by James Hunter
I was no longer in the driver seat, so to speak. The power still raged through me, sure, but now I was a passive member in the equation: a conduit, a battery, while James formed the rest of the working. With a veritable Mack truck of will, he forced the last element into place: Vim. With his sword blade, he scored a shallow gash across the back of his hand; the crimson blood flared along the weapon’s edge and evaporated into a misty red haze that swirled and swayed in the air before joining the working.
Vim is the stored life energy of creation, a divine power that ebbs and flows in the veins of every living thing—humans most of all. One of the most powerful substances in the world. Powerful enough to even stave off death, which is why vampires need to drink the stuff by the friggin’ bucket-load. It’s not the blood itself that sustains them, it’s the Vim, the life energy, stored within. And with enough Vim, a mage could supercharge any working into something a thousand times more destructive, which was why so many of the most powerful ol’ timey rituals called for human sacrifice.
As the Vim joined the elemental party, the construct shifted, purple light giving way to a rolling, tumultuous cloud of orange that manifested in the air. Inside the volcanic cloud, arcs of electric blue light flashed back and forth as terrible static built around us. A bona fide lightning storm in a bottle.
With a final shout, James dropped his sword cane and threw both hands outward, fingers splayed out like a maestro bringing a song to its crescendo, and the orange cloud responded in kind. It surged forward, washing over James’s hasty defensive barrier, quickly swallowing the approaching ranks of Fomorians, momentarily obscuring them from view.
Then the terrified howls began—interrupted by the sizzle-crack of an electric chair on full-tilt—while dizzying blasts of purple-white energy flashed, briefly outlining the convulsing forms of Fomorians dying horrible deaths.
James leaned over—knees quivering, hands trembling, breaths coming in quick, shallow pulls—grabbed his sword, and hightailed it toward us. “It’s unstable,” he yelled, feet smacking against the floor as he sprinted our way.
Well shit.
Ailia and I spun, her still supporting most of my weight, and followed James’s lead: running for everything we were worth, which sadly wasn’t much at that point.
Lugh stood twenty-five feet off. What had once been a dead end of black stone was now a yawning opening, which led directly into the Stonehenge-inspired throne room. While we ran, the latent charge in the air built and built and built, the hair on my head and arms rising to rigid attention.
James swooped in beside me, swung under my other arm, then promptly hoisted me onto his shoulder in an awkward and painful fireman’s carry. My gut and chest burned with every step he took, as his shoulder was jabbing into me with considerable force, but we were making damn good time. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw James shove Ailia onward. “Run!” he hollered. “Don’t worry about us, this is par for the course.” That was a total, bold-faced lie.
Had I not been bouncing up and down on his shoulder, trying not to puke or pass out, I would’ve called shenanigans. Nothing about this situation was even remotely close to normal.
Still, it got her ass sprinting ahead, which I was grateful for. No reason for all of us to go out in a final blaze of fiery glory.
I watched—mounting horror waltzing with blooming awe—as the tremendous lightning cloud, engulfing the host of Fomorians, began to break apart like a festive doom-themed piñata.
Without James focusing his will and holding the massive amounts of energy in the construct together, the working was tearing itself apart as the various elemental forces ripped free and dissipated. And all that ripping and tearing—moving from a high energy state to a lower energy state—made for a very lively fireworks display. Huge gusts of wind slapped against my face as the lightning cloud devolved into a churning, twirling, lightning tornado.
Yes, an honest-to-goodness lightning tornado.
The vortex—its base as wide as a towering redwood—roared through the barren desert-scape, discharging white-hot bolts of energy that left patches of slick glass in its wake. Simultaneously, the churning cloud scooped up distorted, charbroiled bodies and tossed them into the air like some toddler scattering their playthings. Worst of all, this terrifying construct was only the beginning. In a minute—or maybe even only a handful of seconds—that tornado would devolve further, imploding in on itself and releasing the remainder of its pent-up energy in a single blast that’d make any military-grade bunker-buster envious.
The explosion came much sooner than I’d anticipated.
One second a spiraling whirlwind of certain destruction filled my vision, and the next, a light erupted from the tornado’s center. A light so bright, even after I closed my eyes in response, a purple afterimage was stained on the back of my eyelids. A rumbling detonation followed, the crack-bang of a thousand claps of thunder, and a whump of hot air slammed into my face. Then I was weightless, my body sailing ass over teakettle, my arms and legs flapping and waving as I fell.
TWELVE:
Three Boons
The blast had thrown me away from James and, somehow, I’d ended up on my back in the thick grass carpeting the throne room, vacantly staring toward the cavernous, gem-studded sky overhead. One of the strange fruit-covered trees towered nearby, casting a pale shade over my face. I just lay there, breathing hard, mentally scanning my body and ensuring all my limbs were still where they belonged.
My head throbbed like someone had taken a jackhammer to the inside of my skull.
Just thinking about my ribs and chest left me feeling nauseous.
And my friggin’ shoulder? That son of a bitch felt like the survivor of a bear mauling, which wasn’t too far from the mark.
I was also honest-to-goodness smoking-—and I’m not talking cigarettes here, though that would have been one helluva good idea. No, curls of steam and blue-gray smoke literally wafted off my jacket from the heat of that final explosion. I absently rubbed at my face and realized my eyebrows had been singed off in the process. My skin was also too tight and tender, like I had a helluva sunburn, and my cheeks felt suspiciously smooth—the five o’ clock shadow I usually sported was gone. Insult to injury right there. The hair on my head was mostly intact, though, and all my limbs were present and accounted for.
So what if I looked like a naked mole-rat? I was alive and more or less okay. Take your victories where you can get ’em, am I right?
After a few seconds I pushed myself up onto my elbows and surveyed the scenery. I was expecting to find some world-class, scorched-earth devastation, but surprisingly there was none. Not to the throne room proper, at any rate. The brilliant-green grass was still immaculate, the monolithic ring of pillars surrounding us stood untouched, and the riot of flowers looked untroubled by our plight. No blackened earth to be seen and no mound of crispy, charbroiled critters. The hallway we’d come from, and the arid, desolate desert beyond, were gone. Vanished. Just like my eyebrows. And all the corpses along with it.
Instead I was left staring at the massive double doors, currently closed tight, sealing off the throne room completely.
Next to the doors sat a very ashen-looking Lugh, sweating profusely, pulling in great lungfuls of air as though he’d just finished running a friggin’ marathon, his spear leaning against the doors. “That was something. Put my heart crossways, it did,” he said, panting. “Let’s not try to do that again if we can avoid it.”
With a groan, I pushed myself to my feet. Well, I tried, but didn’t quite manage it. Ailia shuffled over to me, moving with a weary obstinacy, and offered me both hands. Reluctantly, I let her help me up.
She slid around me once I was standing, carefully positioning herself between me and Lugh, before running a hand over my face, tracing a finger along one of my missing eyebrows. She looked no worse for the wear, and I was suddenly thankful as all hell that James had pushed her on ahead of us. “Oh, moi kotik, are you okay?” she asked. “For a mom
ent I thought …” She trailed off, then looked away, reaching up and wiping away a lone tear with the back of one hand. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.
“The important thing is you’re alive. Though your poor face. Luckily I’m not with you for your looks.” Her lips quirked at the corners, but I could tell she wasn’t really feeling it. “When this is done, say we can ago away for a while. Just the two of us. You can play your music. I can read good books until late in the night and sleep in the next morning. We can travel. Go to the beach, spend time in the mountains. Please, Yancy?”
I looked down at her and smiled, then drew her into a bear hug, my arms enfolding her. I squeezed her tight, despite the fact it felt like someone was karate-chopping me in the solar plexus. I kissed her forehead, then rested my nose in her hair, taking in a big whiff of that fancy soap she used, desperate to banish the scent of charred meat and death.
“Alright,” I whispered, pitching my voice low so the promise was for her ear alone, then pulled away far enough to offer her a real kiss. Our lips touched: hers soft and tender, mine rough and splattered with baked-on blood—some mine, most Fomorian. She leaned into me despite that, and suddenly a wave of power rolled out from her, invading my senses like a splash of cool water on a scorching-hot day, and all the hurt and ache in my body melted away. Well, not completely, but enough that it no longer hurt to stand or to hold her tight.
She slumped and dropped away, a small cry of anguish escaping her lips. Her skin was pale, clammy, and washed-out as though she were recovering from a bad case of flu.
“Let me sit a moment,” she wheezed, her voice suddenly tired, stretched thin. “I’ll be okay in no time.” She patted my too-smooth cheek. “In no time.”
Carefully, gently, I lifted her into my arms—a groom carrying his bride across the threshold—and deposited her by a stone pillar, near where James was laying. After I made sure she was seated and comfortable, I scooted over and popped a squat near James, assessing him with a critical eye. He was awake, though he looked drained, the weariness bone deep. Slugging out a hasty battle like that, even though it’d lasted only a few minutes, was exhausting. Imagine running a triathlon with a fridge strapped to your back and you’re in the ballpark.
He also looked pissed.
Probably that was because his normally fine attire was slashed, burned, and stained in a multitude of places with splatters of silver and streaks of crimson. Worse still, his neat, wavy 1920s ’do was all kinds of screwed up and his eyebrows hadn’t fared any better than mine. In fact, I’d say his brows looked worse: the explosion had singed away his entire left eyebrow, but only a partial swath of his right, leaving behind a comically small tuft of hair. Yeah, that little teardrop shaped splotch loitering above his eye was definitely worse.
“Good work in there,” I said, trying not to stare or laugh.
He nodded, just a tired bob of his head, but said nothing.
“You okay?” I asked after a moment.
“Swell,” he finally said. “But once I can pull my ass off this floor, I swear someone is going to have a very, very bad day. Also, as a side note really, you look awful—like a cucumber with eyes and a nose. You should stay away from cameras for a while, I think.”
I reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “You ever hear the one about throwing stones in glass houses?” I asked.
He reached up, fingertips gingerly sketching over the mostly smooth skin along his brows. “I’m going to murder someone,” he said through gritted teeth.
“At least we’re on the same page,” I replied. “Now you lay there and fume. I’m gonna go punch that douchebag”—I jabbed a thumb toward Lugh—“in the nose. Maybe more than once. Then I’ll get us some answers. Kay?”
He nodded and laid his head back, closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths through his nose.
With that, I stood up—feeling a damned bit better thanks to Ailia’s unasked for intervention—and ambled over to Lord Lugh, who stood near the massive entryway doors, grasping his spear in one hand. “Let’s not do anything hasty,” the Danann noble said, though a crooked, nervous grin told me he expected something very hasty indeed.
I didn’t disappoint him.
Without preamble, I walked straight over, cocked my fist back, and threw my whole weight into a wicked right hook, which caught him full in the side of the face and dropped him to the floor like a sack of cement. Guy knew he had it coming—he didn’t even try to avoid my swing. He took the blow like a contrite parishioner doing penance. After a moment, he regained his feet and offered me another lopsided grin followed by a shrug. “I’ll admit, maybe that was warranted.”
“Nope, that was just warm-up.” I threw another fist into his gut. He doubled over in a whoff, spear landing in the grass as he clutched at his knees. “You’ve been gaming us since the moment we got here,” I said, “and since you almost got us killed, I think a couple of shots doesn’t come close to making us even. So, you’d better start talking, douchenozzle, or I’m gonna skip to the part where I stop punching you and just set you on fire. Sound like a plan?”
He flopped down onto his ass, sprawled his legs out, and slumped back against the doors, somehow deflated. He casually brushed his palms on his tunic, completely unconcerned by my threats to start an impromptu barbeque with him as the main course. “So I wasn’t completely forthright,” he said after a time. “Perhaps I know where the ambassador is—not dead, nor even hurt, just in an undisclosed safe house far from the Morrigan.”
“Where I come from, that’s called being a dirty, no-good bullshiter. The real question, though, is why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Ailia said. I stole a look over my shoulder and caught her shaking her head. “Zadrota”-—idiot, she said to herself. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. You and Dagda knew the Morrigan was planning a revolt with the Fomorians. You already knew what was in the ambassador’s report. But you also knew the other lords and ladies were leaning toward the Morrigan, so they weren’t likely to come to your aid.” She messaged her temple with one hand. “And you couldn’t request help from the Guild directly because it would make you look like a lapdog.
“More importantly,” she continued, “you knew the Guild wouldn’t help anyway—not since we have a non-intervention policy when it comes to internal political disputes.” She slapped her hands against her legs in frustration. “The Guild would never pick sides in a bloody civil war, especially if there was a good chance your faction would be the losers. Too much risk for too little reward.
“But if you framed the Morrigan for the disappearance of our ambassador, you could force the Guild to take action. So you convinced Mr. Hoehner he was in danger, removed him to a safe house, ransacked his room, and invited us here—knowing we would eventually uncover his findings and blame the Morrigan. Then we’d be forced to execute judgment on her, and if anything happened to us, the Guild would retaliate.”
“You are exactly as good as everyone says you are,” Lugh replied, looking past me toward her. “Unfortunately, uncovering that truth now is absolutely pointless. First, I am not admitting to anything, but even if you were correct, I have committed no crime against the Guild, and I can hardly be blamed if you had come to an incorrect conclusion based on evidence gleaned from your own spy. The Guild would have no course of action to pursue against me or my king.”
I grunted, hands curling into tight fists. “You’re a real son of a bitch,” I said. “But you know what, it doesn’t even matter, ’cause this isn’t our problem, not anymore. This is your mess, so you can clean it up your damned self. We’re done here.”
“Well, you see that’s where you’re wrong,” Lugh replied, that damned mischievous smirk spreading on his narrow, conniving face. “The Morrigan is no dunce—she’s been around an awfully long time, and she has surely reasoned out that she is being framed. So, at this stage in the game, her only possible course of action is to strike and win the throne before you can summon reinforc
ements from the Guild. If she’s occupying that chair”—he gestured toward the earthen throne—“she’ll be the sitting monarch of the Tuatha De Danann and the Guild won’t seek restitution for your deaths. Simple as that, which is why she’s marching on us, army in tow, as we speak.
“Now, you three are certainly free to leave whenever the fancy takes you, but since we are currently in a state of emergency, I must inform you that the court cannot provide you with an escort to navigate the ever-changing hallways of Tír na nÓg. You’re welcome to try and traverse them yourselves, but there’s a good chance you will become hopelessly mired for all eternity.” He frowned and shrugged, as though to say sorry for the slight inconvenience. “So until the court resolves its business, you’re stuck here, I’m afraid. Though feel free to sit on the sidelines while the court settles this dispute.”
“Wait, oh no.” He held his hand up to his mouth, feigning surprise as though he’d just realized some cruel turn of fate. “The Morrigan has a personal blood vendetta against all three of you, so should the current administration fail to turn back the Morrigan and her army of bloodthirsty, demonic monsters—I hear they also like to eat people—then surely you will be next in line. Oh, what rotten luck.”
“You dirty, underhanded son of a bitch. You shanghaied us. I bet you set this up from the beginning.”
He shrugged. “Again, in your hypothetical situation, I suppose that is possible. Your ambassador and I played chess often, and one of the things I’ve learned about chess is this: you must always be planning several moves ahead, and you can never depend on only a single strategy. Is it possible I arranged your disastrous introduction to the court, forcing a confrontation between the three of you and the Morrigan, thus giving you a very good incentive to join my cause should things unravel?” He shrugged again, then casually regarded his fingernails. “Well I suppose someone with the right devious inclination could do that.”
