Kevin remembered...
Peri, terrified, resolute, stepped forward and willed the Marfach to turn and look at him. It had grown, it glowed with a darkness that pulsed around it. But Falcon was wrapped around Peri like armor, like a cloak, her ferocious determination and refusal to be touched. She’s my Fae gift, he realized, stunned. My magick.
The monster swiveled an eye toward him.
“Let him go,” Falcon snapped.
To everyone’s astonishment but Falcon’s, it did.
Kevin remembered...
THE MONSTER CANNOT TOUCH THE MAGICK OF MOTHER MOON.
The darag’s gentle voice cut through Dark Coinneach’s rage like one of the silver sickles of the draoidhean.
Her magick... is gentle. Thinking was hard. Fury was much easier. Too gentle for this. Fiachra—his blood kin—lay on the floor, the flesh of his torso twisted and melted into a parody of Fae shape. Coinneach’s feet ached with the need to grow tendrils through the Marfach’s obscene body and rend it the way roots shattered stone.
ITS TOUCH WILL DESTROY YOU. DESTROY US.
The sent-image of his darag’s death, the vivid reality and the certainty of it, brought Coinneach up short. Not that. Never that. But what can we do?
ENVELOP IT IN SLOW-TIME.
Yes.
Dark Coinneach started receding into the Gille Dubh’s heart. Rage was a devourer of energy, and slow-time required a massive outpouring of magick for very little visible result. He could not maintain both.
And short of a time-slip, for which he and his darag would have to call on every other darag and Gille Dubh awake in the human world, slow-time was the only chance he could give Fiachra. Or any of them.
Kevin remembered...
Rhoann tore himself from the restraining arms of his husbands and dropped to his knees beside Fiachra. The dark Fae’s face was like a candle left too long by the fireside, his body warped in ways impossible for living flesh.
“I can heal you, dre’thair.” His words were as much for the trembling Peri as for the terrified Fiachra. “This was done by magick alone. I can undo it. But I need water.”
As well ask for the sun on a strand of stars. There was no water in sight, only the hurricane swirl of ley energy around the nexus and the razor-sharp glint of unbound magick over the wellspring.
And the Marfach, rising up over them all, jaws opening wide with a creaking, deafening groan like the sound of bones taxed to their utmost and snapping under unbearable weight.
Mac and Lucien knelt on either side of Rhoann; he put an arm around each, hoping they could feel his gratitude for their presence.
Wind rose around the monster, at once a zephyr and a whirlwind, chill air spilling off a glacier and a desert blast. The dreadful roar faded to a whisper, the dully glowing red eyes stared straight ahead.
Slowly, the Marfach blinked.
“Hurry.”
Rhoann turned with everyone else, at the voice like the creaking of branches under the weight of snow. Coinneach, like the Marfach, was nearly motionless, his hands stretched out in front of him and his fingers interlaced in what was obviously a warding gesture. Unlike the Marfach, though, he trembled under some terrible unseen strain. And in the sudden silence, a soft rustling seemed loud—the Gille Dubh’s toes, growing, receding, trying vainly to root him in the living Stone.
“Hurry,” Coinneach repeated. “I cannot hold it this way for long.”
“Let me help.” Tiernan skirted the edge of the nexus cloud and knelt beside Coinneach, touching the floor next to the Gille Dubh’s restless feet.
A shimmer of crystal, elemental Earth magick, rose from the Stone. Coinneach’s roots instantly sank deep, and the strain in his stance gave way to relief.
Lucien leaned in, his lips brushing Rhoann’s ear. “Now that Bryce has broken the ward and Tiernan’s breached the protection of the Stone—can you talk to the water in the tank upstairs?”
Rhoann’s eyes went wide. “You are my wisdom, laród-ar-Fuzz.”
“If we weren’t in trouble before, we sure as hell are now.” Lucien nipped at Rhoann’s ear in the way he knew Rhoann loved. “Get busy, amant.”
Kevin remembered...
Agony sleeted along every twisted, tortured nerve in Fiachra’s twisted, tortured body, agony so consuming it brought back his body’s memories of the Pattern-passage. Nothing existed—nothing had ever existed—but a universe of pain.
Except Peri’s hand in his. Peri’s lips on his forehead. Peri’s voice in his ear.
“Hold on, aisuruhito. Hold on. Help’s coming.”
Fiachra tried to tell Peri that he would hold as long as Peri needed him to. That he loved him. But he was fairly sure he no longer had a mouth. All he could do was try to squeeze Peri’s hand.
Peri stroked the back of Fiachra’s hand. I love you, too, the touch said.
How had he forgotten their language?
Water. There was water rising all around him. And where it touched him, he had flesh again, flesh free of pain.
Hands splashed water over his body. Cupped hands poured water over his face. He blinked open eyes that hadn’t been there a minute ago and looked up into faces—Peri’s, Mac’s, Lucien’s, Rhoann’s. Rhoann’s eyes were closed, and Fiachra could sense magick flowing from him into the water.
“Thank you,” he whispered, to each of them, and to all of them.
Kevin remembered...
Water charged with the healing magick of the Fae welled up swiftly around Coinneach’s roots, bracing and soothing all at once. The relief was indescribable. Even the strain of maintaining the slow-time skin around the Marfach was eased as the water rose.
And his cousin, his kin-Fae, was whole again, unmarked—
A low sound, a tremor in the air and in Coinneach’s core, intruded on the healing flow.
Louder, and higher. Coinneach’s ears hurt. So did everyone else’s, if hands or paws clapped over ears were any indication. And to a man and to a Fae and to a blind puppy, they were all staring at the Marfach.
The Marfach was staring as well... staring at the rising water. And screaming.
Coinneach’s pain slid into agony as easily and as painfully as a rusty razor slicing into flesh as the monster’s scream scaled up. He dropped into a crouch and wrapped his arms around his knees, trying to curl into a ball, trying to shut out the sound of the Marfach’s terror.
Kevin remembered...
Fuck.
Josh wasn’t sure how he heard Conall’s whisper inside his head, when the Marfach’s scream was like a living thing trying to crawl into his brain and his body.
What is it?
Can’t focus... to channel...
Josh staggered, and Conall with him, battered by the hellish screeching.
And then the force of the monster’s panic snapped the time-channeling Coinneach had put on it, and hell truly broke loose.
The next shriek was almost too high to hear. It knocked Josh off his feet, sending him stumbling over Bryce’s outstretched legs to land face-first in the water. Everyone else was down, too—except for Coinneach, who had the advantage of being literally rooted to the floor.
“Oh, fuck, no,” someone moaned. Josh thought it was Kevin; the trail of blood on the wall behind him suggested he’d hit the stone hard and slid all the way down. Now he struggled to sit up, his hands scrabbling and splashing, as he watched...
We’re dead. Slowly.
Josh wasn’t sure if the words were his or Conall’s. They made sense, though. The Marfach was shedding tiny ravenous monsters from its tail, shaking them loose. They fell into the water like a horrible rain.
Unlike their terrified parent, they could swim.
And exactly like their parent, they were hungry.
Kevin remembered...
Kevin’s eyes kept drifting in and out of focus. Maybe it was the blow to his head. Maybe it was sheer blind panic at the thought of being devoured—for real, this time, not just trapped in his own mind and forced to imagine being eaten alive for the Marfach’s amusement.
“I’m not going to let it get you, lanan.” Tiernan’s voice was firm, but just a little too loud, the way someone might talk who had spent the last couple of hours in front of the speakers at a doom metal concert. “No fucking way.”
Kevin managed a nod. Tiernan had killed to protect him before—right here, in fact, in the previous incarnation of Purgatory’s basement. It hadn’t been Tiernan’s fault that Janek hadn’t stayed dead.
But at the moment, Tiernan couldn’t quite pull himself together enough to stand. And the water was full of chitin-toothed horrors.
Another shriek came from overhead—a lullaby compared to the last one. Areán, the black-headed hawk normally tattooed on Josh’s chest, dove and snatched a tiny monster from the water—no, two, one in its claws and one in its beak. Two sharp snaps, and the creatures fell lifeless into the water as the bird wheeled in the tight space and dove a second time. And a third.
Scathacrú, Josh’s gold-winged dragonet, quickly picked up on the new game. Its flame was less effective in the water than Areán’s beak, but its claws were just as deadly as the bird’s.
“Jesus,” Kevin whispered reverently. The little monsters were schooling, dodging to avoid death from the air, ignoring the humans and the Fae except when trying to hide behind and under them.
Dripping jaws shot out, almost too fast to see, and snapped around Areán, plucking the hawk from the air and snapping its body nearly in half. The severed tip of one wing splashed into the water as the rest of the bird disappeared into the Marfach’s gaping maw.
“Scathacrú!” Josh shouted, holding up his arm; the dragon dove and coiled around it, its head still raised and spitting defiant flame.
Kevin remembered...
#burning feather smell# #tear-scent# #fear-scent#
#strange magick#
why does human-who-flies smell like magick?
“Hey, pup, what are you... oh, fuck, Terry brought my comhrac-scatha...”
swordfae knows what the stone in human-who-flies’ pocket is! #tail wagging# #splash into the water# #stone still in my mouth# #goodpuppy#
“Take it to Conall—hurry!”
#stop# #think#
“conall” is the magefae. and i can smell him. i could smell that much magick without a nose. but his scent is wrapped up in inkscent and fire—
“Hurry!”
monster smell is closer, rotting meat, acid, nose burning. i fade to magefae and inkscent—
flyingfire spitting at me! #growl# #yelp#
“Scathacrú, goddamn it!—hey, what’s this?”
#wagging#
“It’s my comhrac-scatha!” swordfae’s voice is hoarse and raw, and hard to hear after monster-screams.
“Sweet bleeding Jesus.”
what did magefae just do? magick scent is so strong—can’t breathe—i hope firstmaster doesn’t set me to hunt this mage till i’m grown—
inkscent strokes me, gently, no fear-scent on him. but magefae is near, and nervous. i lick my fangs and try to look fierce.
inkscent puts the stone back in my mouth. it tastes different. i try to bite it. #whine#
“It’s not a treat, pupper.”
pupper?
“I think you have to drop it on the Marfach.” inkscent whispers in my ear. it tickles. but he is so serious, i hold still and don’t shake my head. “Can you do that, tréan-cú?”
#tail wagging# but only firstmaster can set me to hunt. i turn toward his scent, and i know when he closes his eyes because i can see. see firstmaster, newmaster, inkscent, water everywhere—
deadmeat acid monster walking slowly through the water, all jaws and armor and burning eyes and a giant tail. and the stench of magick gone dark.
#snarl#
#sit#
was that sound me?
no time to be frightened of my own growl! i pick my spot, low on its back, right before the tail, a crack in its armor, like the curl-up-smell-bad bugs in our basement. i fade.
it knows i’m here, tries to stab me with its tail—i drop the stone—
hard thing on the end of its tail hits me—
paw stuck #yelp#
#flying#
#splash#
Kevin remembered...
What’s wrong, baby?
Josh’s inner voice, for all its arid humor, was remarkably soothing under the circumstances. Not that any amount of soothing was going to do Conall any good. Apart from the imminent end of two worlds, you mean? That dog was bred to send Fae like me mad with growls just like that—oh, spiraod n’Draoctagh...
Setanta went flying through the air, flicked off the scorpion-thing’s back like a fly whisked off a horse’s back with a lashing tail. And before the pup could hit the water, everything blinked.
And now there were two Marfachs.
The fact that Conall had known this was going to happen didn’t make the sight any easier to deal with.
The two monsters glared at one another, unmoving except for tails twitching like thousands of tiny lethal creatures having simultaneous seizures.
Conall would have held his breath if he’d been breathing. If I got that channeling wrong, and they both turn on us...
One Marfach lunged at the other, knocking it off its clawed feet and into the water. A shriek almost as eardrum-piercing as the first one followed, a barbed tail elongating to wrap around the attacker.
One less thing to worry about.
“Twinklebritches!”
Cuinn and Rian were kneeling in the middle of the wellspring next to Coinneach, nearly invisible in the whirl of untethered magick. They weren’t inaudible, though, and Cuinn was beckoning with the hand on the far side of the war zone the nexus had become. As if the Marfachs were going to notice anything but each other right now.
Which, Conall suspected, was a large part of the irritating Loremaster’s reason for summoning him.
Crossing the room was interesting. Josh had to duck a sweeping tail twice, and stopped briefly to scoop Setanta out of the water and gently toss the pup to Lasair and Bryce.
“You bellowed?” Josh’s throat was still raw, Conall noticed, from his call to Scathacrú, and probably from holding back cries at Areán’s fate. One more debt to be paid out of the Marfach’s chitinous hide.
“I did, because I have an idea.”
Kevin remembered...
Cuinn had learned a channeling once that let him tune out sounds selectively, such as the hellish cacophony of two nightmares dry-fucking one another with barbed tails. Unfortunately, he needed said hellish cacophony to stop long enough for him to collect his thoughts and remember the channeling.
Oh, well.
“Listen, Twinklebritches, Coinneach, I think I know how we can trap the Marfach. But it’s going to take both of you. Maybe all three of us, I don’t know.”
Rian shook his head. “Not you, consort mine. You’re going to be needing to hold open the way back to the Realm—”
“Back to the Realm?” The voice was Josh’s, but the you-are-out-of-your-bod-snadhm’e-mind was all Conall. “Pardon me, but wasn’t that what this was all intended to avoid?”
“Ideally, yes. Things stopped being ideal when the monster stole a march on us. Now, listen.”
Remarkably, Conall shut up.
Cuinn hoped the twisting feeling in his guts meant there were a few more miracles lined up waiting to be pulled out of his ass, because they were all going to need them.
“Coinneach. So far as we know, you have the only magick the Marfach can’t turn.”
“Time-magick, moon-magick. Yes.”
“What about the—” Conall shut up again, but not without a pointed glance at the spare Marfach, or maybe the original, presently trying to figure out how to get its narrow inner set of jaws around its opponent’s armored throat.
Cuinn shrugged. “It could probably snack on the comhrac-scatha, if it realized it was there, and if the extra Marfach were inclined to let it. I think all it noticed on its back was Setanta, though, and now it has other things to worry about. Like we do. May I go on?”
“Do dalat-serbhisach.”
“If we live through this and I ever need a saddle-servant, you’ll be the first one I call.”
“GentleFae,” Rian chided softly. “Focus, if you please.”
Cuinn felt Rian’s hand slip into his, and relaxed—not much, but enough. Get me through this, dhó-súil.
I will.
“Right, then. Twinklebritches, can you hook up with Coinneach, use his time magick to craft a laród-scatha around the Marfach? One it can’t break down or break through? One that’s safe for us to send back to the Realm so the Loremasters can take their time, so to speak, figuring out what to do with it?”
If Josh’s expression was anything to go by, Conall’s first reaction to his suggestion had something to do with figuring out which combination of animals to tell him to go fuck. But Cuinn, like everyone else, knew the ginger mage couldn’t resist a good magickal conundrum, not even with untethered magick sleeting around him and death times two duking it out a few feet away.
“Maybe with Lochlann’s help... no, he’d only turn moon-magick into living magick, that’s no good...”
“What is a laród-scatha?” There was movement under the water—Coinneach’s roots retracting from the floor and becoming toes again.
The Frown Line of Extreme Pensiveness had appeared between Josh/Conall’s brows, so Cuinn took the question, not wanting to interrupt anything important. “It’s a sphere made of magic, and it only has an inside, no outside. We used one to send the Marfach to Antarctica and to keep it trapped there under the ice.”
“And you want to craft one from a timeslip?”
Cuinn couldn’t tell if the Gille Dubh was impressed, amused, or appalled—his wide-eyed stare could have been any of the three, and it was hard to tease emotional inflections out of the sound of a gale-force wind. “That was the general idea, yes.”
The sound of creaking wood came up through the floor, muffled slightly by the water. A TIMESLIP CANNOT CLOSE ON ITSELF AS A SPHERE DOES. TIME DOES NOT ALLOW IT.
The voice of Coinneach’s darag, or maybe of all the daragin.
And of course, one of the fucking monsters had to choose exactly that moment to scream at the other. Cuinn thought he could feel his ears bleeding.
Rian squeezed Cuinn’s hand. It was a good notion, any road—
“Wait.” Josh held up a hand, and Cuinn thought he could see the excited gleam of Conall’s apple-green eyes in Josh’s. “That’s perfect. A folded flat mirror can do the same thing, and use less magick.”
“You’re thinking of the mirror you were trapped in. Right after we met.” It was still Josh speaking, but now the voice was all his.
“I am.” Now the voice, a light tenor, quivered slightly. “And it’s going to be a pleasure you cannot even imagine to turn that channeling back on this tón-grabrog.”
Kevin remembered...
Coinneach half-listened to the plans being hastily made around him. He was ready to rejoin the conversation when he was needed, but for the moment most of his attention was devoted to his darag’s calm, and calming, presence.
I have never tried a channeling this great alone.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE. The gleam of moonlight in the darag’s voice was kind. BUT CARE MUST BE TAKEN.
Care with the trapping?
CARE WITH THE CHANNELING. FORCE THE MOTHERS’ MAGICK TOO MUCH, AND TIME ITSELF WILL SNAP BACK, ERASING MEMORIES OF WHAT HAS BEEN.
Coinneach managed a smile. Then I will have to count on you to keep my memories safe for me, as you have always done.
Silence, broken only by the rasping of the Marfachs’ dead shells as they circled one another, so different from the gentle creaking of the darag’s branches.
THIS MOMENT, I WILL FORGET. AM FORGETTING. FORGOT.
But you never forget anything!
“Coinneach?”
The Fae princeling called the Gille Dubh out of his communion; both Cuinn and Josh, or Conall, had fallen silent.
“Yes?”
“We’ll need to be about this soon, if it’s to be done at all. Time magick doesn’t sit well in this place, there’s been too much of it used here in the past. And there’s no telling how long our monster’s twin can keep it occupied.”
Rian ducked as he spoke, and Coinneach flinched back, both to avoid a lashing tail.
“I’d better get my pert round ass over to the nexus, then.” Cuinn’s smirk was as insouciant as it ever was, but he had gone pale as birch bark beneath his tan. “Somebody has to open the door.”
Coinneach watched the Loremaster circle around the edge of the maelstrom of ley energy that was the great nexus, keeping a wary eye on both combatants as he looked for a clear path to the center. There was a slight possibility that one of the Marfachs might ignore him, but Cuinn seemed unready to chance it.
Coinneach didn’t blame him.
“Do you think you can feed me your magick? Or will you have to be the one to channel the laród-scatha?”
A soft rustle of reassurance came through the wellspring. “My darag says I can gift you our magick.”
Conall’s quick smile transformed Josh’s face—and somehow, Coinneach found the observation not the slightest bit confusing.
“Then let’s—”
“Fuck. Me. With. A. Pneumatic. Pile-driver.”
All eyes—except those of the Marfachs—turned to Cuinn, crouched in the center of the nexus.
“What is it?” Rian crouched slightly, ready to throw himself between his consort and obscene death.
Cuinn looked up, his pale jade eyes unnervingly wide. “The other Loremasters have sealed the portal with a timestop—Fae time magick, pretty much the only time magick we’ve got. I can’t get through to them. Twinklebritches, you’re the only one with the wattage to break through this.”
Josh/Conall shook his head. “I can’t. Not and build the laród-draoctagh at the same time.”
Lochlann helped Garrett up from where they had both fallen. “Let us see what we can do to help.”
Kevin remembered...
Terry was glad he had Maelduin’s arm to hold him up. “Any chance the mirror Marfach might kill the real one?”
Maelduin’s gaze never left the horrifying combatants, but something in his touch told Terry his scair-anam was well aware of the fear he thought he’d managed to hide. “Yes, that possibility is always there. The comhrac-scatha would be a poor teacher, else.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
Maelduin drew him back a few steps, carefully keeping him out of the arc a tail might pass through. Space was scarce; Cuinn was crouched in the middle of the nexus next to the black leather chaise, one hand on the floor under the water and the other hand holding Lochlann’s, and even though Terry couldn’t see the magick they were channeling, there was a wavering around them like the air over an arc welder.
Every so often, one Marfach or the other spared a hungry glance at what had to be a magickal feast for the ages, but whatever Josh and Conall and Coinneach were up to was starting to take shape right behind the eye of the nexus, the hazy outline of a mirror, and fortunately for Cuinn and Lochlann, the monsters didn’t want anything to do with it.
Unfortunately for everyone else, the magickal work meant the rest of the basement was getting considerably more crowded. Tiernan had recovered from the godawful scream more quickly than most, and was doing his best to keep one step ahead of the clashing Marfachs, distracting them where he could and helping others stay out of their way when he couldn’t.
“How much longer, Twinklebritches?” Cuinn’s shout rose above the monsters’ hisses.
“Couple of minutes.” Josh/Conall’s voice was even, but Josh and Coinneach were both sweating, and their clasped hands trembled.
“Take your time,” Cuinn rasped. “So to speak. This timestop isn’t budging. What the fuck are the Loremasters in the Pattern thinking?”
“Probably that they don’t want us to do exactly what we’re trying to do. Imagine that.”
No matter how many times he saw and heard it happen, Terry didn’t think he was ever going to get used to the way sarcastic repartee was an integral part of any battle to the death involving a Fae.
“I’m a little busy for daydreaming—”
One moment, Terry was craning his neck, trying to see the nexus through the water and the billows of almost-but-not-quite-invisible ley energy. The next, he screamed as a barbed tail cut between him and Maelduin like a whip cracking, coiled around his waist, and lifted him clear of the floor.
Kevin remembered...
Maelduin’s breath hissed through his clenched teeth. One of the Marfachs was bringing Terry up to use him as a shield against the other. Or, more likely, as bait, hoping to provoke a strike.
How the fuck did I let that happen?
Terry, after his first terrified scream, had gone silent. He was trying to force the monster to let go of him, but pushing at the tiny creatures that made up its tail did no good—they just moved out of the way and re-formed where Terry’s clawing hands weren’t.
Maelduin forced himself to loosen his death-grip on his sword, to let the sword become part of him instead of a thing he wielded.
The Marfach holding Terry feinted toward its opponent, dangling Terry off to one side like a bull-dancer’s banner.
The other monster hesitated.
Terry’s captor shook him teasingly, jarring a cry from him.
The other Marfach took the bait, lunging.
Maelduin pivoted and struck, severing the tail that held Terry, catching Terry in his free arm, and continuing the pivot until they both slammed against the far wall.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m—oh, son of a bitch.”
The sudden silence told Maelduin what he would see, even before he turned—his comhrac-scatha gleaming a sullen violet through the water, and a host of tiny scuttling monsters re-forming the tail of the sole remaining Marfach.
Kevin remembered...
Tiernan moved into position to distract the monster even before Maelduin had finished severing its tail. He would have cursed the water, sloshing around his shins and slowing him down, but he had better things to curse.
“Hey, feol’marh!”
The insect-like head turned slowly toward him, jaws agape. Tiernan thought he could see two more sets of jaws working inside the first, at right angles to one another, dripping something that made the water smoke. Several plates of its armor were missing or broken, too, and whatever was oozing from underneath made a Fae’s sensitive nose want to curl up and hide.
Tiernan didn’t give a fraction of a fuck what the Marfach looked or smelled like. No matter what face it wore, to him it was always going to be the monster that had chained and tortured and raped his lanan. The monster he was personally going to kill.
From the look of things, he didn’t have much time. Conall needed him to keep the Marfach busy, that much was obvious. But the trap was growing quickly, which meant he needed to haul ass if he wanted to be the one to make the monster pay.
If?
The sideways set of jaws poked out of the Marfach’s maw, tasting the air. “YOUR GRACE.”
Apparently it didn’t need the inside jaws to talk. If talking was the right way to describe what it was doing—it sounded like a meat grinder, caught on a chunk of bone.
“You must have missed the memo, lofa’bod. That stopped bothering me years ago—-oh, no you fucking don’t.” Keeping his tone light and sarcastic was an effort, because the monster had started to turn toward Kevin. And his lanan’s face was nearly as pale as his dress shirt, his expression a window onto memories no human should ever have.
Most definitely not Tiernan Guaire’s SoulShare.
Circling around to head the monster off, Tiernan held out his hand as he passed Maelduin. His nephew didn’t have to be told what Tiernan needed; the silk-wrapped hilt of his lovely and lethal sword slipped into Tiernan’s hand as if it came of its own accord.
“Tiernan...” Kevin’s voice was hoarse, but the tightness around his eyes was gone, now that he was looking at his husband and not at his worst nightmare.
Yet there was something haunted in those dark brown eyes just the same—something Tiernan only caught a glimpse of before he had to turn back to the horror picking its way spider-like through the water.
“You don’t have to watch, lanan. I’ve got this.”
“Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Kevin’s determined enthusiasm brought a lump to Tiernan’s throat.
A cold, cutting wind whirled around the nexus chamber, stirring the water and Tiernan’s hair, stinging bare flesh with invisible sleet. “Buy us another minute, blade-master, no more. The trap is nearly set.”
A strangled sound drew Tiernan’s attention to the center of the nexus. Cuinn was down on one knee, one hand on the floor and the other reaching back toward Lochlann. Lochlann, in turn, was calling up a torrent of ley energy fierce enough to make Tiernan glad he was comparatively blind to the stuff.
“I hope you can... feed the meter for... longer than a minute,” Cuinn gasped. “This... bod-snadhm... of a timestop... isn’t budging.”
“We cannot wait.” It was easy to see why Coinneach was doing the talking; Josh’s face was set in lines of concentration so acute Tiernan suspected he and Conall would barely notice if the building came down around them again. “Time resists being bound this way. Much longer, and the backlash may kill us all.”
The Marfach laughed. At least, Tiernan thought that’s what the sound was. “I TIRE OF LISTENING TO YOU TALK TO THE WIND.” A clawed appendage reached for the mage and the Gille Dubh. “A MAGE’S AGONY WILL BE A DELICACY.”
Shifting the sword to his right hand, Tiernan produced a crystal blade from the living Stone of his left and hurled it at the monster’s right eye. It sunk in and vanished, slicing through the thick membrane protecting the eye, releasing a viscous greenish-yellow fluid.
And another eardrum-shattering shriek, as the massive head swung back toward him.
“Now that I have your attention, don’t you and I have some unfinished business?”
The Marfach lurched toward him, thrown off balance by its attempt to claw at its eye.
Tiernan lunged, dodging the claw and flaying seeping flesh left bare by a broken plate. There were times the art of the scian-damhsa and that of the bull-dancer had a great deal in common, and this was definitely one of them.
The wind howled. “Now, Loremaster, now!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Tiernan saw the eerie glow of the mirror-trap. He also saw Cuinn’s sheer desperation.
“I fucking can’t!”
“Then you have to unmake the Pattern.”
Lochlann’s voice was strangely distorted by the power passing through him, but there could be no doubt as to the source. All Tiernan could make out clearly was the corona of the other Fae’s dark hair, crackling with ley energy. Even Garrett was hard to see, though Tiernan knew he was there, wrapped around his SoulShare, acting as his anchor.
“You knew you might have to—the Loremasters told you themselves, the Pattern was proof against anything but one of their own, wielding the power of a whole world.”
“Fuck,” Cuinn replied, with the perfect simplicity of a prayer.
Oh, no, you don’t. Not before I kill it.
Getting close was easier than he’d thought it would be. The monster’s front appendages were good for grabbing and lacerating things at a middle distance, but they sucked for close-in work. His only real worries as he sought a vulnerable spot were its movable jaws and the acidic ichor dripping from its wounds.
And the smell. Sweet Nefertem, the smell.
“IMPATIENT TO DIE?” Those jaws couldn’t possibly be smiling, but Tiernan thought they would be if they could. “FOOL. NONE OF YOU WILL HAVE QUICK DEATHS.”
“I thought you were going to cut off my head.” Tiernan smashed the hilt of the sword down on the inner sets of jaws where they protruded a few inches. “Seems pretty quick to me.”
Tiernan thought he heard a low roaring sound from behind the Marfach, like a blowtorch being gradually turned up. Or a flamethrower.
The Marfach didn’t seem to notice, or if it did, it didn’t care. “YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG I CAN KEEP YOU ALIVE AFTER I TAKE YOUR HEAD.”
Oh, fuck me.
The roar escalated. Even a Noble like Tiernan could see the torrent of Cuinn’s magick now, like an aura around the Marfach, fed by Lochlann and reflected and amplified by the mirror-trap.
“Now, damn it, Mastragna, now!” Josh shouted, in Conall’s voice.
Not yet, Tiernan wanted to yell. Not before he found a way to kill the unkillable.
Although he thought he understood the mage’s near-panic. His vision was blurring—as if he saw the cracked, oozing face as it had been an instant ago, as it was now, and as it would be a moment from now, all at once. And his body was—disconcertingly—out of his control, in the same way, moving before he willed it, when he willed it, and lagging behind.
“Elirei!” Cuinn screamed.
And the Prince Royal answered. Tiernan was nearly blinded by the freeing of the elemental magick of the ceangail bond of the Prince and his consort. Every color of elemental magick, and a few Tiernan suspected were being invented just for the occasion, joined the hellish flamethrower.
All the magick of a world. All of it. Living, elemental, ley and lunar. Fae magick, the magick of the daragin... and the human magick of love.
Taking advantage of Tiernan’s distraction, the Marfach opened all three sets of jaws at once—
“Bi’scaol’e.”
No one should have been able to hear Cuinn’s quiet “be unbound.” But everyone did.
And the Stone groaned under their feet, as a space that was nothing at all irised open.
With Conall’s cry of pure relief, Josh made a sharp cutting gesture. The time distortion caught hold of the Marfach, dragging the monster toward the trap.
The monster’s rear claws and barbed tail raked frantically across the floor, straining to slow its backward progress. Unfortunately for Tiernan, its front appendages were otherwise occupied, lashing out and crushing him to its jointed torso.
Fuck me senseless.
If he could just move an arm—either arm, he didn’t care which—and somehow get the sword free—
A hand caught Tiernan’s arm in a grip as unyielding as iron.
“I’ve got you, lanan.” Kevin’s voice, breathless yet calming. “It’s not going to have you.”
“I ALREADY DO.” The Marfach glared at them both, one eye still dripping gore, its claws raking against the floor like fingernails down Satan’s chalkboard, clearly audible even under water. “AND YOUR TRAP WILL NOT HAVE ME, NOT AGAIN.” It shuddered.
Tiernan hoped it was enjoying the memory of being locked under an Antarctic iceberg.
And his husband was mad. Certifiable. Offering himself up to a monster that had fucking near destroyed the Fae race single-handed, a monster no magick or blade-skill could best. And himself armed only with decade-old wrestling skills... and his purely human magick.
Tiernan had never been so glad of anything, or anyone, in his life.
The time distortion was worse now, stronger, dragging all three of them inexorably toward the mirror gaping wide to receive the Marfach. Tiernan did his best to dig in his bare heels, but a more futile gesture would have been hard to imagine. Kevin seemed to be having better luck, though, shifting his grip to get a better purchase and making some headway against the Marfach’s embrace, especially with the monster still shivering—
The Marfach’s head blurred again.
“Oh, Jesus,” Kevin breathed.
The face looking back at them now was human, mostly. Alive, mostly. Bald, tattooed, one brown-bloodshot eye staring wildly, most of a mouth grinning and showing the stumps of rotted teeth. And a sickly glowing red crystal where a good-sized chunk of his head should be.
“Let’s go to hell together, Guaire.”
Janek stopped fighting the pull of the trap.
The mirror-trap and Janek, together, ripped Tiernan from Kevin’s grip, taking most of a fingernail with them.
“NO!”
“S’vra lom tú g’deo—”
The trap closed.
The Patternless void closed.
And past rejoined present, in utter, shocked silence.