Unfallen Dead

I stared down at her in shock. “She refused?”

Ceridwen grimaced as she nodded. “She said your city’s sacrifice would serve Tara’s security. She doesn’t care if Vize gets through to Boston.”

The dark mass roiled within me, anxious to be released again. I kept it back by sheer willpower, letting the light of the spear in my mind keep it from growing again. I grabbed Ceridwen’s hand and leaned in close. “Stay with me, Ceridwen. I’m going to get you out of this, and then we are going to kick some serious Seelie Court ass. Deal?”

She tried to laugh. Blood speckled her lips when the laugh turned into a cough. Not a good sign. “Deal, macGrey.”

If I had never had reason to despise Maeve, I had one now. I marked the distance to the Boston portal. Vize’s remaining riders and some of the Dead pushed toward it. A long way to go through more fighting. The haze in the portal had deepened. I could make out city lights on the other side, but morning was coming to Boston. Samhain was ending, and the portal would close with the dawn.

I lifted Ceridwen gently. “Take her out, Dyl. Find Gillen or Briallen. We need her alive.”

Dylan generated a levitation spell to lift her. We positioned her sideways in front of him, the spear jutting out to either side. A small hope rose in my chest when Ceridwen lifted a hand to hold Dylan’s collar. It slipped off. Her head slumped against his shoulder, her essence sputtering.

“Get on!” Dylan yelled down to us.

“No, you need speed. Get out of here.” I slapped the mare hard on the rump with my sword. She bucked forward before Dylan had any more say in the matter. The fighters fell back at his approach, frightened by the wave of essence he fired in front of him. They swirled into the wake of his passing.

Meryl leaned against the pillar stone watching Dylan ride off. “We’re never going to get through that,” she said.

He reached the portal. The dream mare’s hooves lit with fire as they lifted from her smoky essence. They dove through the haze. A boiling rush of green flame erupted from the door as the Taint from the other side seared through the riders and the Dead. A wind filled with screams roared into the circle. Meryl and I clung to each other as the pillar stone shifted.

“Get out of here,” I shouted.

She tilted her head up to me and smiled. No one should die alone.

I searched her face, traced every curve and line of it with my eyes. I stared down at this person who had done everything I ever asked of her. And more. I saw something, something beyond physical attraction, this brilliant glow of uncommon beauty I couldn’t begin to put words to. My chest ached as I closed my eyes and kissed her, feeling her lips against mine, not with the hunger of sex but the essence beyond it.

I broke the kiss. Meryl smiled from under her bangs. I leaned down and kissed the top of her head, then ripped the silver branch from her jacket. Even with the storm of sound around us, the brooch made a metallic ping as I flung it among the trilithons. Meryl’s eyes went huge with realization. She lunged for me, trying to use me as her anchor in TirNaNog, but I stepped out of her reach.

“Co

Joe hovered by my shoulder and spoke very quietly in my ear. “I hope you realize I can’t shield you like she could.”

I nodded. Another gust of Taint blew from the door. The force of it sent Joe into a spiraling tumble as a sliver of intense white light pierced the mottled green. It shot hard and true at me, burning in my mind, the bond solidifying with a brilliant spasm in my head. I caught the spear one-handed, and it pulled me off my feet. It burned in my hand, not with the intense cold it once had, but with a white-hot fire. It stabbed the ground at the foot of the pillar stone, twisting and writhing as it sucked essence from the ring itself, great waves rippling through the stone circle. The Taint cha

Standing stones cracked. The entire circle warped and swayed. The stones on the sides of the entrance avenue caved inward, pulling down the standing stones and lintels to either side. The adjacent stones fell next, pulling the next set with them. Standing stone after standing stone after standing stone buckled and fell.

Joe tugged at my ear. “Come on! The Way is closing!”

It was more than closing. It was collapsing. As the standing stones tumbled into the circle, they released torrential waves of essence. The circle was half-gone, a tangled heap of crumbling stone. A boulder came flying through the air. Joe screamed as his body shredded into ribbons of pink. The boulder tore through him, and the shreds scattered outward. Joe was still screaming when he snapped back. “I can’t teleport. The Way is closed!”

“The portal! Get out of here, Joe!” I yelled.

He buzzed into my face. I had never seen him so angry and so afraid. He trembled as he turned this way and that, as if looking for an answer to the destruction around us. He flew off, essence waves knocking him about like a leaf on the wind. He dove at the ground and looped back up. He reached the Boston portal as cracks bled up the standing stones to either side of it. Our eyes met one more time as he paused in front of the haze. He flew through to Boston.

Everyone was safe. I was alone.

CHAPTER 36

I might have made everyone leave me to die, but that didn’t mean I was going to accept my own end sitting down. I’d never get to the portal in time, but simply watching it close felt too much like passive suicide. I had to at least pretend I could reach it, click my heels, make a wish, drop the silver branch, and be transported home sweet home. If I wasn’t going to die in my sleep, I’d be damned if I leaned back, tapping my foot to the ol’ ding-dong of doom. Sometimes delusional thinking has the nice side effect of letting you feel better about yourself. I pulled the spear from the ground.

Essence whipped the air. The standing stones toppled as the ground undulated like viscous liquid. I staggered and stumbled across it, even crawled at one point when the earth welled up in my face. The fallen stones became elastic, oozing into each other in a sludge of moldering essence. The henge outside was a gray-green smear, no discernible features or landmarks. Even the Dead were gone, their body essence absorbed by the maelstrom.

Everything disintegrated, but the spear became more real than ever, a firm purity that drank in waves of released essence. I no longer felt pain from it, not in the physical sense. It radiated through me, a force of light, neither hot nor cold, but a thing of energy, eating up whatever passed for substance inside me. Even the dark mass in my head retreated, not disappearing but shrinking to a mote of nothingness. The forgotten pathways to my abilities unfolded like a lost flower, but the spear’s light rushed in, blocking my ability to manipulate essence as completely as the darkness had. At least I didn’t have a headache anymore.

The earth groaned. The ground heaved, raising me on a hill high enough to see the last portal standing. It glowed a molten blue-white, essence pulsing and flickering as the haze thickened. The groaning deepened to a rumble that rose in volume. A higher-pitched sound sliced through the rumbling, louder and more variable, oddly familiar, but elusive. With a rush of power, it pierced through all the other noise around me until there was no mistaking the distinct sound of an engine.