Алекс Калер - The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels)

Flames lance down from her, spearing into the horizon, igniting the cornfield, filling the sky with heat and hungry fire. One pierces down toward me and I don’t even have time to shield my eyes as my world explodes in heat and light and then…silence. A quick glance around and I realize I’m still alive, completely untouched. All that’s left of the fey who attacked me is ash. I look up at Lilith and she catches my stare, nods slowly, then dips her head back to the heavens as the flames around her grow brighter. I don't know if she saved me because, as she said, we're on the same team or because she wants to kill me herself. I don't want to find out.

The fields alight. There’s no more room for sound beyond the crackle and roar of fire, not even the dying screams of the fey. I push myself to standing and see the chapiteau curling in on itself, peeling off in long ribbons of burning fabric that float away, like burial shrouds dissolving into the sky.

Lilith’s reign doesn’t go unchallenged for long. Arrows fly toward her, along with sparks and magical missiles and bolts of lightning, but they all vanish, all become nothing the moment they hit her cocoon of fire. And every shot at her receives a counterattack, a lance of flame that folds back to the assailant. I watch in horror as elves and fey burst into flame, some alive just long enough to scream and try to beat out the flames, others disintegrating on impact. Then another light fills the sky, a pure golden counter to Lilith’s fire. Oberos.

The two meet, brilliant sun and burning dark star, and the words of Oberos ring through the air.

“So, it is true. Kassia the daemon has been kept in hiding by the Winter Court.”

For a moment, I wonder if Oberos had killed Mab, but then she appears at my side in a swirl of shadow. Not a feature of hers is out of place — no sweat, no blood, not a stray hair. She could have stepped straight off the runway. Only her eyes are wild. She puts a finger to her lips and pulls me back, hides me against the wall of a trailer. Together we stand and watch in silence.

Oberos raises his scimitars out to the sides; they glow bright, like horns of sunlight. Lilith just laughs.

“You think you can take me, son of Oberon? I, who made rivers bleed and heaven weep with faerie blood?”

Oberos glows brighter. I wince, but keep my eyes open. I won’t miss this, even if it kills me. I doubt I’ll be making it out of here alive anyway.

“I will avenge the deaths of my kin,” he says. Is it my imagination, or did his voice falter?

“When I am finished,” Lilith says. “None will be left to avenge yours.”

Lilith attacks. In the blink of an eye she’s on top of Oberos, hands reaching around the Summer prince’s neck as flames leap about both of them. I can barely see them in their halo, can only make out the faintest blur as flame meets sunlight. The sky roils, the fields burn. No one else moves.

“When Oberos is dead,” Mab whispers to me, “we will have very little time. Kassia will come after me next. When she does, you will have to stop her.”

I pry my stare from the battle above and look at her, my eyes wide.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

She looks at me with those blazing green eyes, her hair a wild nest of black. She actually, amazingly, looks frightened.

“There isn’t time to explain,” she says. “Just be prepared.”

“I can’t fight that ,” I say, looking back up to the sky. The ball of flame surrounding them is alive, twisting and writhing with their struggle. It doesn’t take an expert to realize that Oberos is losing: his light is dying, and the red flames grow brighter.

“You have, and you will.” Her words are dark as prophecy.

I don’t have time to ask what the hell she’s talking about. With a roar that shakes the trailers and makes the sky fall, Lilith’s red flames completely consume Oberos. The Summer prince screams and struggles, but he’s locked tight in Lilith’s grasp. Arrows once more fly from the fields as the Summer Fey try to rescue their prince, but it’s too late. I watch in horror as Oberos’s bright body burns from the inside out, sinister black and red flames spilling from his sapphire eyes, snaking from his lips. Lilith doesn’t let go, not until Oberos lets out a final scream and explodes in a flurry of sparks and burning butterflies.

Silence.

Then I feel the heat of Lilith’s gaze as she finds us.

“Auntie Mab,” she calls out, a mocking imitation of her usual childlike tone, “It’s time we talked.”

In the blink of an eye she’s there, standing right in front of us. The flames around her are gone, but she still radiates heat. Inside the shell of flickering heat waves, Lilith floats, somehow transformed. Her skin is grey, her eyes are red, her ripped dress hovers over her body like a cloud. When she smiles, it cracks her skin like fissures on pavement, small lines of red light streaming out.

“You thought you could hold me,” she says. “You thought I’d be your prisoner.”

Mab stands her ground.

“I protected you,” she says. “You would have been killed.”

“No,” Lilith hisses, the grass under her feet igniting. “I cannot be killed. Not until every faerie has died for what they did.”

“I will give you one more chance,” Mab says, her voice calm. “Relinquish this battle and serve me, and you may live.”

“Never.”

“Then you leave me no choice.” Mab takes a deep breath. “Vivienne,” she says, and I jerk my glance back to her. No, no, I don’t know what you — “Line 13.”

Light fills me. Brilliant, shimmering white light that makes my skin dance. I can’t see, can only feel the blaze of radiance that pulses in my blood, the light that is blood. My hands are fire, celestial fire, and all I hear is a single word, Lilith’s word — Kassia’s word — and that is no.

Kassia screams and is on me, her hands burning, reaching toward my throat. Deep in her eyes, I see hell blazing, feel its heat digging into my bones as she screams and tries to burn me, tries to tear me apart. But the light inside is brighter, brighter, and that’s when I realize my hands are on Kassia, too. My hands are locked on her shoulders, and I’m flipping her over, pinning her to the ground, the grass below her burning and flickering in our combined light, and she’s screaming, struggling as the light grows brighter, as it burns us both. And then I’m screaming, too. I can’t stop it, can’t stop the pulse and flare of the stars that rush through my veins, out from my fingers and into her skin. The world goes bright, bright, whiter than light.

White, white, then black.

Death hurts.

It’s not the release everyone says it is, not the light at the end of the tunnel. Death is falling down a staircase in the dark while covered in thumbtacks.

I open my eyes and try not to wince at the faint light that sears into my brain. A few blinks and I realize the cool blue light is from candles. Candles in crystal skull sconces. Death is classy.

“So,” Death says, her voice smoke and grave dirt. “The dreamer awakens.”

I push myself up, numb in spite of the needles shivering under my skin. A fine Oriental rug is below me. Very classy.

“Where am I?”

Death appears at my side as a shadow. Her eyes are jade, her lips crimson, her face pale gravestone.

“Where do you think?”

And then I see the desk, the bookshelf, all plucking themselves out of the blackness in puffs of fog. I see the chairs, and the open book.

I’m not dead after all.

Mab reaches down and I take her hand, let her help me up to standing. She leads me over to the desk and gently helps me into the chair. Then she sits opposite me. She wears only smoke, though her whip is coiled on the desk beside the book of contracts. The tip is covered in shining golden blood.