by Eric Asher
“Damian!” he shouted. “Damian, I couldn’t stop them. Oh god, I couldn’t stop them. They took Sam and Foster.”
I ground my teeth and flipped the phone to speaker. “Who took them?”
“I don’t know! Park didn’t recognize the unit, but they had Fae with them.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. They arrested them for colluding with Nudd and providing intel. They’re saying our nukes are missing, Damian.”
“How many?” I asked, dread and rage warring in my gut.
“All of them! Get over here now! I don’t know what to do. Some of Casper’s squad got beaten down.”
Aideen stood slowly. “This was always a risk, trusting the commoners.” She methodically checked the sword sheathed at her waist and the daggers in her greaves. She pulled a quiver and bow from behind the register and looked up at me. “Do what you can. Find my husband.”
“We’re going with you,” I said.
“Meet me there. You’ll slow me down.” She streaked to the front door, exploded into her full-sized form, and slipped out while Bubbles hurtled after her.
“Let’s go,” Vicky said.
My eyes trailed back to the television as Nudd waved goodbye to a split crowd: half somber, half celebratory. Division was growing among the Fae.
I cursed and then said, “Come on.”
CHAPTER TEN
“We have to get to Sam, now,” I hissed as we hurried out onto Main Street. I watched Vicky as she walked beside me. If they’d put Sam down with something, Vicky was at risk. All three of us were.
Zola’s cane cracked against the cobblestones. “We will, boy.”
I glanced at Zola when her cane went silent. She had her head down and trailed Vicky. I slowed a bit to see what she was doing. Her old fingers blurred across the screen of her phone. To say she’d improved her texting skills was a vast understatement.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Vik,” Zola said. “Ah’ve found that vampire replies faster when people type at him than he does when they talk.”
“It’s called texting,” Vicky said. “Or call it messaging.”
“Girl,” Zola said, flipping her phone off. “You get to be older than one hundred and fifty years, you can call it whatever the hell you like.”
An old man smiled at us from a bench, giving Zola and I a look. I gave him an awkward smile, and he tipped his Fedora at us. It was good to see the locals moving back into the area. For a while, it had been hard for them to do that. There’d been so much debris around from the battle with the water witches that it had made the recovery slower than expected.
“Let’s go,” I said, increasing my pace again. It was only another minute before we were hurrying up the steps to the archives. I threw the door open, yanking it out of the hands of the woman who had been standing on the other side.
“Sorry, we’re closed,” she said.
“We’re here for Sam and Foster.”
She frowned.
“I was just here this morning,” I said, flashing her the most plastic smile I could muster.
“I know. It’s just we’re not supposed to let you in.”
“According to whom?” I asked.
Her eyes flashed up and to the right to a camera mounted above the door.
“Military? But not Park? Are they recording sound?”
She shrugged.
“I’m coming in,” Zola said, stepping in front of me.
“What’s going on?” Vicky asked, pressing up beside me. Jasper chittered on her shoulder, and at that point the woman in front of Zola didn’t need to fake the surprise and fear on her face.
Zola might appear small, or even frail at first glance, but she shoved the receptionist into a stumbling sprawl with little effort.
“Come on,” I said stepping between Zola and the woman on the floor. “To the basement.”
I didn’t look back. Zola padded along behind me, her cane cracking on the floor every few steps while Vicky hurried behind her. We passed filing cabinets and shelves, twisting through the hall until we reached the stairs. I hurried down them as shouts rose from below us. I worried what Aideen might be doing to Park’s unit.
The anger on Aideen’s face flashed through my mind an instant before my focus shifted back to Sam. They’d taken Sam, too. If she died, Vicky and I died with her. If she was injured, other people were going to die. Of that, I was sure.
Our pace increased to a jog and finally a sprint. Before I could so much as consider the danger, my aura reached out to the dead buried all around, until it caressed the dormant gravemakers that had arrived after the battle with the undines. We crossed through a section built of cinder blocks before the screams began.
I slowed as we came into the base proper, where we’d met Park earlier.
Shouts filled the hallways. Where it had been silent near the archives, now it was chaos. It took a moment to realize part of that chaos was due to me. Fragments of black flesh and bone oozed from the cracks between the old foundation’s stone.
“Stop,” Vicky said. “You’re scaring them all away. We’ll never find out anything.”
Zola put her hand on my shoulder. “Vicky is right. You need to stop.”
I breathed deeply, but didn’t stop moving forward. I probably wasn’t putting as much effort into controlling myself as I should have until one of the fluorescent lights burst with the influx of the gravemaker flesh. The pop of the bulb slowed my steps, and I focused my will, pulling my aura back tight against my body. The hum of the dead receded, and what flesh didn’t return to the earth at least stopped crawling across it.
“I figured that was you,” a somewhat irritated female voice said from around the corner. A glint of light vanished near the floor before Casper stepped forward, rising from a knee until she faced us. She folded up a small contraption, and I suspected it was either a camera or a mirror she’d used to look down the hall.
“Where are Sam and Foster?” The words that came from my throat weren’t smooth, but rather were gravelly, more the growl of a demon that’d been chain smoking for the past century.
“Bloody hell,” Casper said. “We’re working on it, but you have to get yourself under control.”
“Would you like to meet my dragon?” Vicky asked.
Casper glanced down at the girl. “She’s joking, right?”
“Oh no,” I said, my voice slowly returning to its normal timbre. “Vicky, meet Casper. Casper, Vicky. Vicky is the one who decided to sail her dragon through the Arch.”
Casper ran both of her hands through her hair. Her fingers massaged her scalp, and I suspected she was trying to stave off a headache of monumental proportions. “Come on, let’s go find Park.”
Casper turned around, and Zola flashed Vicky a grin.
“Don’t encourage them,” I said.
Jasper whined on her shoulder.
“Now you’ve hurt his feelings,” Vicky said.
I gave Jasper some side eye. “Don’t worry. I’m sure we can find something to feed you soon. I suspect that will make everything better.”
While Jasper had been keeping a low profile on Vicky’s shoulder, at my words, he flashed his rather large silvery gray teeth. When I looked up from the furball, I found Casper staring at us down the hallway.
I held my finger up to my lips, like a librarian might when shushing an unruly child or a jackass who answered his phone in the reference area.
“What is that?” Casper asked.
“Teeth,” I said. “Now let’s move it.” I stepped toward her. She could either decide to move with me, help us, or block me. She glanced back at Jasper for a moment, shook her head, and then led the way.
We only made it through two turns in the hallway before we ran into what looked like some very paranoid soldiers. One of them started to level the rifle at us before his eyes locked on Casper, and he let the black weapon fall back onto its shoulder strap.
“Where’s Park?” Zola asked
.
“Interrogation,” Casper said before taking a narrow hallway off to the right when we reached an intersection of three tunnels. The fluorescent lights seemed brighter here, but I wasn’t sure if that was simply because the ceiling was lower, as I felt the need to duck as we passed each fixture.
“We caught one,” Park said as we filtered into a small room. Behind him was a window into a room with walls blanketed in what looked like geometric acoustic foam. A soldier was cuffed to the table, with guards standing nearby. “I don’t know how long she’s been in the unit. The only time we can think a breach might have occurred is when some of our privates were in the infirmary for a week last month.”
“What you mean by a breach?” I asked.
Park pointed. “I mean that whoever that is somehow replaced Private Reese.”
“Is this room soundproofed?” Aideen asked.
Park nodded.
“Who discovered her? And how?”
Casper raised two fingers. “I did, with the seeing stone Foster gave me.” She fished around in a pocket near her belt and pulled out a marbled circular stone with a hollow center.
Aideen frowned at the seeing stone. “Foster should have detected the magic. You shouldn’t have needed that.” She turned back to the window into the little holding cell. “How did she hide her disguise?”
The death’s head grin on the captured fairy’s face made her look insane. She uttered a low, guttural laugh. It was the most inhuman sound I’d ever heard a fairy make, like the laughter of a child mixed with the scrape of a blade on a whetstone. “Vesik.”
That word alone, just my name, set Casper off.
She burst into the interrogation room with no announcement. One of the guards standing inside looked like he was about to say something. She silenced him with a glare. On the far wall was another mirror, much like I imagined would be on the opposite side of the room we were in, only much, much larger. But if it was reflecting us, who were the other interrogators? Or was it just another piece of psychology to throw off their subjects?
Eerily calm, the captured fairy watched us with almond-shaped eyes as Casper moved through the room. The fairy’s eyes were narrow, and her face was thin. But she wore a satisfied smile, a knowing smirk. It was likely she had far more intel than we would ever know.
We followed Casper in as she leaned toward the fairy. The prisoner’s calm cracked a hair before Casper crossed back to us and into the strange L-shaped room we were all huddled in. The door clicked close behind her, and it sounded almost like a vacuum seal engaging. “Whoever she is, she’ll break.”
Park rubbed his hands together. “Private Reese was known for constantly wearing hats.”
“Even in the showers,” Casper said. “She wore some kind of shower cap thing. She’d always been particular about her hair.” Casper frowned and glanced away for a moment. “Some of us gave her trouble about it. But that thing in there …”
“She’s Fae,” Aideen said, “just like me. Just like Foster. Which is why I assume you have falsely arrested him?”
“We know who gave our nuke locations to Nudd,” Park said. “We needed to convince the chain of command that Sam and Foster weren’t colluding with anyone. Foster went willingly. He was just trying to keep the response nonviolent.”
I blinked. “Are we talking about the same Foster? I feel like the general outcome of that would be lots of soldiers with severed limbs on the ground.”
“Nonetheless,” Aideen said, refocusing on the soldier. “How did you discover her?”
Casper blew out a breath. “She looks human enough as long as she had a hat on. I only caught a flash of her ears when she was changing. It bothered me, because the movement was so fast I almost couldn’t see it. So I followed her.”
“That sounds subtle enough most humans would dismiss it. A flicker of light from the corner of their eye, or a shadow they can’t explain.”
Casper nodded. “But I know you. And I know Foster, and I’ve seen what the Fae can do. So I followed her. She was the last one in the showers. I waited in the locker room. It was then that I heard the voices.”
“Whose voices?” Aideen said, stepping forward.
“I don’t know,” Casper said. “I managed to catch a glimpse from around the corner. It’s easy enough, the way the room is laid out, to stay in the shadows. She’d written a pattern of what almost looked like blood on the wall, a series of runes maybe? Sigils? I don’t know what they were.” As she spoke, she started flipping through her phone. “Here.” Casper slid the phone toward Aideen.
Aideen hopped down off the stack of books she had been standing on and frowned at the photos of the sigils. “What exactly did you hear her say?”
“Not much. Just that the stage had been successful.”
Aideen looked up. “Meaning the removal of your weapons? And you’re sure she said nothing else?”
Casper shook her head. “She whispered something. I can’t be sure what it was. But it sounded like ‘hail to the marketing King.’ ”
Aideen cursed in English, and then her tongue rolled over into a language I didn’t understand. But the meaning was clear enough. She was infuriated. “Hail to the Wandering King,” she spat.
Laughter echoed up from the other side of the mirror.
“Hell,” Zola said, shouldering her way in front of Vicky. “This goes deeper than we imagined.”
“You know those words?” Aideen said. “You understand what that means?”
Zola nodded. “Ah understand that was the clarion call of the man who became the Mad King, the man Nudd slayed to take his throne.”
That’s why the words had been eating at me. That was the stray thought chewing at the back of my brain, an old reference to the Wandering War, and the madman who had spawned it.
“Is she an acolyte?” Zola asked, leaning over to look at the phone beside Aideen.
“I don’t know,” Aideen said. “But Drake has reappeared. Who’s to say some of the others didn’t survive? I can see why they’d fall in with Nudd. The birth of Falias onto this plain? Nudd’s manipulation of the humans, and their government?”
“Let’s see what she knows,” I said, turning to head back toward the door as my voice lowered to a growl. “Get my sister out of that cell.”
I stalked to the rear of the bunker before cracking the door open and stepping through into the interrogation room.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The fairy’s laughter cut through my anger.
I stared down at the Fae chained to the table. “That was a hell of a job you did, infiltrating this squad. Shame you’re on the wrong side.”
The Fae’s smile faded. “There are no sides. There is only the king, and those who serve him.”
I gave her a half shrug. “Sure, that’s one perspective, but the other side has everyone who doesn’t serve the king.”
The Fae stared at me blankly.
“What’s your boss planning to do with the world’s nuclear arsenal?”
“Is that all?” The Fae cocked her head. “That is information I will give you gladly.”
I waited a beat. “Yes, I would like to know that.” I spoke slowly, as if she was perhaps not fully understanding my words.
“They are destroyed,” she said.
“I don’t believe you,” I muttered. “Don’t make me peel all your skin off.”
She relaxed into her chair. “I would think you a friend of the Mad King with such sweet words.”
“Mad King, Wandering King, why don’t you all pick one name?”
The fairy drummed her outstretched fingers on the table. “You do not know him, so you cannot know.”
I cursed under my breath and rubbed at my forehead.
“How is it you are not an ally,” she asked, “when you carry his hand in your sack?”
It took a moment before I realized she was talking about the hand of glory. “That’s not his hand, but I expect you already know.”
“It is a hand the Wan
dering King owned; therefore, it is his hand.”
That told me enough. She knew it wasn’t his hand, but I wondered if she knew it was Gaia’s. I didn’t want to risk sharing that knowledge. “Are you loyal to the Mad King?”
“Of course,” she said. “All those who understand the way of things are.”
I snapped in an instant, her vague musings wearing through my patience. The stone floor shattered beneath our feet and vine-like tendrils of long-dead flesh and bone snaked out of the earth, spiraling up the Fae’s legs and torso while she grinned. The darkness reached her wrists before she turned her palms up and caressed the dead flesh of the gravemakers.
“Your powers have grown more than we realized,” she said, smiling down at the bark-like flesh solidifying around her. I could feel the same stuff crawling up my chest, reaching my neck, and slithering through my hairline.
“This will end badly for you,” I said.
“Perhaps, but it will end badly for far more humans. The commoners will take their rightful place, at Nudd’s feet. The common filth with whom you so foolishly ally yourself, Damian Valdis Vesik, have no weapons left to fight us. What can they hope to do now? They can only bow before their rightful king.”
I narrowed my eyes, letting the tendrils of pulsating darkness tighten around the Fae’s neck.
They licked at her flesh, hungry to cut into it and pull out whatever soul waited inside.
The Fae laughed through her teeth.
The door clicked open behind me, and a rush of air almost popped my ears before Park’s voice said, “Don’t kill her.”
I hesitated, staring down at the Fae’s bared teeth.
“It is not your choice to release me,” she said. “I can leave whenever I wish, for this body is only a vessel.” The last line was a whisper, meant just for me. I felt something bend and stretch beneath my power before the Fae laughed, and her eyes rolled back into her head. I let my power fade away as the screams began.
“What the hell?” Park shouted. “You weren’t supposed to kill her!”
