Summer (12 page)

The thing about blood magic is it wasn’t always forbidden. In fact, until my mother and her exiles decided to try and change things, it was pretty much standard fairy operating procedure. Probably it would have stayed that way if Gloriana hadn’t gone a bit wacked and started sacrificing fay left and right, just to keep the Progress fed.

If she’d done it right, kept the Menders healthy instead of burning through them one by one, maybe things would have turned out differently. But maybe not, because most of the time I’m sure Siobahn would have used any excuse to try and win back the throne. Handy for my mother she found a cause the
aes si
were willing to get behind: self preservation.

But I think somewhere along the way Siobahn began to believe her own propaganda. By the time she’d lost the rebellion and been exiled with the remnants of her army, blood magic was verboten in truth, worse than poison, and she’d no lack of enforcers ready to punish any poor fool stupid enough to spill a little blood for strengthening Wards or Summoning meat or Gathering flame for warmth.

I don’t know what my father thought, not exactly. Malachi wasn’t afraid to lop off a transgressor’s hand or ear by way of reminder, but just as often he’d stay his sword and ignore Siobahn’s call for punishment. And I’m not one hundred percent certain, but I think he may have tried a few forbidden magics of his own long before I was born, pricking his thumb or slicing his palm as he spoke the words he hoped would shake Gabriel from her mouse form.

Didn’t work, obviously. Maybe if he’d had a Mender to drain almost dry again and again until the spell was strong, viable. Maybe if he’d had Aine. Maybe if I hadn’t kept her under the radar just to spite Siobahn, just because I could.

Maybe things would be different.

“Winter.”
Gabby’s voice in my head, shaking me back from the precipice of angst. I blinked and the cave wall came back into focus. I’d been staring at it for a while, just scowling helplessly at the rock while Gabby prepared our next move.

Usually I was the one making the plans. It felt sort of nice not to have to pretend I knew what I was about for once. Over the years I’ve gotten really good at baffling everyone with my bullshit. Could be I’m more like Siobahn than I’m willing to admit.

“Are you ready?
”

She stood over me as best she could without knocking her head on the ceiling, throwing a darker shadow over the cave’s natural gloom. I realized I didn’t like that she was taller than me. Easier when she was a mouse and I could nest her in my pocket and pretend she wasn’t watching me with wise, sad eyes.

“Depends,” I hedged. “How do I know once we leave this hole you’re not going to”—I waved a vague hand at my head, bit back a hiss as blisters stung—”make me march back through the rift like some fucking puppet.”

Gabby’s never liked it when I swear. I could feel her disapproval radiating between my ears.

“The Horn’s gone into the mountain,” she said, and she said it out loud, as if to make a point. If I’d been half-expecting a squeak, I was disappointed. Gabby sounded as easy with English as any Washington socialite. Even my father had carried a trace of
Tir na Nog
in his tones. Gabby didn’t. “There’s no reason to protect you from its call.”

“Right.” I rolled up onto my knees, testing. Everything stung but nothing was agony. As usual, Gabby’s healing touch was strong magic. “Care to explain a thing? What’s the Horn doing
here
, in
sluagh
world?”

She looked worried. She wrinkled her nose as she thought and for the first time I saw an echo of the rodent she’d been. “I don’t know. “

“Fuck.”

“Winter,” she cautioned and I could imagine her non-existent tail twitching in distress.

“Fine. Okay.” I climbed from my knees to my feet, bending a little to accommodate the tight space. “Richard and Aine are here somewhere. We need to find them. Bring them back home.”

“If they’re still alive.”

Gabby’s always been a worrier, which is probably why Siobahn chose her as my guardian. Generally I ignore her less-than-positive attitude, but looking out past the mouth of the cave at the malignant atmosphere, I couldn’t quite dredge up a cheery retort.

“They have to be,” I said. Probably I sounded as miserable as I felt. “It’s my job to keep them safe.”

We needed more of the
draiochta
before we could leave the cave. We painted the blood-reddened lotion over my exposed flesh, using a bit of wadded fabric torn from Gabby’s robe, sponging the thick liquid up from a shallow, natural bowl in the cave’s wall. The amount of remaining
draiochta
in the bowl didn’t escape my notice, nor the fact that while the blood magic had tasted like honey going down my burning throat, it smelled of salt and tears as it dried on my skin.

Gabby didn’t paint herself, but she did wrap her cowl across her nose and mouth. I eyed her up doubtfully even as her blood itched on my face.

“Don’t tell me you’re immune?”

She made a sound of wry amusement deep in her throat. At first I didn’t recognize the vibration for what it was, and I admit I stared, entranced. For a second all the noises around, great and tiny, seemed to swell. The drip of water in the back of our hole became a roar, and the wind outside the cave the howl of imagined hurricanes, the rasp of sand beneath my shoes like the scrape of fingernails on an elementary school chalkboard.

I was eight years old when my mother made me deaf. My brain remembered how to translate sound, but maybe not how to adjust the volume.

I clapped my palms over my ears. The fairy amber in my earlobes felt cold against the heel of my hands. Gabby leaned even closer.

“Winter?”

My ears popped and everything was all right again. Slowly I took my hands from my ears.

“Fine. It’s fine.” It would be, so long as it didn’t happen again. The wave of noise left me shaking. “We’re wasting time.”

Gabby preceded me out of the cave, but only because I paused to scuff grit over our little hollow of blood magic. There wasn’t much of the ointment left, but I sure as shit didn’t want any wandering ghoul coming upon evidence of our presence there on the wrong side of my rift. Dirt swallowed the thick liquid, turning it into a red sludge.

The orb in the sky had set and the landscape was black ink, hill and lake and horizon indistinguishable. The wind had died with the vanishing moon. I clenched my teeth and breathed carefully through my nose. The air smelled acrid and tasted poisonous, but I was able to inhale and exhale without pain. Without the punishing wind my eyes stung but didn’t water.

“Which way?” I turned in a small circle: black ink all around.

Gabby was a gray shadow at my side. She Gathered a handful of starlight and cupped it on her palm, shielding most of the silver glow with her fingers. Even so the gleam was bright as a laser in the night.

“Without light we’ll lose our way very quickly,” she replied to my grunt of disapproval. “Fall into the lake or over a ravine.”

“With light we’re a walking target.”

“Aye, likely,” she agreed calmly. “You’ve got a better idea, do you, child?”

I didn’t, and of course she knew that. The ground sloped away from our mouse hole. It wasn’t a difficult incline, but grit and gravel shifted under my feet, making the ground treacherous. Above our hiding place the cliff looked solid and slippery, although it was difficult to tell without more light.

“Down, I suppose?”

Gabby nodded. “There’s a path below. Pay attention, or we’ll miss it. It’s not more than a scuff on the land.”

We slid together down the slope, Gabby’s starlight the only hopeful sight in all that dour landscape. Gravel threatened to catch under the edge of my pants and in my shoes. I could hear the eddy of the lake not far beyond our little hill, the slap of fingerling waves against rock. I wondered what chased the water into waves without the wind.

We found the path without trouble, mostly because Gabby has an excellent sense of direction. It wasn’t really all that difficult to recognize, not if you were looking for the right signs, and I’m an expert on
sluagh
spoor. They tend to drop bits of themselves behind, ooze droplets of Cold Fire. Their poisonous fluids will char rock almost as easily as flesh; the Metro tunnels are pitted with marks of
sluagh
blood spray.

Also, they stink like dead meat. The caustic atmosphere and Gabby’s ointment combined had done a number on my nose, but I’ve had years of practice. I squatted as close to the path as I could without subjecting bare skin to damp gravel and sniffed carefully. My mother’s generation are said to be as scent-canny as bloodhounds. I’m not quite that talented, but I was able to make out the sweet-salt reek of rotting corpse beneath the perfume of the alien air itself.

“They were here, alright.” I took a moment to try and orient myself. Without the moon it was difficult. But I thought I’d come from—

“Rift’s that way,” I decided, jerking a thumb vaguely east. “Too black to make it out now. Trail seems pretty straight forward. They’re going west. What’s west?”

Gabby’s pale globe of starlight floated just above her head, revealing a small patch of rocky ground. An army of ghouls could be lurking just out of sight, and we wouldn’t be able to separate them from the shifting shadows. Her small magic was no good against the pitch black horizon.

“I don’t suppose it matters,” she replied. “Unless you plan to change your mind and turn back?”

“Absolutely not. Only I’ve got no magic, and no weapon. I’d just feel better if I knew what we’re walking into.”

“Danger,” my guardian answered with a small huff of disappointment or nerves. “When have you ever been able to resist it?”

She turned and walked west. I limped in her wake. Without the comfort of clear sight I had to rely on my new ears, and that was still frightening. The rattle of a kicked pebble made me jump while the back and forth hush of the waves on the lake seemed muffled and too quiet.

“Feather,” Gabby murmured, stopping suddenly. She bent over the ground and came up again, a long black pinion clutched in one hand. It looked glossy as satin and when I snatched it away the individual barbs felt soft as silk but unforgiving as wire.

“
Sluagh
prince.” I ran the feather between two of my fingers. “Great, winged, ugly monster. Bigger than the average
sluagh
. I’ve seen it and others like it in the tunnels.”

Gabby made a noncommittal noise. When I frowned at her, she only shrugged.

“Does it molt like a parakeet?” I wondered. “Or, could it be, is Richard leaving us a trail of bread crumbs?”

“I doubt he’d have the chance.” But Gabby sent her light spinning low to the ground as I squatted and shuffled about, seeking clues.
“They have no reason to keep him alive, Winter. He’s worth nothing to them. It’s Aine they want.”

I didn’t bother with an answer. She was right, of course, and I knew it. I just didn’t like to think about it too hard. I couldn’t find any other feathers on the ground, any evidence of Richard or Aine or metaphorical bread crumbs. Maybe the feather was just a feather. I stuck it in the waistband of my jeans, rose, and walked on.

The
sluagh
had worn their path as straight east to west through the landscape as possible. It did meander some, around sharp rocky protrusions or sudden inclines, but never more than a few long strides off compass line, which suggested the Dread Host had no desire to spend more time than necessary out in the open. That realization made the hair on the back of my neck rise and prickle. Gabby also was unusually quiet, Gathered starlight held tight and close.

Really, the unspoken sense of doom was so thick I’d happily have cut it with a knife—had I been smart enough to bring one.

It was difficult to keep track of time, but I thought we’d been walking for at least an hour when the path began to curve up and into the hills. It was gentle at first, just enough of a slope to make me have to dig my heels into gravel for balance. Soon it became a real hike and I had to put my hands down on punishing hunks of rock to keep from staggering. Gabby made the climb without any visible effort. She was sneaking glances over her shoulder back the way we’d come and it was pretty obvious she hadn’t yet adapted to life back in a human body because her sneaking really sucked.

“What?” I demanded, nervous and trying not to sound it. As much as I hate to admit it, I felt crippled without my magic to call on—far more crippled than I’d felt in years of deafness. “Is something following us, Mistress?”

“Nay.” She pressed her lips together and I swear the tip of her nose twitched. “Not that I can tell. It’s only—”

“What?” I insisted.

She stopped, turned around, and looked back east, down the hill we’d been carefully climbing. I wasn’t sure what she was looking at; I couldn’t see anything past the globe of starlight. Then she sighed and that small noise was like a punch in the gut, because for all her nattering and worrying, I’d never heard such a bleak sound from my guardian.

“I can’t feel it anymore. I’m sorry, Win, but I think...Aye, well, I’m sure it’s gone.”