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Vitae
A fanfare of trumpets exploded in my car. I glanced at the bronze angel to find the figurine’s expression mixing shock and horror. A blinding wall of white obscured everything as my Mercedes dropped out of Creation and almost ran over a winged figure in white robes.
He leapt upward over my car, but rather than appear disgruntled he beamed like a happy child.
Unlike the transparent veil Vilicangelus employed to separate us from creation, the surrounding white was absolute. I got out and turned toward him.
He stood at last eight feet tall, crowned with long brown hair that fell nearly to the center of his back. A golden rope restrained robes and the muscles beneath straining to get out. A similar circlet kept hair out of his eyes. His teeth gleamed whiter than his wings—an all but impossible feat.
I folded my hands behind my back. “I do not believe we are acquainted, Nuntius.”
His voice shook the world around us. “I have come, beari—” He stopped, starting again with his voice lowered to an exuberant boom. “I have come, bearing a missive for Atlanta’s Shieldheart.”
He kneeled to one knee, extending both arms holding up an ancient-looking tome.
I strode forward noticing thick, braided silver and gold hemming his robes. Three small trumpets adorned his circlet. The book laid across his forearms was wrapped in a thick leather but surprisingly light when I took it.
“You have my thanks, Nuntius.”
He stood, frowning. “You’ve misnamed me twice as one of your kind’s messengers. Do you truly not know me?”
“That’s correct. Your message is delivered, take my thanks with you on your way.”
“I do not think you understand the honor you’ve been given, Atlanta’s Shieldheart. My service is given you by special dispensation to dwell with you among mortals and bring order back to this shire.”
I bristled.
Pins and needles bit into my fingertips and the spots on either side of my jaw beneath my ears burned hot. “This tome is all I require.”
His eager grin faltered. “Begging your pardon, Shieldheart, but without your Watcher you may not be aware what transpires—”
“I do not offer you my pardon, messenger. Atlanta is my realm, and I see to its order and its Shield.”
“But it is said you do not stand at the side of your Aqua—”
Outrage burst from me, filling the white place with fury like thunder. Power washed around me and my words boomed. “Aquaylae is a wafer-licking traitor that belongs under heel!”
A serious expression exposed wrinkles on the messenger’s young face. “Shieldheart. I like not the feel of thy magic. Though you were created second, your strength cannot match those that first served.”
It took all my will not to teach the young messenger the error in his words. “You have discharged your delivery. I require no further assistance at this time. Leave this realm and return me to Creation.”
“You are rejecting my service?”
“Have you lodged feathers in your ears? Yes, I reject your service and forbid you contact with the others of my Shield. Now, begone from my sight.”
Blinding white walls vanished. Tires screeched. Metal slammed against metal and my Mercedes lurched forward into a Corvette. German craftsmanship disintegrated American fiberglass like hot water on cotton candy.
I shot the minivan driver that had hit my Mercedes a look worthy of a Greek gorgon.
Terrance
Terrance stretched in the locker room, getting a feel for his new body before enjoying the relative luxury of a cool shower. He cleansed methodically, bolstering the bones of each limb with a protective layer of stone as he washed it. The new muscles weren’t used to the weight, making them move more sluggishly than he might otherwise want going into a fight.
Since the shower area was broken up into walled-off cubicles, he took a moment to transmogrify his entire form into essence. The primordial scent of new-growth forest and freshly-turned earth filled the small space. He inhaled deeply, remembering beloved corners of Creation. Caelum or Aquaylae might’ve poked fun that he enjoyed his own scent, but they were both absent.
One an injured captive, the other free somewhere. Are you well, little sister?
He’d been ordered to capture her if they encountered one another. Fortunately, he’d not witnessed her current body allowing for, if not perfect, at least plausible deniability.
The order itself suggested one of the others had encountered Aquaylae or Vitae. Within the murky cave Dunham caged Terrance, he couldn’t be sure who’d allowed the free shields to escape, but Caelum’s condition pointed to the younger shield’s guilt.
Terrance focused on his essence. Unlike Quayla’s fluid form, a mud bordering on the consistency of clay composed the base essence of Terra phoenixes. A thick lichen shrouded the dark, wet soil, making Terrance resemble one of mortal kind’s Chia pets in the earliest stages. Unlike Caelum’s or Ignis’s essence, Terrance’s essence maintained a stubbornness to stay unified and in a set shape.
Much like water and the reason Quayla and I feel such pain separating out our essence.
Terrance bullied his essence, shifting extra breast and hip mass into muscle. The new body would be leaner, better able to manage the added weight to its limbs and easier to balance. He could remold his features too—not something he wanted to reveal to Dunham—and even make himself appear male again. It would be appearance only, since the encoding in the new body was and would remain female. Terrance hadn’t died unexpectedly in some time and thus hadn’t lost the opportunity to fix his ID prior to death in many rebirths.
Female bodies have chemical and biological difference, but their senses and connection to Creation are often stronger.
He chuckled, a musical note far from his old rumble.
It’s Mother, not Papa, Nature after all.
Terrance completed rearranging his essence once he’d bullied his shape into a body better balanced for the combat ahead. He stepped out of the shower cubicle only to bump into a tiny but athletic girl in her late twenties. The collision cost both of them their towels and balance, but Terrance regained his feet first. His eyes lingered on her, traveling head to foot with a few short stops that kindled the primal hunger common in a new body. His gaze rose to her face, finding a hard expression in place to mask flustered embarrassment.
“I’m sorry for knocking you down,” Terrance purposely pushed damp hair away from his face. “I’m also sorry for staring. I know I shouldn’t envy others, but sometimes you see someone and just wish you could be as beautiful.”
The girl’s hard expression transformed into a full-fledged blush.
Terrance picked up his towel and offered it with a hand up. “I really am sorry.”
The girl took the hand. Once Terrance had her on her feet, he lowered his head to hide his face behind dark curls and turned back to his locker.
“Don’t you need your towel?”
“I’ll grab another. I didn’t want to bother you anymore.”
“I’m Bree, I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”
Terrance turned, standing in profile half engaged in the conversation and halfway positioned to flee. “Terra. I’m one of Dunham’s new acquisitions.”
“Mister Heffernan hired you personally?”
Terrance chose a noncommittal tilt of his head.
“What did you think of him?” Bree asked.
Terrance considered his answer for a few moments. “I have no fondness for arrogant megalomaniacs.”
Bree gasped.
“I apologize for distressing you, but I must be going. Dunham scheduled me for a meeting I may not miss. Have a good day.”
For a moment, Terrance thought she might say more, but she allowed him to return to the lockers. The clothes Dunham provided no longer fit the adjustments to his body. For the same reason he transmogrified in an area less susceptible to Dunham’s surveillance, Terrance chose not to convert the clothing to essence and back with a corrected fit in the locker room.
Security in the lobby provided him a long duffle bag ostensibly containing the requested cudgel. When he asked about the address he’d been promised, they directed Terrance to a waiting car. He’d have rather had lone access to a vehicle, but having a driver meant relinquishing responsibility for arriving at the right place in a timely manner.
The mortal tried to use the vehicle as a rolling speak easy, but Terrance focused on preparing for the battle ahead. He was required to assault both sides of a Sidhe battle. He was neither permitted to adhere to the strictures proscribed in the Articles of Ararat nor to allow any of the combatants to escape alive. The plausibility of complete obedience didn’t seem one of Dunham’s concerns. He had control of Terrance through his egg.
He would demand.
Terrance was expected to obey.
The smile grew slowly, a widening furrow in fresh earth.
Dunham’s orders, if interpreted and implemented correctly, provided conditions that could be used to Terrance’s advantage.
Waves of Sidhe taint reached Terrance before the driver stopped outside of a small park. Seeing faeries battling in a public parked during broad daylight felt wrong.
It is what it is.
Terrance strode away from the car, duffel in hand. He inhaled the scent of nature, choking on a thick taint that suggested the potency if not the number of battling Sidhe. Stepping into thick brush that parted around Terrance without so much as a snag allowed for enough cover to transmogrify once more.
He drew rock-heavy soil in through his feet and mixed it throughout his body to increase his available mass. Battle gloves of obsidian and granite, quartz and diamond formed on Terrance’s arms. He raised one leg and sawed it away mid thigh with a sharp edge of obsidian, grimacing at the pain.
Transmogrified into pure essence, there was no risk of bleeding out from cutting through the femoral artery that wasn’t in place at that moment. His unfamiliar balance wobbled a bit, but he redistributed his essence just as he might when filling his nest—or the bottle Dunham demanded be filled—until he’d regrown the missing leg. He kneeled, concentrating and transferring the sacrificed essence into the duffle bag.
I have to trust Anima will sense such a large amount of essence and lead the others here to reclaim it.
Terrance left his bag behind, creeping through summer-dried leaves and undergrowth. The Sidhe battle looked more like an event of the mortal Society for Creative Anachronism. Faerie lords and knights lounged comfortably in tents with sweat-beaded goblets and platters of fine food. Central to the two clusters of tents, lesser faeries battled one another with ferocity the faerie onlookers all but ignored. Mortals undoubtedly in attendance as potential recruits gave the battling Sidhe attention enough to compensate for the bored remainder.
Not ideal, certainly not the situation Dunham described.
Terrance squared his shoulders and marched into the battle field. His clothes had been transformed into body hugging armor modeled in stone after modern designs. “In the name of the Undying Light, I demand your attention.”
The half dozen bloody hobgoblins fighting one another abandoned their opposing Sidhe and mobbed Terrance as a man.
Terrance dodged the first short blade thrust and brought his elbow down to break the metal blade. A curved, serrated blade thrust at Terrance’s face. He dodged to one side, staying just away from the edge the hobgoblin yanked backward to saw into Terrance’s neck.
Terrance slammed a cestus into the hobgoblin’s grinning teeth. He twisted his fist as he landed the blow, quartz and diamond digging through the faerie’s face like a mining drill. His other cestus knocked away a mace, obsidian edge taking off the hand swinging it.
“Cease this at once. I only wish to speak.”
His opposing combatants ignored Terrance, but the observing Sidhe and their potential recruits watched from the edges of their seats. Terrance punched and kicked, spun and dodged. Violet and evergreen blood fertilized the brown grass beneath their feet in a bizarre portrait of gore.
Less than a minute later, Terrance stood alone—the center of a solar system of bodies, body parts and blood.
“Damn, is that what I’ll be like if I join?”
Terrance raised his eyes to the speaking mortal. “No, mortal. You will be deceived and used until one of my kind come for you.”
An Unseelie elf in elaborate silver and raspberry robes stood protectively in front of the speaker. “Don’t lie to the mortal.”
“I did not.” Terrance said. “Hear me, Sidhe. I am here not to enforce the Articles of Ararat as I might wish, but to slay every single one of you. There will be no escape. I will hunt you down until each of you lies dead on the Earth.”
After a short pause one of the elves laughed. His mirth spread to the others.
“This bitch for real?” the mortal asked.
Terrance sighed. The encounter wasn’t proceeding as he’d planned. He’d hoped his warning would turn at least some Sidhe on their heels, allowing him time outside Dunham’s control while he pursued—as ordered. “Very well, I gave you fair warning.”
He chose the mouthy elf as his first prey and waded into the fray.
The elf’s gesture summoned a half dozen goblins. They dropped their serving trays, pulled curved knives and charged. Lesser elves followed a moment behind as two Unseelie ogres lumbered out of their chairs to join the fray.
The goblins barely slowed Terrance, but they weren’t meant to go toe to toe with a juggernaut. The goblin assault allowed the elves time to summon their magic. Crackling hex bolts slammed into Terrance in threes, their caster trios bracketing Terrance from either side. The magic staggered Terrance, but as with most energy in Creation, ground softened its bite.
Terrance took two moments—one to stud his skin with salt crystals and the other to check on the Seelie—before his haymaker tore up an elf’s torso to impale the elf under his chin. He bulled into the elf with a shoulder, spinning to his left to backhand the sharp obsidian edge on his offhand cestus into the gut of the second of three. The elf dodged backward as expected, darting in to gut Terrance only to meet Terrence’s right battle glove with his face.
Hex bolts slammed into Terrance’s back, but the salt further dispelled the energy, reducing them to horsefly bites rather than the deadly blasts they were intended to deliver. Terrance turned his attention to the last Unseelie spellblade only to take a face full of fire so dark red it was almost black.
Pain seared Terrance’s skin, but felt muffled compared to the agony of his melting eyes. His burning hair crisped his scalp. Blades drove into Terrance’s back carrying agony spells on their edge.
Blinded both literally and by the pain, Terrance lashed out in a whirl of fists. At least one of the blades broke off in his back and another blast of fire engulfed him.
Terrance mastered his pain, listening to his feet to position the attacking elves. A flurry of punches impacted three of the four combatants. He pushed his essence into the ground, shaking it underfoot to buy time to master his essence. He leapt with all his might.
In an instant, Terrance transmogrified into his phoenix form, snapping two elf heads off with his talons before landing once more in his human shape to glare at the hellfire caster. Terrance drove into the elf like a locomotive before the elf could respond. He shifted a spike of stone out of one heel to pin the elf’s foot to the ground and savaged the caster with an avalanche of crystal-edged blows.
He turned from the pulped elf to the last of the elves just as the ogres meandered into the fight. Over their snarls, Terrance heard the Unseelie taunting the Seelie as cowards. His experience with the petulant, almost adolescent nature of the Sidhe pretty much guaranteed the Seelie would join the fight.
Terrance took a sword to the gut, the blade scoring his armor but deflecting off to one side. He turned his head at the last moment as the remaining elf’s head exploded violet-grey pudding all over Terrance’s arms. He extruded essence down the Sidhe body, encasing it before hefting the elf off the ground. Terrance swung the elf into the first ogre like a cudgel.
He ducked low, dodging a blow he’d felt more than heard. A long quartz spike grew from the center of his right fist. He drove it up into the ogre’s groin.
The ogre doubled over, bellowing opera and swinging wildly.
Terrance grabbed the beast’s stringy hair and yanked his head down into a newly-grown knee spike.
Massive hands wrapped around Terrance’s shoulders, lifting him off the ground. Terrance swung his legs up as he turned the modern shoulder armor into medieval age spiked pauldrons. The ogre released the sudden spikes before they dug into his hands, allowing the momentum of Terrance’s kick to flip him upward and upside down. He wrapped the ogre’s head in a leg lock and threw his torso weight sideways. Terrance spun a half orbit around the ogre, clapping both cestus into the ogre’s ears with all of his strength.
The ogre staggered.
Terrance raked the obsidian edge across the back of the beast’s head and threw his weight forward. They both fell. The ogre face-planted dead into the ground. Terrance rolled off the felled Sidhe into the Seelie reinforcements.
The Sidhe forced Terrance to transmogrify and repair himself three more times before they fled in opposite directions. He took a moment to catch his breath before chasing down the mortal and disabusing him of any delusions around his survivability as one of the Fae Kissed.
His duty to Creation discharged, Terrance set out after the Unseelie elf lord that had angered him. Dunham’s orders required Terrance to track down the Seelie too, but allowed enough latitude for Terrance to choose the pleasure of vengeance before other concerns.
Dunham
Magic swirled up in a crescendo, coursing through Dunham’s quarters like a welcome symphony. Energy coalesced over a giant flat square of stone in a fog of blues and oranges, violets and reds. Depressions at the four points of the compass held blood fresh from the latest company blood drive. Their contents dwindled as the life energy of his employees fueled the opening Arch.
Viviane strode through first. Her naked skin glowed with a vitality that often clung to her after she returned from Faery. The knights she’d broken—Gherrian and Dolumii—entered next, keeping a wary eye on their opposite.
Either would have gladly slain the other in hopes of earning enough glory to escape their shame. Dunham wouldn’t allow it. Being out of favor within their Courts made them easier pawns and easier to control.
Dunham pointed. “Stack them there, gentlemen.”
Gherrian gave Dunham a look of long-suffering, but Dolumii wanted Dunham’s blood nearly as much as he wanted Gherrian’s. Each directed an entourage of faerie porters as the parade of equipment taken from the Shield sanctum assembled next to the windows. Both knights lingered near Dunham’s caged phoenixes, eyes lingering on runes.
“If you gentlemen are so interested in my spells, I am all too happy to offer you firsthand experience.”
“Watch it, mortal,” Dolumii said. “Her Ladyship may not favor you forever.”
Dunham gathered his power, a litany of silent incantations flashing through his mind. He swept a hand toward the seditious Unseelie knight. Light lashed across him, carving away fine garments to stitch a tortured scar across the faerie’s flesh as a replacement.
Dolumii grabbed at his chest, legs folding beneath him.
Disapproval undercut Gherrian’s words. “If I am not mistaken, that was divine magic.”
“You are not mistaken,” Dunham said. “Imagine it hurts worse than the infernal magic your kind performs.”
Gherrian offered Dolumii a hand up.
The Unseelie slapped the offered hand away, climbing to his feet and drawing an ornate elven sword. “I intended you to join my bevy of slaves eventually, mortal, but today you have chosen your time.”
“Do you really want to die again?” Dunham asked. “Your patron may have excused a death defending her meeting place, but dying again and so soon not to mention when away from your duties. You might not be offered a rebirth.”
“You’re not even armed,” Dolumii hissed.
“I am a druid, elf—the eye of the storm, the balance of forces,” Dunham’s lips curled into a smirk. “Forgive the cliché, but I am a weapon.”
Gherrian placed a hand on Dolumii’s sword arm. “He’s wielding divine power in addition to what Her Ladyship has granted. I do not think even so honored a knight can prevail in this.”
Viviane appeared in an elegant skirt suit fitted in a way that made her more desirable than when she sauntered around naked. She propped a hand on one hip. “Are you boys misbehaving? There’s work to do.”
“See this thing put back together exactly as you removed it.” Dunham crossed to Viviane, lowering his voice. “Your ranks seem less numerous than I recall. Have you assigned them another task?”
Her eyes flashed. “You may recall we are supposed to be thinning the ranks of both Courts.”
Dunham gestured to the gear. “This will allow us to better coordinate deployment of your forces and mine.”
“You exhausted poor Caelum on your own petty business.”
“A test of control, milady.” Dunham smiled. “With a bonus. The Terra is eliminating some of your foes now.”
Viviane’s attention searched the faeries reassembling the Shield’s control room before drifting to Summuseraphi. “We need to find the Vitae and recapture Quayla.”
“The divine is suitably weakened. I don’t think he will be able to challenge his cage again soon,” Dunham said.
“Always plan for every contingency, dear boy.”