Matter of Truth, A (10 page)

Will stands next to me, surveying our location as I lean
over, hands against knees, searching desperately for my breath. “Seems awfully
open.” He squints, peering through the trees. A controlled shriek in the
distance answers.

“Better open than trapped,” I gasp.

“I’ve been thinking.” He taps his fingers against his thigh.
Why is he so calm? He ought to be freaking out. Sane people would be,
especially nons who’ve just learned monsters are real. Is that it, though? Is
Will truly insane and I just never caught on until now? “I need a sword.”

Yep. Full on INSANE. I straighten, my eyes widening. “Oh,
you do, huh?”

“Paul tried to take me hunting once. I was shite at it.”

“And yet, you’re a master swordsman?” I let disbelief coat
my words.

He grins. “I’m Scottish. Highlanders have been wielding
swords for centuries.”

“You’re from
Glasgow
. Isn’t that like, sacrilegious
or something to call yourself a Highlander when you’re a Lowlander?”

“You’re just being picky now. Would it help if you made me a
kilt or something to go along with the sword? Also, why is this taking so long?
Do you need to create a forge as well?”

I sigh and hand over a lightweight yet indestructible sword.
“Be careful. It’s sharp—”

“Swords normally are.”

I consider it a victory that I don’t bop him on the head
with the butt of the sword. “Just keep it away from me.”

“No stabbing Chloe. Note taken.” His grin diminishes some.
“What’s the plan?”

I wipe sweaty loose strands away from my face; they’ve begun
to develop ice crystals. And then I make myself a super warm white beanie. Upon
consideration, I switch all of our clothes to white to match our surroundings.
Will jerks in his boots, like the color change shocked him. “Don’t be a baby.
All I did was camouflage your clothes. Keep it up and I really will make you a
kilt. Didn’t they wear those without underwear?” I leer. “Gosh, can you imagine
that in this weather?” He protests, so I talk right over him. “I’m kidding. The
plan is simple: take the Elder down before it kills us.”

“Oh, yes, that sounds quite simple,” Will mocks. He pats his
pants, clearly making sure I didn’t switch them out for a kilt after all.

A scream fills the clearing. My knees spasm, but I know that
I can’t let Will down. I must stay calm for him.

He slides an arrow out of the black leather quiver I made.
“What kind of arrows are these?”

His voice is still calm, filled with a hint of amusement.
Seriously. What’s wrong with him? Any sane person, Magicals included now, ought
to be scared shitless in a situation like this. “They’re like little suns,” I
say, pointing to the glowing arrow tip.

He jerks his fingers away from the shaft.
“The fuck . .
.?”

This freaks him out more than the monster coming to hunt us
down? “Well, I took away the gravitational pull, and altered the properties so
it doesn’t, you know, blow up the planet or anything, but technically it’s a
concentrated bit of hydrogen.” He stares at me with growing horror, so I add,
“It’s not like I’m a scientist or anything. They’re probably not even
technically suns. It’s just what I call them. I made them up. They’re
effective. Unless you get shot with one, you ought to be fine handling them.”

He’s still horrified.

“Oh, gods,” I groan. “Just give me the damn thing. Stick
with the sword.” I probably shouldn’t tell him that I made the blade out of a
metal found only on the Goblin plane that can cut through anything, including
stone, like it’s a sheet of paper. I take the bow away from him. I keep the
arrows, adding them to my quiver, but erase the rest.

“You’re a wee bit terrifying,” he finally says.

A shriek follows, the closest one since the house. I will my
courage to not fail me. “Let’s hope I stay that way. Get ready.” I slide an
arrow into the bow.

Will holds his sword up, looking for a brief, snowy moment
like the warrior from the past he’d joked about. Like metal in his hands was
second nature. If I were truly smart, I’d knock him out and hide him, but the
truth is, it’s sort of nice to know I’m not alone right now.

Because . . . there it is. Right at the opposite edge of the
clearing. It’s found us.

I nearly started screaming in terror. This Elder looks, for
the first time ever,
humanish
. Still smoky, still distorting, but damn
if it doesn’t actually mold its shape into a person with eyes—glowing ones that
can’t seem to decide on a color. I don’t know which is worse—the shape-shifting
creature, or the choice to look like it does now. No, wait. I do. This one.
This one looks far more frightening than any of the others.

“Bloody hell,” Will whispers.

What he said.

A concave hole opens where a mouth ought to be and . . . it
laughs. LAUGHS. Not screams, but
laughs
. And it’s an awful laugh, all
evil and angry and . . . female. This thing here, it’s a
female
.

“Found you, little Creator,” it hisses, voice distorted and
hollow.

Oh. My. EFFING. GODS. It spoke to me. It spoke! THEY
SPEAK.

Furthermore, its arms extend and twist until they resemble
fists curling around twin sais. WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE? This—Elders don’t do
this! Do they? Have they changed in the last six months?

I fight to reclaim my voice. “What
are
you?”

It tsk-tsks, black smoke trailing out of its cavernous hole
of a mouth. “Rude little piglet. Not what.
Who
.”

My own mouth snaps shut. I pull the bowstring in my hands so
tight my arms ache. Finally, “Alright.
Who
are you?”

It swings the sai-like extensions in whip-fast circles that
lead my heart in a matching rhythm. “I am feeling generous right now, so I will
answer you. I am Cailleache, little Creator. And I am here to collect you.”

Cailleache. Cailleache—the wheels in my mind spin as my arms
slowly liquefy under the strain of keeping the bowstring taut. And then it hits
me, why this name is so familiar. This is the first Creator’s wife. The second
Elder/Magical in existence. The one who controls all four elements: earth, air,
wind, fire.

The first Elemental ever.

“Oh, shit,” I whisper.

Cailleache glides forward, like some kind of nightmare from
a horror film. “Come with me, and I won’t kill your pet.”

Will beats me to the punch, his sword out, two fingers
pressed against the blade. He slowly circles to the side, so we’ve got two
angles on this thing. “I’m no bloody pet.”

Cailleache laughs again, the sound so awful that snow dumps
down around us from the surrounding trees.

Even still—she doesn’t want to kill me? She wants me to
go
with her? Go where? Elder Headquarters? “You want me?” I tell it.
Her
.
“Then you’re going to have to take me.”

I let the arrow loose and it whizzes lightning fast toward
Cailleache. She dodges it, but just barely, howling in fury. I reload, but now
she’s charging us, so fast she’s a black, wispy blur.
Thwang
. Reload.
Thwang
.

She manages to dodge everything.

The next thing I know, my shooting arm is bleeding heavily.
Bitch cut me with one of her smoky sai through my coat. Why didn’t I think of
making Elder-proof clothing? When will I learn?

That awful mouth twists into a distorted grin. “We can do
this all day.”

I draw another arrow out, arm shaky. Bandages snake around
my arm. The snow below me is stained red. Will barks something about moving,
but I position myself so I’m standing in Cailleache’s direct line toward him.
“Is that all you’ve got?” I ask her, glad my voice is even despite me wanting
to barf everywhere.

“Oh, little Creator. The things we’ve got in store for you,”
it hisses in return.

The next strike, I manage to sideswipe her with one of my
arrows. Her scream is an explosion, followed by heavy snow raining down on us.
Will comes at her while she twists to the side, slashing at what resembles a
leg; the scream turns atomic. Trees splinter around us, but she’s back on
her—well, not her feet, because she’s floating, but definitely ready for
another round, fresh with a new set of stereotypical villain
wait ‘till I
get ahold of you
threats.

Both Will and I are bleeding profusely. I triage us with
bandages as quickly I can, but if this is her game—cut us down, piece by
piece—I’m truly scared for our chances as we go round after round. She cuts us,
we barely nick her. If I’m not careful, we’ll bleed out in the snow. What can I
do? What can I make?

I . . . I walled the last one in. That’s it! I drop a heavy,
but clear wall behind her just as she slices at my leg, and then two more on
the sides. A roof curves over us, blocking out the snow. It’s enough to
momentarily distract Cailleache; one of my arrows finally lands a clean target.
Bits of smoke surge out of her in disturbing waves as the arrow tip explodes in
her torso. Her mass regroups quickly, but as her anguished shrieks rattle the
impenetrable material surrounding us, I drop another wall behind me and Will,
effectively caging us all in. And it’s enough for Will to leap forward, looking
like he’s in a movie to my blurry eyes—all lithe, slow motion as he first goes
up and then down, driving his blade straight through what appears to be her
upper back and into the snowy, hard ground below.

He’s pinned her.

And she stays where she is. She’s struggling, fighting
against the blade, but somehow, Will found some tangible part of her existence
and trapped her to the floor.

“I’ll destroy you.”
Black smoke pours from the maw on
her face. “Piece by tiny piece!”

“Big words coming from the shish kebab,” Will says to me.
He’s panting, sweat swirling with blood on his face.

I’m stunned. There is an Elder effectively pinned and
captive, right in front of me. Terrified she’ll somehow break free, I drop a
secondary cage around Cailleache’s body, boxing her into position.

Okay. Okay. She’s not going anywhere. At least, I hope not.

“Chloe,” Will murmurs, limping closer. He’s bleeding heavily
in at least five or six different places. I’m the same. I get to work on
bandaging him, but he grabs my face with one hand, forcing me to look at him.
“What are we going to do with her?”

“She’s . . . she’s contained.”

“I know.” He winces as one of my bandages tightens on his
leg. “But we can’t leave her like this. What if somebody stumbled upon her?”

I press my palms against my temples. “Normally, we imprison
them underground. A team comes and helps. The—the Guard decides what to do.”

“Whatever the Guard is, they aren’t here.” He grunts
quietly, flexing a wounded arm. “I am. I’m your team. So again, I ask—what are
we
going to do?”

I stare at Cailleache; she stares right back, her head
twisting up, those semi-lips distorting in pure hatred and anger.

“Back at the house,” Will continues, “you erased the back
door. You made us new clothes. You changed my tire after making the first one
disappear. You—hell, you made these bandages appear out of thin air.”

I switch my focus to him. “Yes, but—”

“You can make a door disappear,” he says quietly. Firmly.
“Why can’t you make that thing disappear?”

What?

All of a sudden, Cailleache thrashes in the box, her efforts
to get out redoubling. And the weird thing is, little drops of dark red—more
blackish than ruby—splatter around the sword pinning her intangible body. Is she
bleeding?

“You’re asking me to kill her.” My voice is hollow.

He doesn’t answer, simply squeezes my shoulder.

I’ve made lots of things disappear over the years. I’m a
Destroyer, after all. But in all this time, it’s never occurred to me to erase
a living being. I don’t know if I can, let alone want to.

And then I remember Oliver Crocus, an Elvin Storyteller on
the Council, telling me a couple years back that, once upon a time, an Elder
who was a Creator asked another Creator, one of his own making, to will him out
of existence. What was his name? Oh. Rudshivar—the son of the same being now
bleeding out in a box in front of me, the Creator who stood up to the rest of
the Elders. The one who created all of the races that exist today. The one who
made Magicals who they are. He was an Elder, and he no longer exists.

He had another Creator will him out of existence.

“If you do this,” she spats, like she can read my mind, “the
others will never stop hunting you. They will destroy everyone you value.”

So, she knows. She knows what I’m capable of.

“How many of my kind have you killed?” I squat down next to
the box. I’m impossibly sad all of a sudden. This creature, this thing—this
woman, the first woman of our kind—she a killer. She’s hunted Magicals and
sucked their lives right out of them. Nons as collateral damage have been
killed, too.

She’s nothing more than a monster. No reason she can give,
no excuse, can ever explain why she’s been privy to the serial killings going
on.

Instead of answering me, she smiles that terrifying sneer
instead.

I really have no right to serve as judge and jury, let alone
executioner, but Will is right. Nobody else is going to come in and clean up
this mess. It’s just me. I count to ten, just like Caleb taught me. And then I
say in clear, crisp words, “I can’t let you hurt anybody else. I’m sorry. I
can’t.”

Cailleache stops moving. “If you think this is the end,
think again, little Creator. This is only the beginning.”

Images flash through my mind, reminding me of the damage the
Elders have done to those I love. Even if it takes my dying breath, I refuse to
let that happen again.
You’ve caused too much pain over the years
, I
think in my mind.
It’s time to rest. You are no more.

And yet, here she still is. I lean back on my heels, stunned.
Maybe I can’t do this after all.

As if she knows I’ve failed, Cailleache laughs. Billows of
twisting smoke pour from her mouth as she cackles at my incompetence.

Why didn’t it work? If another Creator could do this to
Rudshivar, why can’t I?

I lean forward against the box; the moment my palms flatten
against the plastic, Cailleache’s laughter ceases. Thrashing replaces it,
alongside threats even more frenzied than before.

I slowly rock back on my heels, my palms dropping to my lap.
The thrashing slows considerably.

Could she . . . is she scared of my
hands
?

I stare down at my bloody mittens. Prior to today, I’ve only
ever had to think about destroying something for it to happen. But then, I’ve
never stolen life from a sentient being before. Maybe . . . maybe Fate wants
something more than my thoughts when it comes to physical life. Maybe Fate
requires a risk from me.

I strip off a tattered glove and make a small hole in the
box, just large enough for my hand to reach in and press against her shifting
shape. She flinches sharply when my skin touches whatever it is that makes her
her, but then she calms once more, like she knows what’s coming.

I whisper, “I’m sorry,” and then I do the unthinkable.

I will her out of existence.

And I’m left leaning against an empty box surrounding a
sword.