by Eric Asher
Then we’re fucked, I whispered back.
Foster was snoring in the hood of Zola’s gray cloak by the time we reached the next hall. The yellow stone of Falias gave way to rock with veins of magrasnetto running through it. I worried they could be warded, ready to tear us apart with one wrong move. But despite my nerves being on edge, and nearly jumping out of my shoes at every random sound, no attack came.
“It’s quiet,” Jonathan said.
“Hmm …” Zola started. “If he says ‘too quiet,’ Ah’m going to slap him.”
Jonathan glanced back and flashed a toothy grin at Zola. It looked sincere, and it was one of the few smiles I’d seen on the vampire’s face since he’d resurfaced.
Aideen ripped a thunderous snore from her perch on Vicky’s shoulder, loud enough to startle herself awake.
“Foster would be so proud,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes and gave me a look that could have killed a commoner. “Remind me to heal you last.”
I froze when Dominic pulled up short, and Jonathan drew his flaming sword.
“This is it.”
At first, I didn’t understand what Jonathan was talking about, or why he’d drawn his sword. But when the vampire stepped forward, the smooth stone wall was plain to see in the light of the sword.
“That’s the bunker?” I asked. My gaze trailed toward the ceiling as I stepped out of the passage we’d been walking through. It stretched at least a hundred feet into the air, apparently nestled in a massive cavern. And that’s just what I could see of it.
Dominic felt along the wall before punching it. A tiny chip of stone dust fell to the ground. Whatever it was, it was sturdy as hell. “This is going to take a year to punch through.”
“Then we find a door,” Drake said, his dragon expanding to fill the void in front of the wall.
“Oh, Ah’m so happy we have such a brilliant strategist with us,” Zola muttered. She summoned a light and sent it racing from one end of the cavern to the other, the dull white glow highlighting every inch of unforgiving rock. “Only there isn’t a door.”
“Then we burn through it,” Vicky said.
“Burn through the rock?” I said with a half-hearted chuckle. “I don’t think that’s going to—”
But by the time I finished speaking, Jasper exploded into his dragon form, hip checking Drake’s dragon to the side before he reared back and unleashed a torrent of bright blue fire.
“Whoa!” I shouted. “Turn down the fireworks! There are nukes on the other side of that thing!”
“Nuclear weapons are actually highly resistant to fire,” Jonathan said, his voice so calm and teacher-like that I didn’t think he’d really thought the situation through. “You could theoretically drop one into a volcano and the warhead wouldn’t go off.”
“Oh sure,” I muttered before raising my voice into a near-hysterical scream. “But what about the rocket fuel?”
Jonathan’s eyes widened before he joined me in shouting, “There are nukes on the other side of that wall!”
Jasper slowly relaxed, his neck curling back as the flames died out. In the sudden darkness, I could just barely make out the massive head of the dragon turning his eyes on me.
“Thanks for not blowing us up.”
The dragon chuffed and started collapsing into himself. A moment later, only the dust bunny remained, a ball of fur with huge black eyes and teeth like a demon in the shadows.
Zola stepped closer to the hole before raising her left arm and cursing. “That’s hot enough to boil your ass right there.” She grimaced, raised her cane, and said, “Modus Glaciatto.”
A whirlwind of ice showered the red-hot doorway Jasper had melted into the stone. The moment I thought the incantation was dying out, Zola leaned into it, forcing more line energy into the ice storm. The clash of frozen precipitation and molten stone sent a geyser of steam up toward the ceiling, until it crashed against the rock and billowed back down toward us.
For a moment, it felt as though we’d stepped into a sauna, but that gave way to a cool breeze, and finally a bone-deep chill from Zola’s incantation. The molten red stone solidified into a gray mass, and the mist cleared.
I stared into the cavern, a place filled from wall to distant wall with man’s own ruin, and said the only words that could encompass the sight of endless death. “Fuck. Me.”
Acres of bombs, if not more, stacked end to end but for narrow aisles and unstable-looking catwalks stretched so far into the distance that our lights could not reach it. Staring at those vessels, those metal shells that held the end of all mankind, a tiny thought took hold inside my mind. We could never return these to the military. We could never let the hands of political adversaries hover over shiny red buttons. Egos could not be allowed to end us all.
“We have to destroy them,” I said.
“What?” Zola said. “And what do you hope to gain from that, Damian? The governments of the world will only make more. It’s one of the few things Nudd seems to understand.”
The thought curdled my blood. That humanity could build its own extinction on a scale that was scarcely imaginable. And then escalate it.
For a time, we stared in silence at the mass of warheads and rockets laid out before us. I’d seen pictures of bombs before. I’d thought I knew what to expect, but some of them were so small, not much taller than I was. And yet every single thing in that place was born for such destruction. Others were what I imagined to be hidden in the silos of Kansas and the plains, massive rockets capable of reaching out and annihilating cultures on the other side of the world.
More than the soldiers, more than the jets, tanks, or ships. This was the core of our military. The deterrent that should anyone be foolish enough to attack us, we could wipe them from the face of the earth. Did Park understand it? Casper? I shook my head. They had to know what they served.
They had to know the blood our country had on its hands. But did they understand how much more it could bleed?
We walked deeper into the bunker, thoughts of Liam and his family being choked out by the limitless destruction that flanked our every step.
“What can we do against this?” Foster asked.
“This isn’t for us,” Aideen said. “The commoners have always been particularly good at murdering themselves. And whatever darkness falls, we can always retreat to Faerie.”
“Where? Gorias? That city is a shit town. Whatever glory it once had is long dead.”
“You judge too harshly, my love. Gorias has a great deal of life left to give.”
“This is insane,” Drake said, turning in place and raising his arms to gesture around us as we stepped into a small clearing that wasn’t choked by massive metal cylinders and sleek warheads. “His mind is gone.” The old fairy turned to Foster and Aideen. “You know who he is, don’t you? You have to know.”
Aideen frowned. “Gwynn Ap Nudd, the Lord of the Dead. King of Faerie, Betrayer of—”
Drake gave a violent twist of his wrist. “No.”
I stared at the fairy, his words from the sparring ring coming back to me. Nudd, a Fae who is truly mad. “The simplest answer is most often the truth. That’s what you said …” The pieces slammed together in my mind, the hand, the Lord of the Dead, the fairy who slayed the Mad King, only … “Nudd is the Mad King.”
“What?” Foster hissed. He glanced at me before stepping toward Drake. “That’s … not possible.”
“Isn’t it?” Drake asked, leaning toward Foster. “How could I bear the mantle of Demon Sword while its power still flows through you? The answer is simple, no matter how much you wish it wasn’t.”
“Nudd killed the Mad King,” Aideen said. “That’s common knowledge.”
“Of course it is,” Drake said, “because he wanted it to be.”
Aideen narrowed her eyes. “We’re already enemies of the king. What do you think this will accomplish?”
“Tear through his glamour and see the truth for yourself. Let the world
see the twisted thing he’s become, the Eldritch magic that keeps him alive.” His eyes grew distant, focusing on a point only he could see in his mind. “You’ll never forget it. He’s not … he’s something else now.”
“What do you mean?” Aideen asked, some of the conviction of her earlier words bleeding away.
“He’s not of the Fae. That’s how he’s still alive. Only a Fae can sit on that throne.”
“Apparently not,” Foster muttered. “He’s been on the throne for centuries. And why would we still have our powers if he wasn’t a Fae anymore?”
Drake focused on Foster, opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing for a time. “I don’t know. That’s old magic, older than any of us. Older than him.”
Aideen laid a hand on Foster’s shoulder. “Cara always thought the mantle was tied to the throne itself more than the king. The king simply … guided it to the next bearer.”
“Ah don’t think …” Zola started, but she trailed off. “What in the seven hells is that?”
At first, I saw nothing, just the endless pit of bombs that could end life as we knew it. But I frowned as the shadows in the distance grew. Subtle at first, the ambient light and reflections were almost being devoured as something moved through the bunker.
Metal screamed as Appalachia shifted one of the warheads so she could more easily join us.
I cursed. “Whatever the hell it is, it’s big. Make ready.”
“Make ready?” Vicky said. “You sound like Carter.”
I glanced at Vicky. “Really?”
She frowned. “That wasn’t a compliment. You just sounded old. Like, older than you are.”
Zola let out a humorless laugh as she stepped between us and joined Foster and Drake. Aideen gave one violent flap of her wings and shot toward the ceiling of the bunker. She came down again a moment later, lines etched into her forehead.
“Bad?” Zola asked.
“It couldn’t be much worse.”
“Dark-touched?” Drake asked.
Aideen grimaced. “I’m afraid Hern didn’t come alone. The Wild Hunt is here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
“There’s no forest here!” Foster shouted. “No oak! He can’t summon the Hunt without oak!”
“Things change,” Vicky said, so matter of fact all Foster did in response was blink. “What are they?”
“The Hunt?” Drake asked. “More like, who are they? Any Fae caught up in the spell can be pulled into the Hunt. They’ll do Hern’s bidding, and your own mother would murder you on his command.”
“She does that every night when she cooks for me,” Vicky muttered, patting Jasper on the head. She made a quick hand motion, and the furball exploded into the dragon. Drake’s mount followed suit, and it lent me some modicum of comfort, being wedged between the two massive reptiles.
Except, of course, there were still nukes all around us. I shivered, drew the focus, and summoned a soulsword.
Drake stared at the blade. “Be wary. They’ll have magic, in force, and some of them may be able to meet your blade.”
The distant shadows spread out and irregular patterns formed in the murk. The sight chilled me to the bone, and that was before I saw the faces. Cara had told us stories of the Wild Hunt, a lost tradition that only Hern had domain over until Nudd took the throne. The Hunt had once been a celebration, a yearly gathering when the Fae would walk among the humans and partake of their offerings: fresh game, cider, and mead.
But the darkness before me was something else. I’d come to think of many of the Fae as tranquil when they weren’t actively trying to kill me, but the faces in the shadows here were pierced by anger. Eyes glazed over, glowing a dull white while the fairies closed on us. The cloud was power, Hern’s power, and it spread like a black web across all of those caught up in the hunt.
The wings of the Fae vanished into a rolling bank of power that reminded me of a thunderstorm crashing down on the cabin in the woods of Missouri. What I wouldn’t have given to be back there, on familiar turf, instead of underground, surrounded by world-killers.
A sloping, skeletal hand erupted through the mist. I vaguely heard Drake shouting orders for Vicky to take to the air a moment before the dragons raced away. My eyes were all for the skeleton. It had less flesh than the wights we’d fought along the rivers and old battlefields, and it wore much the same armor. But the eyes … the eyes glowed with sickening green light, unlike any power I’d seen before.
Hern rode out of the mist behind the creature, a broad smile on his face as he sat astride a horned monstrosity the Wild Hunt had brought him. The antlers of his helmet glowed until they became one with the Fae, both majestic and deadly.
“Crush them!” These were the only words Hern spoke, and they were the only words the skeletons erupting from the mist needed.
A sound rose, like the keening of a dying animal trapped in the darkness. The shadows around Hern flared and fluttered, reminding me of a cape in a strong wind. The creatures came as one.
I stepped backward as Hern’s power brought forth the likes of which I couldn’t comprehend. A few Fae retained a normal appearance, aside from their glowing white eyes. But the other things—the lamprey-like creatures and the skeletons mounted upon steeds of bone and blood—were the stuff of legends.
“For the Sanatio!” Foster howled as he sprinted toward that oncoming wall of death. His wings flared and fires as bright as the sun surged around the hilt of his sword.
Zola ran her tongue over her teeth and spat. “Seen worse.”
“Oh really?” I asked, adjusting my grip on the focus. “Where was that?”
“In the hands of men. But they all die, Damian. Everything dies.” Her voice changed, and I didn’t understand the words she muttered as she dropped the carcass of some long-dead thing onto the stone floor at her feet. Old blood stained Zola’s fingers. Old blood from a young body, I realized when I recognized the form of an Owl Knight’s mount.
“Zola?”
But Zola wasn’t there anymore. She’d stepped away, her posture straightening, the power of the ley lines arcing up as if it meant to embrace a long-forgotten lover.
Ritual magic. Death magic, performed on the body of a Fae creature.
The cloud of darkness reached us, and hell came once more to burn upon the earth.
* * *
The first of the skeletal horsemen closed on Zola. It was taller than I’d thought, as if the skeleton of a Titan, one of Gaia’s siblings, had been stripped of its flesh and animated by Hern’s madness. My master took no heed of the thing.
I didn’t know what magic she was working. Some ritual spells could last hours, though she’d never try something like that here. But wrapped in that kind of power, you could lose yourself. Lose awareness of your surroundings. Lose awareness of the blade angled to strike your head from your shoulders.
The soulsword raging from the focus in my hands met the strike of Zola’s mounted assailant, and the vibration of the impact sent me down to one knee, my entire body shaking. But my attack hadn’t been without effect. The horseman spiraled as he hit the stone floor, a massive clang echoing around the chaos as he crashed into one of the nukes.
I raised the sword and struck out at his mount. The horse-like creature screeched as the bones in its neck shattered, and for a moment the dismounted rider’s eyes flashed like the glowing orbs of a dullahan. The horse stumbled, once, twice, and then fell to pieces. They could be destroyed. That was good.
Six more of the riders slipped from Hern’s darkness.
That was bad.
Aideen swooped down in front of me, raised a hand to the rising skeleton I’d knocked down, and shouted, “Inimicus Sanation!”
White healing light flowed across the animated undead. Flesh crept onto its ribs for only a moment, but that one flash of power, of life was enough to break whatever hold Hern’s magic had on it. The skeleton collapsed into a pool of bone and bloody new flesh.
I reached out to it, curiosity war
ring with common sense, but it was just death now. It was mine now.
A flicker of fiery blades cut into the shadows. Dominic and Jonathan, side by side as they worked to whittle down Hern’s forces as quickly as possible. Every blow from the vampires sent another enemy to the ground like straw men, cutting through another layer of Hern’s shroud, but that shroud was thick, and hid an unending army.
I brought the horseman back to his feet, the flash of knowing somewhat dulled by the roar of souls welling up in my head so that I could scarcely follow which vision was his. The field of wildflowers with the young girl? The bloody alley that died away in a storm of light? No, it was the screaming warrior, the family cut down by Nudd’s gambit a thousand years before. A lightbringer, a warrior of Gorias.
“Well, now’s your chance to raise a little hell,” I muttered as I pointed the skeleton and its reanimated, reassembled mount at the nearest of the Abyss creatures. The horseman surged forward, plunging into the tangled mass of tentacles and teeth.
Drake’s dragon unhinged its jaws and swooped down, obliterating the shadows for a moment in a storm of blue fire. Something lashed out and scored a hit along the dragon’s flank, so fast I could scarcely comprehend anything had moved.
“I see you,” Zola said, raising her voice loud enough to startle me half to death. She opened her eyes, and looked out at the field before us, her pupils glowing like angry red suns. She raised her hand, fingers curled like a fist with two knuckles standing higher than the rest.
She struck out at the air, a vicious lunge that wouldn’t have done much of anything on a normal day. But today, a sickening black and red sludge burst from the body of the dead owl. It surged forward as though it had a life of its own, its wings too rubbery, too red, too wrong.
But the effect when it met the darkness was unmistakable. Something screeched in the shadows as Zola’s zombie owl barreled into the ultimate battle of its short life. It brushed up against one of the fairies, and the result was horrifying. Black and red lines shot up the Fae’s legs while Zola’s clumsy creature continued on.
