Sweet Child

by Brie Tart

  “I...I’m not sure.” Yoel darted toward the burned up husk that used to be Morag. He knelt beside the body, using his revolver’s barrel to sift through the charred remains. He came across the headdress with the horns and the moon. “She’s a druid, a more spiritually adept priest of sorts. They’re better with healing and rituals. She must have split her spirit from her corporeal form. And that keening means she was born part banshee. She’s marking us for death.”

  “Can you stop it?” Helen tried slicing into the smoke again. Another gap. She tried shoving her way through. It filled in quicker this time.

  “If I had a tome of counter-spells and found the right one, maybe.” Yoel gritted his teeth as he rummaged through one of his pockets. He took out a waxy piece of chalk. “I’ll go through the ones I’ve memorized and see what works.”

  “Do it fast!” Helen hacked at the barrier again and rammed into it. It opened a wider hole, almost wide enough for her to get through.

  Tommy’s body seemed different. His skin glowed gray, except for his hands where it blackened. His nails were longer and pointed. He squirmed against Ailpien poking around under his ribs, around his heart. Helen could hear it pulsing and beating. The sound broke through all the commotion of Morag’s singing shrieks and penetrated deep. There was a partner in there, growing stronger. He was ally, friend, fellow monster.

  Morag’s smoke blocked her view.

  The affinity boosted her fire. Her Unseelie power longed to connect with that emerging presence so much that it amplified the force running through Helen’s muscles, her blood, her very spirit. She let out another flurry of strikes on the barrier. She could get through. She could get to Tommy before Ailpien finished his demented work. She didn’t want her uncle to be a friend in darkness. She wanted her family, her human family!

  Triumphant laughter rose above the banshee screeches. Ailpien’s deep voice ran under Morag’s.

  Helen’s blows made a space big enough to fit through. She dove for it, penetrating the bubble. It closed up after her.

  Tommy laid on that gurney, whole and complete. His organs were back in his body, and his skin glowed the same red as Helen’s. His forearms up to his fingertips were coal-black, with the rest of him gray as an old corpse. His beard and hair had its black back, no salt and pepper in sight. He seemed vibrant as he tugged against the bonds. The brittle leather snapped under his force.

  She was too late.

  The smokey dome stopped swirling as the discordant singing paused, like it waited for orders.

  Helen could only watch in stunned horror.

  Tommy sat up and swiped off what was left of his bonds. He looked through his same Carver Green eyes, but brighter. His energy matched Heken’s in feel, but it seemed fuller, like it was further along. He seemed disoriented and dizzy at first as he examined his sharpened fingers, his blackened forearms, and how sallow the rest of him was under the remains of his shirt. He flexed his hands and stretched his strengthened muscles.

  “How do you feel?” Ailpien peeled off his gloves as he beamed.

  “Strong. Better than ever,” Tommy said with an audible growl in his voice. His pupils dilated and narrowed as his confusion contorted to rage. “Pissed.”

  “Allow me to direct that anger.” Ailpien pointed at Helen. “Kill her. It will feel amazing, I assure you.”

  “What?” Tommy twitched as he just seemed to notice his niece. “But that’s...that’s Hellion. That’s my kid.”

  “More than that.” If Helen could salvage his condition, she would adjust to having another monster like her around. “We’re made of the same shit. He’s what we fight. Everything in us makes us want to take him out.”

  “Those ties no longer matter. I am your maker, Thomas. She’s my enemy, therefore she’s yours.” Ailpien squeezed the air like it had a life to choke out. “Kill her.”

  “I don’t...” Tommy panted hard and strained against something, like unseen puppet strings moved his legs off the table and into a fighting stance. “What’s going on? I don’t wanna move, but something’s makin’ me.”

  “You submitted yourself to me, remember? You promised to serve me in exchange for your power,” Ailpien explained. “You are an Unseelie abomination now, my abomination. You cannot betray your word.”

  “Come on. Fight it,” Helen begged. “If I can break his power, you can too.”

  “I...I can’t,” Tommy whimpered. “I’m sorry.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Tommy raked Helen with his sharp new claws.

  Pain spiking through Helen’s arm broke her stunned trance. She scrambled away.

  Tommy swiped at her again. She parried it with the edge of her machete.

  Ailpien laughed, full and joyous. It grated against Helen’s nerves as her uncle swung at her almost too fast for her to follow. Her blood still read him as a friend. All her Unseelie instinct told her was that she should fight alongside him, not against him. It helped her keep up just enough for a friendly spar, not a fight for her life.

  Tommy cornered Helen against the smokey barrier. She pressed her back against the cold mist.

  Tendrils curled out and snatched her arms, holding her in place. Morag’s song started up again. Helen wriggled against the power holding her machete hand hostage. Her red flared to life as she wrangled her instinct to action. But Tommy leapt at her too quick, thrusting dead center at her heart.

  The tendrils slackened.

  Helen shoved herself to the side. Tommy’s claws dug into her shoulder instead.

  The dome around them began to dissipate. Openings showed between its swirling layers.

  Yoel wrote something on the ground with the chalk stick he had. Morag’s body was in the middle of a white circle, intricate symbols drawn around it in a geometric pattern. Most of his straight lines curved some with how quick he drew. He’d set his gun aside on the ground, out of his hand.

  Morag’s keening got louder as she regathered herself. She shot for Yoel’s neck.

  Lucy cried from Yoel’s back.

  The smoke engulfed both of them.

  Tommy came at Helen again. She jumped back, but his claws left bleeding gashes along her stomach.

  Something flew out of the smoke, a metal square on a ball chain. Yoel’s dog tags? Morag shattered from around Yoel and Lucy.

  Yoel’s entire back seemed to melt away, exposing rough black plates connected by pulsing hot veins, like cracking magma from a volcano. They covered most of him from the tops of his arms, running down his entire backside like armor. Every piece of fabric on him, including the straps of Lucy’s harness, burned away in patches.

  Lucy balled up and coughed as she hung from his back by a few threads.

  Helen redirected Tommy’s next attack away from her chest. It scraped the rapidly healing cuts in her gut before they finished. She hissed through gritted teeth. She couldn’t focus between Tommy’s and Morag’s attacks at the same time.

  Yoel’s steady tones cut through Morag’s screeching.

  Morag wailed, loud and final. Her smoke fizzled into the air.

  “Stop!” Ailpien pointed toward Yoel as if he only just noticed the extra intruder. “Get the half-breed. He can’t be allowed to report any of this to Nicnevin. Kill him now!”

  Tommy jolted away from Helen and switched to his new target.

  Yoel panted and massaged his neck as he steamed. Lucy frantically patted what was left of Yoel’s clothing as she pointed at Tommy in warning.

  Tommy ran to Yoel in a blink and smacked him to the ground.

  Helen went to dash for them. No. He was going to kill her friend. He was putting her little girl in danger! She stopped mid step. Some power covered her limbs, making them too heavy to move. It had Ailpien’s stink all over it.

  Ailpien glared at her, his face tight and straining.

  Yoel swayed as he tore Lucy’s harness off and tossed the toddler away as far as she would go.

  Tommy swiped at Yoel’s exposed chest. Yoel blocked the claws
away with the rocky top of his arm. The claws cut through the black sections and red-hot liquid spewed from the wound. Tommy hissed as smoke rose from his nails. He grabbed Yoel by his tender face.

  Yoel banged at Tommy’s arm and wherever he could reach as Tommy lifted him up. It didn’t phase the new fae a bit. Tommy threw Yoel head first into the nearest wall. Yoel crashed through old cinder blocks and sagged into them, unmoving.

  Helen tugged on her power and forced it to surge. Screw that instinct that refused to help her friend. It was hers to control, hers to master. She launched out of Ailpien’s magic and tackled headlong into Tommy. He rolled with her as she abandoned her machete and tangled him into a chokehold with her elbow hooked around his neck and her legs locking the rest of him.

  Tommy reared back, scraping at Helen’s forearms. He flailed and sent blood drizzling from everywhere he could reach. Helen’s aura dulled the pain enough that she could take it, but those pangs got sharper the longer she held on.

  “Throw her.” Ailpien ordered. “Then go for the girl. That should make her pliant.”

  “K-Kill me,” Tommy whimpered, that growl fading from his voice. Tears slipped from his blood-shot, green eyes. “Make me stop.”

  “Fight it,” Helen growled by her uncle’s ear. Her arms trembled from how tight she held, how much they hurt. “You’ve got this. You can break it.”

  Tommy bucked her legs and managed to squeeze his fingers under her elbow.

  Helen’s grip broke.

  Tommy bounded up and raced for Lucy.

  “Mam!” Lucy scooted back and crawled to her feet. Not fast enough.

  Helen grabbed her machete. Her straining joints stung and made her too slow. She pulled her aura up, yanking it to the surface as she chased after Tommy. She thrust her blade at his back.

  The machete struck true.

  Helen sank all of her weight into the blow and twisted.

  Tommy yowled, writhing and convulsing as the steel burned through him. Those black lines spread over his slate-gray skin, and the red blisters spread out behind them. It was the fate of an enemy, of prey, not family.

  Helen’s injuries sealed, healing faster than they ever had. The euphoria she should’ve felt after killing something added to the vengeful rage boiling in her gut ever since she’d entered that abandoned asylum, ever since she’d learned those bastards had taken Tommy, ever since Ewan had dared threaten her little girl. It exploded out in a rush, and she shined a blinding red that painted the whole room the color of fresh blood.

  Ailpien went to run for the basement door.

  Helen bolted in front of him and cut him off. She grabbed him by his throat, her nails sharpening to the same claws that Tommy had wielded at her. Tears stung her eyes but dissipated to steam as they dribbled down her cheeks. She lifted Ailpien up so only his toes grazed the floor.

  Power radiated out from the Sìth, registering on Helen’s radar as it flew over her in massive waves. Her aura cut through it as easily as her machete did through fae bones.

  “There’s...so much you don’t know,” Ailpien rasped out. “Your lover...your daughter...they’re like us. They’re Seelie. Your mother...she’s—”

  Helen jammed her blade into his chest, his heart, and twisted.

  Blood spurted from the wound, and whatever other secrets Ailpien wanted to spill were muffled by the juices he coughed into Helen’s face. Black lines crawled up his pretty jaw as his face twisted into the same gnarled expression Tommy’s corpse wore. He screamed, and Helen relished every moment. She let him hang there, twitching like a hanged man until only a heap of steaming bones and flesh was left.

  He was dead. It was over.

  The high passed, making her whole for a solid minute before it faded all at once and her knees buckled.

  CHAPTER 26

  Helen panted hard, reeling from the come down. Her hands were sticky with Ailpien’s fluids, and the half of her machete not stuck in him was covered to its hilt. All she wanted to do was rest, sleep, recover. It was as if the entire week caught up all at once.

  The Seelie would come soon to take care of their dead, though, wouldn’t they? She had more work. There was no telling when they’d collect Cailean, Rhona, Morag, and especially Ailpien. She had to chop up the bodies and then carry Yoel and Lucy out of there. They’d have to find new clothes, then find a way home to Cleveland. There was so much left to do.

  Lucy whimpered from where she’d huddled against the wall. She stared at Tommy’s charred corpse, transfixed. How long until the girl recognized who it was who tried to attack her?

  Helen left her machete in Ailpien’s chest. It belonged there a little longer. Her top priority was Lucy, and cleaning up the wreck she’d made of her little girl’s nerves.

  “Baby girl, c’mere.” Helen crawled over and held out her arms.

  Lucy’s attention snapped to Helen. She stared at her mother a second before she crawled over. She threw her arms around Helen’s neck and sobbed into her shoulder.

  Helen clasped the girl to her chest, rubbing her daughter’s back and muttering little reassurances into her blonde ringlets. Lucy blubbered loud bits of scrambled Welsh and English.

  It was only when Helen calmed and had that solid child as an anchor to bring her back to reality, did she remember Ailpien’s last words.

  Her lover and her daughter were like them. They’re Seelie, he’d said.

  He was a man looking his death in the face and trying to bribe his way out by twisting the truth. Technically, Dylan was part of the Seelie by being their human servant. Lucy, by extension, could be considered part of it too by being Dylan’s blood relative. The alternative… Her daughter was a sweet little thing who’d been traumatized. Her lover—and possibly her ex depending on what she decided after she had time to think—had shared many great years with her as they’d built their family, even if he had been working for the other side the whole time. They couldn’t be fae.

  “It’s okay,” she muttered into Lucy’s hair, reassuring herself more than her daughter. “The bad guys are gone. We can go home.”

  * * *

  Helen cradled Lucy like that long after the strength returned to her legs and carried her to check on Yoel. He laid slumped over cracked cinder blocks, his eyes shut and body still. His chest moved, though, slow and steady. The ground under him had scorch marks where the rocky black plates on his skin touched. The glowing cracks between them pulsed in time with his breaths.

  Helen felt along the floor around Morag’s corpse until she found a metal rectangle with perforation lines in the middle and raised foreign script. Being so close and touching the dog tags, she finally felt the subtle thrum of magic buzzing over them. It had to be like the disguise charm Yoel made her, containing his natural shape and making him look like everybody else.

  She pushed on the soft part of Yoel’s chest and shook him awake. Better to play it safe by not touching the magma bits.

  Yoel groaned and his eyes fluttered open as he lifted himself up. He held his head and surveyed the bodies and the broken lab equipment, then settled his attention on Helen. They shared an awkward stare. The olive-complected part of his cheeks turned pink as he took the dog tags from Helen’s outstretched hand.

  She didn’t comment as he twisted the ball chain into a loose knot around his neck. As soon as the necklace settled against his collarbone, the rock plates and magma veins flickered into tanned skin and wiry muscle.

  “You finished them?” Yoel croaked.

  “Yeah, they’re done.” Helen went to pat his shoulder. At first she flinched, convinced it would burn the pads of her fingers off. But it was only the warmth of normal skin as she clapped her full palm on him. “You did good.”

  “So did you.” Yoel pushed himself up. “We should take care of the bodies before—”

  “—before the Seelie get their dead,” Helen finished. “We’ve also got to figure out a way to get back to Cleveland.”

  “I have a rental a few blocks down.” Y
oel wiped rubble dust off the bits of his shirt and jacket that were left. He sighed. “That was my favorite coat.”

  “Get a new one after you drop me off, Scribbler.” Helen started for Ailpien’s corpse and dislodged her machete from his chest as she hugged Lucy tighter to her chest. The girl had her thumb hanging from her mouth as she slept, too tuckered to stay awake.

  “I’ll handle clean up,” Yoel said as he offered his hand for Helen’s machete. “You see to Miss Lucy.”

  * * *

  On the drive back, Helen worked up the nerve to ask about why Yoel had busted out the rock plates while Morag attacked him, and where he got them from. He explained that he was born with the plates, and when he removed the charms on his dad’s dog tags, the magic in his blood came out and made him sturdier. The bits of Unseelie power he had were enough to interfere with Morag’s spectral form and let him finish the ritual that brought her ghost back to her body. Soon after Yoel answered, Helen crashed worse than Lucy. After days of mistreatment, torture, and starvation, she was long overdue for a nap.

  Next Helen knew, Yoel nudged her shoulder. She woke up to a stiff neck and a motel parking lot. It seemed so foreign after everything that had happened, so delightfully mundane. She glanced around for the Honda. It wasn’t there yet. Only her Harley.

  “Hmm, Dylan’s not back yet.” Helen sighed as she stroked Lucy’s back. The girl was still asleep on her lap. Dylan’s tougher than he looks, she reassured herself. That meant he should be alive, and on his way by then. “That gives me some time to figure out what I’m gonna do about him.”

  “The air mattress offer still stands,” Yoel said. “If it does work out, though, I reiterate that I hope to never see you or your little family again.”

  “You going to be okay with the scary lawyer chick?”

  “Kate? Oh yes. More than okay.” Yoel offered a small smirk. “If I bring back all of this information about the experiments and whatnot, leaving out mention of you, I’ll get a commendation from the Dark Queen herself. That will keep them off my back for quite a while. Then perhaps I can actually finish my doctoral thesis while Nicnevin and the Seelie Queen squabble.”