by Juliet Dark
“Who are you to address me by my name and make demands of me? I cursed you, too!”
“I’m the doorkeeper,” I said, “and I have this.” I held up the Luckenbooth brooch.
The green eyes widened as they took in the angel stone. She took her finger away from William’s throat and made a grab for it, but I swept it out of her grasp, stepping back to get her farther from William. Instead of running away, though, he moved to my side and addressed the Fairy Queen. “Aye, Cailleach found a way to destroy those bastards.”
While William’s pride in me was heartening, I hoped he wouldn’t make the Fairy Queen even angrier.
“And did she destroy them all?” Fiona asked nastily.
“No,” I admitted. “Some got away. But the rest are in Fairwick, back in my time. Let William pass and we’ll destroy them there. You won’t ever have to pay a tithe again. I’ll restore the door. You’ll be able to pass between the worlds …” I hesitated, not entirely sure that I wanted to let Fiona back into my world after what I’d learned she’d done to William and other unfortunate young men before him.
“You think to dictate terms to me?” she thundered.
“Are you so reluctant to give up your human boys?” The question came from golden-haired King Fionn. He stood even taller than Fiona and had the same fiercely green eyes.
Fiona turned to him, her emerald eyes sparking. “As if you haven’t had your own human lovers!” Although she snarled the words, they lacked the conviction she’d had when addressing William and me. She was either afraid of the king or in love with him, I couldn’t tell which. Either way, I didn’t want to be in the middle of their lovers’ spat.
“We want to return to my time and get rid of the nephilim. Surely that is in your interest, as well.”
“But it’s not his time,” Fionn pointed out, glaring at William. “We can’t let humans use Faerie to move through time. It frays the fabric of both worlds.”
I looked at William, who was glaring at Fionn. “Then let him go back to his time,” I said, my voice cracking. It didn’t seem fair that I’d have to make this sacrifice twice, but I had to return to Fairwick and I couldn’t bear to see William trapped again by the Fairy Queen.
“No!”
At first I thought the word came from King Fionn, it was so loud and authoritative. But it was William who had bellowed it. I turned to him, confused.
“No,” he said more softly, returning my look with a sad but level gaze. “I won’t go back. If I do, then I’ll never become your incubus, or Liam, or Bill, the man you fell in love with.”
I stared at him, desperately trying to untangle the threads of time and refute his logic. “We don’t know that’s how time works,” I said finally. “The Stewarts had the plaid in my time, but I still hadn’t gone back to give it to them.”
“As doorkeeper, you are not bound by the rules of time,” Fionn said. “But William is. Unless he stays in Faerie and becomes the incubus, you will never meet him and never fall in love with him.”
The thought of never meeting Liam or Bill made me feel faint, as if I were standing at the edge of a vertiginous drop. I was. The maw of time was opening up to swallow me. It was one thing to give up William and another to give up ever having known him. But if it meant sparing him hundreds of years in slavery, I would have to make that sacrifice. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he placed a finger on my lips.
“No,” he said again, with the same firmness as before but a shade more gentleness. “No, Callie. This is why I came with you. I knew what it meant. I had to come back so I could become the man you fall in love with. Knowing that you’re waiting for me at the end, it will be worth it.” He slid his fingers from my lips to my cheek and placed his lips where his fingers had been. His kiss tasted like heather and honeysuckle. Like the first breath of summer that had brought Liam to me and the last smoky sigh of fall. It tasted like eternity, but it was over too soon. He pulled back from me and looked into my eyes. “I will see you again,” he said. Then he looked past me and strode toward Fiona and Fionn.
I watched as he stopped before the king and queen of Faerie. He straightened his back, legs apart in a stance I’d seen him take when faced with a balky ram. “If I stay, you’ll let Callie pass through Faerie,” he said—not a question but a demand. The queen glared at me, but at a look from King Fionn she agreed to William’s terms.
“I have one more condition,” William said. Then he crooked his finger to indicate they should bend their heads to hear what he had to say.
I watched in awe as the royal couple inclined their heads as one to listen to William’s whisper. What could his condition be? I wondered, jealously hoping it involved not having to have sex with Fiona. But that couldn’t be it, because both Fiona and Fionn nodded. Fiona looked up and smiled.
“Very well,” Fiona said.
“It will be so,” King Fionn proclaimed with all the majesty of royalty.
“We’ve agreed to your lover’s terms, doorkeeper,” Fiona said. “You are free to return to your time. You have only to walk over that hill and you will find yourself back in your time among your Fairwick friends.”
She pointed behind me, but I didn’t turn. I was waiting for one last glimpse of William, but as he turned my way he began to fade. Fiona and Fionn were dissolving, too, but I kept my eyes on William. I heard voices behind me, some that I recognized, but still I didn’t turn. I held William’s eyes until their green-gold had dissolved into the green flower-filled meadows of Faerie. I will see you again, he’d said. And he would. But would I ever see him again?
“Callie? Cailleach McFay?” The voices came closer and called my name. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I turned to face my friends—and a future without William.
* * *
All my dear friends who had gone back to Faerie when the door was closing last summer were coming over the hill. I saw Brock Olsen and Dory Browne walking hand in hand with a troop of brownies, Elizabeth Book and Diana Hart among a herd of deer—and one bear, whom I recognized as Liz’s familiar, Ursuline—Casper Van der Aart and his partner, Oliver, with a contingent of gnomes, and many other townspeople whom I recognized and who now crowded around me, clapping me on the back and hugging me. I let the tears that had been brimming in my eyes fall, the loss of William mingling with the joy of this reunion.
“You found a way to open the door!” Liz cried. The dean had changed since I’d seen her last. Her gray hair had turned into a shimmering silver. Her skin was unlined and glowed like rose-tinted porcelain. She wore a long gown of glittering material that changed color as she moved from mauve to violet and she looked at least ten years younger than when I’d seen her last. Even Ursuline looked sleeker and shinier. Dwelling in Faerie agreed with them.
“It turns out I am the door,” I said. “Forging a blood bond to the door last summer was the first step in becoming the door.”
“I knew Callie would figure out a way!” Diana crowed, hugging both Liz and me at the same time. Diana had also been transformed during her time in Faerie. The demure innkeeper who had collected animal figurines and run the Fairwick Spinning Circle and Knitting Club had reverted to a wilder self. Her chestnut hair stood up in spikes around a wreath of twisted rowan branches and russet leaves. Her freckles had bred and multiplied, turning her skin into the dappled hide of a young fawn. She wore a skimpy green tunic over coltish brindled legs, looking a bit like a feral Peter Pan. I found it difficult to imagine her and Liz fitting back into their respective innkeeping and administrative roles. But apparently they didn’t.
“So we can return now?” Liz asked.
“She’s been worried about the college,” Diana told me.
“No more than you’ve been worried about your inn,” Liz countered. “How are they? The inn and the college, I mean. And Fairwick, of course. Did you drive out the nephilim?”
I stared at Liz and Diana, wondering how I could describe the awful changes the nephilim had wrought—Diana’s inn turned into a frat house, the
college ruled by nephilim and patrolled by trows …
“Things are pretty bad back there,” I admitted. “I came to Faerie to get this”—I held out the angel-stone brooch—“but I had to go back in time to get it.” I blinked away tears, thinking of William. Liz and Diana gave each other a worried look, then I felt a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. I turned to find Brock Olsen, my old handyman and Norse divinity, towering over me. Was it possible he had gotten taller in Faerie? He’d certainly grown more imposing. He was dressed in a leather tunic and boots and a fur cloak, his scarred but handsome face both graver and stronger. Beside him was Dory Browne, in a homespun dress and peaked cap, looking tiny but no less fierce. Brock cradled my hand in his and looked at the angel stone. “You had to give up William to get it, didn’t you?” he said softly.
“How did you know?”
“It was a story Dolly told me once.” Dolly was Dahlia LaMotte, the romance novelist who’d lived in Honeysuckle House and drawn her inspiration from my incubus. “She said it was the one story she couldn’t write down, because it hadn’t happened yet.” He smiled. “I never quite understood that.”
“Dolly could be a little cryptic,” Dory said, with just a hint of jealousy for the woman Brock had once been sweet on.
Brock squeezed my shoulder before lifting my arm, displaying for all to see the hand that held the angel stone. The crowd gasped at the sight. The golden light of Faerie was filling the stone, making it glow like a beacon.
“Callie has sacrificed much to get this stone,” Brock roared. “Are you ready to fight by her side to take back our town?”
A great shout swelled from the crowd. I looked around at the faces of my friends and felt a corresponding swelling in my heart. This was what William had given me. I couldn’t let that sacrifice be in vain. As my heart swelled, I felt the door opening within and around me.
“Let’s go,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
From Faerie we stepped straight into a firestorm. For a moment I thought I’d gone back to Castle Coldclough and was fated to be burned at the stake. The sky above was a roiling mass of red sparked with blue and yellow, the air filled with smoke and shouting. Great black shapes bulged through sheets of flame, roaring like fire-breathing dragons. Through the smoke I glimpsed dark-robed figures shooting bolts of light at the swooping monsters. The monsters responded as if stung by mosquitoes—annoyed but undeterred. One dived down and landed on a black-robed figure, who screamed and flailed at the creature. The figure’s hood fell away and I recognized Jen Davies. I ran to help her, but before I could reach her, a large woman stepped between the monster and me, aimed a shotgun at the creature, and fired.
“Touched by an angel, my ass!” roared the woman, whom I recognized despite the ash covering her face: Moondance. “I’ll touch you, asshole!” She fired again. The nephilim fell off Jen and hissed at Moondance with a mouth full of sharp teeth. It dug its claws into the ground and tensed its leg muscles to spring. I aimed the angel stone at it, directed my will, and unleashed my ire. A white beam shot from the stone with so much force that I staggered backward, but I stayed on my feet long enough to watch the nephilim explode in a burst of black ash.
“Holy shit!” Moondance swung around, her face now streaked with the ashy remains of the nephilim, her eyes wide at the sight of me. “Callie’s back, and she brought a laser gun!”
“Sort of,” I admitted. “I’ve got recruits, too.”
Diana knelt beside Jen, healing a gash on her arm. Liz was hugging Ann Chase. All around the circle, the people I’d brought back from Faerie were greeting their friends. “How many have you got in the circle?” I asked Moondance.
“Nine, including myself. Two recruits joined us, and there are the Stewarts outside still holding back the nephilim, but the bastards have been picking off the Stewarts to weaken the field—”
“Is that McFay?” a hoarse voice croaked behind me. I turned and found myself crushed in a bear hug by a man in tattered burned clothing and a blackened face. Only by his voice did I recognize him as Frank. “Damn it, McFay, where’d ya get the light saber? Have you got an army of Wookiees, too?”
“Sorry, just me,” I told Frank, holding him at arm’s length. His face was covered with soot, and it appeared as if his eyebrows and half his hair had burned off. Blood trickled down from a cut over his eye, and when he stepped back I saw he moved with a limp. But otherwise he seemed okay, nearly recovered from his run-in with Duncan Laird. “How many nephilim are there?” I asked, looking up. I saw now that the roiling red dome was made up of the Stewarts’ tartan field. They must have thrown the tartan around the glade to protect me when I came back through the door, but they were being attacked mercilessly.
“Soheila counted thirteen before she went back up there,” said Frank.
“Soheila’s up there?”
“She assumed her bird shape. She’s like this super-owl!” Frank grinned. “It’s awesome, but I don’t think she can kill them, just distract them. If we don’t get rid of them soon—”
A hair-raising shriek cut off his words. Above us, silhouetted black against the tartan field, two winged creatures fought like shadow puppets in a play. An enormous owl creature dug its talons into the neck of a nephilim. It was the nephilim who had shrieked. I raised the angel stone and tried to aim it at the nephilim but couldn’t get a fix on it without the risk of hitting Soheila.
“Can I see that thing for a minute?”
I handed the angel stone over to Frank. He turned it over, held it up to the light, then closed his eyes and stroked its surface with his fingertips.
“Are you going to taste it next?” I asked.
He opened his eyes and grinned. “This is a very powerful gewgaw you’ve got here, McFay, but essentially it’s a focusing device, a kind of prism that collects magical power and concentrates it.”
“That’s what I did with the Stewards in Ballydoon,” I said. “If I use the energy of our Stewarts now, the field will collapse.”
“We can add the power of the witches’ circle, but we’ll have to time it just right,” Frank said, handing the stone back to me, “and get Soheila out of the sky first. You stay here and fend off any of the bastards who get through the field. I’m going to have a word with Mac about sending up a flare to Soheila.”
Frank was gone only a minute before a nephilim forced his way through the field and landed on Phoenix. I aimed the angel stone and blasted the creature into dust. Brock appeared to help Phoenix up from the ground, and she preened and fawned over him as if he’d been the one to save her from the attack. I swung around in the circle, keeping an eye out for any breaches. I was startled to see Adam Sinclair, but before I could aim at him, I watched him and Leon Botwin repel a nephilim trying to wedge through a crack in the plaid. When they were successful, the boys high-fived and grunted, “Oorah!” So my speech to the Alphas had an effect. Heartened, I continued my patrol until Frank returned.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” he shouted, grabbing my hand. “We’re gonna join hands, but not to sing ‘Kumbaya.’ ”
A circle was hastily formed. When Brock Olsen grabbed my other hand, I felt a jolt of power. The angel stone in my right hand pulsed and burned like a hot coal.
“Hot damn!” Frank shouted. “That baby’s ready to blow! On the count of three, the Stewarts will drop the plaid and we’ll blow them out of the sky. Ready?”
The circle cheered as one. Frank squeezed my hand. “One …”
“Frank,” I whispered, “what about Soheila?”
“She knows to get out of the way,” he said between gritted teeth. “Two …”
I looked up and saw the owl creature winging upward, then one nephilim detached itself from the throng to pursue it. I was going to tell Frank, but it was too late.
“Three!” he shouted. The plaid field melted to the ground in a shower of red, green, yellow, and blue streamers. Frank raised my hand and I concentrated all my power—and all the power of the circ
le—through the angel stone. A wide beam of white light shot into the sky. Inside the beam, winged shapes writhed and tumbled toward the ground, their delicate wing bones briefly etched against the surrounding glare. I smelled incense and heard a screaming inside my head. I momentarily felt the nephilims’ pain—not just their dying but all the hurt of their long lives, the horror of their fathers, the expulsion from their love, their love of humans twisted into hate because it was their human side that had turned them into monsters. For the briefest moment, I wanted to lower the angel stone and save them—surely there was some way for us to live in peace—but it was too late. Ash fell through the sky like black snow. My arm felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. I dropped to my knees, dragging Frank down with me. I saw his lips shouting my name, but I couldn’t hear him. The nephilim’s dying screams had deafened me. Then I saw Frank look up and his eyes filled with terror. The sky darkened, and a great winged creature swept down through the ash. It slammed straight into me, claws raking my throat, wings beating my face. The angel stone dropped from my hand. Bright-blue eyes glared at me out of a blackened face. It was Duncan Laird.
You have destroyed my brothers, I heard his voice say inside my head. But after I’ve destroyed you, there will be no one to open the door between the worlds. All your friends will die. His claws dug into my throat, and my vision blackened. In that darkness, I glimpsed William’s face as I’d last seen him in Faerie. He’d sacrificed himself so that I could return. I couldn’t let his sacrifice be in vain. I summoned all the strength I had and pulled myself out of the darkness, shoving Laird away. I felt his surprise at my power—and then felt something else: Frank pressing the brooch into my hand.
“Hold on, McFay, and use the damned stone.” Over Frank’s shoulder, I saw Duncan grappling with another winged creature, but this second creature had the body and face of a woman. Soheila. She fought him with all her strength, but one wing hung broken by her side, and her face was slashed. Duncan lifted one wing bristling with razor barbs, just about to bring it down on Soheila. I raised the angel stone and aimed. The white-hot light struck the razored wing, lighting each feather tip with flame and illuminating the bony structure beneath the skin. Veins of fire ran through the wing toward Duncan’s heart. I could see his entire skeleton light up like an X-ray, but before the power could dissolve him, he twisted into a knot. His hands tore at his own flesh. There was a horrible rending sound and a scream that vibrated in my own bones. Sparks flew into the air along with a flurry of feathers that rose, flaming, to the sky before drifting down to the ground as ash. When the blizzard cleared, Duncan stood at its center, one soot-stained wing arched over his head like a mantle. He had torn the other wing off to survive the attack. I was so shocked by his self-mutilation that it took me a moment to aim the stone again. Too late. He had already bolted from the circle and vanished into the woods.
