by C. E. Murphy
Dafydd watched her go, then turned to Lara with a bemused expression. “I’d hardly think I deserved that from her.”
Lara shrugged and took his hand. “I told her the truth. She believed me. So she has no reason to blame you for anything.”
“Even so,” Dafydd murmured, then nodded as Washington gestured impatiently down the hall.
Silence fell over the little group as they hurried for the cavernous concrete lot beneath the court building. Half a dozen police cars were parked in the area they entered, and Washington slowed before reaching the floor-to-ceiling fence that barricaded the police area off from the rest of the lot. “I don’t suppose this is private enough for your little discussion.”
“Sorry.” Lara glanced upward at the security cameras. “I’d rather not be someplace where there’s surveillance.”
Exasperation flashed over Washington’s features. Lara imagined he thought her paranoid, but Dafydd’s safety was worth that. Cooper, trailing along behind, muttered “Give me a break” as Washington waved a keycard at the gates and they began rattling open.
“We’ll go back to my place,” Kelly said. “I’ll get my car, and, I don’t know, Reg, can you take a police vehicle? There’s not enough room in the Nissan.”
“We’ll manage. Go on.” He waved at the doors.
Dafydd, at Lara’s side, stiffened. She turned a worried glance on him as warning widened his eyes and caught an alarmed sound in his throat.
And then it was too late, as concrete walls and massive pillars rended with magic that let nightwings pour through the gaps.
Twenty-Five
“Down! Down! Down!” Lara tackled Kelly, laying her out on the concrete. Kelly screamed, more surprise than fear, and Lara rolled off her, reaching for Dickon’s hip. “Get down!”
She suspected it was instinct rather than her orders that made him duck as winged blackness shrieked and flew at his head, but the effect was the same. Lara grabbed a fistful of his shirt and let her body become deadweight, dragging him further down. “Keep Kelly safe! Don’t fight them!” The command and confidence in her voice were alien to her, but Dickon responded, flattening himself above Kelly, whose eyes rounded with outrage as Lara scrambled to her feet.
For an instant she saw everything as though it had been flash-frozen, an indelible image stamped in her mind. The glamour that made Dafydd appear human was gone, and a scattering of objects lay around his feet: loose change, his belt, a ring. No doubt his earrings lay somewhere on the concrete, too small to see as lightning shattered from his fingertips and threw the garage into stark relief. Against that inversion, gunfire flashed repeatedly.
Nightwings squealed, ripped apart by lightning, thrown back by bullets. It seemed ludicrous that human weapons could damage the nightmare creatures, but Lara was glad they did; glad that Washington, whose eyes were as round as Kelly’s, had the nerve to stand his ground and fire into the seething blackness over and over again. She glanced around wildly for Rich Cooper and found him at the open gate, his own duty weapon flashing gunshots into the mass of nightwings.
Some kind of distortion altered the appearance of the nightwings. A shadow, a ghost, nothing more: if Lara looked straight on she couldn’t see the wrongness at all. A part of her was ready to look away, so she might pretend the nightwings hadn’t followed them at all.
But fury bubbled up: fury that they had been followed, fury that her friends were in danger, fury that someone was trying to kill her to hide the truth of an investigation she’d promised to see through to its end. That anger wouldn’t let her look away, not even to study their ruined shapes—though with monsters scattering around them, anywhere she did look let their broken forms tease at the corners of her eyes.
Lightning and gunfire erupted again, reminding her sharply that she had a weapon of her own to use. She flung her hands up, as dramatic a gesture as Dafydd used, and threw familiar words at the nightwings: “I exorcise thee, unholy spirit, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!”
The black-winged creatures nearest to her flinched, then surged forward, swarming her. Kelly screamed again as Lara went down beneath a rush of nightwings, too astonished for fear. She knew nothing about fighting: it was an instinct for survival that straight-armed a fist into one of the monster’s throats. That had more effect than the exorcism had. The thing fell back, clawing and coughing as if it were a mortal beast instead of a magical horror.
“Your world!” Dafydd bellowed, and light blew through the words, illuminating their meaning to far beyond their simple content.
In his world, calling on the trinity of her faith was a spell of significant power: the godless Barrow-lands were vulnerable to it. In hers, a world of many gods and faiths, the simple exorcism she’d called on was only the beginning of a ritual that could banish demons. “But I don’t know the longer version!”
Dafydd was there, cutting through nightwings with a blade of electricity in one hand and offering help up with the other. Lara seized his hand and flew to her feet. For the space of a breath they were nose to nose, and Dafydd’s voice was quiet under the screams of monsters and mortals alike: “Call on the heart of your magic. Nightwings fail before the light.”
“I don’t know how,” Lara whispered, but he was gone, pulling lightning from the air and wielding it with faultless precision. It had to exhaust him, Lara realized abruptly: his magic wasn’t natural to her world, forcing him to fight against the same faith and laws that had weakened her attempted exorcism.
But the nightwings still drew power from the Barrow-lands, its magic feeding their strength as much as the bleak riders on their backs pushing them forward. Lara could see it in scatter-shot glimpses, truth ringing short sharp chimes in her head.
The heart of her magic was the music of truth. She had wished, earlier, for a way to couch harsh words in softening song, and it suddenly seemed a viable path. She dropped to her knees—making herself a smaller target, putting herself in a position of prayer—and began to sing, a thin weak version of the only song she could think of.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me …” In the space of a breath Lara whispered, “Kelly, I need help. I need faith.”
Kelly’s screams broke off, replaced by astonishment. “You know I don’t believe in God.”
Forget God! Lara wanted to shout. Believe in me! But there was no time: she sang the next words, still struggling to put power behind them. “I once was lost, but now am found …”
Big hands folded over hers. Lara’s eyes popped open and Dickon gave her an embarrassed smile. His baritone, though, was deep and powerful, lending strength to Lara’s voice as they sang, “… was blind, but now I see.”
The nightwings etched into brilliant white light, coming vividly clear in Lara’s gaze. They were warped: that was the impression of riders she’d glimpsed. The creatures she’d encountered in the Barrow-lands were sleek killing machines: these leeched back to the breach between the worlds, as if the Barrow-lands pulled them back. They became more ephemeral the farther they were from the split, though the leaders still struck with vicious, painful attacks.
Lara lurched to her feet, forgetting the words to the hymn herself, but Dickon continued to sing, strong and certain. A second voice joined in over the rupture of gunshots: Washington, singing harmony to Dickon’s melody, their voices entwining like they’d practiced in choir a hundred times.
Buoyed by the song, by the tones that rang through it—not just what they sang, but the passion and conviction beneath it—Lara walked forward, eyes on the rip in the air. The bleached-out nightwings shrieked and wheeled to escape her, as if her presence was anathema to them. Some drove back through the black tear, but more simply scattered, tearing away from the hole that dragged them back. Those who escaped it snapped into the sleeker shape she’d seen in the Barrow-lands and winged forward, skreeing triumph. Where they broke free, the breach bled thick black ichor that spat and sizzled when it hit th
e concrete floor.
Power leaped in Lara as she stared at the rip, chimes ringing with such violence there could be no music to it. It grew worse as she lifted a hand, bringing it nearer still to the rip.
The raging bells told her the doorway wasn’t true in the way an arrow might not be true: it was warped, a thing not meant to be. That was what the worldwalking spell did, created a mistake between two disparate lands that allowed them, briefly, to touch. It could be set right, the magic undone, closed off again, by one who understood the inherent untruth of its making.
Lara put her hand over the tear in the world, drew breath, and sang it closed.
Power rushed out of her, clashing bells turning by slow degrees to chords, then to single notes, and finally to a thin sweet sound of purity as the gash shriveled and shrank to nothing beneath her palm. Lara sagged against a concrete pillar, dizzy with exhaustion as she tried to focus on the fight.
Dickon’s song stopped, his jaw fallen open as he knelt where Lara had left him. Kelly was crouched a few feet away, knees drawn up so she could just barely see over them. She’d never begun screaming again, though her eyes looked like she still might decide to.
Dafydd and Washington stood between Lara and her friends, each fighting in their own way. The attacking nightwings paled as Lara watched, turning gray with the sudden break in the link to the Barrow-lands. Dafydd roared triumph, lightning cracking from his hands to destroy dozens of the creatures at once. The survivors screeched, making a flurry around Dafydd and falling back again as fresh electricity snapped around him.
Under the sound of wings, of screams, of lightning leashed, a familiar click rang loud in Lara’s ears. Familiar, but only from film; a quiet sound, something she shouldn’t have been able to hear in the noise. The sound of a gun chamber coming up empty, no bullet to fire.
Lara screamed, much too late. The nightwings wheeled away from Dafydd and descended on Washington as if they sensed his vulnerability. Dafydd bellowed and spread his hands, but this time no lightning came, nothing to tear black beasts away from the detective’s fighting form. Claws dug into his flesh, the nightwings struggling to steal him as they fled.
His weight proved too much: almost as one, they dropped him, one straggler with tangled claws crashing to the concrete with him as he fell. Kelly screamed this time; Lara’s hands were fisted against her mouth, cutting off any sound.
She could not, from the small distance, see if the detective still breathed. Gashes and punctures tore his body, made a red bleeding mess of his clothes, and his eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, mouth pulled in a rictus of pain.
The nightwings grew increasingly pale as they spun together, their amorphous mass darting from one exhausted form to another. Kelly shrieked and slashed at their cloud as they came toward her, but Dafydd threw lightning and they retreated with a howl. A funnel formed, rushing the sole open path in the garage.
Rich Cooper stood in the gates, duty weapon still lifted but emptied of rounds, and had no chance at all as the nightwings slammed into his chest, and disappeared.
The silence left in the wake of their screams was astonishing. Cooper broke it with a faint sick sound, fingers plastered against his chest as though he could find, or draw out, what had entered him. Then he snarled; a feral expression that showed too-long teeth and nightwing-dark eyes before he flung his gun away and ran.
Lara managed one step after him, then caught herself on the pillar again, utterly drained of energy. The door she’d torn to return home hadn’t exhausted her as much as closing this one had. But then, the Barrow-lands were meant for working magic in. Earth was not, and she paid the price for that.
They all paid the price for that. Dafydd took a step forward, staring down at Washington and drawing all their gazes. Lara, abruptly, saw what Dickon and Kelly must see: a slim form, alien with arrogance. The angular lines of his face, the inhuman slant to his eyes and the upsweep of exposed ears, were all pronounced as he looked down an aquiline nose at the detective as if he was an inexplicable thing, lying there bleeding as he did.
“I have no talent for healing others,” he said. It sounded absurd in the aftermath of the fight, Lara thought; absurd in the face of his elfin form. Anything that looked like that should command magic as easily as breathing; he should be able to heal a wounded man. And he knelt, as though he’d try.
“You can’t.” Lara barely knew her own strained voice. “I’m so sorry, but you can’t. I did it, Dafydd. I broke the world.”
“Broke?” Dafydd looked up, expression drained by incomprehension.
Lara put her hand against the pillar for support. “The worldwalking spell, it’s bad for the Barrow-lands. I could feel it, and when I closed it … ‘changes that will break the world,’” she reminded him. “I think I closed it for good. You saw what happened to the nightwings, how they went gray when the door closed. They were cut off from the magic, and so are you. And you said they’re creations,” she whispered. “They don’t have magic, energy, of their own. I think that’s why they went into Cooper, so they had sustenance. I’m sorry, Dafydd. I think you’re stuck here, and all the power you’ve got left is what’s inside you.”
Kelly crawled to Washington and put her hand against his chest, then whispered, “He’s still breathing.” She glanced at Dafydd, flinched, and looked away. Injury flashed across his face and sympathy surged through Lara. He had saved them all with his magic, and it was neither fair nor surprising that Kelly should look away.
Especially given that Lara’s blurred vision had disappeared. “The glamour, Dafydd. It’s gone.”
His hands were always long-fingered, elegant, but his gaze snapped to them, and then he lifted his hands to his ears, tracing their elfin shape with clear shock. Lara shook her head. “It fell away as soon as the fight started. And I don’t think you’re going to be able to put it back now.”
“I had to get rid of the earrings to call the lightning. But the glamour should have stayed—”
“Dafydd, you’re not strong, you know that. Being in jail did something to you, you haven’t looked right—”
“This is all very touching,” Kelly said through her teeth, “but we have to go. We have to go right now, Lara. We have to leave Reg.” She got to her feet, face tight with determination as she pulled keys from her pocket.
Lara, gaping, turned her attention to Kelly, and Dafydd staggered as though only her gaze had kept him in place. Kelly, despite her earlier flinch, caught Dafydd with an arm around his waist. “There were gunshots. There’ll be cops here inside another thirty seconds. We have to go right now.”
“Kelly, are you nuts?” Dickon sounded thunderstruck.
Kelly propelled Dafydd away from Washington, driving him toward the gated doors even as she answered Dickon. “Do you see any choice? How are you going to explain what happened to Reg? How are you going to explain what David looks like? We have to go. Cops’ll take care of Reg, but we cannot be here.”
“It’s too late,” Lara whispered. “I hear them.”
Fear so potent it became fury filled Kelly’s eyes. She pushed Dafydd off her and caught his shirt in both fists. “Lara told me everything about you. You’ve been here a hundred years. What do you think happens if the cops find you, Dafydd ap Caerwyn? What do you think happens?”
“I die,” he said in a remarkably clear voice. “If I’m lucky, I die quickly.”
Lara let go a low cry of dismay, but Kelly snapped a nod, then pointed toward voices and lights that were now coming close. “You have about fifteen seconds, and that glamour trick you do is going to have to hide all of us. Do it. Do it now.”
“He can’t! Kelly, he’ll—”
“Die?” Kelly shouted. “Maybe, but if he doesn’t try we’re all going to jail and he’s going to be the most exciting lab rat anybody’s ever seen! Lara, you know I’m right, we can’t be found here!”
Dafydd whispered, “She’s right,” and wrapped them all in magic.
The world wen
t wrong.
The double vision of Dafydd’s glamour, worked on himself, had nothing on the way the parking garage folded in on itself as magic swept over them. The air turned red and twisted around, smearing the garage’s contents into a shattering landscape. The usual unending song of truth became knife stabs of piercing noise, short and sharp. Even Dickon and Kelly were horrible to look at, bleeding pieces of themselves into the concrete.
Dafydd, though, was worse. If she saw any truth at all with his magic surrounding them, it was his truth, and that was a story of agony. Power sheeted off him, weakening him with every heartbeat: in very little time, he would be unable to recover, but he would die, if necessary, to get them to safety.
“Quick,” Lara grated, and the sound made her stomach turn, distorted by the veil of falsehood Dafydd held around them. She caught his arm, supporting him as they ran for Kelly’s car.
He arched in agony as Kelly yanked the Nissan’s front door open and propelled him inside. Silent agony: whether he had the presence of mind to stay quiet, or simply hurt too much to give it voice, Lara didn’t know. She ran to the driver’s side, climbing into the backseat beside a whey-faced Dickon, and Kelly took them out of the garage under cover of magic before snapping, “You can let it go.”
Dafydd jerked violently, then collapsed, and the ear-bleeding madness of the world faded. Lara whimpered, then bit her knuckles to calm herself, and reached forward to tug Dafydd’s seat belt around him. It would be foolish to let a detail so small give the police an opportunity to stop them.
“Straighten him up, too,” Kelly said in the same short tone. “Can you reach the glove compartment? There are sunglasses in there. I don’t know what to do about his ears, I don’t have a baseball cap with me.”
“Some people’s ears point,” Lara whispered. Kelly gave her a sharp look in the rearview mirror, then nodded, allowing Lara her illusion. It was true: some people’s ears did point, but not usually with the fine-tipped delicacy Dafydd’s did. She got the sunglasses out and fitted them over Dafydd’s face.
