CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The charring edges of the Veil disappeared into the distance. If anything remained of the barrier, it was too far away to matter now.

The Beyond now filled our vision, obscuring what we might have seen of Louisiana.

They were mounted on white destriers, a dozen that I could see. Paranormals all of them, and all in battle gear. Golden armor with long crimson robes beneath, golden helmets topped by crimson combs or feathers, and gleaming golden weapons in their hands. The horses were enormous white stallions with thick legs, long curling manes, and wide and flaring nostrils.

I didn’t see the female commander who’d waited in the Beyond the last time the Veil had nearly been opened, the woman who’d looked into my eyes with murder in hers. But that didn’t ease my fears. They were different shapes, sizes, skin tones. But they all looked ready to fight.

Some of the Paras had wings like Malachi’s. Others had streaks of crimson down their foreheads, noses, and chins, and the same crimson along the tips of their fingers. They were called Seelies, members of the Court of Dawn, the faction that had broken through the Veil and led the war against us.

“The Court of Dawn!” Malachi screamed. “Be ready!”

We had a few humans and Paras, a few Containment vehicles, and a couple dozen soldiers—only enough people to threaten a scientist into backing down.

They had two dozen mounted soldiers with armor that resisted human weapons, or had before Containment had tweaked the ordnance. God only knew what would happen now.

“General!” Rachel ran toward Malachi. “Would you like the field?”

He stared at her for a moment. Then his expression shifted, went hard, and he looked back at his meager troops. Paranormals had a long way to go toward parity, but that Containment was giving Malachi control of the human troops was a pretty big deal, or so it seemed to me.

“Create an arc,” he said, and began pointing to locations. “Soldiers in front, armored vehicles at each end, pointed into the Beyond. You take that end,” he told her, pointing to his right. “I’ll take the other. They’ll try to flank us; it’s what they’re trained to do. Don’t let them, Captain.”

That single word—his saying her title—contained enough heat to scorch. And the look in her eyes said she knew it. I had a sense that a kiss between Malachi and Rachel would have plenty of heat.

The promise of that, the reminder of love and connection, made me feel incrementally better. I looked back at the Beyond. Or as good as one could feel when staring down a group of people who wanted us dead and our world to boot.

“What about us?” Erida asked.

“Take as many as you can, and don’t stop short of killing them. They won’t stop short of killing you.” The loathing in Malachi’s eyes looked ancient, built from years of anger and mistrust.

A horn trumpeted from their world, long and low and wavering, and lifted the hair on the back of my neck. A flashback threatened, but I shook it off. Not here, not now.

The woman at the front of the line of horses screamed, and they let loose.

The Battle of Belle Chasse had begun.

•   •   •

“We’ll stand together,” Liam said, gripping my hand as we took positions in the front line. My hand was damp, my heart beating like a timpani as the soldiers galloped toward us.

Liam’s eyes were completely gold now, as dense and shimmering as Malachi’s. But there was no mistaking the human fury in his eyes, or the look of hatred he directed at those who would destroy us.

“Stay with me,” he said. “We stay together, work together, we’ll be fine.”

But then the army crossed into our world, and all hell broke loose.

As if guessing our plan, one of the Seelies, her white hair streaming beneath her gilded helmet, charged us.

“Claire!” Liam called out as I moved first, darting to the side when she arrowed her stallion between us with an evil grin.

She was close enough that my hair rustled as she passed, close enough that I could smell the clove scent of her skin, the warm odor of horse, her well-oiled armor.

She circled around and came again, whipped the bow from her back with one hand and the arrow from her horse-mounted quiver with the other, and fired.

I smiled, gathered magic, made my best guess about velocity . . . and grabbed the arrow in midflight.

It shivered in the air two feet from my face. Holding it steady, I turned, pivoted it with a fingertip, and looked up at her. “You want to walk back into the Beyond?”

She screamed and charged.

I propelled the arrow toward her, and she barely dodged it, the metal tip grazing her shoulder. She screamed again, launched another arrow, fired.

Her movements were so fast I didn’t have time to prepare, to grab that arrow. I hit the ground on my stomach, heard the arrow whiz over my head, and then her stallion was nearly on me.

I screamed as I was hauled to my feet and looked up into golden eyes.

But this time, it wasn’t an enemy.

Liam crushed his mouth to mine. “Together,” he said.

My head was spinning, but I nodded. “We’ll try it again.” I had only a moment before the next round. “Behind you!” I yelled, and pulled him to the side, inches from where a golden lance slid into the ground.

I’d seen one of those before, knew they were heavy. But with the two of us together . . .

“I have an idea. But it’s a little dirty.”

“They’ll kill us if they can,” he said. “Dirty’s fine.”

I glanced back. The soldier who’d thrown the lance—a man this time, a Seelie with dark skin and beard with the same crimson stripe—galloped toward us.

“A Seelie walked into a bar,” I said, and Liam nodded.

“Right there with you,” he said, and took my hand.

There was plenty of magic in the air, especially now that it was funneling through the open Veil, but it was weird and wild, and that much harder to wield. It took precious seconds to pry the enormous lance from the ground, to get it horizontal. And we had only seconds to move.

“On three,” Liam said. “One, two, three!”

We raised the lance to the Para’s chest height.

The horse galloped toward us, passed cleanly beneath the bar. But the rider hit the bar, then hit the ground, and didn’t get up. We let the lance fall; it was heavy enough, dense enough, that it didn’t even bounce.

The earth shook, and we looked to see smoke rising from a mortar round fired on the other side of the battlefield where soldiers, horses, and Paranormals had fallen.

Fuck war, I thought, and let myself look away. I had to if I was going to get through this.

Behind us came a banshee scream. A female Seelie, golden sword lifted over her head, ran toward us, her gaze aimed at me, maybe because I was smaller and she believed I was weaker, the easier target.

But Liam had decided no one would get to me. No one would get past him.

His eyes glowing gold, he put a hand on the ground like a sprinter on the block, then pushed off. They ran toward each other. Liam leaped, propelling his body an inhuman ten feet into the air—maybe borrowing her magic for the trip—arms back and ready to strike.

They met with a blaze of fire and power that sent a shock wave of magic through the air; then they hit the ground with enough force to put a dent in the earth and send dirt flying.

The Seelie swung the sword. Liam blocked it.

I watched for a moment to intervene, for a chance to lend him a hand, to grab the sword or the woman, but they were a blur of action as he fed off her magic and matched her strike for strike.

I was so focused I heard it before I realized what it was—the buzz in the air, the sound of speed and danger. And even when I looked up, all I could see was the gleaming edge of the golden arrow headed straight toward me.

“No!”

Erida leapt toward me, pushed me toward the ground.

I heard the arrow land with a horrible punch of flesh, and Erida jerked above my body.

“Oh, no,” I murmured, maneuvered out from under her and tried to roll her over—or as much as I could, given the arrow piercing the middle of her chest. “Oh, Jesus, Erida. Why did you do that?”

She smiled a little. “That’s not very gracious of you.”

“I’m grateful and pissed off . . .” I trailed off, looked her over, tried to figure out some way to help her, to move the arrow.

But there was only acceptance in her eyes. She reached out, squeezed my hand. “I did it for your father. Because I loved him best of all. And you were his child. He was gone before I wanted him to go. But this is a gift I can give him, even now.”

Bon dieu, I thought, borrowing one of Liam’s favorite phrases as tears streamed down my face.

She shivered, blood at the corner of her mouth.

And I knew what I could give her. “The gas station,” I said. “Remember what you told me about it?”

Jaw clenched, she nodded.

“He finished, Erida. But it’s not just a gas station. It’s a museum. All those magical artifacts Containment tried to burn, tried to get rid of, he saved. Books, weapons, objects. Hundreds of them.”

She squeezed my hand, tried to smile against the pain. “He saved them.”

“He did.” I wasn’t exactly sure why, but I could make a good guess. “And there’s a bunker in it, too. Food, beds, a kitchen.” I swallowed back tears, tried to dig out the strength to do this. “It wasn’t just going to be a store. I think he saved the objects for you, and I think he meant for the three of us to live together. To be a family. Me and you and him.”

Tears slipped from her eyes, gratitude clear in them. “Thank you, Claire. Thank you for that.”

“Thank you for making him happy, Erida. Even if it wasn’t for nearly long enough.”

She squeezed my hand again, then closed her eyes tightly against an obvious burst of pain. There was a sudden intake of breath, and then her eyes opened and she went still, even as the battle waged behind us.

Liam shielded me, watched me, and waited. I brushed the hair from her face, then linked her hands atop her chest and climbed to my feet. I would grieve for Erida, for what she’d meant to my father. But I couldn’t do it now.

There was fighting to be done.

•   •   •

There was more blood. More death. The Paras, for their part, were fierce warriors. But though Containment’s new mortar rounds were still being tested, they were ferocious. They cut through armor just as they’d cut through the Veil. Unfortunately, only half a dozen rounds had been manufactured thus far. And they’d all been depleted today.

When smoke spread like fog across the field, the scents of gunpowder and blood in the air, the world fell quiet.

Malachi emerged through the smoke that swirled around his boots. His wings were folded but still visible. The top arc on his left wing was ripped, his blood brilliantly crimson against the ivory feathers.

“Is this it?” Liam asked.

“This was probably a sentinel unit assigned to watch the Veil for breaches,” Malachi said.

Liam surveyed the devastation. “They’re only the first wave.”

“The first part of the first wave,” Malachi corrected. “A guard unit. They’d have passed along a signal, a warning, the moment the Veil began to open.” He wiped sweat and smoke from his face. “A battalion will be next, whichever is closest. And when they come, they’ll come with weapons and death. We need to prepare.”

He walked toward Gunnar, who was talking to a few of the troops.

Liam reached out, squeezed my hand. “I’m going to go speak to them.”

“Go ahead.” I watched him walk away—temporarily, this time—and then turned back to Laura and Caval. They were on their knees twenty feet away.

There was a bruise across Laura’s cheekbone, a smear of blood from a cut on her collarbone. But unlike many of the others, they were alive. They were the reason for it all.

I strode toward them, stared down at them. “How could you be so selfish?”

She pushed her hair from her eyes. “I did what I was asked to do.”

“You were fired. Icarus was killed. But you decided to keep going. To keep developing a weapon.”

Her eyes were clear, and utterly free of guilt. Free of conscience, if that was possible. “I had a job to do, a mission. I wasn’t going to just stop because someone got scared. Because someone wanted to ignore reality. You think Paranormals are our friends? Look around you.”

She would never change her mind. She was at least forty, and wasn’t able to see the world outside her myopic vision. And it didn’t matter. I didn’t matter to her, and she didn’t have to matter to me. I wasn’t her responsibility, and she wasn’t mine.

I looked at Caval. “You destroyed the Veil.”

His smile was wide and totally without doubt. “We beat them before. We’ll beat them again.”

“You won’t be beating anyone,” I said. “You’ll both be in prison. Locked away for the rest of your lives. Away from your money, away from your lab. You’ll have plenty of time to think about all your achievements.”

“We have friends.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “The jig is up, and your friends are as much underwater as you are.”

Liam and Gunnar walked back with half a dozen Containment agents.

One of the agents, an MP badge on her fatigues, stepped forward. “Laura Blackwell and Lorenzo Caval. You’re under arrest for murder, several counts, terroristic acts, and other charges that will be made known to you.”

They were pulled to their feet, and two of the agents took the prisoners toward one of the vehicles for transportation.

But the other agents stayed behind. And they looked at me and Liam with grim expressions. They’d seen us do magic. Big magic. Powerful magic. Liam had been cleared of murder, but we’d still violated the law.

We were still criminals.

One of the agents stepped forward. Gunnar tried to move in front of us, to protect us, but I held out a hand, shook my head.

“Claire Connolly and Liam Quinn, I’m sorry, but you’re under arrest for multiple violations of the Magic Act. We’re going to need to take you in.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t believe you will.” Because I was absolutely done.

The agent’s eyebrows lifted.

“We won’t be putting our hands in the air. We won’t be going with you and we won’t be going into Devil’s Isle.” I took Liam’s hand, smiled at him. “Little help?”

“Always.”

I reached for the magic, gasped at the sheer volume of it. It was flowing from the Beyond now, filaments filling the air like millions of fireflies. So much magic I could feel it floating between my fingers.

“Damn,” Liam said, swallowing hard. “There’s a lot of it.”

And there’d be more than this eventually. More magic in our world, more humanity—if that was a thing—in theirs. Because the Veil had been ripped open, and there was no turning back.

The agent put a hand on his weapon.

“Nor will you be pointing those at us,” I said, and lifted my hand.

Liam’s magic joined mine, braided around it, and together we lifted every weapon in the group into the air, let them float twenty feet above their heads.

Some of the agents jumped, scrambling to keep their guns. Others just stared at us, openmouthed and afraid—or openmouthed and completely awed.

“In a few hours,” I said, “maybe sooner, battalions of Paranormal troops are going to storm through that gap and into our world. They’ve been waiting for an opportunity to go to war, and Lorenzo Caval just gave them one.”

“Call the Commandant,” Liam told them. “Tell him to get ready for war.”

I squeezed his hand, my partner and my friend. “And tell him we’re ready to fight.”