by brett hicks
I felt a shiver rush up my spine that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature.
“I don’t suppose it’s pointless to read you your rights, is it?”
I asked him, but I made no movements. I kept my hands perfectly still, and I felt the ink on my body beginning to rush along my skin like the sleeves of tattoos. Winter did not miss this, and his black eyes widened suddenly.
“Impossible!”
He exclaimed in a guttural tone that caused the birds of prey on my shoulders to fly out in a screech of defiance and rage. I quickly used this distraction, to slip my hands into my cloak and I tore the daggers free from their sheaths. The silver blades glinted on the moonlight with an ethereal deathly beauty.
The fairy magiks of Sorcha’s own signature rushed up, like green flames along the blades. Fairy-fire, I had heard of it, but I had never seen it. It was not fire in the normal sense; it was pure magical energy given form and meant to protect its wielder. The tricky fae princess was not letting me free from her grip. She was protecting me, even while not in body.
Blackness slashed out and raged like a tempest on the birds of prey, and one of them finally flopped to the ground and then soon rushed back to my arm with a blazing edge of heat. The tattoo stilled on my shoulder, and I felt it alive still, but not active. I did not have time to contemplate this development any further. The darkness made man launched itself at me, and I twirled my fairy blades and parried his slashing black-clawed attack.
I realized in a sudden eerie comprehension, that the blades of the first murder had been claws, not steel.
“Bloody Styxx!”
I exclaimed in surprise and equal part anger. I twisted my upper body just in time to narrowly dodge the next thrust of the razor-sharp claws of pure darkness. I had never felt or witnessed a possession so prominent that it could manifest new shape changes.
I felt the hard-as-steel fist slam into my stomach and relieve me of all my oxygen in the next moment. Instinct and years of training etched into my body, allowed me to twist and pivot, and catch myself on my left hand, and flip upright, landing on my feet. The dark blur that was once man now stood mere paces from me, closing the gap at inhuman speed.
I slashed up wildly with one dagger in my left hand, and green fae fire singed a clawed right hand. He kicked out, and I rolled off. Only a fraction of the force glanced my side, but the impact still shook my body as though he had hit me with a sledgehammer.
“Enough of this!”
He roared in a thundering fury. His tone had become a dissonant sound, like two voices speaking over top of each other at once. He moved in, closing off my slight breathing space. He grabbed my throat with a powerful claw, but none of the bladed limbs punctured my throat. I felt his other hand close on my left arm, and the fae blade fell to the ground with a dull thud.
I didn’t have long to wonder what he held in store for me.
“This form shall serve us well. You dared to think ye could catch us! We who have haunted Dublin since its very first generation! Our father was the dark mage, he and his witch bride sanctified this ground for our family. He who built Dublin, is he who gave us life!”
He said in his eerie duel voice. My mind spun back to the history of the city. There were old stories that the founder of the city had a witch bride, and that she had spelled the land for him. There were many such old tales, but no one I knew of had invested any stock in such nonsense!
There are more of them! More of these insanely powerful spirits are loose here in Dublin! How the fuck did the community not notice them sooner?!
I felt all air burn from my lungs again, as the icy pain washed over my eternal soul. My body was a pure-white nova of fire and ice burning away every square inch of my flesh, searing the bones and blackening the hollow remains. I felt the heat and the searing agony. Time lost all meaning and calculable sense to me.
Years and split seconds passed in the span of my eons of suffering. The pain was constant it was all-consuming, and it was inescapable. There was no rapture from the edge of my agony. There was no daybreak to my endless abyssal night. All life, all fight drained, and all hope long abandoned.
I heard her screaming, so distant from my spirit. I could almost make out the visage of my beautiful form, but it was like the spirit of me, and my awareness were losing their tether to my physical form, slowly.
Snarls sundered the sky of the universe I was wrapped inside. Suddenly the night seemed to become alive, and the castle seemed to grow roots and leaves all around us, the roof became a small forest.
Fae fires danced through the night and blasted into the black male form strangling the life and the soul free from my body.
“Reline get her from him! I am afraid we are about to lose Jimmy now!”
Sorcha said in an urgent warning. I had time to see a flash of dark blue blur to the side of the hulking shadowy monstrosity. Snarls and feral sounds of some unknown feline origin tore apart the surrounding air, and massive claws nearly the length of my entire forearm slashed at the grappling arm choking me.
I suddenly felt the fire retreat and the cold of night rushed to my flesh, as if something had been holding it back from my flesh before. I felt a mild hand grab hold of me, and tuck me tightly to a slender female form, and then we shot off at a neck-break speed. I almost felt like I did on the speedy rollercoasters when they go from zero-to-seventy.
Her heels clacked to the ground, and she nimbly sat me at her side.
“Got her, Jayasus, he really seemed to have done a number on her energy! It’s like he was suffocating the very magiks from her body!”
Reline exclaimed, and I gagged and coughed, and I felt wobbly on my feet. The vampiress helped me stand up-right.
“Blimey, easy does it luv!”
Reline said, and she steadied me further. I could barely track the combat ahead of me, but it seemed that the blue-black furball of a large six-one male human-feline hybrid mesh, was Jimmy. I felt the same midnight cool magiks from the beast, only the magiks were many folds more powerful.
The shadowy form of the possessed man called Winter laughed in a roar of dual-voice amusement.
“Feral druid, pitiful off-shoot of the real bloodline. What do you truly expect to accomplish, besides prolonging her suffering?”
He taunted Jimmy, who was a flurry of clawed slashes and hissing. He was a shifter, but he was not a shifter, like my senses had been telling me all along. He was a feral druid, not that I knew much about them.
I watched helplessly as a wall of black energy slammed into Jimmy, and his body stopped mid-swipe, and fell limp to the ground. He shrank noticeably, and the blue-black fur seemed to recede into nothingness. His large pointy cat ears morphed back into normal people ears and returned to their rightful places on his head. My human-looking partner was left in torn dress clothes on the floor near my feet. His body was void of any major physically noticeable injuries, but I saw his rich blue aura was dimmed and nearly completely snuffed out.
“Um, Princess, have you ever seen one this strong?!”
Reline asked surprised and mildly fearful. Sorcha frowned and shook her head.
“This is a first, and I would never have believed it, if anyone had tried to tell it to me.”
Sorcha said, her tone grim. She seemed to resign herself to a futile battle, and she flashed forward in a blur of speed. I could follow her, but she moved so fast that it nearly lost sight of her several times.
I saw the green blooms all around us light with her powers. She expanded outwards, and the shadows were trapped with no escape of darkness. Black magiks like a small mushroom cloud erupted around the massive flash of green light. I felt the gale-force of her powers around us whipping my hair about and threating to upend me. I steadied myself and I squinted my eyes against the sudden flash of light.
The battle was over in moments, and Sorcha was on one knee, coughing and gagging.
“Reline, go, help her!”
I pleaded hurriedly, and I pus
hed command into my tone I scarcely knew I possessed. I felt a rush of fresh power from somewhere, almost like a full second wind. I was watching this thing swat down my friends like flies, and he was intent on not only possessing me but also destroying every life I loved!
I knew next to nothing about myself or my power. I just opened myself, as if for the very first time. I felt the moon and the night course through my blood, like they were my very own. I felt the darkness and the light fill me from head to toe.
Silver-green magiks infused the rooftop, and I felt the power cascading from me in volumes I had never felt.
“Utterly impossible! You should not be here! We killed you all! A thousand years has passed, and your kind have been dust!”
He roared at me in a shattering discordance of two different voices.
I blocked out his words and focused on the dark energy flowing around him, and I channeled all my energy into my right palm, and the rune from my chest skittered down to my palm, the rune my mother had given me before her death. I channeled all the rushing powers into that single pinpoint.
“By the heavens!”
Sorcha exclaimed from beside me somewhere.
I charged the shadowy monstrosity. My palm slammed into the wave of emptiness and black-magiks. The silver-green fought with the black, but the focused energy soon burst through a small section of the magiks wall. I flew through his defensive platting, and my hand slammed through his chest. I saw the dark spirit fly out the back side of his body, evicted from its “home”
The thing writhed and screamed on the ground. And the human soon tumbled to the floor unconscious.
Thirty-Three:
My borrowed gown was trashed, and I mourned for it, even as I helped Sorcha hobble to the stairs to take a seat. Jimmy was just carried out on a gurney and Reline was helping me fabricate a fictitious version of this sudden and unexpected confrontation.
Only minutes had passed since the ambulances had arrived, and yet the vultures were already swarming out front. Every news crew in Dublin was sieging the castle gates.
“WHERE IS SHE?!”
An ursine sundering tone came from down the stairs. I soon locked eyes with the glowing red eyes of my boss. Templeton saw me looking back into his magik-infused eyes. He snorted and gave me a sly smile.
“Playing mortal all this while, have ye?”
It sounded more like an accusation, than a statement of fact. I just shrugged and looked away, yep, guilty as charged! I had a feeling that he was not the only one who would give me shit for hiding myself from the community! Hell, I already had a damn leprechaun on my ass about that very thing!
“I’m fine you big hulking meat-head!”
Sorcha said groggily from her perch on the steps. She waved her hand in a flowery gesture of dismissal.
“The puss-n-boots is the one you ought to fuss over, yeah?”
She said and waved off vaguely toward where Jimmy was likely being wheeled. The same wall of magic that I had punched through had blasted Jimmy, but I was not sure why only I had broken the wall open and attacked the more vulnerable man inside it.
“Ye should have seen it, was like a bloody anime!”
Sorcha was waving her hands around as she very loudly recapped the entire fight for Templeton. He sighed and looked over his shoulder to Reline.
“Make sure we have some of your very best compulsion artists here, just in case one of these mortals gets a wild hair about something we’ve mentioned.”
Reline nodded in agreement.
“Will do, boss. I will leave our newest member in your capable hands, so I can make the necessary arrangements.”
The ursine nodded to her and grumbled his thanks to Reline. It was surprising, since most shifters would rip their own fur off by hand, then to thank a vampire! Reline waved him off, and she rolled her eyes.
“We are well beyond debts, big guy!”
She said in a good-natured tone. There was a deep and meaningful connection that caused these two to transcend the normal boundaries in the sand. Usually they were from apposing clans of equal powers and capabilities.
Reline left me with a quick hug goodbye. She was off to call her vampires or whatever.
“I felt the very tip of his power as I drove here. You should not be standing, girl.”
He said, and he touched my right cheek with his large palm.
“To think I would feel the warmth of your power after such a long absence.”
My eyes widened.
“You know what I am?!”
I rushed out louder than intended and the humans looked over at me with baffled expressions on their faces. Reline clapped her hands and distracted the mortals and talked to them about something or other.
“I do, but I am not crazy enough to butt in on a leprechaun deal. I don’t want to wake up with clover for fur, for the next three hundred years!”
Templeton said in a very serious tone.
I huffed in frustration and my boss winked at me, a very playful gesture for a powerful alpha-male ursine.
“This was sloppy work, but considering yer age, I’m inclined to just say good job, kiddo.”
He said and his tone brimmed with praise. I felt a warmth in my heart the likes of which I had not sensed since my father turned on us. I felt a paternal affection from my boss. I had not realized just how alone and emotionally starved I was until I felt the first morsels of approval nurturing my desolate husk of a soul.
***
After several hours of repeating the same story, they finally released me to go check on Jimmy. The large man was sitting up eating ice cream in his hospital bed with Sorcha and my granny. My eyes widened in surprise at her presence here. She waved lazily with her spoon as I walked into the room.
“Good to see yer all in the same shape.”
Granny said jokingly, but I saw the true bone-deep relief in her eyes. She was very worried about me. I flicked my eyes to Jimmy, who was staring at me like I was the last drop of water in the Atlantic.
“How d'you get here so fast, gran?”
I Asked, and she snorted and waved me off dismissively.
“Just happened to hear one of the arresting detectives was injured, so I took a cabby. This sweet one was already headed in, so she let me tag along.”
Gran explained, and Sorcha wiggled her fingers at me, but kept shoveling in more of her favorite creamy flavor.
“Yes, your gran has been kind enough to give us each a little more backstory on you. After all, ye are the first of your species to be seen in over a millennium.”
I frowned and Sorcha shook her head and waved me off.
“Talk to Ernie!”
She said and cut me off from asking. I huffed in frustration.
‘Well, so much for me trying to live under the radar!”
I muttered in frustration, and Jimmy sniffed. He winced slightly as he moved. The damage to his body was not deadly, but apparently it was still painful, and healing.
“Well, I could have gone to Ernie, but I was concerned with how my partner was doing.”
I said, and I looked Jimmy over from head-to-toe, seeking any injuries.
“You know what they say about cats, they always land on their feet.”
Sorcha said in a teasing tone, and Jimmy looked at her with a narrowed gaze, and I saw his eyes go vertically slit for a moment, then his illusion of human was raised properly again. He had dropped the image of human himself, but he was a lot sloppier about it than the boss or Sorcha. Jimmy was not a subtle man, but that was one of his admirable traits, in my book. I always seemed to know where exactly I stood with him!
“As you can now see, I am fine, thanks.”
He said in a gentle tone, and I caught a conspiratorial look between my gran and Sorcha. The damn fairy was not the type of friend I wanted for her! Not when they could band together to cause mischief directed at me!
I found a chair and sat next to Jimmy. I enjoyed some cookies and cream flavored ice cream. After a wh
ile of eating and a lot more friendly conversation, I finally took my leave to go meet Ernie. I was greatly relieved now that I knew all my friends would be fine. All of us knew that this had been a lucky break. Whatever power had overcome my level of inexperience, was not a fluke we could count on a second time!
Epilogue:
“I was expecting ye hours ago!”
The old green man said, standing with his arms crossed over his plump masculine chest. I looked down at him and narrowed my eyes.
“I have been busy.”
He sniffed the air and chortled.
“Aye, eating yer weight in bloody Ben and Jerry’s I see!”
I growled in annoyance, and I glared at him.
“Your little stipulation to our deal almost cost me a good partnership!”
I simmered and the ageless leprechaun looked at me in what passed for long-suffering patience.
“That was a consequence, not a stipulation. Ye should never deceive the local middleman. I am the anchor that holds both sides snugly together, as do all of my kind.”
I scoffed in frustration and I waved my hand in mild dismissal.
“Whatever, we had a deal, so I am here to learn what I am! We can settle all the rest later, but I need to know exactly what I am, and why everyone is looking at me like I am a fecking unicorn!”
I growled in an animated tone. His eyes danced with genuine amusement.
“Oh, unicorns are only slightly less rare than ye lot, I would say!”
“Ernie, please tell me!”
I said in annoyance and he tapped his small wooden cane to the ground and bright green magiks sparkled around the tip for a few seconds.
“Ye are a druid, the first pure-blood born in over a thousand years.”
I frowned deeper still, and I huffed in frustration.
“A druid? But Jimmy is a druid! There is a whole clan of his people!”
I said, and Ernie snorted and waved his cane in a dismissive gesture.
“Yer ancestors would be fecking turning, if they heard ye compare feral druids, to the main-line. I cannot be sure yet, but ye are of the highest order of yer fecking kind. It’s like expecting the king of vampires to be as weak as Reline, which would be ridiculous!”
