The Antarctic coast was behind them, on the far side of a ridge of ice; every once in a while, the bitch wandered over to have a look at the land behind them. It had receded behind them for a few days, right after the ice shelf trapping all of them had broken up, and Janek for one had been fucking glad to see it go—the only nightmare worse than the one he’d been living ever since Guaire almost killed him had been the nightmare of all of his passengers fighting for control of their body and clawing their way up through grinding, tumbling ice, trying to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the liquid ice that had almost drowned them all.
They hadn’t moved all that far from shore at first—back when he’d been alive, Janek might have been willing to swim for it, then, at least if his share of the body wasn’t wearing iron-soled boots that were functioning mostly to hold his feet on. But then there had been a jam-up, not far from shore, and now nobody was going anywhere. Except when one berg came unstuck from another, and everything jerked and tipped and threatened to dump them all back in the fucking ocean again. Welcome to hell.
Damn, he couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t focus. Until the image of a headless Tiernan Guaire dropped back into what passed for his consciousness. That was enough to perk him right up. Gonna hold on. However long it takes. They owe me.
The female’s head jerked up. She wasn’t staring at the water any more. “We can find out.”
How?
The bitch was smiling. And not the cold smile that would make a corpse deader than Janek piss himself and whimper. She was really happy about something. “We will need to spill untouched magick out onto the ice, and make it our own, and channel it back into our body. And when we regain it, it will know the way to safety. It will draw us.”
Everything was quiet. Janek thought he felt the abomination stirring. Shit.
Once we taint it, we’ll have to consume it, you know. The male was talking fast, and loud, like he’d sensed the monster himself and was trying to make sure it couldn’t get a fucking word in edgewise. It won’t be good for anything else. Like keeping us alive.
“We would have had to do that in any event. Sooner or later.” The smile was getting colder. Janek was glad he hadn’t needed to piss for a long time. “It will sustain us for a while. And we will know where we need to go.”
DO NOT WASTE OUR ESSENCE.
Janek’s balls tucked themselves up into their favorite refuge, right behind his kidneys, as the abomination weighed in.
“It will not be a waste. We will understand, at last, where we must go. And once we know that, we can begin to plan.”
Janek had to admire the bitch, at least a little, standing up to the monster that way. He could feel her heart pounding, the sweat on her palms. What was left of his brain wasn’t too rotted to let him appreciate the way two-thirds of the monster was scared to the point of runny shits by its own third part.
The gag would have been even funnier if he wasn’t fucking terrified of the monster himself. He’d only caught a few glimpses of it inside the mirrored ball they’d all been trapped in, under the ice, but those were more than enough to make him wish he was blind in his remaining eye.
Long pause. VERY WELL.
The male, the female, and Janek all heaved huge sighs of relief. Which beat just plain heaving, which Janek thought he might have at least tried to do if he’d had to listen for the scorpion-thing’s bone-grating-on-bone voice any longer.
Then they all got still again, as the female braced her feet, shoulders’-width apart, held her hands out in front of her, palms up, and closed her eyes. “Let go of your magick,” she whispered. “It must come from all of us.”
Janek didn’t have a fucking clue how to let go of the force that was keeping him what passed for alive. And he wasn’t going to.
He wasn’t given a choice. He could feel a trickle of life running out of him, being pulled out, joining thin, grudging streams from the others and pouring into the bitch’s cupped hands. At least it isn’t running down my leg. That would have been too much like what his life had been like right before his bodily systems started shutting down for good.
Red-nailed hands spread apart, and something Janek couldn’t see—but even though he couldn’t see it, it was beautiful, like nothing he’d seen since his zombie life began, even though it had just come out of three monsters and whatever he was—spilled out of them to splash on the ice and spread in a puddle of… well, nothing, except that he couldn’t see the ice under it, so he could tell there was something there. He’d probably be able to see it for real, if one of the others was riding his senses, the way the male had done when they were all trying to break into the tattoo parlor next door to Purgatory. He could still remember the feeling like a dagger in his one remaining eyeball, when he’d let that happen. Fuck that noise.
Another few seconds, and he started wishing he couldn’t see as much as he did see. The place where he couldn’t see the ice… crawled. Oozed. Probably smelled, too, not that he could tell any more.
Then the female started talking to it, in the language the Three Faces of Evil used sometimes when they were talking to each other, and Janek went from being glad he couldn’t see what was really happening to being glad he couldn’t puke any more. He’d never seen snow and ice rot before, but they were doing it now. Everywhere the invisible slick spread, the snow sagged under it and went a putrid purplish-black.
And then the circle started to drop away. Like a fucking elevator. Down toward where the water waited.
Call it back! the male shouted, so loud his voice cracked.
Janek could feel the abomination digging clawed talons into the ice. Didn’t matter that it didn’t have control of their body.
The female shrieked out another couple of words and dropped to her knees, reaching out toward the hole. Reaching down the hole. Which meant Janek could see into the hole. Twenty, 30 feet deep, easy. He wondered how much farther the rot had to go before it hit bottom, and whether it would let the water in when it got there.
Another shriek. This one sounded like the female and the male. And—oh shit—the monster, and Janek’s throat burned with their grinding shout.
The unseen rot paused. The hole went no deeper.
Something started rising up the tunnel into the ice. Whatever it was the bitch had poured out of her hands. But it wasn’t beautiful any more. Janek still couldn’t see it, but he was fucking certain he didn’t want it touching him.
Once again, he wasn’t given a choice. The magick they’d sent out was coming home to roost, and he was nothing more than part of the perch.
And the other three sucked down the filth like an alcoholic sucking down a stolen fifth of Jim Beam. They were getting off on it. He could feel it.
Janek wanted almost nothing more than he wanted to stop feeling.
Just give me Guaire, and I’ll send us all to hell along with him.
Hell was going to be a picnic.
It’s working.
The male’s voice in their head was thick and clotted, like the spoiled yogurt Janek had once loved to make his passengers endure. Karma’s a stone bitch sometimes.
“Yes. Yes.” The female started turning in a slow circle, one hand stretched out in front of her like she was feeling for something in a dark room. Then she stopped and stepped forward. Another step. Another. Janek thought he felt something—a string, a fishing line, wrapped around his guts and being gently tugged. He wondered what would happen if he tried to step back.
Probably something like Bryce felt when the piece of the Marfach in his guts had been ripped out. Karma could go fuck herself.
“This way.”
Great. Now all we have to do is figure out how to walk across a thousand miles or so of ocean—
Janek’s gut wrenched. The female stumbled and turned. The pull was a hell of a lot stronger now. And it was urging him—urging all of them—back toward the hole to hell.
Fuck, they’re going to walk right into it. And there was n
o way that was going to end well.
He wasn’t sure whether his will was responsible, or someone else’s, but their shared body lurched and dropped to its knees, right at the smooth circular edge of the hole, staring down into it.
What the particular fuck?
The female was the first to start laughing. Then the male. The monster’s laughter made Janek want to rip off his one remaining ear.
Have a look, Meat.
One of them must have loaned Janek its senses, because what had been a crawling mist at the bottom of the hole now shrouded a glowing blue-silver design, in a perfect circle at the bottom of the hole. It made Janek think of frost, or crystal. A doily, like his Irish grandma’s lace, but made of ice.
He recognized it. He’d seen that design surrounding Josh LaFontaine’s tattoo parlor. And he’d caught glimpses of it since then, usually when he was being goaded through a ward. Or forced to do something else that he knew was going to hurt like a motherfucker.
“The Fae call them wellsprings.” The bitch ran the tip of her tongue over her fangs. “The way to our true home is closer than we thought.”
Chapter Thirteen
An outsider would have heard nothing but the whispering of leaf on leaf in a breeze, though no breeze blew; a scattering of rain on leaves, though the sky was clear. Would have seen nothing but moonlight on leaves, in a patterned circle on the leaf-covered forest floor, though the moon was a sliver past new. All this was the language of Gille Dubh and darag.
Then, perhaps, a patient watcher would have seen the figure under the tree, seated on a root, leaning against the bark, unmoving save for breathing, and the movement of his green-flecked brown eyes.
LONELY, YOU ARE.
Coinneach sighed at the gentle whisper from his darag, stirred the fallen leaves among its roots with his toe. There is no use in loneliness, and the wood is different now. Only a few of the daragin had awakened, when wellsprings opened at their roots, so there were few of his own kind to talk to. Humans avoided this part of what had been Alba but was now Scotland, finding it inhospitable. Even his Cradle-mother the Moon looked away, her gentle but adamant magick turned to a purpose that had nothing to do with the human world, or with her children there.
The creaking of the ancient tree was like a hand on his shoulder. Daragin had never understood the enjoyment the Gille Dubh took in the company of humans—the trees had difficulty with the concept of more than two beings, those two being any darag and its companion Gille Dubh. But, then, Coinneach had never understood how the great Grove of the daragin thought of itself as a single being, either.
It was a good thing indeed, that nothing depended on Coinneach’s understanding for its existence.
MEMORIES ARE WITHIN, AND ARE HELD THAT THEY MAY BE LIVED.
A corner of Coinneach’s mouth quirked up at his darag’s reminder. The Dark Men gave over most of the memories they made in the world outside their trees to the keeping of their daragin. And the trees, with their lack of concern for which particular moment constituted the ‘present,’ were fond of taking treasured moments out of their stores of memory and reliving them while their Gille Dubh indwelt, sharing them as vividly as if the events were happening again. Coinneach could have again and again every lover he had ever known, down to the last shudder and sigh and caress and delight.
Faintly, far off in no direction his eyes could look, Coinneach heard water splashing. And laughter. He recognized the voices by now, two human males and a water-loving slaidar. A magick-thief. A Fae.
He was coming to understand why the daragin preferred the company of their Gille Dubh, and their memory-hoards, to anything the outside world might offer. What had their beloved human world given them, when he and his darag were scarcely emerged from the all-but-death to which Cuinn an Dearmad had consigned them? Slaidarin. More of the magick-thieves than Coinneach had ever wanted to deal with, and certainly more than he had ever wanted to spend his nights and days listening to.
The darag’s laughter was a faint whisper, the brush of falling leaves against Coinneach’s dark skin. DISTANCE MAKES TOLERABLE EVEN A SLAIDAR?
Let us hope the Mothers throw no more of them at our roots. One had been bad enough, and in his heart Coinneach hoped Mother Sun and Mother Moon had had nothing at all to do with their cousin Fiachra Dubhdara’s appearance.
Strangely, the darag’s laughter stilled.
Coinneach looked up into the oak’s branches, curious. Were you… happy… to see the thief arrive?
THIEF, YES, BUT COUSIN. KIN. A RARE THING.
True enough. Fiachra Dubhdara—Darkwood, among the humans—was dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed, at least for a slaidar. And his blood had confirmed what his skin suggested; before the sundering of the Fae Realm from the human world, perhaps thousands of years before, some slaidar female had enticed a Gille Dubh, and the blood from that mating had followed a capricious path, creating a line of dark Fae. Kin, but we share nothing but a few drops of blood.
The darag was silent.
Do you regret what we did to him?
REGRET? EXPLAIN.
Coinneach frowned in thought. Do you wish that you had acted differently?
More silence. Coinneach sighed. For the daragin, the past was a real thing, as real as the present. He had spent many pleasant hours, in their old life, trying to explain to the sentient oak the concept of ‘might-have-been,’ a past that was not the actual past. In this instance, a past in which they had not sent the newly-arrived and disoriented slaidar half a world away and 17 years into the past, simply to be rid of him.
WISH? The leaves overhead rustled. WHAT IS, IS. More leaves brushed Coinneach’s skin, as the darag struggled to express concepts foreign to its being. A DIFFERENT PAST ACTION TOWARD THE SLAIDAR WOULD CREATE A DIFFERENT PATH, TO A DIFFERENT THIS-MOMENT. Coinneach sensed the darag’s satisfaction at grasping the concept of ‘difference,’ of alternate possibilities. AND THIS-MOMENT, THE SLAIDARIN LEARN HONESTY. TRUTH.
Only because they know the blood price they will pay, should they return to their old ways. Dubhdara had given the darag his blood, willingly, thinking it was only asked of him to allow the oak to determine whether the dark Fae, called adhmacomh by others of their own kind, were kin to the Gille Dubh; now, though, having taken that willingly-given blood into themselves, Coinneach and his darag could enter into the slaidar’s mind, and do there as they willed. Could, and would, if any of the slaidarin showed any signs of considering a betrayal like the one that had condemned Gille Dubh and daragin to thousands of years of what might as well have been death. Can we ever trust them?
ASK NOT FOR THE TRUTH OF A MOMENT NOT YET KNOWN BY TRUNK AND SAP AND LEAF. The crown of the tree tossed gently in an unfelt breeze. THE FATE OF THE SLAIDARIN IS THEIRS TO DETERMINE.
As ours never was, Coinneach grumbled.
Another voice drifted to Coinneach’s inner senses. More laughter, followed by a voice that made his darag’s roots curl and blacken at their most tender tips.
“The Fae call them wellsprings. The way to our true home is closer than we thought.”
The darag whispered, a rustle of dead leaves and heart-rot and the terrible moments when Mother Moon turned away and hid the face of Mother Sun, plunging the world into a darkness that was as much despair as the absence of light. The tree folk had never given a name to the creature the Fae called Marfach, but they knew it for what it was, a slow and twisted death that had never paid them any attention.
Until now. Until it stood over a wellspring of the magick that gave life to the whole symbiotic race of Gille Dubh and daragin, and contemplated poisoning the well.
Quickly. The seeds of a mutual defense plan existed, among the other tree folk who had awakened. But bringing those seeds to growth would require the cooperation of all the daragin, all the Gille Dubh. And the daragin, at least, did nothing in haste. Quickly!
YES. QUICKLY.
Chapter Fourteen
I’m as crazy as he is. Terry shook his head as
he stepped up onto the square of sample flooring, marked with Garrett’s sneaker prints and what was probably Maelduin’s blood.
But he wasn’t crazy. Probably. He was just humoring a crazy person. And just because there wasn’t any reason to, other than the way the fine hairs on the back of his hand still stood on end, and the way the gorgeous smile Maelduin was giving him was making him feel, didn’t make him crazy.
Well, maybe the way that smile was making him feel wasn’t quite sane. He was being manipulated, Maelduin had as much as admitted it. And he was letting himself get excited at the prospect.
Although… Maelduin was scared green of the Metro. That couldn’t possibly have been an act. And yet he’d ridden the train to bring Terry here for this. Whatever ‘this’ was. There were probably a million better ways to manipulate me. Most of which would have involved sex.
“Do you feel it?”
For a second, Terry wasn’t sure what Maelduin was talking about. He was too captivated by Maelduin’s clear blue gaze, the way his beautiful smile had faded to something more thoughtful, intent.
Jesus. I have issues.
So what?
Then he followed Maelduin’s pointing finger, down toward his feet. Light pooled there, the way so many spotlights had surrounded him in the past.
Only… there were no spotlights here in this half-built shell of a dance studio.
And this light was coming from underneath the floor.
Terry’s feet tingled.
“What the hell?”
* * *
All we have to do is fall forward. The male didn’t seem fazed by the prospect of a 20-foot drop onto solid ice. We’ll never even hit the bottom. We’ll just fall into the wellspring and come out in the Realm.
Where his parasite would gorge its three-headed self on all the magick the Fae Realm had to offer. And where he, Janek O’Halloran, would be of no use whatsoever and would be quickly dead. Without ever having had the satisfaction of putting a bloody end to the fucking Fae who had sent him to hell.
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