Hallow Point (15 page)

“Gáe Assail, Oberon. The Spear of Lugh has come to Chicago.

“And you have agreed to deliver it into Unseelie hands.”

“
S
pear of what now?” Pete was nearing the bottom of his second mug of joe, and still sounded deeply groggy. Then again, I didn’t think he’d be making a whole lot more sense out of this if he were fully awake. “Spear of Lou?”

“Lugh,” I corrected, even though he probably couldn’t hear the difference. Woulda helped if I hadn’t had my head between my hands like I was trying to compress it into a pancake. With brain jelly. “The Spear of Lugh. Alias Gáe Assail, alias Ahreadbhar. One of the four hallows of the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

Pete peered at me through bloodshot peepers.

“Okay, so I know some of that was words…”

Just so you know, you mugs look even sadder when you’re confused in a bathrobe than when you’re just confused.

Pete’s flop was exactly what you’d expect, if you knew the guy. Small but comfy, redolent of cheap aftershave lotion and slightly burnt beef. Spick’n span where it counted—clean kitchen, creased blues hanging behind the wide-open door of the closet—and, ah, let’s call it
informal
everywhere else. I’d hadda move a pile of books and a light bulb off the chair before I could plant my keister on it, and my heels were resting on a wadded-up pair of pants.

Oh, and the bird himself, of course. Worn grey bathrobe, mustache half-matted to his lip from sleepin’ on his face, and clutching his coffee like a holy icon.

“Okay,” I said. “Short version, since you ain’t gonna live long enough for the unabridged…

“A long time ago—no, longer’n that—longer’n that, too—the
aes sidhe
and few of the other Fae races were a lot more’n we are now. We were beautiful, and we were
powerful
.” I wondered if he could hear the regret and resentment. I wondered if I’d ever manage to ditch ’em. “Magics of a sort this world hasn’t seen since. Your ancestors worshiped us as gods, and they had reason to.”

“Well, long as it hasn’t gone to your head…”

“I’m serious here, Pete. You got no idea.”

He blinked over the rim of his mug, nodded, threw back a swig.

“Our power was a lot more concentrated, then. You gotta remember, this is before any significant human technology, before a lotta the Fae and semi-Fae races even exist—”

“‘Semi-Fae’?”

“Damn it, Pete, you wanna hear all this, or don’tcha?”

“You’re the one came to me at four in the A.M., Mick. I think I get as many questions as I want.”

“Yeah, remind me not to do
that
again.” He was right, though. I’d come knocking ’cause I had to hash out my thinking with
someone
. (Fact that
he’d
woken
me
up the night before had no bearing on it. No payback here. Nuh-uh. None.) He deserved to understand what I was yapping about.

“What you call the supernatural,” I said slowly, trying to couch it all in terms he
would
understand, “is either human—mortal sorceries, ghosts, whatever—or Fae.”

“Wait, all of it?”

“All of it.”

“Vampires?”

I jerked him a nod. “Fae spirits, real dark ones, inhabiting human corpses.”

“What about… me?”

Shouldn’ta surprised me that he asked. Especially since the full moon wasn’t even two weeks away.

“Creature of the wild, way back when. Primal, savage, from the woods of Elphame. Something in its essence, its blood, corrupted a guy, he carried it to someone else, and… well, Bob’s your uncle.”

“Gotta say, Mick, I’m not sure I buy it. Sounds kinda… propaganda-ish.”

I shrugged. “Could be bunk. It’s how we’re taught, though. Can I get on with it, now?”

Pete wandered into the kitchen, poured himself a third cup, and strolled on back.

“Now you can go on.”

“Oh,
can
I? Swell.

“Point is, at the height of our power, the Tuatha Dé Danann crafted a lot of powerful devices and fetishes. When I say we put part of ourselves into it, I mean it. Our power, our essence.

“The greatest of these were the four hallows, and one of those was a spear, granted to one of our finest warriors.”

“That’d be this Lou guy?”

Oh, for…
“Lugh. Lugh mac Ethnenn. Lugh of the Long Arm. Father of Cú Chul…” I actually
heard
Pete’s eyes starting to glaze over. “Ah, nuts. That ‘Lou guy,’ yeah. Anyway, the hallows saw a lotta use for centuries, especially when our other power started to wane. We couldn’ta conquered the Firbolg without ’em. But eventually, after we’d faded to just ‘the people of the mounds,’ the hallows were lost. One or two’ve popped up here’n there—we’re pretty sure
Claíomh Solais
resurfaced for a while with the name ‘Excalibur’—but never for long.”

He didn’t say anything, do anything, just stood there and held his cup while it steamed. He was wakin’ up fast, though. I could see it in his expression and his aura both.

“All right, so this spear thing’s here. That really such a big deal? What’s it do?”

“Eh, nothing much. Always strikes its mark, punch through any damn thing, returns to the hand that threw it, glows with fire hotter than the forge, no man may stand against its wielder in battle. Focuses and channels the wielder’s own magic in a way that makes it a howitzer if we assume my wand’s a friggin’ Daisy BB gun! That sorta spiel.”

“Is… is all that true?”

I wanted to shrug, decided I couldn’t be bothered.

“Some of it? Nobody ever got the full use outta it that Lugh did. Whether that’s ’cause some of it was him, instead of the spear, or just ’cause nobody else knows properly how to use the dingus… No idea. But even at its weakest, it ain’t something I want the Unseelie getting their grubby mitts on. Or the Seelie, for that matter. Or Herne. Or any-damn-body.”

“Fuck me.” Pete upturned a splash of milk into his joe, then handed me the bottle. Bit chilly for my taste, but I threw back a few slugs anyway. “What’re the Unseelie gonna do if they get hold of it?”

“God knows. There’s a good chance it’d be enough to win ’em Chicago in the Otherworld. If they decided to play with it
here
… Pete, you’d be surprised how many of your unsolved cases are down to them. When they visit the real world, especially the Unseelie, most of the time people die. And that’s in small numbers,
without
ancient magical hardware. If this goes down bad, it’ll make the city’s worst gang war look like a bridal shower.”

“And you’re just gonna hand it over to them if you find it?” he demanded.

“Whaddaya want me to do?”

“How about, let’s see, just a quick thought off the top of my head,
not
handing it over?”

“I swore an oath, Pete.”

“I think your conscience can shoulder a fib or two!” He was so animated now, gesturing this way’n that, I think more of his coffee ended up on the rug or his bathrobe than in his belly.

“Ain’t a matter of principle. It’s a matter of…” Shit, how could I even try to put a human wise to what a Fae’s word means? What kinda chance I took, what kinda fears I had, when I bonded myself to Eudeagh?

Damn the Unseelie, anyway!
No-win decisions, pickin’ the lesser evil, hurting some to save others… That’s why I abandoned the Court, locked so much of myself away, in the first fucking place! I promised myself long ago, after the last time, that I wouldn’t…

Guess an oath to oneself doesn’t carry the same weight, huh? Fuck.

“Okay, look,” I explained, about a year later. “One of us violates an oath—the right kinda oath, anyway—we lose all Fae protection for a year and a day, see? Legally, anyone can do anything to the foresworn, with no repercussions. Nobody can start any family vendettas over it, either; though it’s not like I have a family to avenge me.”

“Okay, yeah, that don’t sound good, but…”

“That’s just the legal bunk, Pete. The real kicker’s mystical. You seen what I can do to random chance? That’d turn against me, but swift. I’d have better luck if I broke a mirror’n used the pieces to skin a black cat under a ladder. And I’d be a damn
beacon
. Anything within miles’d feel it.
Vulnerable
aes sidhe
here!
”

“What do you mean ‘anything’?”

“There are things out there, see? Things that normally leave the rest of us Fae alone, things worse’n the Unseelie, worse’n you could even… They might not suss me out,
probably
wouldn’t, there ain’t many of ’em. But they
could
. I might be willing to die to keep the spear outta the wrong hands. But I’m not willing to risk my
soul
for it. Even at my best, I was never
that
brave.”

Took him near on a full minute to absorb it all. He finally dropped into another chair, didn’t seem to notice he’d planted himself on top of a crumpled—and now gettin’ more crumpled—magazine. (Me, I decided to pretend the quick peep I got of a brown breast, as the pages folded up, meant it was a
National Geographic
.)

“Loopholes?” he asked more quietly.

“Nada. Dame I bargained with, she’s sharp. Wouldn’t let me get away with anything like that.”

“You sure?” He smiled, a little. “Could ask a lawyer.”

“Nuts to
that
! The Unseelie’s one thing, but let’s not push it!”

We both chuckled, and we both knew full well that neither of us was really feeling all that chipper.

Was another minute before he opened his trap again. “Don’t that mean it’s a good thing, though? That you can’t find it?”

“I gotta get out from under, Pete. ’Sides, if I don’t, one of the others will, sooner or later. We’ll all still be behind the eight ball anyway.”

I shook my head, kept on yapping, as much to myself as my buddy. “Gotta be veiled somehow. Something that potent, that much mojo? Me and the others, we’d feel that across town. Maybe across worlds. Nah, it’s hidden, contained. I’m gonna need actual clues.”

“Anything I can do?”

See? There’s a reason Pete’n me are buds when I usually got no time for mosta you.

“Anything more you can sniff up about the museum, uh, not-robbery, that’d be swell. Hmm. And try to dig up everything you can on any unexplained or hinky deaths in the past few days.”

Like I’d told him, with Unfit and outside Fae stalking Chicago, it was a fair bet there’d be at least a handful of… unfortunate bystanders. The Unseelie ain’t
all
full-on psychotic, but even the stable ones… Well, the fact that there wasn’t a newsworthy amount of blood in the streets
already
had me pretty well astonished. If I could learn some about the deaths that
had
happened, maybe I could at least keep a peeper on where everyone was’n what they were up to.

“Can do.”

“Thanks, Pete. Um… Maybe don’t go through Galway on this, yeah? Kinda doubt I’m in his graces after my no-show yesterday morning.”

Few more minutes of polite jawing, a few more snorts of lukewarm cow juice, and I was off. Hadda let Pete catch some more winks before his shift; and me? I decided, since I still had a couple hours before sunrise, that there was time for me to have one more conversation.

If
I was right about who it was I was tryin’ to talk to. And if he’d take my call.

* * *

Assuming you want something bigger’n a beagle, there ain’t a lot of full-on predators in or around the Second City, unless you’re talking about the kind with two legs. Suppose I coulda snuck into the zoo, but what I had in mind might attract attention there that I
didn’t
need.

Still got a
few
options, though, even if they’re as much scavenger now as hunter. This close to dawn, most of ’em had already slunk back to their dens, but once I got to the outskirts of town, it wasn’t
too
hard to find a handful of coyotes still out and about.

I crouched in the dirt and weeds, and waited. I don’t smell human, not to them. Between that and a touch of long-distance mental coaxing, I got one to come near enough for some peeper-to-peeper communication.

Pushing into an animal’s mind is weird. Different than a human’s or another Fae’s. It’s duck soup in some ways; they don’t got the same will, same innate resistance, as you schlubs. But they also don’t think like we understand it. They’re all emotion and instinct. It ain’t easy giving ’em instructions, making ’em understand what you’re encouraging ’em to do. Ain’t even a language barrier so much as a… concept barrier.

End of the day, though, after a whole dance number of sniffs and yipping, I got through. Wasn’t as though I was asking it to do anything unnatural—just a smidge, uh, differently than normal.

Drawing a whole lot of perked ears and confused stares from the rest of the pack, the coyote howled.

Short. Long. Short, short. Long. Short, short, short. Long.

Up to five shorts, then counting back down.

Didn’t mean anything, really, but it was a
blatantly
artificial pattern. No coyote, no animal, was gonna call out like that of its own accord.

Most Fae would probably notice but not much care. I could get a few of the local wilderness enthusiasts—a
ghillie dhu
or faun, or maybe even a
huldra
. Didn’t think it too probable, though, with everyone either tracking down the spear or lying low.

I coulda gotten Herne, too, I suppose. He’d have noticed the odd call. But he’d also probably dismiss it as a ruse.

No, the guy I was looking for, if I was right, would notice the call and
wouldn’t care
if it was a trap.

Yep, he showed. And yep, he didn’t give one good goddamn if it was a trap.

He appeared from a nearby copse of trees, sorta ghosting outta the dark beneath the canopy. Branches didn’t rustle when he passed, grass and leaves didn’t crunch where he stepped.

Just about pitch black out here, and he still wore the sunglasses and the wide-brimmed hat. His teeth glinted in the darkness.

And it was all I could do not to dust out of there, to run until my legs were worn to bloody stumps. Not because he was so frightening, though he was that, but because he
knew
. I could just sense it, feel it in the air around him. I didn’t even know
what
he knew, only that it included every crime and every sin I’d ever indulged—and so much more, besides.