by Eric Asher
“Is she okay?” Nixie said. “When she left, was she okay?”
Stump turned slightly, and the fading sunset revealed a pale wound on what constituted the Green Man’s right cheek. “She was well, though most distraught over her inability to commune with her sisters. With you, in fact. Not all undines left this place.”
“Cool scar,” I said.
Stump blinked and slowly raised his right arm to run across the stretch of his cheek where the bark had been stripped away. “Why does your kind compliment our injuries? You are not the first today to do so, as the one called Cornelius said much the same. The sight of one’s lifeblood spilled upon the battlefield does not seem like an event that should earn praise.”
“Who is it?” A voice shouted from just over the rise in the embankment.
“The queen and her necromancer.”
Nixie and I gave each other a bit of a double take before I cracked her a grin. “Come on, Your Majesty,” I said. “Thank you, Stump. We need to talk to the innkeeper.”
Nixie and I hurried over the hill, her muttering something about me being a pain in her ass, and the vista of Rivercene opened before us. My rapid strides stuttered as I took in the scarred landscape, and the sprawling form of one of the dark-touched harbingers.
“What happened here?” Nixie said, her voice raised as we stepped around deep furrows in the earth, and more than one shattered corpse of a water witch.
We jogged to a halt before the steps of Rivercene, the diminutive form of the innkeeper a strange contrast to her heavy presence.
“What are you doing here?” the innkeeper snapped, ignoring Nixie’s question. “Alexandra has made for Saint Charles. And she’s taken her soldiers with her.”
“Did they leave you defenseless?” Nixie asked.
The innkeeper barked out a harsh laugh. “They were not the ones to bring down the harbinger.”
“Ashley? Did she come here with Beth and Cornelius?”
The innkeeper nodded. “Most of your friends escaped. I didn’t much like them torturing people on my front lawn, but they did leave a nice new garden of statues behind. Cornelius is resting upstairs. I will watch over him while you return to your home.”
“Do you need a healer?” Nixie asked.
“We have our own ways,” the innkeeper said. She paused a moment, and then said, “But I appreciate your offer.”
“If you need us…” I said.
“Whatever Nudd has done to block the water witches’ communications has not silenced my telephone.”
I blinked at the innkeeper and suddenly felt rather stupid. A brief smile crossed her face before she snapped, “Now go. Your people need you.”
I held my hand out to Nixie, and she wrapped her hand around my forearm before I laced my fingers between Gaia’s.
“Tell the old Titan hello,” the innkeeper said. “We will see you soon.”
As Rivercene’s broken sidewalk faded from my vision, I understood why the innkeeper said they were not unguarded. The massive willow tree-like creature, which I’d once seen walking down Main Street in Boonville, shifted near the old stump in the front yard. Blood and viscera dripped from the end of its vine-like limbs. And I saw the corpses of the dark-touched at its feet.
The light returned in the Abyss faster than I was accustomed to. Gaia coalesced beside us in an instant.
I fought down nausea, as it felt like my stomach was trying to escape through the top of my skull. “The innkeeper says hello,” I muttered.
“It is always good to hear from an old friend,” Gaia said, a serene smile passing over her face.
“What’s happening?” Nixie said. She looked like she was about to double over.
“Are you okay?” I asked, worry rising in my gut.
“It feels as if the very earth beneath my feet is spinning.”
“She will recover,” Gaia said. “I do not believe the queen has experienced vertigo before.”
Nixie looked up at me in horror. “Is this how you feel when you get dizzy?”
“Kind of,” I said. “It’s usually not quite this bad, though.”
“By the gods,” she said, grimacing. “Why do you continue to live?”
“Brace yourself,” Gaia said. “This will not prove to be pleasant.”
Nixie started to protest, and the Abyss spiraled into chaos around us. I would’ve laughed at the expression on her face if I hadn’t known exactly how she felt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I kept my eyes open this time, not bracing for the impact of the river as I had before. Gaia released us from the Abyss not above the Missouri River, but inside it. Nixie once again made the entry into the water smoother than anything I’d experienced before. It was a strange sensation, diving beneath the waves without getting wet; shielded by Nixie’s warmth around me, while the frigid waters rushed by.
We surfaced near the bank where the national guard units had incurred such great loss. Now it was an empty, muddy, and blood-soaked field. The carcass of the Green Man Aeros had slain waited like a fallen log. I blinked, and stared at it, in death unable to discern the difference between the sentient being and the driftwood around it.
Shouts echoed around us, but I couldn’t pinpoint their source. Nixie stumbled beside me before hunching over, hands on her knees.
“This is awful,” she said.
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “We’re still alive enough to know it’s awful.”
She laughed, made a pained noise, and slowly stood upright. “Come, no one is here. I pray we weren’t wrong.”
We struck out toward the scattered gravel and old railroad tracks that led back to the street. The shouting grew louder, and slowly I came to realize that we were hearing more than raised voices. Heavy equipment ground and squealed in the distance.
“Tanks?” I said, frowning as I looked either way on the street. I cursed when I saw the small clusters of tourists. The military might have been regrouping, but the gawkers and ghouls had come out to stare at the carnage.
The boom of a gunshot echoed around us, and Nixie and I exchanged a glance.
“This is bad,” I said.
I ground my teeth as we hurried through the seething masses of soldiers, a level of chaos that spoke of their inexperience.
Aeros’s voice boomed and cut through the noise of the street. “Stand down!”
Commoners screamed and ran away from the mass of rock and rage that formed the Old God. A still form lay at his feet, partway sheltered while Aeros faced down a tank rolling down the hill.
“Damian, we must hurry,” Nixie said, dragging me forward. “We must clear the innocents out of harm’s way.”
“Shit, yes,” I said, hurrying along beside her as fast as I could in the throng of soldiers.
“I don’t know if you fully understand the consequences,” Nixie said, her steps wobbling slightly under the vertigo of the Abyss. “This is a tactic Lewena used against Leviticus in the war for Atlantis. She drowned the innocent in front of the soldiers, drawing them out to die at her convenience.”
I cursed and crashed through a line of soldiers. The commoners stood around us, stunned into silence. Two of them stepped behind me, and I thought I recognized them from the store when I heard the man say, “Stay behind Damian.”
The machine gun mounted on the tank burst to life, cutting a line of chips across Aeros’s chest while the bullets ricocheted in every imaginable direction.
The tourists and more stubborn locals weren’t the only people in danger here. I raised my hand in a useless protest. Nixie held me back, preventing me from doing something stupid.
A flash of black and white wings caught my eye beyond the tank. “Angus!” The fairy looked up.
The tank’s main turret fired.
Flames and death and smoke screamed from the barrel of that awful weapon. Aeros raised his fists, and a u-shaped wall of stone sprang up between him and the shell. The wall cracked in the following explosion, sending waves of shr
apnel and debris skyward. Angus had barely escaped, shocking me with his speed as he grabbed two of the kids behind the wall and launched into the air with them.
One of the kids he’d had to leave behind screamed and went down, clutching his leg. Aeros glanced at the child, then turned back to face the tank. The Old God dropped into the earth, vanishing into a circle of green light. The tank adjusted its aim.
The next shot would take what was left of the wall of stone, and kill the half dozen people sheltering behind it. The commoners who had been protesting, the kids who had come to call Aeros a friend.
“No!” I shouted, sprinting forward. If I could get close enough, raise a shield, raise the Hand of Anubis, do something. I wasn’t that fast. No one was that fast. “Run!” Angus dove back into the panicked crowd.
A loud thunk sounded from the tank. I wasn’t going to make it to them in time. Where the fuck was Aeros?
He answered with a fury, rising beneath the tank. One stony fist grabbed the barrel and bent it toward the ground before the Old God flipped the tank over and slammed it against the earth. Stone flowed over the armored metal shell, and the tank squealed as Aeros tore it apart.
“They are children!” the Old God roared. “My stone will bear your names for all time, and the world shall call you murderers.”
“Aeros, no!” I shouted.
He paused with his fist raised above the exposed soldiers, his eyes flashing between me and the terrified men below him.
“Don’t kill them,” I said.
“He’s dead!” A voice screamed, cracking and rising into hysteria. I turned to see a child tugging at the arm of an older man. The endless, undefined wails of a survivor. There were the cries of grief, and then there were the primal chords of loss no person could put into words. The hiccupping, terrible sobs of lives broken, and a world that would never be the same.
“Murderers.” Aeros turned away from the soldiers and looked down at me. “They should be held accountable. Would you not slay them if they were Fae or vampire?” He walked back toward the screaming boy.
I stepped up onto the flattened edge of the tank. “Okay, look, that’s a big talking rock who wants to kill you now. Congratulations on pulling that off. You also just murdered someone’s grandfather, so fuck you very much. The Fae who triggered Gettysburg are still out there, and they still want to kill you. Wise up before you find yourself alone in this fight.”
The nearest soldier’s hand reached for his sidearm. It caught on a mangled strip of metal.
The man next to him had a smarter approach. He placed his hand on his companion’s arm, preventing any further attempts to draw his weapon. When the first man tried to protest again, the man I’d come to think of as the smart one stopped him more forcefully.
“Stop it. Do you want to see your family again? Or you want to die here?”
The man with the gun stopped fidgeting. I backed away, letting them climb out of the ruined tank. The wails of the child behind me cut through the silence of the men before me.
“Never forget that sound.”
I turned away at that point, not wanting to see what the men would do. Or maybe I just didn’t care anymore.
“Can you get them to the hospital, Aeros?”
“It will be done.” He held out his hand, and the sobbing boy climbed onto it.
Nixie held her hand over the wound in the man’s chest. “He’s still alive.” Her hand trembled, and a small orb of water congealed across the wound. “It will stop the bleeding for a short time, but you must be quick.”
“I will be,” Aeros said. The earth beneath the man shifted and surged forward, carrying all three of them past the overturned tank like a ship set upon the stones.
A familiar face caught my eye in the chaos. “Ranger Rick!” He didn’t hear me, just kept walking.
Nixie raised her voice into a shrill, cutting octave. “Rick!”
CHAPTER FORTY
Rick froze, his gaze strafing the crowd around him until he found us. I raised my hand. He wove through the throng of people on the street and slipped past displaced cobblestones.
“Damian, is everyone back?”
“They’re headed this way with Graybeard.”
“How long?” Ranger asked. “Stacy has been preaching some ridiculous bull shit.”
“Is that why your so-called soldiers opened fire and injured commoners?” Nixie asked. “It’s disgraceful.”
“You mean the protesters?” Ranger shook his head. “You have to understand, I think these morons hate the protesters as much as they hate their enemies.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“I’m saying they’re not referring to them as civilians anymore, but as the Devil’s prophets or some such shit.”
I clenched my fist and cursed. “And what good will it do bringing the others back here?”
“When they left to help you, the rumor is they were running away from the damage they caused with their own hands.”
“What about Casper and the others? The unit we helped?”
“The soldiers they saved,” Nixie said. She didn’t pull punches, and she didn’t dance around the point. “If Graybeard had not been there, far more would have died. Both the wounded and the defenseless.”
“We can try to sort this out now that it’s over,” Rick said. “I’m due for a debriefing. I have to go.”
“Ridiculous,” one of the soldiers walking behind Rick muttered. “She’s one of those witches that attacked us. Why is she walking around free?”
I didn’t see the rock until it smacked into the side of Nixie’s face. She grunted and held a hand up to the cut above her cheekbone. “Who?”
I found the cluster of men. And I started toward them, Nixie beside me, before Rick held out his hand.
The Ranger stalked over to the men.
“You like that shot, Ranger,” the largest of them said. Rick said nothing, he simply struck the man with blinding speed. The soldier gasped and grabbed his neck before collapsing onto the ground.
“We do not fire on our own allies, be it with bullets or stones, so listen now. This is not over. Pull your shit together and make ready.” Rick spat on this ground beside the man. “If you have a problem with it, you can have a big chicken dinner instead.”
The two remaining hecklers stayed silent. They looked at the man on the ground, still working to breathe normally, as Rick walked away.
“God damn new recruits,” Rick muttered. His eyes widened, and he took a hesitant step backward, and then another. “What in God’s name is that?”
Nixie and I turned to find a shadow looming over the river; the titanic form of a dark-touched harbinger walking beside a towering translucent figure.
“That’s a sentinel formation.” Nixie frowned. “It’s a calling card of the queen.”
“That’s why she cut the earlier attack short,” I hissed. “Now Nixie is here without the force of her people.” I turned to Rick. “Do you still have the daggers? The bullets?”
“I … I don’t know,” Rick said.
“Casper had them before,” I said. “And some of her soldiers. Find her, find Casper’s unit, and get to high ground.”
“Make for the shop,” Nixie said. “Our best hope until Alexandra reaches us is the cu siths.”
“Aye,” Angus said, settling in on Nixie’s shoulder. “I’ve seen a cu sith take down more than one water witch in my day.”
“Run,” Nixie said.
I didn’t question it further. Angus and Nixie knew more about the history of the cu siths and the water witches than I likely ever would. I knew they’d been used in the Wandering War, and I knew they were heavy ground troops in that conflict. But as we dashed down the rough brick sidewalks, and the heads of the harbinger and the sentinel peaked above the rooftops, I worried what any of us could do against that force. I choked the doubt down and focused on my footing. Nixie could sprint for hours, while I didn’t have that luxury.
The harbinge
r roared, the wailing cry of a dark-touched turned into a basso howl. The few commoners who were still standing on the streets turned and fled. Some dove into storefronts and restaurants. I hoped they were only gathering a few essential items before leaving. I feared what the coming battle could do to my city, and I promised myself I would do anything to keep these people safe.
* * *
I hadn’t even managed to get the front door open before Bubbles shouldered it wide. The cu siths’ fur bristled, and they stared down at the river front. Our enemy was close enough now I could see they stood in the center of the river. That they had such height, beyond the depth of the water, was a terrible sight.
“Why one?” Angus said. “Why one harbinger?”
“They’re territorial creatures,” Nixie said. “It’s not uncommon for them to attack one another. Though I would’ve expected it to attack the sentinel.
I cursed. “Look at the sentinel’s shoulders. Do you see them?”
“Dark-touched,” Nixie said, surprise plain in her voice. “What is this? How is the queen controlling them?”
“There has to be a dozen of them. Bloody hell, how are five of us going to slow that down?”
Nixie splayed her fingers across her breastplate, and said, “Get your armor.”
I dashed into the shop, throwing the closet open and pulling out the vest with “Cub” embroidered across it. Hugh’s gift had saved me more than once, but as I flattened the Velcro straps, I remembered a weapon that might give us far more of an edge than the cu siths.
I ran up the stairs, skipping one with each stride, and hurried to the wall at the end of the library. I slid the trunk out and popped the latch, digging for the thick leather scabbard. I grabbed a black leather sheath as well, and frowned at the Key of the Dead and the splendorum mortem. The dagger I’d once used to kill a god.
I hesitated, and then slid the sheath for both the daggers onto my belt before securing it beside a thick iron buckle.
I hurried back to the front of the shop, and Angus stepped away from me as I exited. “What is that? The power, by the gods, I can feel it rushing off you.”
