There was no sign of the sidhe rade.
Kate turned to ask Finn about the fiaina when they all heard a shriek that came from the third floor. It dissolved into a long, aching moan that woke goosebumps on her arms.
“Oh, God,” she said, white-faced. “That must be Jacky. The droichan’s hurting her.”
Gump nodded and started for the door, but Kate got there first. The sound of Jacky’s moaning fired her worry to such an extent that she forgot to be afraid. She ran towards the stairs going up, but before she could take the first step, Gump caught hold of her arm and pulled her back.
“Wait,” he said.
“We need a plan,” Finn added. “We can’t just rush in there against the droichan.”
“But Jacky’s probably dying”
The moaning ceased abruptly and they heard a soft thump, like a body hitting the floor. Kate looked at Finn, then at Gump, a pleading in her eyes.
“We’ve got to do something.”
Finn nodded. “Yes, but”
Kate pulled herself free from Gump’s grip and sprinted out of reach, up the stairs. She paused at the door to look back. Gump reached her side first, Finn, brow furiously wrinkled in thought, right behind him. They could hear voices Jacky’s and another’s. The droichan’s.
Relief ran through Kate. Jacky was still alive.
“When we go in,” Finn whispered, “we split up immediately. No matter how strong the droichan is, he can’t aim spells at three different moving figures.”
“Then we crush him,” Gump said.
He opened his big hands and then closed them into fists, a grim look on his face.
Finn shook his head. “We need his heart for that. No, the best thing would be to keep him off-balance. Throw him out the window perhaps while he’s concentrating on breaking his fall, we can try to escape.”
“Or we could jump through the window,” Kate said, remembering what Jacky had told them about its odd properties.
“That will still leave things as they are,” Gump protested.
“Do you know where his heart is hidden?” Finn asked the trow.
Gump said nothing for a long moment, then slowly shook his head.
“This way we might win free to keep searching for it,” the hob said.
Kate plucked at both their arms.
“We’ve got to go in now,” she said, only just remembering to keep her voice pitched as low as theirs.
They could hear the sounds of a struggle from the other side of the door.
“What if there’s more than just the droichan in there?” Finn wondered aloud.
But Gump was through with waiting. He bent low, put his shoulder to the door, and smashed it in. There was no more time for plans or second thoughts.
They went in, Kate darting to the right, Finn to the left, Gump charging straight through, rising to his full height once he was in the room. They saw Jacky pinned under the droichan in a corner of the room the corner nearest to Kate. A moment’s hesitation on their part was all the droichan needed.
“Can’t spell you,” he muttered to Jacky as he woke his shadow. “But what about your friends?”
Finn had it wrong. The droichan was quite able to throw more than a spell at a time. His shadow-creature lunged at Gump. An invisible force lifted Kate from her feet and slammed her against the bookcases. As he turned his attention on Finn, Jacky lunged from under him, throwing him off-balance.
The hob charged the droichan, but Colorc recovered quickly. He batted Jacky aside with one arm. Before Finn could reach him, the droichan’s shadow-creature split into two, one pinning Gump to the floor, the other bowling the little hob over and trapping him as well.
“Don’t even think of it,” Colorc told Jacky as she pulled another wallystane from its pouch.
But Jacky could only hear Kate’s moaning from where she was pinned up against the bookcase. She could see Kate’s wide-open eyes only the whites showing, because they were rolled back in her head. Kate was staring into the void.
Jacky remembered that bleak place all too well. Kate was lost there. Trapped in its emptiness. Death, with its promise of the Summer Country, was far preferable to that. Death for herself, for Finn, for any of them, rather than letting even one of them spend eternity in that place.
She placed her will in the wallystane and threw it, straight and true, across the room where it struck Kate and exploded into a shower of crystal dust. Kate’s eyes rolled down, seeing this world once more. The invisible bonds holding her against the bookcase lost their power over her and she fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. Only then did Jacky turn back to the droichan.
Colorc towered over her, the fire in his eyes burning like a torched countryside. His cloak fell from his shoulders and pooled on the floor. The night skies outside the room went darker still. Thunder rumbled directly overhead. Rain exploded against the Tower’s roof. Lightning seared across the sky in sheets of icy fire.
“This has gone too far,” Colorc said.
His voice was quiet, almost conversational, but cold as a winter sky. He swept over Jacky, and before she could move, he’d grabbed the front of her shirt and hoisted her up, smacking her up against the wall again.
“Do you see your friends?” he said. “You’ve saved one, but my darkness will feed on the souls of the others. It will tear their bodies open and spill their entrails on the floor. It will suck the juices of their brains and make bracelets of their bones.”
Jacky had hit her head on the wall when the droichan threw her against it. Sparks danced before her eyes. She found it hard to breathe with his hand pulling the throat of her shirt tight across her windpipe. But she could see the droichan’s shadow-creatures crouched over Finn and Gump.
The side of the trow’s throat was bleeding where the skin had already been broken. The shadow holding him was lapping at the blood with a black tongue while the trow struggled uselessly against the creature’s superior strength. Finn was almost swallowed by the one on him. It lay across his body like a loathsome cloak, wet with the boggy reek of the sluagh. Kate was the only one not trapped, but she lay very still where she had fallen.
Colorc pulled Jacky from the wall and slammed her against it again. She tried to fight him, but his sheer strength was just too much for her. She clawed at his chest, tearing open his shirt, breaking the skin with her nails, but the droichan ignored her efforts. The unnatural storm continued to rage outside, counterpoint to the fires in his eyes.
“Give me what I want!” he shouted at her, spittle showering her face.
He pulled her back again, driving her against the wall with so much force that she thought she could feel her bones rattling against each other.
“Your friends will die,” Colorc told her. “One by one, torn apart before your eyes, and then, then I’ll take you apart with my own hands and feed your flesh to the night.”
Thunder boomed, punctuating his words with an earth-shattering crack that shook the Tower to its foundations.
Jacky could hardly see the droichan now. Her eyes were blurred with tears of frustration and pain. She desperately needed air. She tried to focus on him, but she saw merely a blur.
There was the dark of his torn shirt, and the lighter hue of his skin. The red fire in his eyes. A gleam of brass or bronze hanging from his neck, hidden until she’d torn his shirt. The white gleam of his teeth as he drew back his lips, snarling at her.
He slammed her against the wall a fourth time, and then even those blurry sights were driven away by a new shower of dancing sparks.
“Give me the key!” the droichan roared, but his voice seemed to come from very far away now.
The scene was like something out of an old Hollywood western, Johnny thought as he and Mactire reached the park.
They entered off Bank Street, right near Billings Bridge. Spread in a long line along the bank of the river was the rade of the sidhe, ready for war as they had been when he and Jemi had called them up earlier tonight. If they we
re the Indians, then the Unseelie Host were the white-eyes. They were a disorganized swirl of creatures bogans and gullywudes, trolls and goblins, things for which Johnny had no name.
“Jesus,” he breathed as he and Mactire stopped to reconnoiter. “We haven’t got a chance.”
The Unseelie Host outnumbered the fiaina sidhe, three to one.
Mactire frowned, also taking in their number.
“I hadn’t thought there were so many left after the Jack destroyed their Court last year,” he said. “But still. We have no choice. We must”
The sound of someone calling Johnny’s name made the wolf boy pause. They turned to see Henk running up to them. When he reached Johnny’s side, he bent half over, clutching his side and breathing hard through his mouth.
“Henk. What’re you doing here?”
Henk straightened slowly. “I wanted to see what you were up to
” His voice trailed off as he took in the scene before them. “Oh, Christ. Tell me I’m dreaming.”
Touched by faerie, he could see into the Middle Kingdom now.
“You’d better go,” Johnny said.
“No way. I’m staying right here with you.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“I know enough,” Henk replied. He pointed out Loireag and Dohinney Tuir near the center of the long line of sidhe. “Those two they’re the ones I met by the river when I was looking for you.”
Johnny followed the line of Henk’s vision, but his gaze went further to the small figure that the kelpie and hob were talking to.
“Jemi!” he cried.
Without looking to see what the others did, he ran along the line of sidhe to where she was.
She looked up at his approach, a faint welcoming smile appearing briefly on her lips before her features went grim once more. She was sitting astride a small shaggy pony and looked wet and bedraggled. Her hair was mostly plastered to her skull, except for the odd pink tuft near the back that was dry. As he got closer to her, a vague marshy smell came to his nostrils.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“I had a swim in the canal.”
She slipped from the back of the pony to give him a quick hug. Stepping back, she touched the back of her hand to his cheek.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Johnny. I was afraid you wouldn’t hear the call, but there was no time to go by your place. I just had to hope that you’d hear that you’d understand what it meant and come.”
“Well, I’m here. But Jesus, Jemi.”
He turned to look at the Unseelie Host. They were jeering and catcalling the sidhe, but kept to their unruly ranks.
“This is going to be a slaughter,” Johnny said.
Jemi shook her head. “Only if we don’t kill the droichan.”
“The what?”
“Droichan it’s a kind of gruagagh, but worse. Way worse. He’s the one who’s been behind all of what’s been going on. I ran into him in Sandy Hill while I was fetching this.”
She pulled the little bone flute pendant from under her shirt where it was hanging and showed it to him. Johnny felt a spark flicker inside himself at the sight of it. He put his hand in his pocket and closed his fingers about his fiddle charm. It was hot to the touch.
He tried to concentrate on what Jemi was telling him about the droichan how his shadow could run free and kill people for him, how he was deathless, except he could be killed, but only if his heart was found first but his attention kept wandering to the colour of her eyes, the line of her chin, the shape of her ear. He shook his head. There was no time for that kind of thing right now.
“I’m going into the Tower,” she said, finishing up her explanation. “Johnny, will you lead the rade for me?”
Johnny shook his head again. “I’m going with you.”
“But the rade needs a mortal to lead it we’ll be stronger then.”
“I can’t let you go in there alone.”
“You don’t think I can handle it?”
“I’m sure you can handle anything you set your mind to, Jemi. I just can’t handle being out here and not knowing what’s happening to you.”
Jemi sighed, but before she could argue anymore, Henk stepped up.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “If it’s the kind of thing that anyone can do, not just Johnny.”
“You?” Jemi said, surprised to see him there. She’d only had eyes for Johnny.
Loireag moved closer. Henk flinched at the sight of her looming over him, but he stood his ground.
“Has this tadpole suddenly found teeth?” she asked, looking Henk over.
“Loireag,” Tuir warned.
“Don’t worry, Tuir. I’m saving my anger for the bogans. I just want to test the mettle of this tadpole, that’s all.” She turned her attention back to Henk. “Can you lead us against that?” she asked, pointing at the Unseelie Host. “Or will you run off with your tail between your legs halfway through the first charge?”
Johnny started to speak, but Jemi caught his arm and shook her head.
Henk’s throat felt too tight. He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing, and looked at the Host. He’d thought the sidhe had been his nightmares come to life, but he’d been wrong, he realized as he looked on the creatures of the Unseelie Court. He tried to imagine leading a charge against that monstrous, unholy crowd, and couldn’t. But he knew that if he didn’t, the dark would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life.
“I’m scared shitless,” he said, looking back at the kelpie. She started to nod knowingly, until he added, “But I’ll do it.”
Their gazes met and held for long moments, then Loireag nodded.
“So be it,” she said. “I think the Moon can ride you.”
“Lend him your fiddle,” Tuir said to Johnny.
“He can’t,” Jemi said. “He’ll need that for where we’re going.”
“I can’t play one anyway,” Henk said. “My instrument’s the concertina.”
“Anglo or English?” Loireag asked.
Henk blinked. “Uh, English.”
Loireag sent word up and down the line of the sidhe until a small hob trotted up on his pony and handed Henk an instrument. It was a beautiful old Wheatstone, its silver gleaming, its wood dark, its leather bellows worn but still strong.
“It was my father’s,” the hob said. “Play the Moon fierce in it.”
Before Henk could thank him, the hob turned his mount and returned to his place in the ranks.
Henk hefted the instrument. “I’m not so sure I understand,” he said. “We’re going up against those things with music?”
“Oh, no,” Tuir assured him. “The music’s there to call up the rade and aim its strength like an arrow against our foes.”
“Any particular music?” Henk asked.
“I think a march would do the trick,” Jemi said. “Something fierce.”
” ‘O’Neill’s Cavalcade’?” Johnny suggested.
“That would do,” Jemi agreed.
“Okay,” Henk said. “When do I start playing?”
“Now!” Loireag cried, but Jemi quickly shook her head.
“Wait for them to make the first move,” she said. “If we haven’t lost all our luck, Johnny and I will have put an end to the droichan and there’ll be no need for this war. The Host will quickly lose heart without a chief to lead them.”
“I want blood,” Loireag said. “Someone has to pay for all we’ve lost.”
“Tuir, please?” Jemi asked, turning to the hob. “Hold back until you’ve no other choice?”
“Different words from what you asked of us earlier tonight,” the kelpie complained.
“I didn’t know then what I know now,” Jemi replied.
“If I’ve got to start it,” Henk said, “I’ll make sure we wait.”
Loireag and Jemi both shot him looks, the one angry, the other grateful.
“Thank you,” Jemi said.
Leaving her pony for He
nk, she led Johnny past the ranked sidhe, back to Bank Street. From there they doubled up Riverdale, turning down Belmont to come up to the Tower by the front. There were few Unseelie creatures abroad now, most having gathered in the park to face the hosted sidhe.
“Have you got a plan?” Johnny asked as they crept near the Tower.
Jemi nodded. “But it means me going in and you staying out.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Listen to me, Johnny. At least hear me out.”
Reluctantly, Johnny did. When he heard what she had planned, he had to agree that he couldn’t accompany her.
“But only if the front door’s guarded,” he said.
“That’s a bargain.”
And an easy one to keep, Jemi thought as they closed in on the Tower. She’d already spied bogans and a tall trollish figure in its doorway. They appeared to be looking for someone or something. She led Johnny quickly along until they were standing by the front of the Tower. Johnny looked up and shook his head.
“You can climb that?” he asked.
Jemi nodded.
“What are you part monkey, too?”
“Just a Pook, Johnny and a halfling at that.”
“And you’re sure the droichan’s heart is in there?”
“I’ve met him,” she explained again. “He’s the kind that needs it close at hand probably even on his person. Will you play the tune, Johnny?”
“Sure.”
He opened his case and took out fiddle and bow. Tightening the frog until the bow’s hairs were taut, he started to put the instrument under his chin, then paused.
“Jemi?”
She looked at him, then leaned close for a kiss.
“If we lose,” she said softly, “I’ll look for you in the Summer Country.”
Johnny swallowed dryly. “Yeah. But we’re not going to lose, right?”
“Right.”
Fiddle under his chin, Johnny drew the bow across its strings and began to play the tune that Jemi had requested of him. It was an instrumental version of the traditional Breton folk song “Kimiad” a sly music that fit into the sounds of the night so that the Unseelie Host would ignore it, but a music that would call down the Moon’s strength for Jemi to borrow. She needed her own hands free for the climb.