by Eric Asher
Lampreys surged up over the wounded skeleton, or whatever lay beneath them, but it thinned the layer of lampreys around its neck, showing just how deep Drake’s initial cut had gone. Slimy gray flesh spouted a rich blue fluid. Zola focused another blast of the fire on the wound, and the beam lanced out the other side, leaving a smoking hole in the thing’s neck. I raised the hilt and lit a soulsword as the towering mass rose up and over me as if it meant to drown me in an avalanche of fangs and snakes and death.
But if that had been the creature’s plan, Appalachia fucked it up royally.
The forest god’s vines rocketed up from the floor, launching from her trunk-like feet to impale the lampreys. The vines spiraled around the creature’s neck, like a noose of their own. I hacked at any lampreys that got too close, but part of my focus remained on the gory spectacle unfolding above me. Blue blood splattered the room as Appalachia roared and her vines shifted violently, jamming thorns and splinters and jagged chunks of bark deep into the neck of the Abyss creature. But something whispered in the back of my mind, something I didn’t want to acknowledge that told me I could do more, kill more, if I only called on the power.
A moment later, the creature lost focus on the rest of us and tried to attack Appalachia in earnest. I used the soulsword to cut down as many of the strikes as I could, but still, the lampreys hit their target. Appalachia didn’t stop, the rumble didn’t stop, and the roar of the furious god deafened us as she throttled the Abyss creature.
I watched in fascination and horror as those vines around the thing’s neck seemed to turn into a rotating buzz saw, spinning ever faster, and becoming ever more narrow until at last, with one mighty crunch, the severed head of the creature collapsed onto the stone, and the lampreys fell still.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“We’re close,” Drake said between rasping breaths. “That thing wouldn’t be here if we weren’t.”
“Close to what?” Vicky asked.
“One of Nudd’s prisons,” Drake said. “The Mad King used to use those things as torturers. I didn’t think there were any left.”
“Nudd isn’t the Mad King,” Aideen said. Her eyes fell to the massive lamprey-like tentacles on the ground around us. She frowned. “But he is clearly mad. Removing the head killed the entire creature.”
Drake nodded. “At the end of the Wandering War, there was supposed to be one final attack against Gorias. Hern was to lead an army of these things against the golden walls of the city. But something went wrong when the Mad King tried to bring them through the Abyss. No one knows exactly what happened, but the attack never reached the walls.”
“I think I have some idea,” I said. “I’ve seen other things like that in the Abyss. Maybe they’ve been trapped there since the Wandering War.”
Drake looked at me. “Bigger?”
I nodded. “More like the size of a large house. Some were tall, some were a bit more squat. But they were all pretty awful.”
Drake blew out a breath. “More awful than you know. Nudd liked to spread the rumors that these things could spend a century eating a Fae. People used to think that would give them more time to rescue their allies, but they were wrong. More than a day with one of those chewing on you is enough to send most Fae deep into insanity.”
“And how does their venom affect vampires?” Dominic asked, holding up his arm to show the gashes from the thing’s teeth.
“It’s not fatal,” Drake said, “but it might slow you down. It will kill most commoners in a few minutes, an hour at most. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same went for the necromancers.”
A pile of the lampreys moved, and Jasper’s head popped out a moment later, covered in gore and his scales showing wounds from the lampreys.
“What about Jasper?” Vicky hurried forward to the dragon, gently touching where some of his scales were missing, and the fangs had obviously torn deep.
“He’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
The gentleness in Drake’s voice caught me off guard. I exchanged a glance with Zola, who tilted her head to the side as if to say, I don’t have any fucking idea either.
Dominic grumbled before spinning Jonathan around and pulling a bag of blood out of the other vampire’s backpack. He bit down on it and drank deeply. He handed the rest to Jonathan. “Drink. I suspect we’ll need it.”
“Nothing can get through those fire wards,” Foster said. “That means nothing sneaking up behind us, but it also means we’re not getting through them without taking the wards down.”
“So, we backtrack,” Aideen said. “Take the corridor this thing came through.”
“That would be the wisest option,” Zola said. “If this is truly a guard of the prison as Drake said, then we must assume there are more.”
“More would be bad,” I said, looking to the shadows. “Hopefully we won’t see something worse.”
“Always the optimist,” Zola said, narrowing her eyes.
“Enough,” Appalachia said. The mass of vines and bark shifted and made their way to the door where Appalachia ducked and swept a path that we could all follow through the lampreys. “I will lead the way, should we meet another of these dark things.” She glanced back at me, though I couldn’t read her expression. “For what you did for Dirge, Damian Vesik. For what you did for Dirge.”
“You have a lot of weird friends,” Vicky said, readjusting Jasper, who was now just a furball again and cradled in her arms.
“Hey, you’re one of my friends, too.”
Vicky slowly raised an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure I qualify as weird.”
“I’d go with bizarre,” Foster said.
“Hey.”
“A man who can survive being Samantha Vesik’s brother is a man who has adapted to having some oddities in his life.” Jonathan gave me a smile, and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if he was making a joke, or an observation, but I was fairly certain it was Sam who’d had to grow used to oddities in her life because of me. Not the other way around.
My boots slipped in muck as we entered the hall. “I don’t even want to know what that was.”
“Just be glad you didn’t get any in your mouth,” Foster said.
Aideen looked at her husband. “Sometimes it’s better just to slash, than scream and slash.”
The corridor rumbled around us, and it took me a moment before I realized Appalachia was laughing.
* * *
We’d only gone a few hundred feet down the dark corridor before Appalachia paused and pulled her vines back enough that we could see the path leading down a steep set of stairs.
“These stairs were not here before.” Appalachia’s vines formed into the semblance of a hand, and she ran it along the tops of the stairs. “The slick substance from the lampreys is here. They came this way.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” I stepped forward, and Appalachia nodded a moment before she led the way down the stairs.
Aideen eyed the retreating form of the forest god. “So, which was the trap? The room where we fought the Abyss creature? Or this?”
“Both,” Jonathan said.
“I agree with the vampire,” Drake said. “Be on your guard. We may be far below Nudd’s palace, but his machinations are many.”
“Ooo, Drake with the fancy words.” I blinked at the unbridled sarcasm in my voice.
“Just ignore him,” Vicky said. “He gets like this when he’s nervous.”
“That’s true,” Zola said.
Drake’s gaze lingered on me for only a moment before he nodded to Vicky.
* * *
“I still think it would’ve been better for the vampire with the flaming sword to lead,” I muttered, carefully descending the stairs and letting my Illuminadda incantation flow a little bit ahead of me.
“Drake made the right call,” Foster said from his perch on my shoulder. “That kind of magic could trigger something down here. At least in the sheath, it’s warded, and less likely to be detected. For all we know, that’s
how the Abyss creature found us.”
I wanted to argue more, but I was pretty sure that was my nerves. I let it drop, and focused on what was in front of us. What had started out as a steep staircase hit several landings as it descended. The air thickened with humidity, but the stone walls felt dry.
“Whoa, stop!” Foster snapped. “Damian, stop.”
“What is it?”
“That ripple. Something rippled when the light hit it.”
Aideen slid up beside us, still in her full-sized form. “Some kind of barrier.” She frowned as she studied the apparently empty air from floor-to-ceiling. “It tastes stale. This is old magic, something that survived the trip from Faerie.”
“It has to be the prison,” Drake said. “What else would they bother warding with magic that strong? We should be able to pass through it, but getting back out could be a problem. I’ve encountered this kind of barrier before.”
Zola ran her fingers across the dry stone. “And Ah’m somewhat concerned where the trail of slime from the lamprey went. It vanished up at the first landing, and we haven’t seen it since.”
Liam, Lachlan, and Enda could be on the other side of this thing. And if they were, we had to do everything we could to get them out.
“It would be a stupid thing to simply walk right …” Drake started.
Before he could finish his words, I stepped through the barrier with Foster on my shoulder. I’m not sure what I’d expected, perhaps the feeling of twisting and falling like stepping into the Warded Ways. But this was smooth, a mild resistance, and a faint sound like a deep guitar string plucked inside a vast cave.
I was still staring at the awful sight around us before I registered that anyone had come through behind me and Foster. The fairy sat silent on my shoulder, but screams filled the void.
A rotten silo of stone, towering and dripping with slime, sat off to the right. I suspected that’s where the Abyss creature had come from, Nudd’s prison guard, much as Drake had said.
Beyond that waited a wall of cells. Some were forged from a dark metal, most likely iron. Others appeared to have no enclosure at all, but the creatures inside them, at least those that were still in one piece, were bound by glowing bonds of power. A few appeared to have been fed upon by … something.
A pile of Fae armor rested in the corner, and I had little doubt some of that metal was from our allies. Tortured, slaughtered, or eaten in this place, only their essence left to return to the ley lines.
“Monsters,” Aideen said, hurrying to a cell on the other side of the dim room. Inside was a sight I’d seen many times. The death of a fairy, and the screaming form as it returned to the lines. But this fairy hadn’t passed on. Instead, it was trapped in some awful magic, stuck between living and dying in an eternal scream. It was barbaric, and the high-pitched wail never ended.
If Lochlan and his family were there, we might already be too late. Nudd had no reason to keep his word, and most of the commoners wouldn’t even know if he executed some other fairy.
The thought filled me with rage. I drew the focus, and a soulsword snapped to life, red fire from my aura licking up through the golden blade. The power in the bars at the front of the cell fell away when I slashed them with the soulsword.
I watched the face of the imprisoned fairy, an aura of pulsing golden light. Its eyes flashed wide and focused on me for only a moment. The blade slid through the glowing bonds and the fairy’s eyes closed, the scream grew quieter, and the golden glow slid away, back into the ley lines.
“You should’ve left him,” Drake said. “You don’t think they’ll notice if you start freeing their pets?”
“I wouldn’t leave my worst enemy in something like that.”
Vicky laid a hand on the empty armor that sat on the table in the cell. “How long was he trapped?”
“Hard to say,” Foster said. “But I’m afraid any length of time would have been an eternity.”
“His armor is from the Wandering War,” Aideen said. “That’s the crown of the Mad King. One of his servants? Surely not.”
The mere thought of being trapped in that state of agony for centuries sent a shiver down my spine. It was a level of cruelty I could scarcely imagine.
“Free who you can,” I said. “Send them to the Obsidian Inn. They can determine who is friend and foe. Though I suspect we don’t have many enemies in this place.”
A dark laugh echoed from deeper within the prison. “You have more enemies here than you know, Vesik!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Shadows gave way to nightmares. A smiling vampire, his face lost in the darkness of a helmet but for his gleaming teeth. Some of the cells opened, and what had at first seemed an empty hall filled with nothing but prisoners revealed itself to be a stronghold, infested with a great many enemies.
Behind us, stone fell in place across the staircase, cutting off our retreat.
“Now, Vesik, I think you’ll—”
But the vampire didn’t have a chance to finish uninterrupted.
Jonathan roared, and it was a sound not meant for this earth. A cry of frustration and rage and fury that had built over a decade. His flaming sword cut a vicious arc toward the nearest dark-touched, cleaving through the flesh of its thick neck.
“For Alexi!” Jonathan screamed as he booted the collapsing body into its brethren.
Dominic flashed forward, narrowly stopping the incoming claw of another vampire before it took Jonathan’s head off. Chaos erupted around us as the shock of Jonathan’s attack subsided, and the normally frantic attacks of the dark-touched took on a more deliberate, more terrifying focus.
They didn’t come at us in waves. The first who had spoken flashed hand gestures, and small pods of the vampires scurried at his commands. It took all of five seconds to see what they were doing, but it would take a hell of a lot more than five seconds and a shitload of luck to get through it.
“Boxing us in,” Zola said as she stepped closer to me. “They’ve been waiting for us, boy. They expected it. Expected this. Don’t give them what they expect.” She held her hand out and gathered a glowing ball of white energy that swirled and flexed until the power itself emitted a high-pitched whine. “Don’t. Hold. Back.”
“Eyes!” Zola shouted.
I slammed mine shut as half the hall turned toward us, barely enough time to shield myself from the incantation.
“Magnus Illuminada!” Zola’s voice shook with the strain of it, pooling line energy to magnify even the most powerful of incantations. Light that I thought only Edgar himself could conjure clawed and burned at my eyelids, demanding to be seen, to be witnessed.
The screams and shrieks told me she’d found her mark. She’d blinded at least some of the dark-touched. But vampires healed fast. I didn’t know how long we’d have. The light faded, and I opened my eyes on the reeling forces, pale afterimages flickering across my vision. Vicky charged forward and leaped, Jasper’s dragon form exploding beneath her, the gouges in his scales still visible from his run-in with the Abyss creature. They streaked toward the cavernous roof above the third floor of the prison.
Appalachia surged into battle, using her vines to haul herself onto the structure of the very cells. From there, she looked like a tree caught in a tornado, lashing out with such speed and fury that Fae died at the impact, and the dark-touched were sent scampering away to reform their ranks. Without her, without that flurry of deadly flails, they would have overwhelmed us in moments.
Zola sagged backward, raising her cane, readying herself for more.
I charged forward, following the path of carnage a half-mad Jonathan had carved. If I’d ever, for a moment, thought he’d recovered from the death of Alexi at Vassili’s hands, I’d been wrong. The rage-fueled vampire bathed in the blood of the dark-touched, and what fairies dared to close on him died in pieces.
Foster and Aideen landed on the second floor of the cells to my right, the two fairies fighting in an intricate dance, each strike and parry ju
st one more move in a graceful, deadly series. The prison guard fairies died one after another, their shrieks filling the cavern, only to be drowned out by the roar of dragons.
I lashed out with a soulsword, cutting deep into a dark-touched’s forearm. The sword rebounded at the bone, but it was enough to disable one of the thing’s claws. I could’ve used a flaming sword right about then, though I didn’t have near the skill and power as Dominic, or the sheer bloodthirst of Jonathan.
Through the carnage, as I faced down fairies and vampires and things I had no name for, the first of the elite dark-touched stood stock still. As if waiting for us to reach him. He didn’t bloody his claws beside his soldiers. He simply gestured and sent more to their deaths.
A fairy got through Jonathan’s defenses and impaled the vampire through the gut. I dodged an attack from the right, and glimpsed Jonathan’s attacker now in the vampire’s jaws. He dropped the fairy and sliced the hilt off the sword in his abdomen with a quick blow from his own blade.
One of the lamprey-like things erupted from another cell, forcing me back against a wall, flashes of tentacles and light and teeth threatening to circumvent my soulsword.
“Impadda!” The shield snapped up, and the lampreys sizzled as they tried to bite through it. One got around and cut into my shoulder. I wondered if this one would have the same poison in its maw, but I didn’t have time to worry.
I flinched, and saw the cell behind me. Two Utukku stood naked and unarmed with claws extended. A quick bash of the shield forced the lampreys back for the split second I needed. The soulsword made quick work of the wards holding the Utukku in their cell, and its fall sent them into the Abyss creature like a gunshot. Reptilian flesh vanished into the writhing mass as the Utukku started tearing the thing apart with their bare hands.
