by Eric Asher
Drake shook his head. “But I don’t think he’s a threat.”
* * *
We continued on, leaving the ancient and broken Fae behind. Drake seemed to think he’d be able to find his way to the Obsidian Inn. I had my doubts.
“Who was that?” Zola asked.
“A servant of the courts from before the Wandering War. He saw the rise of the Mad King, and his fall. I believe he was originally from Gorias, but I can’t imagine how he’s still alive.”
“I know,” Aideen said. “To live in solitude, hidden away for so many centuries. And I believe it had to have been him who hid this place, or else there would have been some rumors of its existence. Someone would’ve known.”
“Unless he killed whoever helped him,” Drake said. “Those were ruthless times.”
“Doesn’t sound so different than now,” Vicky said.
“It is different, little one,” Drake said. “You have friends you can trust, allies who won’t betray you for an extra coin in their purse. Violent times perhaps, but quite different.”
We moved deeper into the catacombs, until it was Drake regularly leading us. We’d gone deep enough that Aideen and Foster no longer knew the way. The farther in we went, the more unsettled I felt. I didn’t trust Drake, no matter what bond he had with Vicky. He could just as easily be using her to set us up, regardless of the respect he showed. But Vicky trusted him, and I was willing to give him some leeway for that. But we still didn’t know much about the fairy, and it ate at me.
Drake stopped in the center of the next hall. It reminded me of the area where we’d seen the dullahan. Halls and doorways crisscrossed the entire area. What I’d first thought was a simple rectangular hallway, I realized was far more complex than that. Halls and doors curved in at awkward angles, leading off into a dozen different paths with no indication of where any of them led. It was confusing to look at, much less try to navigate.
“When was the last time you were down here?” I asked.
Drake looked from one side of the hall to the other, frowning at what appeared to be a steel door with a half-moon carved into it. “A few centuries. Maybe more. Not that long.”
I blinked at the fairy in the dim light. Not that long, but not what most people would consider a short time.
“It’s a good idea to stay away from the metal doors,” Drake said.
“Why?” Vicky asked, leaning back from the door she’d been inspecting.
“Because some will harbor traps to kill an unsuspecting Fae. Others can lead you into a never-ending hall, where the same ends of the Warded Ways are twisted together into an infinite loop. The Mad King banished more than one of his enemies into that infinity.”
I shivered at the thought. An eternity spent slamming around inside the Warded Ways until one day you finally died.
We moved farther into the hall, some hundred feet, before I noticed how the pattern of the stones on the floor flowed to each doorway. Some made their way into the open halls, and others stopped dead before the metal doors, almost as if they were marking unique pathways, but if what Drake had said was true, I didn’t think whoever had built this place intended for the average person, or Fae, to find their way through it.
Drake said something to Zola and the light beside her brightened, revealing a stone-lined arch with a pair of horns carved into the top. They weren’t simple things, not in representation or design. They were intricately carved, covered with more detail than seemed possible on such a narrow strip of stone. As if a giant painting been made miniature.
“This is it,” Drake said. “If anything is going to lead to one of the bunkers, it’s going to be this.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
Drake indicated the horns. “Nudd’s favorite errand boy, Hern.”
“Just because it’s marked with his sign doesn’t mean he’ll actually be guarding this place.”
Drake harrumphed.
“It could be like an alarm system,” Vicky said. “We walked into the wrong place, and it notifies them.”
Drake nodded, and I felt a little stupid for not thinking of it first. But if that was true, anywhere we went in the catacombs could be a signal to Nudd, or any of his lackeys. We might have already been in more danger than we thought, and depending on the nature of the defenses, I started to suspect why Morrigan didn’t simply march the army of the Obsidian Inn into the catacombs.
For all we knew, that army could set foot in this hall, and be smashed flat by a cave-in. Or by whatever was hidden behind those doors.
“Follow me,” Drake said. “We won’t learn anything waiting here. They’ll either be waiting for us, or they won’t. Either way, by the time we make it to the bunker, you can be sure we’re going to run into defenders.”
And on that happy thought, we plunged into the darkness of the hallway below Hern’s antlers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“It’s been a while,” Dominic said, falling back to join me at the rear of the group.
I nodded to the vampire. “It’s good to see you. I haven’t seen you much since Greenville.”
Dominic smiled in the dim light of the incantation. “As Sam might say, things have been a bit crazy. I spent time with Hugh in Kansas City. Have you spoken with him?”
“A few times. But they’ve been holed up there for a while now. Ashley and Elizabeth were heading out that way, too.”
A grim edge crept into Dominic’s voice. “So, you haven’t spoken to him in the last day.”
I shook my head. “No, why?”
“A new wave of dark-touched struck the old city there. A great many casualties among the commoners, but I believe Hugh and the River Pack mitigated the worst of it. Thankfully, they weren’t alone.”
I frowned. As far as I knew, the River Pack was very much alone. Most of the Kansas City Pack had been slaughtered, and Hugh had gone out there to find out why, and by what. “Who’s helping them?”
“Camazotz and the death bats took care of many of them. The Old God seems to have taken refuge in some caves beneath the old trading city.”
“So they came for Camazotz?” I asked.
“I don’t believe so. From what Alan told me when I spoke to him this morning, the dark-touched were quite surprised by the sudden arrival of Camazotz and his death bats. But the tourists who encountered them first were not so lucky.”
I cursed under my breath. We’d been worried about a war on two fronts. What concerned me even more was that the dark-touched had migrated to the northwest, reaching Kansas City as a formidable force without being detected. I wondered if Hern or Nudd was uncovering lost pathways for them through the Warded Ways. That was something we might never know.
Zola’s light dimmed at the front of our group, and we all came to a halt behind her. I let the power flowing to the Illuminadda incantation over my shoulder weaken to a trickle. I could only see Dominic beside me, and the back of Vicky’s head. The furball nestled against her neck shifted, and white light glinted in Jasper’s eyes.
Zola whispered, “Well, what is it?” She held up the dim ball of light, and I could just make out Jonathan’s features. He frowned.
“I’m not sure if it’s friend or foe,” he said with a shake of his head. “But we aren’t alone.”
“I—” Dominic started. “What the hell …”
The vampires could hear better than us, but it was only a moment before the rumble grew loud enough for my ears to detect. “Kill the lights,” I hissed.
Zola dropped her incantation before I even finished speaking. Whatever was coming for us might need the light to find us. But if it didn’t, it might be tracking us through our body heat or the sound of our footsteps. Neither option was comforting.
The rumble grew louder, closer, until the soles of my boots vibrated. I put a hand out and touched the wall, where I could feel the stone shaking beneath it.
“Whatever it is,” Dominic said, “it’s here.”
The rapid unsheathing of swords sang through the a
ir. Something like tentacles flashed into the light cast by Jonathan’s flaming sword. For a time, I feared it was some kind of leviathan down in the corridors with us, but that would be impossible. They were massive forms, and I doubted even a Fae with Nudd’s resources could pull that off.
A moment later two huge, jagged eyes appeared in the hall, glowing gold and staring down at Zola. Its voice boomed through the halls.
“You walk into your doom, mortals.”
One of the forest gods, I realized to great relief.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Do you not already know, deathspeaker that brings life?” the forest god asked, sweeping her eyes down to meet mine.
Her name came to my lips. “Appalachia.”
The forest god inclined her head, and her eyes flashed to the corridor behind her. “You’ll find no easy path out of these catacombs. There are dark-touched and viler things left over from the forgotten times of Faerie. No matter how many I destroy, another replaces them. More evils dwell in this place than you know.”
Appalachia cast her eyes down to Vicky and said, “Light your blades, little one. For there are many, and we are few.”
With those words, Foster and Aideen exploded into their Proelium forms, sending a rainbow of fairy dust into the air to flicker amid the magical lights now flooding the passage.
“Follow if you will. It is only a few hundred feet to a more defensible position, an antechamber that will give you some room to maneuver. Should you survive, the prisons of the Fae King lie close.”
Appalachia surged down the hall. Masses like roots and vines stretched out and propelled the forest god through the corridor. The vibrations beneath our feet returned, but I knew it had not stopped entirely when Appalachia fell still. Even as she spoke to us, the stones still rumbled all around. We ran after her in silence, only the thud of our boots on stone followed.
We sprinted into another rounded hall not so unlike the one that had housed the mosaic. But this one was plain save for a series of shackles on the walls.
“What the hell is this?” Vicky asked.
“Commoners would call it interrogation room,” Foster said. “It’s not a place you want to be.”
“Or a place you ever escape from,” Aideen said. “Light the fires.”
Foster hurried over to a trough near one of the doors. Apparently, they’d both seen rooms like this, as Aideen turned to face another trough. She held her hand over it and snapped her fingers. Something sparked from her hand, and a fire burned high. It leaped across the doorway, creating an impossible pattern in the air before settling into the trough on the other side. Foster did the same, his fire forming a similar pattern and blocking the opposite door.
Appalachia pulled away from the walls and centered herself in the room. “They have only one way in now.”
“And we appear to have no way out,” Zola said.
“You never did,” Appalachia said.
“I don’t suppose you care to enlighten us as to what’s coming,” Drake said. He glanced around the fire dancing across the shackles on all the stone walls and frowned.
“It has come.” Appalachia’s words were the last any of us spoke before the thing made itself known.
A snake was my first thought. A slithering form that slipped through the corner of the doorway. Another followed, and then they were on us. The things looked almost reptilian, until their featureless faces split open, revealing spirals of teeth like lampreys. Something black dripped from those awful maws, and the rumbling as they crashed through the hallway and into the antechamber grew ever worse.
There was no pause, no moment where the enemy stopped to assess us, to determine how much of a threat we posed. They simply attacked. The things coiled up like cobras and exploded forward.
Jonathan made first contact. His sword swept forward in a lightning-fast arc, slicing sideways through one of the lampreys, sending black gore to splatter across its brethren. Before he could so much as line up another sword strike, three of the things slammed into him. As it got closer, I realized what at first seemed like a large snake was closer to the size of a small anaconda. They were fast, and considering the yelp of pain that Jonathan released, most of us weren’t going to survive a hit from one.
I lit the soulsword, power flooding through the old claymore’s hilt, until the brilliant golden light bathed us all. I’d gotten better at using the souls locked away inside me, to the point where I could balance tying them together with my own aura and not cause myself to practically black out every time I drew the blade, which, at the moment, would’ve been a very bad thing.
Sealing the doors with fire felt like a worse and worse idea as more and more of the lampreys poured into the room. With nowhere to run, I couldn’t see a way out of this. They were choking the entire hall, and we’d blocked off our only other exits.
The fairies dove into the chaos as Vicky and Zola danced away from a wild strike from the creature. Jonathan may have had the speed and fury of a vampire, but Foster and Aideen had centuries more experience. They made short work of the lampreys that tried to strike from above, slithering along the ceiling as if defying gravity. Before the pair of fairies could get behind us, I cut down most of the lampreys that succeeded in passing them.
Drake slammed into the opposite wall and shouted, “Get them in the fires!”
“Duck,” Appalachia said.
Me, Zola, and Vicky dropped to the floor. Jasper didn’t quite get out of the way in time as Appalachia twisted the mass of vines she used for movement together and slammed dozens of the lampreys into the fire at once.
Jasper gave an annoyed squawk as he was tossed up into the air and smacked down into the ashes of the lampreys that had hit the flames. But the annoyed squawk became something else as Jasper’s color deepened to red and the scaly legs of the dragon exploded forward. His long neck reared back a moment later, and blue fire joined the spirals of ash of the burning lampreys. Jasper attacked with surgical precision, careful not to burn Vicky as she dove in, wielding dual soulswords and hacking down the lampreys.
I joined her, staying as close as I could while being sure to keep my own soulsword away from her, and hoping she’d keep hers away from me. I’d never actually cut myself with the soulsword before, but I was sure it wouldn’t be pleasant.
“Too many,” Dominic shouted as he flailed backward, tossing two more the massive lampreys into the fire. “They’re just not stopping.”
Appalachia scooped up another mass of lampreys and slammed them in the fire. “They are only the beginning. Survive to meet your true foe.”
Zola cursed and shouted, “What the hell does that mean, you damned tree!” She whipped her staff around, and a bolt of fire erupted from the end, cutting into the hallway and causing an ear-piercing squeal that cut through all the noise.
The lampreys froze, and those that were still alive retreated into the hall.
We regrouped, sheltering against Appalachia as if she were a mighty oak to shield us from a hailstorm. The rumbling started anew, but it was different this time, more deliberate, less constant. When a scaly hand reached through the doorway pulling a massive shadow behind it, I stared in slack-jawed horror at a creature from the Abyss.
* * *
I’d never seen one so close before. It might have been smaller than the slithering mass I’d seen when walking with Gaia, but this one looked much the same. Gaping maws lined with fangs sat where you would expect the thing’s eyes to be. It was bipedal, but it surged and compressed, revealing the fact its body was formed from countless lamprey creatures.
A second arm extended from the writhing monster and pushed on the opposite side of the doorframe until its body spilled forth into the antechamber. Most of us stood there staring.
Drake didn’t.
“Take its head!” he shouted. “It’s the only way to stop it! The venom triggers hallucinations, and they aren’t the pleasant kind.”
And with that, the slow moments of ho
rror exploded into the chaos of a pitched battle.
Drake moved with speed and grace. Even Foster fell behind as Drake launched into the air and brought his sword down in a vicious arc. It slashed into the creature’s neck, but dozens of the lamprey-like appendages swelled up to meet the sword, sacrificing themselves to save the whole.
Foster tried the same from the other side and met with far more resistance, as if his attack had been anticipated. Even as the creature fended Foster off on one side, it lashed out at Drake and sent the fairy streaking across the room to crash into one of the stone walls. Drake didn’t even slow. He charged back at the creature, as the vampires started hacking at the lampreys.
“Burn them,” Appalachia roared.
Part of me wondered how wise it was to summon a massive flame in that enclosed space, and another part of me wondered how flammable Appalachia was. I didn’t want to injure the forest god, especially not knowing how badly she’d been injured when Falias was dropped into her world, on top of the damage the commoners had inflicted building their cities.
But the forest god stood her ground as Zola extended her cane and summoned a focused needlepoint of power that sliced deep into the arm that was pinning Dominic to the floor. It recoiled, and Jasper crashed into the lampreys, his teeth rending flesh far faster than it could be replaced, and his claws savaging flesh until at last it was not merely the black ooze that spewed from the lampreys at a surface wound, but something rich and blue that flowed onto the stones.
A third appendage erupted from where the thing’s mouth should’ve been. It tightened like a noose around Jasper’s neck. The dragon squawked as he was hauled into the writhing mass, a thousand fangs digging into his flesh.
Vicky followed him in, her soulswords snapping out and eviscerating dozens of the fanged heads in seconds.
I cursed, aimed high, and shouted, “Modus Ignatto!” The blast wasn’t nearly so refined as Zola’s, but it certainly drew the creature’s attention. Lampreys surged forward, their fanged eyes laser-focused on me as the appendage that was its mouth fell away to be reabsorbed into its writhing body. Vicky exploded out the side of the creature, the furball under one of her arms. The lampreys reached out for them again, but were met with a blast of blue fire from Drake’s now full-sized dragon. The arm withered in the heat, just as its head did in the blast from my incantation.
