“Well done,” Cruce said. “And you have Toc’s blood?”
The roach god nodded, holding himself together with eons of discipline and relentless hunger for a better way of life.
“Toc had the papers printed as I instructed, and dispersed?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. When they come—”
“Will they come?” the roach god demanded.
Cruce smiled. “Oh, yes, they’ll come. My name is synonymous with rebellion, and the Unseelie have long memories. We fought for freedom once before and nearly attained it. I will not fail this time. I will rule both the Fae and human realms. They are already mine. I’m merely trapped in a spiderweb for the moment and that will soon change.”
“This world is dying. If it does, I want to go with you where you go.”
Cruce’s gaze locked on him and the roach god shuddered faintly. Ah, yes, this Fae had power. He hid it well.
“This world will not die. My realms are tied to it. When they come and the battle begins, watch and wait. If our side appears to be suffering losses, set the fires.”
“You said it burns hotter than human fire. How hot?” Fire was one thing to evade, Fae fire might be entirely another.
“Not too hot for you,” Cruce said. “Light all three at the same time. I want the fires to divide the humans and scatter them across the abbey. The fools will try to put it out rather than fight.”
“If they don’t?”
“They are governed by emotional attachments. Even the brightest among them suffers this weakness. Go. Now. Watch and wait. When the time is right, burn this fucking place to ash.”
The roach god nodded and let his form collapse abruptly to the floor, disintegrating instantly, a trick he’d perfected in human homes, moving through their houses when they weren’t around, as if he were one of them, sitting on their beds, fondling their combs and toothbrushes, even perching on their toilets, wondering what it would feel like to be whole and large and not a bug.
Thousands of glistening insects rippled across the stone chamber, vanishing into every crack and crevice.
32
“I will burn for you with fire and fury.”
When the Hunter circled above Chester’s preparing to land, I was surprised to see there wasn’t the usual boisterous crowd gathered outside the club, jostling and bribing and arguing to get in.
Fewer than fifty humans loitered near the rubble of the former club at a safe distance from the cordoned-off black hole.
There wasn’t a single Fae in sight. Normally, there were more Fae than humans, the lower castes that Ryodan wouldn’t permit into the club, trying to seduce the bored, hungry clientele denied entry with an immediate, less potent (and far less attractive!) fix.
As I slid from the Hunter’s back, I was the target for dozens of sharp, envious glares. Jealous of my “ride,” that I had such a powerful beast seemingly at my command, wondering what magical gifts it bestowed—and if it could be eaten for a high probably.
I wasn’t afraid of fifty humans. Not this close to Chester’s.
I had guns, Voice, a Hunter, and Barrons a text away. Still, I stayed near my ride, one thickly insulated glove on its icy flank. I shivered from cold. Without Unseelie flesh in me, it wasn’t nearly as comfortable to be so close to one of the icy beasts. My thighs were numb and my ass was completely frozen. I rubbed it briskly with my palm, trying to thaw it and restore sensation.
“Where are all the Fae?” I demanded, glancing at the underground entrance, surprised to find it was unguarded.
“The doors are locked,” a woman said. “Does it let you eat it?” she asked with a frighteningly bright smile, shooting a greedy look at my satanic ride.
The Hunter swung its great horned head around and snorted a stunningly precise tendril of fire at the crowd.
The woman’s hair went up in flame. She ran off screaming, clutching her head. The rest of the crowd backed warily away from me.
“The door to Chester’s is locked?” I said incredulously. No one answered me and I got a brief bizarre flash of myself as I must look from their point of view: blond Barbie as Barrons had so pithily said, with crimson-streaked hair tangled wild from the wind, coated from head to toe with a light dusting of black ice, standing next to a demonic-looking winged dragon-beast, weapons bulging in my pockets, spear strapped to my thigh, and a snub-nosed automatic I’d tossed over my shoulder as I left for no reason I’d been able to fathom. Just a bad feeling I might need more weapons than usual tonight, or maybe all that kinky, rough sex with Barrons had made me feel more like my badass self. “Chester’s never closes,” I protested. That would be like the sun not rising.
Suddenly the door in the ground rattled and shot open from below. “Ms. Lane,” Barrons growled as he stepped out. “About bloody time. Let’s go.” He closed the door then bent and traced a symbol on it, murmuring softly.
People began to hem him in, chanting, “Let us in, let us in!”
“Get the fuck out of here!” Barrons roared in Voice that staggered even me, and I felt my feet begin to move of their own volition. Not you, Ms. Lane, he shot me a look.
I stopped and stood, watching in astonishment as fifty people turned like zombies and trudged woodenly down the street. The most I’d ever managed was four with a single command.
Then I scowled at him. “One,” I snapped, “how did you do that to fifty people at once. Two, why did it work on me when I thought I was supposed to be immune to you, and three—”
“The abbey is under attack. Get on the Hunter, Ms. Lane. And read this.” He thrust a paper at me. “We didn’t understand why the club was so empty. One of the patrons brought this in. Then Jada called. The others have already gone ahead.”
He’d waited for me. That must have driven him bugfuck crazy, knowing a battle was being fought and he wasn’t there. Waiting for his girlfriend.
“You’re not my girlfriend, Ms. Lane,” he said coolly.
“You could have gone without me,” I said just as coolly.
“You could have checked your bloody texts.”
I gave him a blank look. “I didn’t get any.” I tugged my cellphone from the front pocket of my jeans. It was completely coated with a thick layer of ice. When I fly, I scoot up beneath the bony apex of the Hunter’s wings because it gives me more to hold on to, and my phone must have been pressed to the underside of the frigid crest. I tapped it against a nearby trash can to crack the ice. Sure enough, three texts messages, and the last one was pissed as hell. I made a mental note to carry it somewhere else when I flew in the future.
“You still could have gone without me.”
“I bloody fucking know that.” He cut me a seething glance.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because, Ms. Lane, when the world goes to bloody hell, I will always be at your bloody side. Read the fucking paper. Not even Ryodan saw this one coming. Seems his ‘news’ isn’t as spot-on as it once was.”
I snatched the paper and scanned it quickly.
The Dublin Daily
August 7 AWC
STOP THE BLACK HOLES THAT
ARE DESTROYING OUR WORLD!!!
FREE PRINCE CRUCE!
Held hostage beneath ARLINGTON ABBEY is the most
POWERFUL FAE PRINCE ever created!
He is our SAVIOR!
He has the power to stop the black holes that are DEVOURING EARTH.
He ALONE possesses the magic to heal our world!
Fae power damaged it and only FAE MAGIC can SAVE it.
WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!!
A secret cult known as the sidhe-seers has taken him PRISONER and is holding him in a vain attempt to EXPLOIT HIS POWERS for their OWN purposes!
They have the ability to travel to other worlds and care nothing for THIS ONE.
JOIN THE CRUCEAID!
FREE PRINCE CRUCE!!!
Meet at Arlington Abbey and help us liberate our champion!
See map below!
/>
“Who would print this?” I exploded.
“No bloody clue,” Barrons said tightly. “Up. Now.”
I scrambled back onto the Hunter and, as Barrons settled behind me, reached for the great beast’s vast, unfathomable mind. Can you help us fight? Call more Hunters?
We do not attend matters of Fae and man.
You’ve been flying me around.
You amuse.
Because it sensed the king in me? I wondered. I order you to help us fight.
Not even you.
Can I offer you something? If bribes were what it wanted, I’d try.
It rumbled deep inside, a chuckle of sorts. You have nothing. We have all.
Well, then just hurry! I urged it. My friends are in danger. Take us to the abbey as quickly as you can get us there!
You do not mean that. It rumbled again and I felt its mirth. You would not survive. But it flapped its enormous leathery sails, churning black ice beneath us, and pumped up and up.
We soared beneath the clouds, where the day was still bright, then through the clouds and above them, sailing higher and higher into blackness and stars and cold, cold sky, then just when I thought my lungs might explode and it was getting dangerously hard to breathe, it tucked its wings close to its body like an eagle preparing to plunge and whispered in my mind with a soft rumble, Hold, not-king.
I shoved my arms beneath its tightly wrapped wings and hugged the bony crest, clutching it, clenched my thighs and pressed my face to its frosty hide. It burned and I drew back sharply, but too late, I left a layer of my cheek on its back. “Ow!”
It suddenly went motionless, hanging in the sky like a dead weight, not moving one leathery scale. I remained just as still, bracing for whatever was about to happen.
Suddenly it rocketed forward so fast I’d have flown right off its back if it hadn’t given me warning. I felt like the Enterprise, entering warp speed.
I tucked my face low (but not too low!) to its hide, as Barrons’s arms tightened around me, and I squeezed my eyes shut against the cutting wind. I could feel the skin of my cheeks dragging back with gravitational force humans were not intended to experience without helmets or space suits.
After a moment I slitted my eyes open and watched stars trail past, like silvery party streamers.
Behind me, Barrons laughed with raw, ferocious exhilaration. I felt the same. Best. Damn. Supercar. Ever.
I sensed the Hunter prodding gently at my mind, making sure I was breathing and alive.
Best safety features, too.
We bulleted through the sky, dropping down and down until at last fields came into view, lush and fantastical from Cruce’s magic. In no time at all we were nearly to the abbey.
“Oh, God, Barrons, look at all the Fae!” Nonsifters crammed the narrow winding road to the abbey, Seelie and Unseelie alike, while more loped and slithered and crawled through meadows, splashed and lumbered across streams. There were humans, too, though not many. I suspected there may have been more but this dark, wild army had fed on them, all pretense at seduction abandoned to the hunger of battle-frenzy. “All for Cruce?” I yelled over my shoulder. “I thought the Seelie despised the dark court!”
“They’re unled,” he shouted into my ear. “The unled are always fickle.”
Once before, I’d seen Seelie and Unseelie gathered en masse. Not in clusters here and there like I’d seen mingling at Chester’s but facing off like mighty armies.
V’lane had been leading the Seelie, while Darroc and I had stood at the front of the Unseelie.
I’d felt the shuddering in the tectonic plates of our planet, even with both sides holding their enormous power in check.
Now there was no division between the courts. Seelie and Unseelie were rushing toward a single place with a single goal.
Our abbey.
To destroy it.
To free Cruce. Break out the most powerful Fae prince in all creation. And they didn’t even know he had all the power of the Sinsar Dubh at his disposal.
“Uh, Barrons, we’re in a world of shit,” I muttered.
“Same page, Ms. Lane. Same bloody word.”
—
“Where are Ryodan and the others?” I cried as we soared low over the battle.
Five hundred sidhe-seers were down there. But I didn’t see a single one of the Nine.
My sisters were facing thousands of Fae with more marching directly for them.
The front lawn of the abbey was a scene straight out of one of the Lord of the Rings movies. Amid towering megaliths and silvery fountains, humans battled monsters of every kind imaginable, some flying, some crawling, others stalking. Some beautiful, some hideous. There were those damned death-by-laughter fairies darting around a sidhe-seer’s head! I watched, horrified. She was still laughing as she was killed by a ghastly Unseelie with tubular fronds all over its body.
There was Jada, slicing a circle around her, the alabaster blade of the sword gleaming. But it was only one weapon and there were thousands of Fae down there, flying, slithering.
“They aren’t bloody sifters,” Barrons said and snarled. “They fucking drove. And they sure as bloody hell can’t be taking the road.”
I sometimes forgot the Nine had limitations. They seemed so all-powerful to me. If I knew them, they’d shift not far from the abbey and lope to battle smack in the middle of the Unseelie. “Well, why didn’t you call more Hunters for them?”
“This is the only one that ever comes.”
“Shit,” I cursed, leaning low, peering over the side.
I heard a low growl behind me, followed by the crunching sound of bones shifting, then the Hunter tensed beneath me and shook itself violently. I clung to the crest of its wings with all my strength.
“You are not my enemy,” Barrons roared behind me. “I’ll change and drop.”
You’ll drop and change, the Hunter snarled in my head. It arched its long neck and shot an enormous burst of flame over its shoulder, blasting Barrons right off its back and singeing the hell out of my coat and hair.
“Barrons!” I screamed as he went tumbling off the Hunter’s back, falling toward the lawn, transforming as he went.
The Hunter banked hard and began to circle back around. I stared down, watching Barrons fall. He was fully transformed by the time he hit the ground, horned, fanged, and ferocious.
He surged up, a sleek black shadow, grabbed the nearest Rhino-boy by the throat and ripped off its head with his enormous jaws.
Then his jaws opened even wider, impossibly wide, then the Barrons-beast vanished.
When he reappeared an instant later the Rhino-boy slumped dead to the ground.
Damn. And I still had no idea how he killed Fae.
The black-skinned beast exploded into battle, savagely ripping and clawing and killing, spraying guts and lifeblood everywhere, its crimson eyes glittering with feral glee. Vanishing. Reappearing.
He does not ride again, not-king. Nor do you.
The Hunter soared lower and turned its head, apparently about to dismount me the same way it had gotten rid of Barrons. I raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’ll jump, okay?” I said hastily. “Just go a little lower, I’ll jump. But try not to dump me in the middle. Get me closer to her.” I pointed to Jada.
The Hunter dropped like a rock, and some twenty feet from the ground I braced myself and dove off the damn thing. I wouldn’t hold up so well under the same blast of fire it had turned on Barrons. I lost my automatic halfway down, watched it smash into the ground. I didn’t care. It was the spear that could make a difference in this battle, and it was secure in its holster.
I tried to tuck and roll to minimize the impact, but the objects I was plummeting toward were moving and I landed smack on top of one of the red and black Unseelie guards and took it to the ground beneath me. I slammed a hand into its ridged breastplate, nulling it, then yanked out my spear and drove it into its gut.
Adrenaline was raging through me, smoothing ou
t my edges, perfecting my reflexes. I rolled, leapt to my feet, and began methodically slashing my way through the slithering, lumbering Fae, determined to get Jada’s back. Criminy, how had she been holding them off this long?
All around me sidhe-seers were fighting Fae in a horrifically unmatched battle. We had three weapons: spear, sword, and Barrons, at least until the others of the Nine got here, and sidhe-seers were going down hard and fast.
As I spun, kicking and stabbing, I was painfully aware of the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire going off. I have a special hatred for digging bullets out of my body without Unseelie flesh in me, and I’m trying really hard to abstain. I whirled, nulled, and was about to stab when the Unseelie I was after went flying backward, knocked off its feet by a concentrated burst of bullets.
“Hey!” I snarled. “Get off my kill!”
“Sorry!” one of the new sidhe-seers, trained by Jada, snarled back as she hurled herself past me, taking a Rhino-boy off its feet. As I watched, she yanked a machete from a sheath on her back and began hacking the Unseelie into pieces. Damn. The sidhe-seers might not have weapons that killed immortals but they were pretty darned good at slicing them up, rendering them ineffective.
I felt an Unseelie behind me, spun, hand out to null, stab, move. Null. Stab. Move. It was beginning to seem the Fae were ridiculously easy to kill. I was fighting better than I ever had before. Not one of them was managing to land a blow on me, as if deflected by an invisible shield. I was astonished by my own amazing prowess, how much better I’d gotten without even practicing.
I plunged into the battle with ferocity, periodically catching a glimpse of the ebony-skinned beast that was Barrons, lunging, powerful muscles bunching, jaws wide, ripping with talons, shredding with fangs. As I worked my way toward Jada, Barrons pushed farther into the crush, and I realized he was shoving sidhe-seers from harm’s way, trying to make them see he was on their side by taking down Fae in front of them.
I began shouting to all the sidhe-seers I passed, knowing the other Nine would soon be joining us: “The black beasts with red eyes are on our side! Don’t attack them! Don’t kill the black beasts. They’re fighting for us!”