Chapter 1
EYES CLOSED, MIND open, he waits. A
frisson of anticipation passes through
him, eliciting a shudder, a sigh. Not long now. Not long at all.
He tastes danger in his casting, and
possibility. Perhaps a promise calling to him from the Above. Here in the
Below, there is only the safety of a prison.
He has sent the restless ones ahead,
knowing their portals to the Above are far less obtrusive than those he and his
fellow Fomhoire must use. The restless are creatures of magic; it is in their
very nature. They can slip from the Below to the Above and back again with
ease, making hardly a ripple in the bounding. One reason why they are such
perfect predators.
Somewhere close, just beyond his reach,
a Sidhe works her magic, a spider spinning a web. As with any spider, once she
is dead, her web can be broken with little more than the swipe of a hand.
She and
her kind keep watch, seeking to confine the Fomhoire to this place. But they
are easy prey; the network of awareness they use to guard the boundary is
porous. It grows weaker by the day. Time is on the side of the Fomhoire, as are
the fates.
This
night’s triumph will offer but a taste of what is to come.
A tremor
runs through the magic Above. It flickers, like a candle guttering in a sudden
wind. An instant later, it is duller, more faint.
Now, he sends to those around him.
And they
echo, keening to one another, Now,
now, now!
He leads
them, and so must keep his anticipation in check, though their eagerness
mirrors his own. Emotion and desire flutter in his heart, and he stifles a
grin. Freedom, blood, revenge—all of these and more beckon to him.
Now, his mind whispers again.
His
conjuring is complex and demanding, even with the Sidhe web weakened, even with
other Fomhoire lending him their strength. The incantation is as old as Baelor
himself. The words are like stones in his mouth, and the power, as it awakens,
seems to heat his blood to a boil, scalding him from within: his chest, his
limbs, his head.
Soon enough, the portal opens. Silvery gray, its edges
jagged as broken glass and gleaming like
cold moonlight. The others clamor forward, and he orders them back with
a single snarled word. They retreat, glowing eyes darting between him and the
glimmering rent in the fabric of their world. Those margins would burn like
Sidhe fire; it needs to be wider before they can pass. He repeats the spell
over and over, his voice building each time he starts anew, power coursing
through him, the pain of the burn tipping over into ecstasy. And still he
chants, until he is incandescent and the portal is broad enough for all of them
to cross.
He waves
them through, not daring to interrupt the incantation. When all have gone, he
follows, allowing the gap to snap shut behind him. Release leaves him
lightheaded; he staggers, rights himself.
The
other Fomhoire watch him. They appear in human form now. He examines himself, runs a hand over face, neck,
chest. Unlike his companions, he is clothed—the advantage of being a
shapeshifter in the Above.
The
restless ones stand nearby—three of them, blood staining their mouths and chins. Their stench reaches him, and he
winces. It never bothers him in the Under; only here.
The
ravaged body of a Sidhe lies at their feet. Her blood dampens the pavement,
glistens with the glow of a streetlamp. Her chest rises and falls, the movement
faltering, labored. Her eyes remain open.
He walks
to her, the feeling of movement both alien and oddly familiar. It is always
like this at first.
The Sidhe stares up at him, eyes wide, imploring, her
breaths shallow and quick. The restless ones have fed
first on her innards, as they are wont to do. Later, after he finishes with
her, they might take the rest.
"You
want to die, yes?” he says. His voice sounds odd, but this too will pass in
short order. Already he feels more at ease in his Above form. "There is much
pain?”
She can
only gape. She is nothing; she might as well be dead already. But she lives,
and so might be of some use.
He
squats beside her, glances at the mass of bloody feathers nearby. A hawk. Her
conduit, no doubt. Without it, she is powerless. The restless ones have done
well.
"I could
kill you. End the pain. Would you like that?”
Tears
brim in her eyes.
"Release is yours if you grant me a simple boon: the
names and whereabouts of those
who maintain the network with you.”
Weak as
she is, dying, her body in ruin, she manages to convey her refusal. The look in
her eyes hardens. She turns her gaze skyward.
"I
expected as much.” He stands. "Die slowly, Sidhe.”
He turns
back to the other Fomhoire, sees hunger in their expressions.
"Find
clothes,” he tells them. "Find conduits for yourselves. Then hunt. Already,
we’ve killed one. More will follow. For some of you, this is your first time in
the Above. It is a wondrous place, once you get used to it. But remember, the
war is everything.” He waves a hand at the bloodied thing behind him. "Every
Sidhe corpse brings us that much closer to the victory first sought by our
forebears.” A smile curves his lips. "Now, go.”
They say
nothing, but turn and shuffle off into the night, their movements stiff,
awkward. He knows, though, that they will find their way and blend in, as
others have done before them.
He no
longer wonders if the Fomhoire will prevail, only when, how soon. He watches
the others go before approaching the three restless ones.
"Have
you found any of the other Sidhe?” he asks.
One of
the creatures answers, its voice like steel scraping stone.
"Good,”
he says. "Where?”
They
tell him and leap into the sky, soaring on membranous wings. He will follow on
foot, once he has his conduit. It is all happening swiftly now, more so even
than he anticipated. The Sidhe, he feels certain, do not yet understand how
close they are to being destroyed. An advantage he and his fellow Fomhoire must
exploit.
He
glances at the woman. She moves no more, her eyes are glazed and dull. Another
gone. And not so many left.
Chapter 2
TWO DROPS OF blood. One on the bottom
stair, glistening on brick, red on red. The other on the cement landing by the
front door.
The
drops were small; she might easily have missed them, walked past and into the
house without noticing. But having seen, she couldn’t look away, and she
couldn’t take another step.
She stood rooted to the walkway, empty reusable grocery
bags tucked under one arm, an
oversized bottle of Australian Shiraz in the other hand, her purse slung over her shoulder. And she stared at the
blood.
Alistar
has cut himself, said a voice in
her head. He’s cut himself while working
in that damn garden of his.
To which
a second voice—Alistar’s, usually so calm and reassuring—said, No, he’s dead. You need to get the hell out of here.
Blood,
brick, the geraniums in the ceramic planters Alistar had placed on either side
of the stairs. So much red today.
The
front door was open behind the screen. Burl should have been there watching for
her, tail wagging, tongue lolling happily. Or he might have been in the back
garden with Alistar, in which case he should have come bounding around the
corner of the house as soon as she pulled up.
She
reached for the dog with her mind, with her magic. Nothing. This is what she
felt at the store. This was what made her rush through the rest of her
shopping, what drove her to flee the grocery store, leaving her half-full cart
beside the check-out line. The sensation had been abrupt, final, like someone
placed a wall between them.
Like
someone had killed her conduit.
On that
thought, she was moving again. Not inside, but to the back, the sweat on her
palm making the bottle slick and unwieldy. At the corner of the house, she let
the canvas bags drop to the ground. She kept hold of the wine; a weapon now.
As soon
as she stepped into the backyard, she spotted Alistar. He lay in the dirt
between the slate patio and his bed of gladiolus. Even from a distance, she
could see the blood that stained the front of his shirt, like a fan-shaped bib.
She faltered a step, a choked sob escaping her, her stomach seizing into a
fist. An instant later, she was at his side, knees cushioned in the rich black soil.
A faint stench hung in the air, cloying, foul, the smell of rot, of disease, of
death.
Alistar’s
throat had been cut, ear to ear, the gash a ghoulish grin on his neck. His
eyes, pale blue and once electric with wit and mischief and passion, were fixed
on a clear sky, unseeing, lifeless. His midsection.... She
couldn’t even look at that. Whatever killed him had feasted as well. She wanted
to believe they waited until he was dead, but she knew better. A tear rolled
down her cheek, and she swiped at it. It landed like a raindrop on the slate,
darkening the stone just beside Alistar’s hand.
His
bloodied hand. One crimson-stained finger appeared to point at a dark scrawl on
the patio. Letters in blood. A single word. Or part of one. "S-L-U-A—”
Not
much, but enough.
"Oh,
Alistar,” she whispered. But her heart hammered.
Now she
understood where that terrible smell had come from.
Sluagh. Shadow demons. Winged, enormous, utterly without
mercy. Fomhoire assassins.
Get
the hell out of here!
His
voice again, urgent and compelling.
First,
though, she had to find Burl.
If a
Sluagh did this, or more likely a trio of them—the old powers did things in
threes or fours—Burl would be dead, too. They would sense the magic in him and
assume he had been Alistar’s conduit. Forced to guess, she would say the poor
dog was dead before Alistar knew what was coming.
She
remained beside him for another moment, trying to reconcile the wreckage before
her with her memories of the man she had loved. She never should have gone out.
She was the one with a conduit, the one who had been maintaining their part of
the network since the death of Alistar’s conduit two months ago. She should
have stayed here and sent Alistar to the store. But he was so happy in his
garden, and she was gone for such a short while.
It’s
not your fault, and this is no time for blame. Go.
Leaving
him seemed wrong. He deserved... more.
No.
You have to go. And you have to take it with you.
She
stood, gripped the wine bottle once more, and strode to the back door. It was
open, of course. Burl lay sprawled on the kitchen tiles, his silky white fur
matted with blood, his water dish overturned, the floor covered with a thin,
dark pink mixture.
Tears
again, a stream of them this time. How could she cry so for her dog, when she’d
shed barely a tear for Alistar?
He
wasn’t just a dog.
She felt
more than grief. The stench of the Sluagh was thick in here. She gagged, biting
back against the bile rising in her throat and the terror clawing at her chest.
Without a conduit, she was vulnerable, all but defenseless. Sidhe or no, she
couldn’t cast much of anything without a source for the magic.
She swallowed hard, wiped her eyes again. Burl deserved
to be buried, too. Losing either one of them would
have been bad enough. But both?
She
stepped over the dog, avoiding the stained water, and halted at the door to the
dining room. Drops of blood trailed away from the kitchen, through the dining
room, and into the living room. Toward the front door. She guessed they had
come in from the front, killed the dog, gone back out the same way, and snuck
up on Alistar from behind. Then they returned to the house and ransacked it,
breaking and tearing nearly everything of value. Sluagh wouldn’t worry about
leaving behind a trail of destruction, much less a splattering of blood. They
were hunters, nothing more or less. They worried about the kill and whatever
they’d been sent to find.
At last,
terror kicked in. She hurried to the bedroom, knowing she couldn’t take much.
There wasn’t time, and the Sluagh hadn’t left much intact. Clothes, photos,
papers, books, music. Most of the furniture was Alistar’s and what belonged to
her wouldn’t fit in her car.
Alistar
had insisted they keep boxes in the attic and packing tape in the utility
drawer, just in case there came a time when they would need to leave without
delay. He had also paid the rent on a month-to-month basis; no lease.
"I want
to be able to leave this place on an hour’s notice, and never look back,” he
often said.
Hearing
the words in her head once more, she muttered, "You were supposed to come with
me, old man.”
She was
packed in less than two hours and had the car loaded before nightfall. But she
waited until dusk to return to the garden for the one thing she couldn’t leave
behind.
When it
was dark enough, she went to the garage and retrieved the ancient wooden crate
Alistar stored there. It must have weighed ten pounds empty. She carried it to
the farthest end of his garden, took a spade from his shed, and removed the
stone from its spot in the dirt.
"It
should be packed in soil,” he’d told her at least two or three times. "And the
crate should be nailed shut.”
On one
occasion she laughed at him. "Why tell me all of this? You’ll be the one
packing it. You never let me near that thing.”
He’d
stared back at her, silent and grave and beautiful in the dying light of an
autumn afternoon. Had he known it would come to this? Had he seen it?
She stared at the gaping hole she’d left in
the dirt. They had hosted parties at the house, sat with friends on the patio,
sipping wine and chatting deep into the night. No one ever noticed the stone,
which was just as it had to be.
There
was nothing striking about it. It was vaguely round, about the size of a
honeydew melon, dull grey, with a few gleaming specs of mica and quartz. And
with the spells she and Alistar had cast on it, its power was dampened. She
shivered, as if someone ran a magical finger down her spine. The spells. They had
cast them together, so that if one of them died, the spells would survive. He had seen
this day coming.
Bastard.
Brilliant bastard. More tears streamed
down her cheeks. She went back to work.
The
stone fit perfectly in the crate. She had created a nest of soil for it,
leaving just enough room to sprinkle more dirt around it and over it. She
sealed the crate then retrieved the other stone from behind the shed. It looked much like the first; same color, shape,
and size. She put it where Alistar’s stone had been, smoothed the dirt
surrounding it.
She
stood, lifted the crate with a grunted "Sonofabitch!” and staggered out to the
car. There she wedged it into a space she had left unfilled in the far corner
of the rear hatch. As an afterthought, she threw in the shovel, too. It had
been Alistar’s, just like everything else in the garden shed. She slung coats
and a few dresses over the stone, arranging and then rearranging until it all
looked natural, like she was a slob, rather than someone trying to hide something.
When
everything else was done, she went to the basement for the last of Alistar’s
precautions. Somehow, he had managed to buy or steal license plates from half a
dozen states. On their own, the plates would have been of limited use, but he
had also arranged to have new registration stickers sent each January from the
state DMVs. She didn’t know how he did it, and he never bothered to tell her;
it was just Alistar being Alistar. But she was smart enough—or maybe scared
enough—to put a fresh set of plates on her car, and to take the others with
her. From now on, she would be from Maryland. Until she needed to be from
somewhere else.
She
tossed the old plates and the wrench into the back and closed the hatch.
She
needed to let the others know. Their part of the network was open now, exposed.
In recent months she had sensed gaps, weaknesses in their web of magic that the
Fomhoire might exploit. Now it was worse, and without her conduit there was no
easy way for her to send a warning. All she could do was run and hope she’d
find an opportunity to tell them later.
It
didn’t feel right. Alistar still lay in the garden, Burl in the kitchen.
Alistar
had long been a prominent figure in the Sidhe community, which made her one as
well. They had helped establish the network monitoring this part of the Sidhe
world for Fomhoire incursions. That was reason enough for Fomhoire and their
Sluagh friends to want Alistar and her dead. Not that they needed reasons to
kill.
She
sensed, though, that the Fomhoire were also after the stone, and she didn’t
understand why. Alistar had never explained to her the stone’s significance.
For years she had wanted him to tell her, but always he refused. Now she needed
to know, and he was gone.
"That
part wasn’t so brilliant, old man,” she whispered, peering through tears at the
darkened house.
You’ll
figure it out. Now, go!
She climbed into the car, and with one last glance
toward her home, toward the gardens, she drove away.
