C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“Lara, who is this? What’s going on?”

The trooper drew their attention by amending her question to, “What the fuck is going on?” He was crouched behind his open car door, a shotgun balanced in the rolled-down window, so all that was visible were wide eyes and a double barrel.

Lara sensed, more than saw, both Kelly and Ioan cede the right to answer by taking half-steps backward. The right to answer and the position of responsibility, she thought a little wryly, and stepped forward. “We’re the good guys.”

“You’re wanted for assault!”

Incongruous hope slammed through Lara’s chest. “Just assault? Detective Washington’s alive?”

The shotgun wavered as the trooper raised his head a few more inches, staring at her incredulously. “‘Just’ assault? That carries a fifteen-year prison term, lady! Whatever you did to him was bad enough that the whole damned East Coast is on alert, looking for you three.”

“We didn’t do anything to him. It was creatures like these ones.” Lara nodded toward the shriveling nightwings, then took a second look and swore. “They’re disintegrating.”

“Not entirely.” Ioan nodded at the largest of the nightwings, which twitched like a lizard’s tail, life gone but nerve impulses remaining. Its body changed shape more than withered as Ioan spoke again. “Whatever sustained them will be left.”

“Something sustained them?” Lara said horrified. Then, more urgently, she added, “Nobody’s going to believe any of this without a body. Do you have a camera, Officer? Ioan, can you, I don’t know, can you put a stasis spell on one of them or something, so it doesn’t disappear?”

Both men exchanged glances, but the trooper, looking like he wasn’t sure why, exchanged his shotgun for a cell phone and approached the largest dead nightwing to take pictures. He muttered, “The camera in the car will have caught the fight, too,” somewhat dubiously.

Lara shared his uncertainty: it seemed somehow unlikely that magical creatures could be caught on videotape. On the other hand, Dafydd had spent years as a TV weatherman, so maybe there was hope. “Ioan?”

He shook his head. “Any spell I cast would only last as long as I remained here, and I have no intention of staying to explain any of this. We’re weaker here, Truthseeker. Legend said we have always been. No one from Annwn stays in your world long, not if they can help it.”

“Fairy tales,” Kelly whispered. She’d knelt at Dafydd’s other side and looked up now, eyes shining with worry. “In fairy tales if the fair folk stay in our world it’s usually because they’re trapped somehow and aren’t strong enough to get away. Like Tam Lin except in reverse.”

“And it was mortal love that saved Tam when he rode back into this world with the queen’s host,” Ioan said. Lara looked between them, bewildered, though Kelly’s expression said she knew the story. “Had Janet come to Annwn to rescue him, she never would have been able to free him. We’re weakened by this world,” Ioan said again, “and Dafydd is weaker yet than he might have been, because his link to the Barrow-lands has been stolen from him.”

“How did you—?”

“Know? Because no denizen of the Barrow-lands would be so wasted unless he’s been cut away from the source of our power. Was it you?”

Lara nodded miserably. “I was trying to stop the nightwings from coming through a breach between the worlds. I closed it. I was afraid they’d take on a life of their own.”

“As they would have. Or stolen many, more likely.” Ioan frowned at the largest nightwing, which the trooper stood over, still filming. It had nearly reverted to shape, and bile rose in Lara’s stomach as she recognized the shape.

“It’s Officer Cooper. Oh my God.” Her hands went to her mouth, half shock and half holding back illness. “Oh my God. This is the man the nightwings … took refuge in. Hid in. Oh my God, Ioan, what happened to him?”

“They required a host. Sustenance, so they could survive. Their maker would have been able to control a man infested by them, Truthseeker. Not easily, perhaps, but in time, with such an infection, the purveyor of disease would inevitably dominate the host. And the host’s perception of himself as an individual being would have permitted the nightwings to act in concert the way we saw.” Ioan sounded admiring. “It would take a magic user of great skill to accomplish all this.”

“And a lot of innocent lives,” Lara snapped. Ioan had the grace to look slightly abashed, as Kelly slowly came to Lara’s side, looking down at the contorted dead man.

“No wonder it took awhile for him to catch up with us,” she whispered hollowly. “Cooper would have been fighting for control over his own body.”

“And losing,” Ioan said without pity. “You’re fortunate he had the strength of will he did, else you might have been destroyed hours since. And you are equally unfortunate that there was such corruption in his soul that he was susceptible at all.” He fell silent a moment, looking at Cooper’s body. The police officer looked tortured, Lara thought, and as though he’d aged years in the hours since she’d seen him last. Black threads stained his skin, like the blood vessels were filled with poison, which wasn’t, she imagined, far from the truth.

Ioan finally turned his attention back to her. “You probably saved your world from an infestation, Truthseeker. And no wonder, then, that I had such trouble crossing over, with the path so thoroughly closed. Following you took everything I had, and even now I’m uncertain how it was accomplished.”

Lara curled her fingers around the staff she still carried, reluctant to suggest it as the source of power Ioan had sent her searching for, or as the conduit that had allowed the worldwalking spell to work again. He only knew that he’d wanted a weapon, not what it looked like, and she had no intention of giving it up. Instead, after a moment’s silence, she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, does it? You came, and you saved us.”

“As I would now save my brother. I would return him to the Barrow-lands, Truthseeker.” Ioan’s voice cooled, as though he expected a challenge, and Lara for once found herself glad to meet that expectation.

“Why would I let you take him anywhere? As far as I know you’re the one who killed Merrick and started this whole mess.”

For a sudden moment she saw what Emyr might have looked like if he’d ever displayed a sense of humor. It cut through Ioan’s face, biting but true: “I have done no such thing. I have, indeed, done my best to protect him. He faced some manner of trouble on the battlefield, Truthseeker. That was why I usurped his power and thrust him back to this world in the first place.”

“You what? You laid the compulsion?” She hadn’t expected her suspicions to be confirmed so easily, but Ioan’s voice rang out over hers, strong and angry.

“No. I stole his power, Truthseeker, but not his will. I was watching you during that battle, through my silver pool.”

Lara, under her breath, said, “I thought scrying was an ice spell.”

Ioan, unexpectedly, interrupted himself to answer that. “Ice is only frozen water, and water is my gift. I was watching,” he repeated. “To find you, but Dafydd rode close to you, and so I watched him as well. I saw him struggling with the compulsion, and I saw his lover bind him so he could drive himself away into the heart of the Unseelie army. I took the only path I could see to keep him safe. I wrenched his own magic away and forced the worldwalking spell he held at the ready to be cast, sending him back to your world. But he is dying now, Truthseeker. He will die if he stays here.”