Juliet Dark - The Angel Stone

I watched in awe as the royal couple inclined their heads as one to listen to William’s whisper. What could his condition be? I wondered, jealously hoping it involved not having to have sex with Fiona. But that couldn’t be it, because both Fiona and Fionn nodded. Fiona looked up and smiled.

“Very well,” Fiona said.

“It will be so,” King Fionn proclaimed with all the majesty of royalty.

“We’ve agreed to your lover’s terms, doorkeeper,” Fiona said. “You are free to return to your time. You have only to walk over that hill and you will find yourself back in your time among your Fairwick friends.”

She pointed behind me, but I didn’t turn. I was waiting for one last glimpse of William, but as he turned my way he began to fade. Fiona and Fionn were dissolving, too, but I kept my eyes on William. I heard voices behind me, some that I recognized, but still I didn’t turn. I held William’s eyes until their green-gold had dissolved into the green flower-filled meadows of Faerie. I will see you again , he’d said. And he would. But would I ever see him again?

“Callie? Cailleach McFay?” The voices came closer and called my name. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I turned to face my friends—and a future without William.

All my dear friends who had gone back to Faerie when the door was closing last summer were coming over the hill. I saw Brock Olsen and Dory Browne walking hand in hand with a troop of brownies, Elizabeth Book and Diana Hart among a herd of deer—and one bear, whom I recognized as Liz’s familiar, Ursuline—Casper Van der Aart and his partner, Oliver, with a contingent of gnomes, and many other townspeople whom I recognized and who now crowded around me, clapping me on the back and hugging me. I let the tears that had been brimming in my eyes fall, the loss of William mingling with the joy of this reunion.

“You found a way to open the door!” Liz cried. The dean had changed since I’d seen her last. Her gray hair had turned into a shimmering silver. Her skin was unlined and glowed like rose-tinted porcelain. She wore a long gown of glittering material that changed color as she moved from mauve to violet and she looked at least ten years younger than when I’d seen her last. Even Ursuline looked sleeker and shinier. Dwelling in Faerie agreed with them.

“It turns out I am the door,” I said. “Forging a blood bond to the door last summer was the first step in becoming the door.”

“I knew Callie would figure out a way!” Diana crowed, hugging both Liz and me at the same time. Diana had also been transformed during her time in Faerie. The demure innkeeper who had collected animal figurines and run the Fairwick Spinning Circle and Knitting Club had reverted to a wilder self. Her chestnut hair stood up in spikes around a wreath of twisted rowan branches and russet leaves. Her freckles had bred and multiplied, turning her skin into the dappled hide of a young fawn. She wore a skimpy green tunic over coltish brindled legs, looking a bit like a feral Peter Pan. I found it difficult to imagine her and Liz fitting back into their respective innkeeping and administrative roles. But apparently they didn’t.

“So we can return now?” Liz asked.

“She’s been worried about the college,” Diana told me.

“No more than you’ve been worried about your inn,” Liz countered. “How are they? The inn and the college, I mean. And Fairwick, of course. Did you drive out the nephilim?”

I stared at Liz and Diana, wondering how I could describe the awful changes the nephilim had wrought—Diana’s inn turned into a frat house, the college ruled by nephilim and patrolled by trows …

“Things are pretty bad back there,” I admitted. “I came to Faerie to get this”—I held out the angel-stone brooch—“but I had to go back in time to get it.” I blinked away tears, thinking of William. Liz and Diana gave each other a worried look, then I felt a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. I turned to find Brock Olsen, my old handyman and Norse divinity, towering over me. Was it possible he had gotten taller in Faerie? He’d certainly grown more imposing. He was dressed in a leather tunic and boots and a fur cloak, his scarred but handsome face both graver and stronger. Beside him was Dory Browne, in a homespun dress and peaked cap, looking tiny but no less fierce. Brock cradled my hand in his and looked at the angel stone. “You had to give up William to get it, didn’t you?” he said softly.

“How did you know?”

“It was a story Dolly told me once.” Dolly was Dahlia LaMotte, the romance novelist who’d lived in Honeysuckle House and drawn her inspiration from my incubus. “She said it was the one story she couldn’t write down, because it hadn’t happened yet.” He smiled. “I never quite understood that.”

“Dolly could be a little cryptic,” Dory said, with just a hint of jealousy for the woman Brock had once been sweet on.

Brock squeezed my shoulder before lifting my arm, displaying for all to see the hand that held the angel stone. The crowd gasped at the sight. The golden light of Faerie was filling the stone, making it glow like a beacon.

“Callie has sacrificed much to get this stone,” Brock roared. “Are you ready to fight by her side to take back our town?”

A great shout swelled from the crowd. I looked around at the faces of my friends and felt a corresponding swelling in my heart. This was what William had given me. I couldn’t let that sacrifice be in vain. As my heart swelled, I felt the door opening within and around me.

“Let’s go,” I said.

From Faerie we stepped straight into a firestorm. For a moment I thought I’d gone back to Castle Coldclough and was fated to be burned at the stake. The sky above was a roiling mass of red sparked with blue and yellow, the air filled with smoke and shouting. Great black shapes bulged through sheets of flame, roaring like fire-breathing dragons. Through the smoke I glimpsed dark-robed figures shooting bolts of light at the swooping monsters. The monsters responded as if stung by mosquitoes—annoyed but undeterred. One dived down and landed on a black-robed figure, who screamed and flailed at the creature. The figure’s hood fell away and I recognized Jen Davies. I ran to help her, but before I could reach her, a large woman stepped between the monster and me, aimed a shotgun at the creature, and fired.

“Touched by an angel, my ass!” roared the woman, whom I recognized despite the ash covering her face: Moondance. “I’ll touch you, asshole!” She fired again. The nephilim fell off Jen and hissed at Moondance with a mouth full of sharp teeth. It dug its claws into the ground and tensed its leg muscles to spring. I aimed the angel stone at it, directed my will, and unleashed my ire. A white beam shot from the stone with so much force that I staggered backward, but I stayed on my feet long enough to watch the nephilim explode in a burst of black ash.

“Holy shit!” Moondance swung around, her face now streaked with the ashy remains of the nephilim, her eyes wide at the sight of me. “Callie’s back, and she brought a laser gun!”

“Sort of,” I admitted. “I’ve got recruits, too.”

Diana knelt beside Jen, healing a gash on her arm. Liz was hugging Ann Chase. All around the circle, the people I’d brought back from Faerie were greeting their friends. “How many have you got in the circle?” I asked Moondance.

“Nine, including myself. Two recruits joined us, and there are the Stewarts outside still holding back the nephilim, but the bastards have been picking off the Stewarts to weaken the field—”

“Is that McFay?” a hoarse voice croaked behind me. I turned and found myself crushed in a bear hug by a man in tattered burned clothing and a blackened face. Only by his voice did I recognize him as Frank. “Damn it, McFay, where’d ya get the light saber? Have you got an army of Wookiees, too?”