Flight (Children of the Sidhe) (13 page)

Right after dusk, when they’d finished a simple meal and shared a flask of mead, all hell broke loose.

At first Nathan thought his eyes must be playing tricks on him. A figure had emerged from the forest, but where the Sidhe could almost be mistaken for a human, this being was monstrous. Its one eye blinked blearily, like the dim light was too much for it. Its head was too small for its chubby, long-armed body. And it shuffled oddly. When Nathan realized its feet were saucer-like, splayed and webbed, and that was the reason it moved so, he nearly passed out.

Even as his eyes refused to make sense of the monster, he saw another form much like his own.
This Sidhe wasn’t one he’d seen earlier. He had a terrible suspicion this was the assassin he’d been hiding from. Around the foreign Sidhe, shadows swirled. They slithered swiftly from between the trees, inky darkness like a black fog stretching toward them.

More forms slunk and stumbled from among the trees. With no rhyme or reason, they were hideous. No one form characterized them. They seemed like something out of a bad old movie, a hodge-podge of
sea monsters that had grown various numbers of legs and come to land shuffling like zombies.

At that moment, Ian and Tessa appeared between Nathan and the creatures.

“Tessa!” Nathan shouted, relieved beyond belief to see her…except that it put her right in the line of fire. “Look out!”

She spun back and finally saw the creatures coming closer, and the Sidhe man who stood among them
, shadows hovering around his legs.

“Abarta! Call them off!”

So it was the assassin. Nathan whirled to the others. “Inside! Get inside the buildings!”

Joel grabbed for Therese, but she’d taken off in the other direction. He yelled after her, but his words were lost in the chaos. The monsters came on steadily. Nathan found his feet were planted firmly on the earth – he didn’t seem able to move.

“Go with them, Nathan!” Tessa shouted.

Instead,
Nathan watched Abarta. The creatures moved on to flank the buildings. Finally, a clash of weapons filled the clearing as the Sidhe joined the fight. Nathan didn’t know what had taken them so long, but they were sorely needed now. The creatures just kept coming.

Therese had stopped, maybe to look for Joel – and one of the monsters caught up with her. Nathan didn’t notice the weapon until it had slid straight through her. She touched the creature, and it writhed in pain, yanking back from her with a howl. With a sigh like a light breeze teasing a stand of alder, Therese sank to the earth.

“No!” Joel surged from another building, and as he ran, true night descended.

Night didn’t happen
in Middleworld. Dusk was as dark as it got.

Abarta’s shadows might have been creepy, b
ut now an inky blackness stamped out everything. It happened so suddenly that gasps and curses testified to the surprise and stubbed toes.

Nathan couldn’t see anything. His ears tried to compensate, but his mind kept making up wild scenarios to go with what he was hearing. It sounded like…a rush of wings and limbs and the pounding of earth like a great drum.

Then a light flooded the clearing. Tessa held a ball of light above her palm, stretched high into the air. And what Nathan saw would feed his nightmares for the rest of his life. There were more monsters than ever, a mass of them, more limbs and heads than he could count. And they moved faster than before, like the darkness helped them somehow. They grimaced and wheeled from the light Tessa held, but all through the rest of the clearing they ran and leapt like sugar-crazed kids on a playground.

Joel had reached Therese’s side, his hands were covered with her blood, and as two monsters approached from either side, he shrieked her name and covered his head with his hands. The Fomorii hauled him off between them.

“Call off the Fomorii!” Tessa challenged Abarta.

Abarta fidgeted
, watching the Sidhe advance among his troops. He twirled a dark metal ring on the first finger of his left hand.

Tessa yell
ed, “The ring! That’s how he’s traveling!”

Ian didn’t hesitate a moment. His eyes narrowed slightly
in the changing light, his gaze focusing on his target while he pulled a wicked looking knife from his pocket. In another moment the knife whistled as it arced through the air. As soon as it left his fingers, Ian dropped, unconscious. Shit, they didn’t know about the spell on the land!

His aim was decent. The knife’s whistle came to an abrupt end as it embedded itself in Abarta’s forearm. It didn’t sever the hand, but Abarta howled in pain and clutched his bleeding limb to his chest with a snarl.

The Fomorii front guard echoed the snarl as they collided with the front of the building. It wasn’t a place meant to withstand attack, and Nathan wondered if it would crack with that first onslaught.

And
just like that, everything stopped.

A woman who shone like the sun
stepped toward him. She had green hair that swirled to her waist with a life of its own, and strange shapes emerged and retreated on her brown skin. Her eyes were sky blue, as blue as the fastest of streams, or a robin’s egg.

Nathan blinked
. Her form shimmered, like a mirage. But then she solidified, and Nathan got the feeling she’d just crossed over from somewhere else. He looked around, wondering at the sudden and strange silence that had fallen over the battle.

T
he rest of the clearing was silent – everyone was frozen where they stood, with angry faces and arms raised to attack or defend. She walked among them, observing with an air of affronted calm. “What is it you’ve brought to my spring? Violence? The air smells different here. Tir Nan Og is changing. Preparing?”

She l
ooked thoughtful, but kept her thoughts close for the next few minutes as she circled the oddly still occupants of a time she’d apparently stopped at her whim. When she turned back to him, it was all he could do to stand tall and not cower before her. He didn’t know what she was, but it was apparent she had more power in her little finger than he’d ever imagined possessing, despite the small tricks he’d started to pick up.

“
I am Airmid,” she told him, turning to face him again. Her features were odd – huge eyes slanted above high cheekbones, her full mouth smiling as he evaluated her appearance. “And you are the young Lord of the Skies.”

Nathan frowned. “No. My father is the Lord of the Skies. I’m half-human.”

“And what has that to do with what I say?”

“I am not powerful. I was raised in the human world and I’ve just come to Tir Nan Og.”

“Are you so weak you have no hunger for the power you were born to?” She shrugged. “Pah. I have no time for weaklings.”

Now Nathan glared. “I am not weak. Just new. What is this power you speak of?”

“You can stop this slaughter. Your hawk, that is.”

“What do you mean?”

“My spell against violence has no hold on your other form. You must shift to fight Abarta. Quickly, now. We don’t have much time. And Nathan?”

“Yes?” Nathan still wasn’t quite sure what she was asking of him, but there wasn’t time to panic.

“Remember the spring. Its waters restore the Sidhe, even from the grip of death, so long as little time has elapsed. Remember.” Her inhuman gaze was stern. “Now shift, and prove to me you are no weakling. Prove to them the half-humans have everything to offer. And never doubt it yourself.”

Nathan did as she commanded, shifting to Hawk in the blink of an eye. Screeching, he lifted his wings to fly. Just then, the clamor returned to the small clearing, as Fomorii blades rang from their scabbards, and foreign Fomorii bod
ies clattered against the buildings that usually housed the sick.

Nathan knew his target, and blocked out all else. Abarta still clutched his arm, but now it was the ring on his nearly severed hand that he focused on.

Nathan understood with sudden certainty that Abarta would escape in the next few moments. Luckily, wings were a quick way to travel above the fray. Knowing he had only a moment, Nathan stretched his talons toward the assassin who had marked him and the others for death. Abarta’s screams filled the clearing as Nathan’s talons slid far too easily into his left eye, like slicing softened butter. Blood spurted from the wound, and Abarta gargled with the intensity of the pain.

Yet in the next second Abarta
was gone, and so were the Fomorii he’d brought with him. Just gone.

With them fled the night, leaving Middleworld dusk.

Twenty-three

Tessa watched Nathan spin and drop silently to the ground. Was he hurt? He switched back to his human form, rising with one hand pressed to his temple. His legs gave out beneath him as he tried to stand, and a bright flare of alarm filled Tessa with urgency. Tessa shifted into her triple bird form. She flew to him, singing bright notes in a quick stream. She would put him to sleep with her song and heal whatever wound had made him stumble.

Nathan lifted his hands hurriedly
. “I’m not hurt! I’m fine.” He turned to take in the rest of the clearing, and rose from the ground with a bit of a stumble, as if he’d rather just lie down. Her song had made him sleepy, but the effects seemed to wear off rapidly as he looked around.

Tessa took it in, too, turning her attention from Nathan even though what she really wanted to do was grab him and run from what s
he saw.

Therese lay sprawled across the doorway of the little building, which was near collapse and tilted at an awkward angle. A spear stuck up out of Therese’s sid
e, and she wasn’t moving. Tessa flew to her, all three of her birds crying silent tears into the half-human’s grievous wound.

“Where’s Joel? Where’s her brother Joel?” Nathan asked, his eyes darting around the building as he leaned across the doorway where Tessa worked on Therese. Tessa
didn’t see any sign of Joel, the other half-human who had been in the building when she’d arrived with Ian. A bloody handprint marred Therese’s cheek, and Tessa chirped to get Nathan’s attention.

“That must be his.” It was smeared as if he’d been pulled away from his twin by force. “Why would they have taken him?”

Therese still didn’t move. Tessa kept trying, though she was beginning to think there was nothing she could do for this half-human. Even if she revived her, the spear still impaled her, and would have to be removed, damaging her organs and starting the blood flowing massively. What could she do?

“Tessa? Honey, she’s gone. Come back to me, Tessa.”

She switched back to her Sidhe form, thankful for Nathan’s presence, so close she could feel the heat of his body. “She is gone.”

Nathan picked up Therese’s hand sadly.

Tessa sobbed suddenly, all the pressure of the past days colliding with the sight of a dead half-human girl in front of her. An innocent girl who had paid the price for Sidhe pride, for the prejudice Sidhe like Tessa perpetuated despite their shared blood.

“It’s my fault.
Oh, Nathan, what have I done?” She slumped next to the body. “I should have told Mikhail earlier – I never should have kept the blackmailing to myself. I should have told Ian. I should have figured out how Abarta was traveling and how to stop him! What have I done?”

Nathan spoke no words of comfort. He put his arms around her and pulled her close, letting her sob into his shoulder. He let her get her feelings out before he spoke. “It isn’t your fault. You came to help. Abarta was out for our blood long before he began blackmailing you. You never gave him useful information. You completely swindled him where I was concerned, although I know you don’t like half-humans, as a rule.”

Tessa narrowed her eyes at him, but then she couldn’t see through her tears. And she needed to see his smile as he teased her, it was the best of balms to her broken heart.

“You’ve shown your true colors today, Tessa. I’m sorry I doubted you before, but I have no doubts now. I love the woman you are. I love you.”

Tessa stared, drawing deep breath after deep breath. Had he just said what she thought she heard? “I love you, too. You’ve changed me, Nathan,” her voice cracked on that last part. He hugged her harder.

Suddenly, Nathan jumped
, squeezing her a little too hard. “How did I forget? The sacred well! Tessa, hope is not lost. We have to get Therese to the well. Airmid told me not to forget.”

Twenty-four

Tessa shot him an incredulous look. “Airmid? Where did you
hear that name? She’s the well’s patron goddess.”

“I know. She was here.”

“I didn’t see her.”

“She froze time and we had a little chat. That’s how I was able to wound Abarta – the time freezing thing. He would have gotten away scot free without that. I still wish I’d done more damage. I wish I’d killed the bastard before he could escape–”

“Oh, he’s suffering. Between Ian’s knife and your talons, he’ll be out of circulation a while.”

Nathan waved her off. “I’m not sure how much time we have. Help me carry Therese. I don’t want to take the spear out until she’s submerged – I think that’s her best chance.”