. For all Armour’s “expertise” they were fucking useless back at your place.’
They walked away from the bus and the small tent city that made up the Armour mobile command centre. Alex spotted several operatives at various stations, many other vehicles, people huddled in groups around equipment. An air of tense expectation seemed to sit over everything. People flicked him curious or suspicious glances as he passed, some openly hostile. He had to remember that many of these people had lost friends and loved ones recently and he was fundamentally responsible for that.
They climbed a shallow, grassy rise. Silhouette gestured back to the tents. ‘Everything is centralised there and there’s a team down from Edinburgh whose job it is to wrap that up tighter than a drum. They’re building all kinds of wards and shields to prevent the Fey from compromising that base. Personally, I think they’ll just attack it directly first. It seems the obvious target. But Parker says, “I’ve done this one or twice before, lovey” so I’ll leave her to it.’
Alex smiled at Silhouette’s excellent impression of Emma. She managed to both imitate her perfectly and leave the words dripping with disdain. He looked out over the terrain before them. ‘And we’ll be out here, I guess?’
Large arc lights had been set up around a wide, open space, bigger than many playing fields locked together. The grass was lush green thanks to the famous wet Welsh climate. An icy wind cut through them, threatening snow. A high ridge of peaks, curved like a dragon’s spine, stood darkly against the night in the distance.
‘This area is sort of ringed on all sides by high ground,’ Silhouette said. ‘The idea is that it’s a natural amphitheatre and will help to contain the battle.’ She pointed to a few distant spots where Alex could see faint lights glimmering. ‘There are battlemages stationed at all those points, supposedly far enough away to be safe from direct attack, but near enough to assist us.’
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
Silhouette shook her head, lifted her palms, let them drop. ‘We’re talking Fey here, Alex. On a thin day, coming en masse, determined to fuck everybody up. It’s not like picking a site for a pitched mêlée among pikemen and fucking cavalry. Seems Parker and Armour are treating this like some live-action tabletop battle game, but I really think they’re underestimating the enemy.’
Alex scanned the area slowly. Some of the battlemage stations were miles away in the hills, others closer in. He could see encampments all around the open space, small groups milling around with an air of feverish preparation. ‘It’s not going to work.’ His words surprised him, but he heard the truth in them.
‘I don’t know. We have to make it work.’ Silhouette turned a slow circle, looked over the command centre and back across the battleground. ‘But all this, it might be kinda irrelevant. We have to trust in ourselves, Alex.’
‘Yeah. And I trust in you, Silhouette. More than I can say.’
She nodded. ‘Armour will sacrifice us in an instant. In a fucking second. We have to be prepared to do the same to them. We have to look out for ourselves and succeed, no matter how many of this lot manage to help or not.’
Alex grimaced at the thought. ‘There are already so many deaths on my hands, Sil.’
‘And so many live because of you. All the lowen you saved from Obsidian, they would have died without you. The kids on that bus. It’s not all death.’
‘But all the death is my fault.’
She turned to him, took his face between her palms. ‘No, it’s not. It’s the fucking Fey. Always has been. Uthentia, the grimoire, the Darak, it’s all Fey, Alex. All their fault. You’re just another in a long line fighting it, taking up the mantle of the Eld. You have to see it like that, because it’s the truth. If it wasn’t you, eventually it would have been someone else. All this would still happen, and maybe far worse, because I bet others wouldn’t come close to the badass team that we make.’
Alex nodded softly. Silhouette’s words made a lot of sense.
‘I’ve been thinking about this,’ she said. ‘I understand your guilt, I really do. You’ve been through hell and had to make terrible decisions. But it’s become clear to me that this is not your fault. It’s always the Fey, Alex. And here, tonight, we stand up and we fight them again.’ She swept an arm out to encompass everything around them. ‘Fuck all this. You and me, with help from Jarrod, maybe Jean. No one else matters. We’ll take all the help Armour can give us, but focus on ourselves. Focus on our fight, on taking it to the Fey. Because this is all their fault and fuck them for that!’
Alex smiled, genuinely warmed by her words. He leaned forward and kissed her. ‘You should be a motivational speaker.’
She laughed, her hard, serious eyes softening for a moment. ‘Fuck you, too, Iron Balls.’ But she kissed him back.
‘Still gonna take me a while to feel okay about any of this. Even if we win tonight. I’ll always have those deaths on my hands, even if it was the Fey forcing me along.’
Silhouette kissed him again. ‘And I’m here to help you. Always.’
‘You two got a mo?’
Silhouette snarled quietly at Emma Parker’s voice. Alex smiled. ‘Hush.’ He turned to Parker. ‘Sure, what’s up?’
‘Not long to go. Thought we might brief you, talk strategy, all that.’
‘Fair
enough.’
As they moved to follow Parker back to the tented command centre, Silhouette said, ‘Remember, you and me. Nothing else matters.’
Alex nodded, something roiling through his gut. It was nerves in part, he could never deny that. But it was something else too. He had a bad feeling about all this.
For nearly an hour, Alex sat and listened to Armour operatives talk about binding magic and protective wards, arcane energy offence and old-fashioned ordnance and crossfire. There was no doubt these people were committed and organised. Every step of the way they asked him for his opinion and he could do little more than agree and accept their greater expertise.
Eventually they asked him about his own plans and his ability to fight Hood. They had offered to contain Hood entirely on their own and face the Lady and her Fey army, the presence of which there seemed little doubt about, using Alex as nothing more than the bait to lure them all in.
‘No,’ Alex said. ‘This is first and foremost my fight. I’m sure you can hold Hood, but then what? Keep him in some cell somewhere? It’s too risky. I had that fucker trapped underground in molten rock and he got out.’
‘Only because of his son,’ Parker said. ‘We plan to deal with Darvill too.’
‘Sure, and then who else? Hood has been in contact with Black Diamond. That company is powerful and well connected, you all know that. Who knows what he’s put in motion.’
‘Alex is right,’ Jean said from the back. ‘Hood will be taking all kinds of precautions and setting up all sorts of contingencies. He is very smart and very cunning. Don’t underestimate him.’
Alex raised his palms. ‘You see? She knows what she’s talking about. Hood needs to be dealt with. Permanently. And I think I have the tools to do it now. Maybe.’
Emma Parker called for quiet as several voices fought for prominence. Silence slowly settled. ‘We have the means, hopefully, to contain Hood. But Alex is right. He can possibly finish the bastard. Besides, this is Alex’s fight and we’re here to assist him.’ Parker smiled as Silhouette burst out a sound of derision. ‘We will serve the greater good, Silhouette. But we will try to serve Alex first.’
Silhouette’s face was sour. ‘The greater good. Whatever.’
‘What remains,’ Alex said, before an argument could start, ‘is figuring out how to draw Hood to the Lady. We need to use Hood’s anger and power to decimate the Fey ranks and hopefully mess up the Lady for us. How do we do that?’
Emma Parker shrugged. ‘That’s up to you. You need to engage the Lady when she arrives, use our forces to fight the Fey, wait for Hood to wade in. If you or he can’t subdue the Lady, we’ll try to do it ourselves. You need to concentrate first on getting them all together and secondly on finishing Hood — without being caught or compromised by the Fey. We’ll all be assisting you in that. Once Hood is gone, the Fey are neutralised or whatever and the thin day passes, we have all the time between now and the next one to figure out what to do about the Darak. The Fey will keep coming for it, after all.’
‘What about getting Hood here?’ Alex asked.
Emma gestured towards Chang. ‘Good old Jean there has everything ready to go. We’ve already dropped the initial hints, right?’
Jean nodded, held up the tablet that seemed a permanent part of her. ‘Hood, or someone at Black Diamond, has accessed the information already. They know we’re planning a deal and I’ve left clues to get them close. I’m sure Darvill is already scrying for us.’
‘And if the Fey show up, we release the last and most obvious hint,’ Parker said. ‘Hood sees it and comes barrelling for you.’
‘If he hasn’t worked it out already and arrived first!’ Alex said, aghast. ‘Or it might take him hours to get here and we’d have to hold off the Fey all that time.’
‘Yes. Or fight them and win, or lose, or whatever. Ideally we’ll be able to have Hood come in quickly and let him and the Fey fight it out first.’
‘That’s …’ Alex groped for the right words. ‘That’s fucking ridiculous!’
Emma laughed, shrugged. ‘This isn’t a situation that’s easy to plan for, Alex. There are so many possible permutations, so many variables. We know the Lady is coming for you and we’ve picked this place. We know Hood will come when he deciphers Jean’s little Easter egg. Whether they arrive together or apart, who comes first, whether they’ll even fight each other, it’s all out of our control. This is the best we can manage. And regardless, Armour is ready to face whatever threat arises. We fight each fight as it happens.’
‘Nebulous fucking plan,’ Alex said. ‘For all your talk and strategising, we’re really just preparing for an ongoing, all-out brawl.’
Parker grinned at him. ‘Isn’t that what you do best?’
29
In a flat in Soho, one of many properties with no legal link to Black Diamond but which were nonetheless company assets, Claude Darvill watched his father with mounting concern. Hood sat in one corner of the lounge room, crouched by the babbling television. His body was locked in a contraction of muscles so extreme, Claude wondered if the bones of any normal man would have shattered under such duress. Hood’s eyes were squeezed tight, then would pop wide, close again. He muttered and ranted in a language Darvill had no hope of understanding, the words like oiled razors slipping through his ears.
Hood sprang up, stood tall and yelled, collapsed back into a squat. ‘So close. Close and open, stepping through. Freedoms within reach.’ Recognisable words devolved into that ancient, crabbed tongue again and Darvill turned away.
Hood had been in almost total control it seemed, at least for a little while. The presence of his passenger had taken a back seat to Hood’s own psyche and the absurd trap they had set for Caine. Admittedly, that had been a lot of fun at first, but Caine had once again proven himself a most infuriating adversary. It if wasn’t for the bloody Army, they would have had him. But Hood’s frustration at their near miss was catastrophic. He had ranted and raved, smashed a swath of destruction through a part of London Claude didn’t recognise and hoped to never see again. Finally he had managed to convince his father to find somewhere to lay low and Hood had sunk into this state of compressed rage. It seemed his passenger was getting the better of him at last. He might regain control, but there was no guarantee of that.
Darvill had recently discovered Chang was using company resources to set something up between Caine and the Fey. Something massive and valuable. And that piece of news had been the final nail in the coffin of Hood’s sanity, it seemed. Claude wondered if he could survive much longer in his father’s presence. And Darvill was, if nothing else, a survivor. He had a habit of getting off the ride just before it jumped the rails. This one was nearly over.
Perhaps his father would regain some kind of control, perhaps he would even find and finally finish Caine. But Darvill would no longer be his partner. There were many opportunities in the world for a man of Claude’s skills. Time to go.
He moved into the kitchen, grabbed his jacket and satchel from the table. The sword he had held on to so tightly was there too, and he strapped it back on. Its weight was comforting across his back. It might have been a weapon to use against his father, but he was glad he wouldn’t have to. For all his distasteful habits and the atrocities he had committed, he was reluctant to add patricide to his litany of crimes. That man curled in broken agony in the front room had been a terrible father most of the time, but he had forged Claude into the man he was today. There had to be some vestigial respect for that, at least. Much better to quietly slip away and simply remove himself from this whole situation than end up facing a devastating confrontation. Especially as Claude himself was quite likely to finish up worse off in that eventuality. Permanently worse off.
Maybe in a little while, even some years hence, he could figure out a way to make Caine pay for all of this. Now was not the time. With a deep breath, let out as a sigh of resignation, he nodded softly to himself. Harsh, but fair. In Claude Darvill’s life, the safety of Cl
aude Darvill came first.
Arms like iron clamped around his chest, pinned his arms to his sides. He yelped in pain and surprise.
‘Thinking of going somewhere?’ Hood growled in his ear.
‘Dad, no. What do you mean? I’m just …’
Hood squeezed tighter, Darvill’s ribs cracking in protest. ‘Don’t fucking bullshit me, son!’
‘You’re hurting me!’ Panic washed through Darvill. He had left it too late after all. He cursed himself, cursed his ridiculous need to try to build something with his father. He should have walked out on this ludicrous situation long ago, and that knowledge burned.
‘Can’t let you go, son, no. We need you.’
‘We?’
‘Everyone. Us. Them. Hahaha! It’s all so confusing, but clarity comes from purpose, no? And my purpose is clear. Caine must be finished. We might have failed before, but oh, so very, very close! But Caine, yes? Caine!’ Hood lifted Darvill and turned him back towards the front room. ‘Father and son together.’
Darvill cried out as Hood squeezed tighter. A blanket of darkness descended over his vision and mind, some thick presence beyond the pain. He sensed something else with them in the apartment, something terrible. As consciousness slipped away, he wondered if he felt what his father did — the presence of that unfathomable passenger inside him.
Alex walked with Silhouette and Jarrod into the middle of the open battleground. A slight hiss sounded constantly in his left ear from an earpiece Parker had given him. He had a small mic clipped inside his collar, off until he was ready to activate it, and a couple of tracking devices on his belt and boot, in case things got too hectic in the wide open space and Armour needed to pinpoint him quickly.
