The pixies were still swirling about me when my foot touched the floor of the cavern, their minute sparks dimmed by the presence of luminescent ivy vines threading over the cavern’s uneven walls and some of its rocky outcroppings. If anything, the cavern seemed to be brighter than the building above me, but I still had to move carefully, letting my vision adjust.
“Damned place looks like it took a shelling,” I muttered to myself.
There were boulders and stalagmites everywhere, and the fireflies seemed to be interested in a constellation of algae-clogged puddles to the right of the rock pile I’d climbed down. The insects dipped and swirled, their long prawn-like bodies flashing gods-knew-what to the swarm, celebrating their water-drenched salad or perhaps adding me to the list of people they’d drawn down to their deaths. Kenny’s path through their dusting faded off to the left, heading toward a thick copse of columns covered with more ivy, the spires stretching up to connect with the cavern’s ceiling nearly twenty feet above. A trail of sparkling yellow footprints led off clearly at first, but then grew fainter as his shoes sloughed off the fireflies’ powder.
“Hold up.” I frowned, glancing at the ground, then at the fireflies. The glowing motes were everywhere, illuminated circles surrounding each puddle, with a fine layer of dust floating on the surface where the bugs dove down to snatch up whatever it was they found in the stagnant water. “What the hell am I stepping in? Is this bug shit? Is that what this is?”
I sniffed at the gold glitter stuck to my hands, prepared to recoil or gag at the smell.
Nothing.
Still didn’t mean it wasn’t shit, so I wiped my hands on the nearest rock before plunging deeper into the cavern, following the trail of unevenly paced footprints Kenny had left in his wake.
The bubble of space only extended a few feet behind the rock pile but stretched out into the shimmering depths past the columns. There were signs of pre-Merge Earth scattered about the ground below the hole in the building’s floor, bits and pieces of a broken-apart restaurant dotting the rocks near the pools. A small fryer basket stuck out of a stalagmite near me, its mesh nearly rusted through and thick with pixie dung.
More evidence of forgotten Earth cropped up as I walked, the ivy wrapping around not only the rock but also half a car and what looked like a collection of dead-eyed dolls dressed in frilly age-filthy frocks made of lace and tulle. I kept my eye on the toys as I stalked by, braced for one of their cracked legs to move or for one to sit up and lunge for me to drink me dry of my blood.
Oddly enough, the remains of a tik-tik lying against an elephant-sized boulder gave me pause, the blue taxi’s battered body covered with hangul and SoCal Mexican graffiti, with a pair of snapped rail cables draped over its corpse like a gift bow. Lying close to the part of the cavern where the walls tucked in closer, I only had myself to blame when an elfin male stepped out from behind the boulder, his hands stretched out in front of him, a crackling magic playing over his fingers with a delicate ease.
There was no sign of Kenny, but I knew the fat bastard had to be lurking around somewhere. The cavern closed in a hundred yards past where I stood, and there were enough large rock formations to hide him, a handful of walruses, and maybe even a bus or two.
The airborne iron dust didn’t reach down into the cavern, but it felt as if its poison was still working through my lungs, making it difficult for me to breathe. He still wore my face, and the time since I’d last seen him hadn’t been good to it. I imagined he looked more like me than ever before. The polished aristocratic smugness he’d always drawn about himself was gone, replaced by a grittier, more damaged appearance. His hair was longer, more the length of mine now, and streaked thick with purple and silver, muting the black around his lean face. I couldn’t imagine what could have made the scar running from his right eyebrow down to the rise of his cheek, but it flashed white against his sun-kissed skin, going deep down into his flesh. He was lucky he hadn’t lost the eye, but then again, I’d been surprised to find he’d survived the fall into the raging river to the east of the Southern Rise Court when his poorly crafted ainmhi dubh attacked me on my recent run down to the Mexican Unsidhe border.
“Ciméara cuid Anbhás.” Valin’s voice rolled around my name, its tones melodically accented with a thick Unsidhe purr and so hauntingly familiar my marrow quivered in response, anticipating the agonizing pain that normally followed those words. “It’s so good to see you, brother. Especially since the time’s come for me to even the score between us.”
Seventeen
“LET ME guess, you’re the one who put the contract out on me,” I said, keeping an eye on my brother’s hands while I circled him. Like our father, he was a flesh-shaper, and my body wore more than a few scars from their experiments on my flesh and bones.
“Seemed like the easiest way to get my hands on you,” Valin replied with a smirk. “It’s the only thing these animals really understand. Their one true god is Avarice. Why should I spend my life chasing after you when I can have one of them bring you to me? The irony of your savior’s brother dragging you to my feet isn’t lost on me. It has a delicious poetic justice to it.”
I regretted not having an iron-tipped blade on me, but what was poison to my brother was doubly so to me. He wasn’t walking around with shards of rusted rebar under his skin, its sour kiss leaching into my blood and guts. One of Ryder’s healers speculated this made me more immune to the deadly human metal, but the others thought she was off her rocker. It didn’t matter much what any of them thought, because none of them were willing to try to get the crap out of me and there wasn’t anything a human medic could do. Still, the thought of cutting my arm open and pouring a cupful of my blood into Valin’s mouth just to see if it did something to the bastard crossed my mind as I stood there under the ivy strands’ soft glow.
It was eerie to see the face I only caught sight of in a mirror. I recoiled then, mostly astonished to find an elfin staring back at me, but then the memories resurfaced, foggy with pain and red with blood. His face… Tanic’s and Valin’s hovered over me, the stuff spun from nightmares and lurking in every shadow. I knew those hands intimately, having those long fingers work themselves under my skin to separate large expanses of it from my flesh. The things they poured into me—shoved into me—lingered. He and my father were the reason I wore the Wild Hunt clan’s mark on my back, why my shirts sometimes caught on the ripple of scars flowing down from my shoulder blades toward my hips.
“Are you ready to go home, little brother?” Valin’s words were laden with magic, Unsidhe fluid and powerful, calling to my blood and ordering my will to bend to his. Old commands were woven into his cadence, pounding through my mind to grab at my soul, seeking out the cracks I’d healed over since I’d escaped their grip. “Hopefully there’ll be enough of you for Father to play with, but I can’t make any promises. It’s a long trip, and, well, we have a lot to catch up on. So, make it easier on yourself and come here. You won’t like it if I have to come get you.”
The net of his words stung—verbal barbs meant to hook me in—but I’d broken free of his hold—of their hold—since we’d first tangled. The Unsidhe magic slithered off of me, coursing down my spine and whispering off into the nothingness behind me. Only a slight smarting of the binding remained, coupled with a bit of sickness threatening to close my throat. I swallowed hard and it was gone, washed away with a bit of spit and laughter.