Awakenings

Thom’s eyes blinked open and he sucked in a startled breath as he realized he was back in his own body, on his knees in the snow. Thordin touched his shoulder. The screaming of the Greys had died away almost to nothing, just a few echoing whimpers of the death-screams were still audible now.

“Steady,” Thordin murmured. “First time you’ve done that?”

Swallowing bile, Thom nodded as he carefully got to his feet. “We’ve got problems.”

“We’ve always got problems,” Thordin said, his brow furrowing.

“My daughter has Phelan’s anima, old friend.”

Thordin jerked, spinning toward Seamus. “What? Who?”

Leinth went as pale as the snow beneath her boots. “Albina’s daughter?”

Seamus nodded, expression grim. “No one told me that the girl—”

“Hates with a passion that burns with the fire of a thousand suns? More bitter than anyone ever could be or ever should be?” Leinth sighed, eyes fluttering shut or a moment. “How could anyone? None of us knew you were alive.”

“Her mother knew,” Seamus muttered, glaring toward the bridge. His fingers twitched, crept toward the hunting horn hanging from his belt.

Leinth’s hand snapped out and arrested his before his fingers wrapped around the instrument. “No,” she said. “Leave them. Let them do as they’re going to do. We have something else to do, don’t we?”

Thom cleared his throat and spat bile into the snow. “How do we get him back, Seamus?”

Seamus shook himself, blinking. Was it Thom’s imagination, or had there been a shadow over his eyes for a moment? The master of the Wild Hunt swallowed, hand twisting in Lieinth’s until his fingers were wrapped around hers. “First we have to figure out what she wants,” he murmured. “Whether it’s personal or otherwise.”

“It’s always personal with her,” Leinth whispered. “She probably wants you.”

“Oh goody,” Thom said, swallowing a sigh. “If it’s not someone wanting Phelan, it’s someone using Phelan to get to someone else.”

“Shit, guys,” Marin’s voice called. “It looks like we woke everyone for nothing.”

Thom’s stomach sank.

Oh hell. Now what the hell do I say?

“Relax,” Seamus’s voice whispered from somewhere close. Thom blinked and realized he could see again—from a vantage that wasn’t on his knees at the warding lines. He and Seamus hovered together somewhere far above the trees of the ravine. He could see himself down near the rim, Seamus gripping his hand. Thom’s heart started to beat a little faster.

“What the hell is this?” he breathed, glancing sidelong at the master of the Wild Hunt.

“Can you still hear it?” Seamus asked quietly. “The laughter? I think I can hear it now, too, but I need your help. You know the lay of this place far better than I. We need to find the source. It’s less dangerous this way.”

“How are you doing this?”

Seamus smiled briefly. “Phelan never learned every trick in the book. Just a little trick I’ve refined. They can’t see us up here and physically we’re down there.”

Thom squinted. He could see faint shadows below, pale and silvery even in the dark. He sucked in a breath. “We’re like ghosts.”

“Something like,” Seamus agreed. “Now focus. It’s a woman laughing.”

“Or a girl,” Thom said, shivering. He twisted slightly, eyes scanning the darkened trees. It wasn’t any good—it was too dark to see.

Then he saw a dark blot against the white of the arboretum, crossing the snow-covered expanse and moving in the direction of the rubble that used to be Au Sable Hall. “There.”

Seamus looked just as the figure twisted, blue-eyes flashing bright even at this distance.  Thom gasped, body stiffening.  Seamus clamped down on his hand even tighter.

“Don’t let go,” the elder man hissed. “Damn you, whatever you do, don’t let go.”

“What happens if I let go?” Thom managed to ask.

“Considering the look we just got?” Seamus grimaced. “Something devours you before your soul makes it back to your body.”

The laughter rose to a shriek and the woman’s words shivered Thom’s bones right to the marrow.

“I see you, Father,” the dark figure in the arboretum shrieked. “The time’s finally here. A reckoning comes, face me if you dare or the blood of your blood, bone of your bone will pay the price for your reluctance.

“I have him already,” she cackled. “If you want him back, come to me.”

She sprinted across the white and disappeared amidst the shattered concrete and broken glass of the building. Seamus sucked in a breath, swearing softly.

“Phelan,” he breathed. “She’s got Phelan.”

“J.T. has Phelan,” Thom said, heart starting to beat faster. His stomach roiled. Something wasn’t right. Was Seamus right?

Of course.

“Frakking—” Thom swallowed bile. “She clawed his soul free, didn’t she? Somehow, she’s got the most important part of him.”

Seamus set his jaw. “Not for long she doesn’t. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“She called you Father.”

“She’s Albina’s daughter,” he whispered. “Thesan. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.” Seamus’s expression hardened. “But not soul of my soul.”

They plunged back toward their bodies in the blink of an eye.

The power Thom channeled into the wards was amplified tenfold, shooting out in crackling arcs toward the Greys. Their diminutive opponents scattered screaming—those that didn’t collapse into the snow, charred or shattered by the energy that shot out from the warding lines. Thom strained his ears over the sound, breathing hard, heart pounding as he sought the source of the laughter.

He shook his head hard. “There’s someone out there!” he shouted. “Someone’s laughing out there.”

“I don’t see anything,” Thordin shouted.

Thom swore, shoulders tensing. He could feel sweat starting to bead up at his hairline despite the cold. Lightning crackled up his arms but didn’t hut, didn’t burn, but set his hair on end. It sounded like it was close—felt like it was even closer.

A hand grasped his shoulder. Seamus cursed but didn’t let go. “Leave off,” he roared. “Let it go! They’re running.”

Breath rasped in his throat as Thom ratcheted back, withdrawing his senses from the wards before he let go of the stones. His limbs shook as he rocked back against his heels, blinking blearily toward the churned snow between the edge of the ravine and the warding lines. A cadre of the Hunt bunched together, plunging down the walls of the ravine and across the bridge in pursuit of the Greys as they fled.

“They shouldn’t—there’s something–”

Seamus shook his head quickly. “They’ll be fine and if they’re not, this is what we’re built for in the Hunt. Do you still hear it?”

Thom swallowed bile as a shudder racked him. He could still hear the laughter—somewhere near and far all at once. It sounded like a woman, but it was hard to know. “Yeah.” He squinted in the darkness, scanning the trees. Who was it? What was it?

“Your hand,” Seamus said.

“What?”

“Your hand. Give me your hand. The right one.”

Without thinking, Thom extended his right hand to Seamus, who took that hand with his left.

A chill shot through Thom and his vision suddenly shrank down to nothing in the space of a heartbeat.

Silver-white light flared around them as Thom, Seamus, and Phelan crossed the warding lines, shivers of power in the shape of tiny forks of white lightning playing across their skin. Phelan sucked in a breath, shaking free of both Seamus and Thom and leaning a little more heavily against his staff. His leg still felt like it was coated in ice and his shoulders weren’t much better off, but he didn’t have much time to consider either as he twisted, staring at the massing Grays.

“They’re bottlenecking,” he said to Seamus. “The Hunt won’t be very effective if they stay mounted.”

“They won’t,” Seamus murmured, gaze drifting to the right.

“Holy shit,” J.T. muttered.

The first of the dark-cloaked Huntsmen flung himself from the saddle, drawing an iron-dark blade from the scabbard across his back in a single smooth motion. He crashed boots-first into a group of Grays, yelling something in a tongue nearly as old as Phelan, Thordin, and Seamus. Another drew back the bowstring on a lacquered recurve bow, a silver-tipped arrow streaking through the night toward one of the diminutive figures throwing itself at the warding lines.

Phelan’s throat tightened as he planted his staff against the ground, driving its tip through the snow to the ground beneath. The earth still shuddered beneath them even as horses came to a stop and the Wild Hunt swarmed from their mounts toward the enemy, hacking and shouting, battle hymns on the lips of some. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to breathe slow and deep, forcing his senses through the staff, down into the earth.

Thom touched his shoulder. “Phelan?”

“Sensing,” Phelan murmured. The wards should hold—he could sense the power Marin had dumped into them. They’d hold, at least for now. “Where’s your wife?”

“Sent her back with Neve to wake Cameron and the rest. What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you when I know,” Phelan said. He could almost feel it, almost touch it, something dark and cold and deep sensing the same way he was—

A great, yawning maw of darkness opened and swallowed him whole.

The first Gray reached him a second before Seamus’s blade sheared it in half. Needle-sharp claws dug into the flesh of Phelan’s shoulders as the creature spasmed and died, spraying freezing mist into the air.

Seamus grabbed Phelan by the arm and hauled him upright.

“Idiot.”

Phelan croaked a laugh and twisted, leaning against his cousin. The current Taliesin swung his staff like a scythe, a verdant blade of magic slashing through the ranks of Grays, buying them precious seconds.

“I can’t feel my leg,” Phelan said. Truth be known, his back was starting to seize up, muscles tightening as if his blood had been replaced with ice. “Don’t let them touch you.”

“Déithe agus arrachtaigh,” Seamus swore as he hauled Phelan toward the holly bushes and the faint shimmering border between their settlement and the outside world. “You could have said something about that.”

The ground shook with the pounding of hoofbeats against the earth.

No, not just the Hunt. Phelan sucked in a rasping breath, casting his senses away from the fight—hardly wise, but entirely necessary. The area’s lines were twisting, writhing, the magic shifting wildly. The ground was shaking beneath them, not just from the horses.

Déithe agus arrachtaigh and goddamn.

Thordin plunged through the wards, slipping past Seamus and Phelan to cover their escape, ax flashing silver in the dim. Phelan could barely breathe. “Fall back,” he rasped to Thordin as he came back to himself, blinking quickly as Seamus dragged him onward across the last few yards through the snow. “It’s worse than we know. Fall back.”

Thom crossed the lines to help Phelan, expression grim and his grip on the hilt of his blade white-knuckled. “There must be hundreds,” he said.

“It’s worse than that,” Phelan rasped. “The lines are shifting again. They’re shifting again and I don’t know what that means except that it’s bad.

“It’s very, very bad.”

The heart of the bridge glowed green with the magic Phelan called down. His heart raced at three times normal speed. Breathing was hard.

Too much, he thought desperately as he slammed his staff into the stomach of one of their attackers, sending it reeling, screaming as it tumbled backwards and away to disappear under the feet of its fellows. I’ve drawn too much. This is unsustainable. I can’t keep this up.

Seamus cut down another of the Grays as it got too close. Phelan sucked in a breath.

“We have to fall back,” he gasped to his cousin. “They’ll just keep coming. We’ll need to make our stand at the warding lines. We’ll have a prayer of turning the tide from there.”

Who sent these little bastards this time? Vammatar was dead and her sisters had been using the skinchangers to track him. Who would have sent the Grays?

“Go,” Seamus barked. “I’ll keep holding.”

“It’s both or nothing,” Phelan snapped. His limbs were starting to shake. Jac’s going to kill me if I live through this.

He almost—almost—laughed.

Phelan grasped his cousin’s arm and tugged, earning a snarl.

“Phelan!”

“Damnation, Seamus, fall back.” Phelan risked a glance behind him. The Grays were in the ravines below, too, starting to swarm up the walls. “If we don’t, they’ll surround us.”

“We have a choke—”

“We don’t!” Phelan snapped, wrenching his cousin around by the shoulder and pointing toward the ravine, awash with fog and small gray forms. “Run for the holly. Do it now.”

The sound of Thordin’s battlecry echoed off the trees, sending shivers down Phelan’s spine as he shoved his cousin toward the bushes with all the strength he could muster. Something struck the once-druid’s leg, making it numb as he tried to push off into his own mad dash toward safety.

Phelan crashed to his knees in the snow, swearing.

The Grays swarmed toward him, silent as death.

“Neve!”

Marin caught her friend before she could go pitching face-first into the snow, holding her up as Neve twisted, looking back toward the ravine.

“It’s the Grays,” she gasped, wide-eyed gaze returning to Marin, flicking toward Thom and J.T., Thordin and Sif.  “They’ve come back.  Phelan and Seamus are trying to hold them at the bridge—”

“Get her out of here!”  Leinth called from closer to the warding lines.  “She’ll be safer in camp!”

“Christos,” Thordin swore, fingers itching.  “Marin, your bow.  Take Neve back and get your bow.  Wake the rest.”  His heart pounded hard against his breast.  The Grays meant Phelan’s old enemies were back—he knew enough to know that.

But no dirae.  It could be far worse.

He tried to kill the thought before it fully bloomed and failed, silently cursing himself for a fool.

Then he unslung his ax and headed for the wards.  “Thomas, Jameson, with me.”

“Bloody fucking hell,” J.T. growled, his blade rasping free of its scabbard.  He glanced toward Marin.

Her gaze went to her husband in a heartbeat, one hand reaching for him even as she propped up Neve.

“Go,” Thom murmured, pressing a quick kiss to his wife’s temple.  “Wake Cameron when you take Neve back.”

“Be careful,” Marin said.  “Be damned careful.”

Somehow, I doubt that’s going to be an option, Thordin thought.  He clapped J.T. on the shoulder and without another word, barreled toward the warding lines where Leinth still stood, expression slack.

The smoking form of a Gray lay sprawled beyond the holly bushes.

Thordin beheaded it with a careless swipe of his ax and plunged onward, the words to a barely-remembered battle-song on his lips as his booted feet ate up the snow-covered feet between him, the bridge, and two Taliesins—one current, one former—facing certain destruction at its apex.

The sound of the horn’s call penetrated Thordin’s very bones. He shuddered, eyes widening as he spun toward the sound, heart suddenly a-thunder.

“Did you hear that?” he asked breathlessly of his companions, of Thom and Marin and J.T.—and Sif.

Sif.

The Hunt exploded into action. Those that were afoot hauled themselves back into their saddles; those already mounted took off in a thundering cavalcade toward the horn’s echo, pounding along pathways and skirting rubble and the walls, howling battle-cries and drawing weapons.

“What the hell was that?” J.T. shouted over the din.

“The Huntmaster called,” Sif yelled back. “They ride to battle. Where did the sound come from?”

“This way.” Marin spun and dashed back toward the gates. “It came from near the ravine—probably the bridge.”

Odds are that’s where Phelan took Seamus to talk, too. Christos. “Something’s not right,” Thordin said as he jogged after her.

“You think?” she snapped. “Hurry! Rory, once we’re in, seal the gate.”

“Got it.”

Thordin paused, waving Thom and J.T. past him toward the gates. “Sif, hurry.”

She swore softly and darted after them, eyes blazing. “They went the other way!”

“This is a shortcut.” He grasped her arm and dragged her toward the gate and back into camp. Of course she’d barely explored, didn’t know. “If you had let me—”

“Let you what?” she snapped.

“Christos! It doesn’t matter. Come on.”

Rory slammed the gate shut behind them and Thorin dragged Sif along, much to her apparent distaste.

“Let go,” she snarled.

It was easier not to argue. He did as she asked and focused on Marin, still moving at a run toward the bridge. “Marin! Should we wake the others?”

“Got that,” Rory yelled from behind them as he wrestled the bar into place across the gates. “Go figure out what the hell’s going on.”

Thordin cursed and started to run, praying that Sif would follow.

Something told him they were going to need her.

The women stumbled together, slipping in the snow that shifted beneath their boots, as they scrambled quickly toward the line of protective wardings, the holly bushes and cairns that marked the edge of the settlement. An inhuman scream made both flinch, made them both turn. Neve crashed to her knees in the snow with a cry of pain.

“Keep going!” Phelan roared, staff and body wreathed in evergreen light. “Don’t wait for us!”

A single blast of a hunting horn sounded. Neve’s heart took off at twice its normal speed.

I know that sound.

Seamus lowered the horn as Leinth hauled Neve upright again. Both women were trembling as they dashed pell-mell through the snow.

“He just called them,” Neve panted as they ducked through the row of holly bushes and nearly tripped over one of Marin’s cairns.

“I know,” Leinth said. “This escalated quickly and badly.”

Something else screamed behind them, sounding far more like a man than a beast. Both women turned again.

A blur of motion drew their gazes—something small and gray throwing itself at the ward-lines. It rebounded as if it hit an invisible wall, coruscating light shooting up from the space above the cairn.   Neve swore.

“What was that?” Leinth gasped.

“What they’re fighting,” Neve said, swallowing the bile that had suddenly risen in her throat. “Come on. Come on!” Her heart thundered against her breast as she yanked Leinth onward this time. “They’ll come, come on!”

“What if they can’t?”

Hooves thundered somewhere nearby. Neve shuddered. “Then the Hunt will avenge them in the worst ways. We have to get the others. They’ve defeated these creatures before and they’ll be able to do it again!”

At least, I dearly hope they can.

Swallowing her doubts, she twisted free of Leinth and ignored her own agony as she scrambled through the snow toward help she prayed she’d be able to easily find.