by Julie Kagawa
Ash, deep in thought with his chin in his hands, raised his head. His eyes narrowed. “Ask her how we can kill him,” he demanded.
I squirmed, uncomfortable with the thought of having to kill. I only wanted to rescue Ethan. I didn’t know how this turned into a holy war. “Ash—”
“Just do it.”
I swallowed and turned back to the oracle. “How do we kill the Iron King?” I whispered reluctantly. The oracle’s mouth opened.
The King of Iron cannot be slain
by mortal man or fey.
Seek out the Keepers of the trees.
Their hearts will show the way.
No sooner were the last words out of her mouth than the oracle collapsed on the table. For a moment she lay there, a desiccated old woman, and then she just…disintegrated. Dust flew everywhere, stinging my eyes and throat. I turned away, coughing and hacking, and when I could breathe again, the oracle was gone. Only a few floating dust motes showed she had been there at all.
“I believe,” Grimalkin said, peering over the table rim, “that our audience is over.”
“SO WHERE TO NOW?” I asked as we left the Voodoo Museum, stepping into the dimly lit streets of the French Quarter. “The oracle didn’t give us much to go on.”
“On the contrary,” Grimalkin said, looking back at me, “she gave us a great deal. One, we know your brother is with Machina. That was a given, but confirmation is always beneficial. Two, we know Machina is supposedly invincible, and his lair is in the middle of a blighted land. And, most important, three, we know there is someone who knows how to kill him.”
“Yeah, but who?” I rubbed a hand over my eyes. I was so tired—tired of searching, tired of running in circles with no answers to anything. I wanted it all to end.
“Really, human, were you not listening?” Grimalkin sighed, exasperated again, but I didn’t care. “It was not even much of a riddle, really. What about you two?” he asked, looking to the boys. “Did our mighty protectors glean any bits of knowledge, or was I the only one paying attention?”
Ash didn’t reply, too busy staring down the street, eyes narrowed. Puck shrugged. “Seek out the Keepers of the trees,” he muttered. “That’s easy enough. I assume we should go back to the park.”
“Very good, Goodfellow.”
“I try.”
“I’m so lost,” I groaned, sitting down on the curb. “Why are we going back to the park? We just came from there. There are other trees in New Orleans.”
“Because, princess—”
“Explain later.” Ash appeared beside me. His voice was low and harsh. “We need to go. Now.”
“Why?” I asked, just as the streetlamps—and every artificial light on the block—sputtered and went out.
Faery lights glowed overhead as both Ash and Puck called them into existence. Footsteps echoed in the shadows, getting closer, coming from all directions. Grimalkin muttered something and disappeared. Puck and Ash stepped back to flank me, their eyes scanning the darkness.
Beyond the ring of light, dark shapes shuffled toward us. As they came into the light, the faery fire washed over the faces of humans—normal men and women—their features blank as they lurched forward. Most of them carried weapons: iron pipes and metal baseball bats and knives. Every zombie movie I’d ever seen sprang to mind, and I pressed close to Ash, feeling the muscles coil under his skin.
“Humans,” Ash muttered, his hand dropping to his sword. “What are they doing? They shouldn’t be able to see us.”
A dark chuckle rose from the ranks shambling toward us, and the mob abruptly stopped. They moved aside as a woman floated between them, hands on her slender hips. She wore a business suit of poison green, three-inch heels, and green lipstick that glowed with radioactive brightness. Her hair appeared to be made of wires, thin network cables of various color: greens, blacks, and reds.
“Here you are at last.” Her voice buzzed, like millions of bees given speech. “I’m shocked that Ironhorse had such a problem with you, but then again, he’s so old. Past his usefulness, I’d say. You will not have such an easy time with me.”
“Who are you?” growled Ash. Puck moved beside him, and together they formed a living shield in front of me. The lady giggled, like a mosquito humming in your ear, and held out a green-nailed hand.
“I am Virus, second of King Machina’s lieutenants.” She blew me a kiss that made my skin crawl. “Pleased to meet you, Meghan Chase.”
“What have you done to these people?” I demanded.
“Oh, don’t worry about them.” Virus twirled in place, smiling. “They’ve just caught a little bug. These little bugs, to be exact.” She held up her hand, and a tiny insect swarm flew out of her sleeve to hover over her palm, like sparkling silver dust. “Cute little things, aren’t they? Quite harmless, but they allow me to get inside a brain and rewrite its programming. Allow me to demonstrate.” She gestured to the nearest human, and the man dropped to all fours and started to bark. Virus tittered, clapping her hands. “See? Now he thinks he’s a dog.”
“Brilliant,” Puck said. “Can you make him crow like a rooster, too?”
Ash and I glared at him. He blinked. “What?”
I started, a memory dropping into place, and spun back on Virus. “You…you’re the one who set the chimera loose on Elysium!”
“Why, yes, that was my work.” Virus looked pleased, though her face fell a moment later. “Although, as an experiment, it didn’t quite work out as I’d hoped. The normal fey don’t react well to my bugs. That whole aversion-to-iron thing, you know. It drove the stupid beast mad, and probably would have killed it, if it hadn’t been sliced to pieces. Mortals, though!” She pirouetted in the air, flinging out her arms, as if to embrace the crowd. “They make wonderful drones. So devoted to their computers and technology, they were slaves to it long before I came along.”
“Let them go,” I told her.
Virus regarded me with glittering green eyes. “I don’t think so, dearie.” She snapped her fingers, and the mob shambled forward again, arms reaching. “Bring me the girl,” she ordered as the circle tightened around us. “Kill the rest.”
Ash drew his sword.
“No!” I cried, grabbing his arm. “Don’t hurt them. They’re just ordinary humans. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Ash shot me a wild glare over his shoulder. “Then what do you want me to do?”
“I suggest we run,” Puck offered, taking something from his pocket. He tossed it at the crowd, and it exploded into a log, pinning two startled zombie men to the ground, creating a hole in the ring surrounding us.
“Let’s go!” Puck yelled, and we didn’t need encouraging. We leaped over the thrashing bodies, dodging the pipes they swung at us, and tore down the street.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Dryad of City Park
Pounding footsteps told us we were being followed. A twirling pipe flew over my shoulder, smashing the window of a shop. I yelped and almost fell, but Ash grabbed my hand and hauled me upright.
“This is ridiculous,” I heard him growl, pulling me along. “Running from a mob, a human mob. I could take them out with one sweep of my hand.”
“Perhaps you didn’t see the copious amounts of iron they’re carrying,” Puck said, wincing as a knife hurled past him, skidding into the street. “Of course, if you want to make a suicide stand, I certainly won’t stop you. Though, I’d be disappointed you wouldn’t be there for our last duel.”
“Scared, Goodfellow?”
“In your dreams, princeling.”
I couldn’t believe they were bantering while we were running for our lives. I wanted to tell them to knock it off, when a pipe hurled through the air, striking Puck in the shoulder. He gasped and staggered, barely catching himself in time, and I cried out in fear.
Buzzing laughter echoed behind us. I turned my head to see Virus floating above the crowd, her bugs swirling around her like a diamond blizzard. “You can run, little faery
boys, but you can’t hide,” she called. “There are humans everywhere, and all can be my puppets. If you stop now and hand over the girl, I’ll even let you choose how you want to die.”
Ash snarled. Pushing me on, he spun and hurled a spray of ice shards at the woman overhead. She gasped, and a zombie leaped into the air to block the attack, the shards tearing through his chest. He collapsed, twitching, and Virus hissed like a furious wasp.
“Oh, nice going, prince,” Puck called as the zombies lurched forward with angry cries. “Way to piss her off.”
“You killed him!” I stared at Ash, horrified. “You just killed a person, and it wasn’t even his fault!”
“There are casualties in every war,” Ash replied coldly, pulling me around a corner. “He would have killed us if he could. One less soldier to worry about.”
“This isn’t a war!” I screamed at him. “And it’s different when the humans don’t even know what’s happening. They’re only after us because some crazy faery is screwing with their heads!”
“Either way, we’d still be dead.”
“No more killing,” I snarled, wishing we could stop so I could look at him straight. “Do you hear me, Ash? Find another way to stop them. You don’t have to kill.”
He glared at me out of the corner of his eye, then sighed with irritation. “As you wish, princess. Though you might regret it before the night is out.”
We burst into a brightly lit square with a marble fountain in the center. People wandered down the sidewalks, and I relaxed a bit. Surely, Virus wouldn’t attack us here, in front of all these eyewitnesses. Faeries could blend in or go invisible, but humans, especially mobs of humans, had no such power.
Ash slowed, catching my hand and drawing me beside him. “Walk,” he murmured, tugging my arm to slow me down. “Don’t run, it’ll attract their attention.”
The crowd chasing us broke apart at the edge of the street, wandering around as if they had always meant to do so. My heart pounded, but I forced myself to walk, holding on to Ash’s hand as if we were out for a stroll.
Virus floated into the square, her bugs swarming out in all directions, and my nervousness increased. I spotted a policeman leaning beside his squad car and broke away from Ash, sprinting up to him.
Virus’s laughter cut through the night. “I see you,” she called, just as I reached the officer.
“Excuse me, sir!” I gasped as the policeman turned to me. “Could you help me? There’s a gang chasing—”
I stumbled back in horror. The officer regarded me blankly, his jaw hanging slack, his eyes empty of reason. He lunged and grabbed my arm, and I yelped, kicking him in the shin. It didn’t faze him, and he grabbed my other wrist.
The pedestrians in the square lurched toward us with renewed vigor. I snarled a curse and lashed out at the policeman, driving my knee into his groin. He winced and struck me across the face, making my head spin. The mob closed in, clawing at my hair and clothes.
And Ash was there, smashing his hilt into the policeman’s jaw, knocking him back. Puck grabbed me and leaped over the police car, dragging me over the hood. We broke free of the mob and ran, Virus’s laughter following us into the street.
“There!” Grimalkin appeared beside us, his tail fluffed out and his eyes wild. “Dead ahead! A carriage. Use it, quickly.”
I looked across the street and saw an unattended horse and open-top buggy, waiting on the curb to pick up passengers. It wasn’t a getaway car, but it was better than nothing. We crossed the street and ran toward the carriage.
A gunshot rang out behind us.
Puck jerked weirdly and fell, collapsing to the pavement with a howl of agony. I screamed, and Ash immediately hauled him upright, forcing him to move. They staggered across the street, Ash dragging Puck with him, as another shot shattered the night. The horse whinnied and half reared at the noise, rolling its eyes. I grabbed its bridle before the beast fled in terror. Behind me, walking toward us with that zombielike shuffle, I saw the police officer, one arm extended, pointing his revolver at us.
Ash shouldered Puck into the carriage and jumped into the driver’s seat, Grimalkin bounding up beside him. I scrambled inside and crouched beside Puck, sprawled on the floor of the carriage, gasping. Horrified, I watched dark blood blossom around his ribs, seeping over the floorboards.
“Hold on!” Ash yelled, and brought the reins down on the horse’s flanks with a loud “Hiya!” The horse leaped forward with a squeal. We galloped through a red light, barely dodging a honking taxi. Cars blared, people shouted and cursed, and the sounds of pursuit faded behind us.
“Ash!” I cried a few minutes later. “Puck’s not moving!”
Preoccupied with driving the carriage, Ash barely looked back, but Grimalkin leaped to the floor and trotted up to the body. Puck’s face was the color of eggshells, his skin cool and clammy. I’d tried to stanch the bleeding using a sleeve of his hoodie, but there was so much blood. My best friend was dying, and I couldn’t do anything to help.
“He needs a doctor,” I called up to Ash. “We need to find a hospital—”
“No,” Grimalkin interrupted. “Think, human! No faery would survive a hospital. With all those sharp metal instruments, he would be dead before the night was out.”
“Then what can we do?” I cried, on the verge of hysteria.
Grimalkin jumped up beside Ash again. “The park,” he said calmly. “We take him to the park. The dryads should be able to help him.”
“Should? What if they can’t?”
“Then, human, I would start praying for a miracle.”
ASH DIDN’T STOP AT THE EDGE of the park, but instead drove the carriage over the curb and into the grass beneath the trees. Worried for Puck, I didn’t notice we’d stopped until the prince knelt beside me, swung Puck onto a shoulder, and dropped down. Numbly, I followed.
We’d stopped under the boughs of two enormous oaks, their gnarled branches completely shutting out the night sky. Ash carried Puck beneath the twisted giants and eased him down to the grass.
And we waited.
Two figures stepped out of the tree trunks, materializing into view. They were both slender women, with moss-green hair and skin like polished mahogany. Beetle-black eyes peered out as the dryads stepped forward, the smell of fresh earth and bark thick in the air. Grimalkin and Ash nodded respectfully, but I was too worried to catch the movement in time.
“We know why you have come,” one dryad said, her voice the sigh of wind through the leaves. “The breeze carries whispers to us, news of faraway places. We know of your plight with the Iron King. We have been waiting for you, child of two worlds.”
“Please,” I asked, stepping forward, “can you help Puck? He was shot on the way here. I’ll bargain with you, give you anything you want, if you can save him.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ash shoot me a dark glare, but I ignored it.
“We will not bargain with you, child,” the second dryad murmured, and I felt a sinking despair. “It is not our way. We are not like the sidhe or the cait sith, seeking endless ways to empower themselves. We simply are.”
“As a favor, then,” I pleaded, refusing to give up. “Please, he’ll die if you don’t help him.”
“Death is a part of life.” The dryad regarded me with pitiless black eyes. “All things fade eventually, even one as long-lived as Puck. People will forget his stories, forget he ever was, and he will cease to be. It is the way of things.”
I fought the urge to scream. The dryads wouldn’t help; they’d just doomed Puck to die. Clenching my fists, I glared at the tree women, wanting to shake them, throttle them until they agreed to help. I felt a rush of…something…and the trees above me groaned and shook, showering us with leaves. Ash and Grimalkin took a step back, and the dryads exchanged glances.
“She is strong,” one whispered.
“Her power sleeps,” the other replied. “The trees hear her, the earth answers her call.”
“Perhaps
it will be enough.”
They nodded again, and one of them lifted Puck around the waist, dragging him toward her tree. They both melted into the bark and disappeared. I jerked in alarm.
“What are you doing?”
“Do not worry,” the remaining dryad said, turning back to me. “We cannot heal him, but we can halt the damage. Puck will sleep until he is well enough to rejoin you. Whether that takes a night or several years will be entirely up to him.”
She tilted her head at me, shedding moss. “You and your companions may stay here tonight. It is safe. Within these boundaries, the iron fey will not venture. Our power over tree and land keeps them out. Rest, and we will call for you when it is time.”
With that, she melted back into the tree, leaving us alone, with one less companion than when we started out.
I WANTED TO SLEEP. I wanted to lie down and black out, and wake up to a world where best friends were never shot and little brothers never kidnapped. I wanted everything to be over and my life to go back to normal.
But, as exhausted as I was, I couldn’t sleep. I wandered the park in a daze, numb to everything. Ash was off speaking with the resident park fey, and Grimalkin had disappeared, so I was alone. In the scattered moonlight, faeries danced and sang and laughed, calling out to me from a distance. Satyrs whistled tunes on their pipes, piskies buzzed through the air on gossamer wings, and willowy dryads danced through the trees, their slender bodies waving like grass in the wind. I ignored them all.
At the edge of a pond, under the drooping limbs of another giant oak, I sank down, pulled my knees to my chest, and sobbed.
Mermaids broke the surface of the pond to stare at me, and a ring of piskies gathered round, tiny lights hovering in confusion. I barely saw them. The constant worry for Ethan, the fear of losing Puck, and the ill-fated promise to Ash were too much for me. I cried until I was gasping for breath, hiccuping so hard my lungs ached.
But, of course, the fey couldn’t let me be miserable in peace. As my tears slowed, I became aware I wasn’t alone. A herd of satyrs surrounded me, their eyes bright in the gloom.
