Soul of Fire

Chapter 15

Jan knew that something was wrong first, because she was watching Tyler. He didn’t say anything, kept singing some old love song Jan vaguely remembered from the oldies station, but she knew that his mood had changed. He didn’t look at anyone when he sang, letting his gaze float off somewhere, his thoughts entirely within his head. He used to look like that when he was working, too, not so much thinking as letting thoughts come to him. It was almost reassuring, that familiarity in the middle of so much that was strange. But halfway through, that cracked a little, and he was back, entirely present in his eyes. And the look wasn’t scared or worried: it was broken.

Jan studied her lover cautiously, from under lowered lids. She had been released from her posing duties, the brownie that had been perched on her knee scrambling off, shooting her a dirty look as though arranging their positions had been her idea. She had hoped to escape as well, needing time to recover from the stress of trying to woo the preter over to the idea of the Farm as a potential site for her court, as well as the stress of holding her position for so long, but Nalith had gestured for her to come close, then indicated that the human was to stay by her.

Exhausted but outwardly obedient, Jan had squatted on her heels by the preter’s chair. Occasionally, the preter lifted one of Jan’s hands to look closely at some detail or tilted her face to check the line of her jaw, then turned back to check her drawing, but otherwise she ignored her. The preter had her fingers on Jan’s chin just then, angling her to one side, so Jan had a clear view of the moment Ty’s expression changed. Her heart raced, a shot of adrenaline wracking her body, similar to an asthma attack but without the constriction. It was anticipation, fear, stress, all shaped into a bullet and slammed into her heart.

What? She asked him silently. What is it?

Then the fingers on her skin dug in too hard, the preter having somehow sensed that her attention had wandered, and Jan yelped, wrenching her head away instinctively. She hunched over, anticipating a blow, but none came. The mix of conversations, previously a low hum in the room, died, and Jan risked looking up.

Nalith had risen to her feet, the sketch in front of her forgotten. Her narrow, elegant face was pulled even tighter, making her cheekbones and chin seem even sharper, and her eyes...

Her eyes, when she looked around the room, were filled with an unholy gleam, the deep red of a candle flame obliterating any trace of blue. The atavistic response that had dulled in Jan over months of dealing with non-humans, the week of constant exposure to a preter, rose again suddenly newly urgent, urging her to get the hell away.

“Call in the gnomes,” Nalith ordered, her voice sharp and thin as shattered glass. “Deploy them at the borders of the property. All others, inside. Deploy internal defenses. Now.”

She did not raise her voice: she did not have to. All the supernaturals within the range—the entire main floor of the house, from the sound of things—moved immediately, following whatever plans she had established. Jan waited, still half-crouched on the polished wooden floor, until the main room had emptied of all but Nalith and the four humans, all in various stages of confusion.

“My lady?” Her voice shook, but Jan told herself that it should be shaking in the role she was playing. Anything that upset her queen should upset her. “What troubles you?”

The preter’s hand dropped back to Jan’s head, stroking her hair as though she were a cat. Jan managed to restrain a shudder, although across the room Tyler’s body shook once in revulsion. He was revisiting his own memories again, Jan suspected, and her heart ached for him, even as her brain was racing to get on top of this new development. “My lady?”

“It is nothing,” Nalith said, her voice still splinter sharp. “Merely an intrusion on my territory by those I do not wish to see.”

Hope rose that it was AJ and his crew, finally coming to their aid, and then was dashed again. Tyler wouldn’t look like that if it were supernaturals, certainly not supernaturals he knew. And Nalith would not treat AJ and his crew as such a threat, even if she knew about them, which she didn’t...did she? Jan’s head hurt as much as her chest, trying to parse that, so she let it go. If it was AJ, they’d roll with it. If not...if not, they were in danger, too.

The other two humans were looking at Nalith not with fear or concern but utter befuddlement. The idea that there might be something that could upset her, much less challenge her, was beyond their comprehension. Jan had a sudden unkind thought that they looked like dogs who’d just been told all the bacon was gone.

“Others of your kind, my lady?” Ty had stood up, although he stayed safely across the room from Nalith. He wasn’t asking, really; he knew.

“Perhaps even your former mistress,” Nalith said, intentionally cruel, and Tyler’s jaw clenched, his shoulders hunching over slightly, but he didn’t otherwise react to the blow. Before either one of them could react, or Jan could figure out how to deal with this, there was the sound of loud voices and running feet outside, and one of the brownies came racing in, weirdly flushed. It wasn’t one she could identify, which meant that it was lower in their pack rankings, or however they figured it. Odd: normally they didn’t come in to speak directly to Nalith.

“M-my lady, my lady, they are gone.”

“Who are gone?” Those fire-red eyes turned on the brownie, and it gulped but did not flee.

“The gnomes, my lady. They are not in their compound, and they do not respond to the call.”

Turncoats, AJ had named them, changing sides and abandoning their fellow supers to work for a preter lord—or lady, as it had turned out. Jan didn’t know why she was surprised that they had abandoned Nalith, as well. Gnomes, it seemed, played no side but their own.

Nalith was not surprised. Nalith was furious. Jan fell back, scuttling on her knees without shame until she felt the reassuring bulk of a wall behind her, and wondered if getting behind the sofa would help. Tyler held still, as though hoping that Nalith would forget he was there, and the other two humans, although clueless, weren’t dumb, keeping their mouths shut and their gazes elsewhere.

“All gone?”

“All, my lady.”

There was more noise in the hallway, and some of the supers came back in, clearly waiting for new orders. Martin, Jan saw, was among them, although toward the back of the small crowd. She did a quick mental count. Without the gnomes and minus the supers Nalith had sent to the new houses, they were down to less than thirty, and that included the four humans.

“I will deal with them later,” Nalith said. Jan thought the preter might believe her own words, or she might be whistling, trying to save face in front of the others. Most of them looked as if they wanted to believe her, wanted to believe that whatever was coming, she could handle it without the gnomes’ defense.

“There are weapons in the shed. Cam and Alia, distribute them. Tell my winged guardians to take the roof, make sure nothing attempts to land there.” She looked around the room, and this time she saw the humans, clearly.

“And you, my pets. Will you fight for me?” It wasn’t a question. “Serve me, in this, as you have in other ways.”

Wes and Kerry stepped forward as if they were volunteering to go on a picnic. Idiots. They might have muscles, but she would bet that neither of them had so much as made a fist since they were in grade school. In a fight against foes Nalith feared? They would be cannon fodder. But they weren’t her responsibility. Jan held her breath, and Tyler shook his head roughly, running a hand over his scalp, leaving it resting on the back of his neck, hesitating.

“You would rather chew out your eyes than fight for me, would you not, my singer?” She was using that voice again, the one that hinted at glamour, promised it, making you ask rather than forcing it on you. Jan hated that voice.

“Yes. My lady.”

Nalith smiled, and for once—for once—there seemed to be nothing cruel about it. “Then think of it thus. You would be fighting not for me but to inflict harm on others of my kind, who intend less well to your world. You would strike a blow against those who hurt you.”

Jan bit her lip. She didn’t want Tyler in harm’s way, but if he could take real action, finally hurt the preters, in some way close to how they had hurt him, at least a little...maybe that would be the healing he needed.

Finally, after an agonizing wait, Tyler nodded once.

“And you, my little guide, my useless one?” The preter queen was looking at her, that awful gaze focused on her, pulling her in no matter what she might wish, might fear. If she would only give in to that fire, let herself be consumed by it, then all the worry, all the pain and fear, would be gone, and she would be warm and cared for, all the rest of her life....

Jan resisted. She drew on the memories of facing down Nalith’s consort, of walking into—and out of—the preter court, holding on to the knowledge of what a preter’s care was like, the sound of Tyler’s nightmares and the look in his eyes when he finally came back to this world, all of it bricks in a wall she built, slowly, painfully, between herself and that demanding gaze.

When she felt safe enough, she looked not at Nalith but at Tyler. He was looking at her, waiting. When she nodded once, the tension in his face eased at her assent. Whatever had been going on before in his head, it didn’t matter now. He wasn’t alone. She wasn’t alone. Whatever happened, they would face it together this time.

Nalith either missed the subtext or, more likely, Jan thought, chose to ignore it, so long as she got what she wanted.

“Martin.”

Martin pushed through the crowd, putting himself front and center. “My lady.”

“You will lead the defense.”

“No.”

The silence in the room previously was nothing to the utter dead air that filled the room at that.

“You would prefer to guard your lady?”

“No.” Martin’s voice was flat, unemotional, and final.

“No.” It wasn’t phrased as a question, but she was clearly waiting for an explanation. Jan stared at him, wondering what the hell was going on in his head.

His expression gave nothing away, his eyes flat brown, not showing any of the supernatural spark or human-recognizable emotion.

“You are here in this world, and I recognize you,” he said slowly. “But this pitting of forces against each other, the violence that is filling our world, it solves nothing. You know this. We cannot destroy each other, or the balance between the realms will shift. You know this.”

“I know nothing of the sort.” Nalith’s voice was tight, angry, and her entire body screamed danger, at least to Jan. Martin kept speaking, seemingly oblivious to the threat.

“You do not belong here. They will bloody the very bones of the earth, tear apart our Center, to reclaim you. Sending more violence against that will not save you, nor earn you a place here.”

It wasn’t Martin’s voice, Jan realized suddenly. Or it was his voice, but he wasn’t in it.

“Upstart creature.” And now Nalith let loose her anger, lashing out with one hand. She was nowhere near him, and yet Martin staggered back, his limbs jerking as though he’d receive an electric shock, a high-voltage one. His eyes widened, and Jan felt her eyes try to close, indicating that he was about to change form. Then the impulse apparently passed, and he went to one knee, lowering his head.

“My lady. I will guard your house.” The words were grudging, but Nalith took them at face value, that whatever had spoken before had been cowed into obedience.

“Go. Take these humans with you. Make them useful.”

“What the hell was that?” The moment they were outside the main room, Tyler rounded on Martin, his voice low but furious. “Were you trying to get killed? Were you trying to get all of us killed?”

Martin held up his hand, black nails glinting in the overhead light, drawing Jan’s eye to them. She had gotten used to his looks, the fine dark hairs scattered over his skin, the narrow face and too-wide-set eyes, but the nails always reminded her: they were hooves in another form.

“You two. Kerry, go to the shed. There are weapons there. Find something you think you can wield. Wes, go find Patrick’s supplies, all of them, and bring them down. His chisels might be the right size for some of our cohort to use. They were in good enough shape to be deadly.”

Both humans looked vaguely ill, but nodded and went off to follow his instructions, still driven by their obedience to the preter queen.

“What happened in there?” Jan asked. “What you said...”

“He told me the same bullshit,” Tyler said, still furious. “That violence solves nothing, yak yak yak. Which, coming from him, is nice, isn’t it?”

“It wasn’t him.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t him,” Jan said again. And then she said to Martin, “That wasn’t you talking in there, was it?” Jan needed him to answer that. It probably wouldn’t be one she wanted to hear, but she was getting used to that.

Martin merely shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Yes!” There were days, she swore, she wanted to hold the kelpie’s head underwater. Not that it would do much other than amuse him.

“What, something is beaming its words into your head, working your jaw?”

“No.” Martin was certain about that, Jan less so. “It wasn’t words. It was just like this...knowing. Like when you’re trying to understand something and then all of a sudden it’s all there in your head?”

Tyler shook his head, but Jan nodded.

“There is a balance to this world, to both realms,” Martin said, putting a hand on each of their shoulders and pushing them into the now-empty and abandoned kitchen. “We have always known this, and you humans, too, when you think about it. The Center remains, and we balance around it. Occasionally it tilts one way or the other, but over time, it recalibrates, remains steady. If the portals hadn’t changed, that would have remained. Now...the preters may have lost their center, and we’ve done something that...filled the gap?” Martin’s long face scrunched together, as if he was giving himself a headache. “The magic changed, and they were vulnerable to it, changed by it. If we kill them all, here, we may damage our Center, as well.” He frowned. “I think. This is more Elsa’s thing, not mine.”

“Yeah, you’re just the dumb blond. We got that,” Jan said with more than a touch of sarcasm. “So, if the balance is thrown off,” she asked, “then what? What happens?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Change may not always be a bad thing, but that does not automatically make it a good thing.”

“You said that before, about maintaining a balance.” Tyler caught Jan’s glance at him and shrugged. “He was trying to talk me out of being an idiot.”

“Hmm,” she said and then decided that they didn’t have time to dig into that, not without knowing what was about to happen. “And about the Center and earning a place here?”

“That...wasn’t me. I think it was the Center.”

Somehow, that was the only thing in all this that made sense to Jan, that the oasis of calm and recovery would be able to reach out and speak through Martin’s voice. In fact, when she thought about it, it all made perfect sense. She had lost her mind.

“My life is insane,” she said. “All right, so we’re supposed to help with the defense?”

“I can’t,” Martin said. “But I needed to agree, to get you two out of there.”

“I’m staying,” Tyler said. “I have to.”

“You’re going to die, human,” Martin said, as if he’d said it before, and Tyler shrugged, looking unhappy. “Maybe.”

There was a sharp rap of something hitting glass, and all three of them turned to look at the kitchen’s single window. A hand pressed against it, palm down, and then made a pointing gesture toward the door.

It wasn’t a gnome’s hand, so Jan moved to unlatch the lock. A slender figure with dark, mica-glittery skin slipped in, its clothing rumpled, shoes covered in mud and its face splattered with what Jan was pretty sure was blood. Not its own: it seemed unharmed, if exhausted.

“Seth.” The lizardlike super had been one of AJ’s lieutenants back at the Farm. “Are you all right? What happened? Did AJ send you?” The questions tumbled out of her mouth, even as she reached out to brush at the smudge on its cheek. “Is everyone okay? Did you get my email?”

Seth shook his head, not saying no but rather indicating that there was no time to answer questions. “We’ve been looking for you. AJ’s orders. The witch told us where you were. You need to come. Now. AJ needs you.”

That was all Martin had to hear. He half turned, opening the refrigerator to grab three bottles of water, handing one to Jan. “All right,” he said. “But we have to hurry—the preters have found their missing queen, and they’re coming, fast.”

Seth blinked at them, double eyelids making the effect seem even more surprised. “Preters, here?”

“And we don’t want to be here when they get here,” Martin said.

“Right. No. Right.” Seth blinked his underlids again and then slid back out the door, clearly expecting them to follow. Martin was barely a step behind, while Jan, the water still in her hand, was staring dumbly, trying to catch up to what had just happened.

“Wait, how are we going to—” she started to say, but they were already gone. “Damn it,” she swore, checking to make sure that she had her inhaler in her pocket, the witch’s sachet and the carved horse in the other. There wasn’t anything still upstairs that was hers, really.

“Come on. Let’s go,” she said to Ty.

“I can’t.”

“What?” Her first thought was that she’d misheard.

“I can’t. I won’t.”

“Ty...” She looked at the door, then back to her boyfriend, feeling helpless. “You’ve got to!”

“I don’t got to do anything except what feels right. Zan said so, back at the Farm. And it feels right to stay.”

“Jesus Christ, Tyler.” Jan almost hurled her water bottle at him. “You— I can’t—”

“Go. You don’t need to be here.” Before she had time to parse that, either, she was in his arms, a rough and unexpected hug. It was the first time he had initiated contact, and certainly the most intimate contact, since...since before he had gone to meet Stjerne, the preter who had stolen him. “I love you,” he said, almost a confession. “I always have. I always will. But I can’t be like this. I can’t let go, and that means I can’t be with you, either. Let me do this.”

And then he shoved her away, out the door, and closed it roughly behind her.

The backyard was quiet. The area where the gnomes had been camping was a mess of abandoned bedrolls and tents, but nothing moved, not even a squirrel or bird. She could hear traffic from down the road, the sound of an occasional car, and voices shouting to each other, but if there were a dozen or more supernaturals gathering, preparing for battle, she could neither see nor hear them.

Somehow that was worse than if she’d walked out into an armed camp.

Martin and Seth were nowhere to be seen, either. Jan felt abandoned by both her companions, a hot splice of self-pity mixed with panic. Should she go back into the house, throw herself onto Nalith’s nonexistent mercy, fight and hope that whatever had spoken through Martin’s voice was wrong, that battle wouldn’t doom them all?

No. Whatever happened, whatever Tyler decided, Jan knew she could no more go back into that house than she could fly. Martin had told her where he’d left that car; she didn’t have GPS or a map, but maybe she could find that and...then she’d worry about where to go next.

Uncapping the water bottle she only now just realized she was holding, Jan stepped off the back deck and started walking as casually as she could. The yard was large enough, but it seemed twice as wide when you were hoping not to be noticed.

“You, human.”

“Yes?” Her voice didn’t crack, not even when hard, thin fingers latched on to her arm, halting her midstep.

“You’re not armed.”

No, she thought, half-crazed, you took them all. She hadn’t encountered a multi-limbed super before, much less one shaped vaguely and disturbingly like a praying mantis. “I... No. I was supposed to go out to the shed to find a weapon.”

The super snorted, impressive considering it didn’t seem to have a nose, only a wide mouth set over its eyes. “Nothing out there you could use, bitty thing like you. Here.” It reached out with a lower limb, and she took the serrated blade offered almost automatically. “Go low and stab,” it told her. “You’ll do more damage that way than trying to go overhand.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll... I’m going to walk the perimeter. One thing I’m really good at is screaming loud, if I see something I don’t like.”

Jan was pretty sure the super grinned at her, and the grip on her arm turned into a pat on the shoulder. “Not bad for a human,” it said and then went on its way in the opposite direction.

Jan finally remembered to breathe and, with the knife in one hand and the water bottle in the other, kept heading for the far edge of the property, where a break in the fence suggested she might be able to slip through unnoticed. It took sliding sideways to manage, and the splintered wood dug into her legs, but she got through.

When another hand grabbed at her from behind, tugging the sleeve of her blouse, she swung instinctively, the point of the blade digging up until it met resistance, and she heard a startled yelp.

“Woman, what?”

“Oh.” Jan let the blade drop back a little, looking into Seth’s startled face. “Sorry?”

“Good reflexes” was all he said, although he winced a little as he flexed the arm she’d hit. “We’re going to need that. Now, put that away and come on.”

Martin was waiting across the driveway on the other side, looking impatient but also relieved. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, she suspected. But Tyler wasn’t the only one who went with his gut. This, crazy as it was, felt right.

They made it on foot to the bridge that led into town. A girl with pale green hair sat on the stone-lined bank and kicked her feet absently, looking up when they approached. Not Jenny Greenteeth, but another water-sprite. “I guarded the car like you said,” she told Seth. “Good luck.”

It was the truck they had taken from the Farm. That unexpected bit of familiarity hit Jan harder than expected. This had been the truck that had taken her from New Haven originally, sandwiched between AJ and Martin, having no idea how her world had already changed....

“What happened?” she asked. “Why did it take you so long to find us? Why didn’t anyone else come? Is AJ pissed we took off?”

“Farm’s gone,” Seth said bluntly. “Preters are here.”

The ritual had followed the rise of the new moon. Although they could not see it, deep in the basement room, the gathered preters could feel it. As it reached the apex of its nightly cycle, the humans waiting patiently were gathered in the center of the room, their masters placing a hand on their chests, under the silver chain, and commanded each to take up the others’ hands, creating an outward-facing circle, their masters a looser ring around them.

There was an unearthly silence, the sound of their breathing the only sound, softly echoed in the dark corners of the room before fading. Then their fingers curved inward, nails digging into the flesh underneath like bloodied thorns, and the humans cried out in a blend of agony and joy, the pain their masters inflicted welcomed as proof of their affection. The sound filled the room, driving out the silence, creating the bond that tied human to preter, giving the magic a bridge to move over, united preternatural with natural.

One-to-one, such a bridge created and opened a single portal. Combined and focused, matched to the natural bridge of the new moon, and that single portal expanded, deepened, until the mist filled the entire church, and the painted concrete walls were replaced with the cold stone walls of the Court Under the Hill.

Above them, on the streets of this town, and the one next to it, and the ones surrounding it, computer screens and cell phones flickered as the universes twisted into each other, the logic behind them hijacked to another cause.

And there in the basement, on a dais that had not been there a moment ago, presided the consort, regal, cold, and filled with rage. He stood, and his advisers stood with him, watching as he strode off the dais and into the natural world.

Behind him, at a respectful distance, came a dozen more of the court, the greater lords and lesser ones, until only the consort’s advisers and a score of lesser preters remained, to hold the court until they returned. They watched through the Grand Portal but said no word, made no gesture of greeting or farewell.

The consort had put aside his robes, replacing them with trousers and a close-fitting shirt and vest, low boots on his feet, his long, chestnut-brown curls tied back instead of flowing around his shoulders. His gaze raked over the humans, then lingered over the preters who had opened the way for him.

“Well done,” he said. “It will hold?”

“It will.” The proper response would have been It will, my prince. The dropped honorific did not go unnoticed, and the consort’s lips pressed into an even thinner line, but he did not challenge the courtier. And that, too, did not go unnoticed. The consort had held the court together in crisis, but he would not be able to maintain that hold forever; if the queen did not return, if they failed here, his reign would have no legitimacy. She had bred no heir, and without a queen, the court itself would fail, the courtiers turning on each other until there was nothing left. They all knew it.

“Then let us reclaim my lady,” the consort said. “And then we will claim this realm, once and for all, so that it will bother us no more.”

“’Fraid I can’t let you do that.”

A human stepped out of the shadows. He was older, his hair silvered, his long leather coat open to show a crisp white shirt and dark slacks. He could have been any corporate manager, heading home after a long day, except for the small, sharp ax he held in his hands.

One of the preters snarled at the intruder, who merely raised an eyebrow at it, then turned to the consort. “There are rules. You’re breaking them.”

“The rules have been rewritten,” the consort said. “And your people are the ones who rewrote them.”

“Maybe so,” the human said. “We do a lot of dumb things, mostly without thinking. Sometimes it turns out okay, sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s why we look out for each other, fix the stuff that’s gone wrong. Find the source of the noise and shut it down.”

“Noise?” The consort was almost amused.

“Noise. Static. Clamor. The natural realm objects to your intrusion. Every witch on the East Coast knew where you were the moment this thing opened—did you really think you could sneak in?” The human, too, sounded amused.

“Does this look like sneaking?”

The human looked around, making a performance of it. “Under the cover of dark, in a deserted building, coming without invite? Yes, my lord preter, it looks much like sneaking.”

“Stand aside, human,” another of the preters said, almost growling.

“Can’t.”

The consort was still not taking the threat seriously. “Just you, to turn back time? Do you seek to challenge me, to win another truce? That will not happen.”

“No truce,” the Huntsman said. “Die.”

He swung the ax as though he were aiming at a tree, a low sweep that any of the preters could have easily dodged, but when they did, another form came from the shadows as well, lower to the ground, teeth glinting white and red just before they fastened into flesh and hauled their prey to the floor.

And the shadows came apart, revealing the battered, bloodied remnants of what had fled the Farm, mixed with a handful of humans, most of them female, each carrying an ax or sword or, in at least one instance, an athame.

“Glad you made it,” the Huntsman said, dodging a preter’s lunge. He stepped to the side, and the ax bit into preternatural flesh and bone, taking it down as easily as a sapling. But even on the ground, it struck back, long fingers curling into the Huntsman’s clothing, burning through to the flesh like a living brand, and the human cursed, trying to yank free.

“You doubted me?” Jack said, a green-wire garrote in his hands, stopping to finish off the Huntsman’s opponent. “I’m hurt.”

“Kill, don’t flirt,” one of the supernaturals growled at the both of them, and then they were too busy to spare breath for talking.