“It’s you,” the Nomad finally shared, shaking his head. “It’s all of this.”
Another punch flew, another strike, a back-hand, and another kick. The two men tumbled across the sky, slamming into the dome over and over again. More magic let loose in streams of green, red, and black, and the shield sizzled some more under the assault.
A crack finally appeared, a real and telling crack that split beneath their weight and spread from the ground one-fifth of the way up the dome’s circumference. William eyed it warily. But his distraction cost him, and Ahriman landed a sudden and catastrophic blow that sent William rushing toward the ground like a cannon ball.
The Time King hit the dirt and rolled, and this time he was stunned by the impact. From where he lay on his back, he watched the stars twinkle, fainter than usual due to the light of the full moon and the breaking dome overhead.
He heard footsteps and turned his head to find Ahriman stand over him, still grinning. “All this time, you and your friends have been fighting to keep that shield up.” The Nomad said. “And Katrielle?” He now laughed so hard, his shoulders shook. “She’s practically drained herself entirely trying to hold it together.”
His tone lowered into seriousness, but it was laced with real joy. “It’ll kill her eventually, Solan. Amunet is the one fighting her, and we both know my love is the only one who can do away with that damn woman once and for all.”
William didn’t move. His mind worked around the information. Ahriman was right about that. Nomads couldn’t kill one another. Not usually, anyway. But for some reason, Amunet was able to snuff out her sister. Theories abounded that it had to do with love and hate.
William was willing to bet it was just a sister thing.
“And the funny thing is, all this time we knew,” Ahriman continued. “We knew you would erect it. And while you’re here on the inside trying to keep it up, it’s actually just keeping you in.” He leaned over William and blocked the light of the moon, casting his face into pure darkness. “Out there, your world is crumbling to dust,” he said. “Every single realm of it.” In that terrible darkness above William, two fires burned in irises of loathing. “That was the plan all along.”
*****
“You’re lying,” Amunet accused softly.
But Helena saw the fear in her gaze. She recognized that fear; it was a mother’s fear. No mother wanted to hear that their child wished for death.
Reflexively, Helena placed her own hand to her stomach as if there were still a life growing there. She remembered now that there once had been.
She blinked and lowered her head. “No,” she said. “I’m not.” She dropped her hand and met Amunet’s gaze again. “Cain is gone because he chose to go. I only offered him the choice.”
Amunet’s eyes narrowed into a star burning glare. “You’re lying!” Her hand flew so hard and fast, Helena had no time to block the blow. Amunet’s vicious backhand snapped Helena’s head to the side and sent her flying.
She landed with a thud that shook through her numbly, and laid there for a moment just trying to process the attack. Motes of red floated in her vision, but the pain slowly receded. One of the benefits of being Time Queen.
When she did finally open her eyes it took a moment for her to even realize what she’d landed on. Green flames shimmered beneath her body, and a perfect gloss-coated paint job supported her head.
“Angel,” she whispered.
The car seemed to grin at her again. Slowly, she pushed herself up, wondering if she’d damaged it. It was the only car left in the field and the only one that hadn’t yet been destroyed.
But a fist in her hair yanked back her head with hateful ferocity, and this time Helena was afforded the time to rely on her training. She reached up and held onto the hand in her hair, then turned and slid off the car, taking her attacker with her.
Amunet was knocked off balance and stumbled forward. Helena still held the woman’s hand in her hair. She bent Amunet’s pinky finger up and away from the rest of her hand, forcing her to let go. This again caused her to lose balance, this time in the opposite direction.
Helena then used this leverage and a firm hold on that same hand to land a Tae Kwon Do front kick squarely to her opponent’s jaw.
Amunet’s head snapped back, and her legs gave out. Helena released her hand to let her fall just as a voice sounded in her head.
Find the gun!
It was a different voice this time, but she knew it all the same. It was Evangeline, the Dragon Queen.
Helena looked up into the field, searching for the sender of the message. She was easy to find, wrapped in the natural black armor of her dragon scales and swinging a sword that looked very much like it was just another extension of her. She wondered why the woman hadn’t just turned into a dragon, then remembered Katrielle and the shield overhead.
She looked up in time to see a crack in the glass-like dome spread further up and disappear overhead. It was troublesome.
Get the gun, Helena! And get ready! Eva cried out a second time.
Helena looked back down, and this time Eva managed to stop in her struggles long enough to meet her gaze. A silent understanding passed between them. Helena immediately turned and began searching for the weapon that had flown from her grasp when Amunet backhanded her.
But that was when she noticed Amunet was no longer in the grass beside her.
Oh shi-
The kick to her spine was gut-wrenching and animalistic. She heard something crack, felt a disastrous pain unlike any she’d ever experienced, and once again went sailing. This time, she hit a tree a good ten feet up its trunk and slid agonizingly down the length of its rough bark. Rivulets of skin were ripped from her hip, collar bone, and cheek, but she was far more concerned with her back.
It was broken somehow. She knew that. The pain was indescribable and she’d heard it snap.
You will heal, said Time, sounding in her head as if it had known she desperately needed reassurance just then.
Helena gritted her teeth and tried not to cry. She knew damn well it would heal, but she didn’t have the luxury for an injury of this magnitude to slow her down. Distantly, she wondered where William was. People always wanted their loved ones close when they were suffering.
And a part of her sort of resented Time just then. For not making the healing go faster.
I cannot, explained Time gently. You now share my power with the King.
Crap. That explains it, she thought as she clenched her teeth and tried not to break them with the pressure. That explained everything, actually. The Time King had been all-powerful before his contract with Time. But then Time had taken that power and used it to prevent Helena from being reborn. Fate was too strong to be denied for long, and eventually Helena was reborn anyway. So Time scrambled to once again make things right.
And long story short, here they were, King and Queen. There were two of them to share the power William had touted before he’d made his contract with Time. The magic had all been fairly returned to be used by the sovereignty. It was just that there was more sovereignty around to use it.
God this sucks! she mentally screamed as she finished sliding down the tree, dropped to the ground, and fell painfully to her side. Agony ripped an angst-filled sound from between her teeth, no matter how hard she tried to hold it back. She blinked through the haze of building blurriness. Blades of grass cut through her vision where she lay – but as luck would have it, between those blades of grass was the gleaming of a black metal object.
It was right there. Her gun was literally within reach. What were the chances?
Helena tried to move her legs despite the pain, and managed the slightest nudge. That made sense. If she’d been completely broken, she wouldn’t have felt the pain; her nerve would have been entirely severed. So she still had use of her legs, and she was healing by the second. But at this rate, even if she grabbed the gun, she wouldn’t be able to stand and face her opponent in time.
 
; Again, she wondered where William was. The man who shared half her power. Her becoming Queen was the reason neither of them could completely stop Time any longer. But his parting words returned to her.
Remember things have changed. In battle, try everything you can think of. You never know what might work.
Helena realized that although she couldn’t freeze Amunet in place, there were things William had proven he could do that Helena had never even tried before.
Like blink from one place to another, she thought.
Time nodded approvingly. That’s my girl.
Chapter Fifty-eight
Crossing space in a blink was really just a matter of manipulating Time as well, if you thought about it. It took Time to go from point A to point B. Redirect those moments, and Point A became Point B. And just like that, you were there.
Helena heard the sound of ground crunching beneath shoes. She licked her lips and tasted blood. But it didn’t matter. Summoning a store of strength, she reached out through the grass and snatched up the gun that fit so well in her hand. The shoes moved faster now, running.
Helena closed her eyes, imagining the location she wanted to wind up in.
When she opened them again a split second later, she found herself in the quiet and enclosed driver’s seat of her car. The new position was instant torture to her injured spine, but she gritted her teeth and looked down at the gun she still held in her lap. “I have it,” she hissed aloud, wanting to fill the silence with some kind of sound or she would just scream.
Now what? she thought.
But there was no answer. Instead, there was the deafening sound of rending metal. Helena looked up to find the roof of her car being ripped away. But it wasn’t Amunet doing the damage this time; it was another monster from the alternate dimension.
The green drake flapped its large bat-like wings and hovered above the car, peering down at Helena like she was the soft, juicy fruit inside the shell it was painstakingly peeling apart. Helena temporarily forgot about her pain, waved her hand over the ignition of the Shelby, and willed it to start.
The engine revved to sweet, beautiful, rumbling life, and Helena thanked her lucky stars that at least she still had that ability. Her body instinctively wanted to do the driving on its own, but one attempt at pressing in the clutch with her left leg was enough to remind her that she was sorely injured. She sat back, relaxed her legs, and relied on her magic, figuring that if she could make the car start, then she could make it drive too.
She was right. She mentally shifted the vehicle into first, finessed the gas and clutch into that first tricky gear, and rolled out of park. The drake above her screeched in discontent, diving for her through the hole it had made. But she ducked – painfully – and willed the car to go faster. Grass and dirt flew out behind her tires as she steered the vehicle into the field, trying not to hit any of the figures that moved in front of her. She managed it, heading inward about thirty feet before she stopped, then spun it around on a dime to turn back around.
The drake faced her now, flapping steadily a few feet above the ground. It seemed to be considering the car in a new light. Perhaps Helena and her Shelby didn’t much resemble a piece of peel-able fruit any longer. Maybe the drake was thinking the car was actually another animal. With a smaller animal inside.
She gave the horn a long, loud honk just to seal the deal.
Whatever its conclusions, the drake decided to reconsider its dinner choice, because it flapped its wings harder and rose rapidly toward the decaying dome overhead.
Helena watched the mini-dragon fly out of her line of sight, then returned her attention to the tree line. Amunet stood like a ghost against the backdrop of trees, her face ashen, her blonde hair a mess, her clothing torn. But her eyes burned ever brightly in her fury, and at the moment it was all directed at Helena.
The Time Queen didn’t wait for her enemy to attack again. This time, she mentally shoved the car into gear and willed the gas pedal to the floor. The car spun out, but Amunet stayed where she was. Helena resigned herself to the notion that she might actually run someone over that night.
And then Amunet was lifting her hand and flicking her wrist just as Helena had seen Ahriman do earlier. The entire car flipped up from the ground and went end over end. Helena screamed as she was ejected through the hole in the roof created by the drake. She saw the forest and field and all of its many struggling inhabitants go by in a dark blur. She knew she was going to hit something awful and possibly break herself entirely.
A second later, she heard the crunching of metal as her car landed somewhere and took a solid beating. I’m next, she thought.
Helena, someone said.
She lifted her head and opened her eyes. She hadn’t even realized that she’d closed them. More surprising was what she found when they were open again.
She wasn’t falling. She was in fact floating. Helena hovered in place far above the ground, so high up she could nearly touch the top of the protective dome. Surrounding her body was a red and purple cloud of magic. It was the same magic that had given her the strength to attack the Nomads with the mobile home earlier. Now it seemed to have pulled her from the car that would have become her coffin and held her safely aloft a hundred and fifty feet above the ground.
She’d never been particularly fond of heights, but Helena felt perfectly safe in that moment, surrounded by that cocoon of magic. It was her magic, her strength. And it was stronger now than it had ever been.
She looked at her right hand and was both surprised and not surprised to see she still held the weapon. Through it all, she’d managed to keep her grip.
She smiled just a little, the reaffirmation of her strength boosting her enough that she straightened there in the sky and took a second to get her very strange bearings. She had a birds-eye view of the battle, and in the full moon light she was able to take a fairly quick head count.
The Vampire King was locked in combat with a pack of dire wolves, and he wasn’t alone. Two other Kings were assisting him. What he probably didn’t know was that the dire wolves of the Dark World fed on magical attacks. Battling them with spells of any kind only made them stronger – and bigger. Which probably explained why they had already grown to twice their normal size and were now requiring the help of several other Kings to control.
Two other strapping male sovereigns were struggling rather comically with a small horde of Fearfells, around twenty or so in total by her count. They too knew nothing about how to deal with the monsters of the Dark World, and were failing miserably in their attacks. Only certain weapons could harm a Fearfell – and once again, magic did absolutely nothing to them.
In fact, magic worked differently or not at all against most of the creatures of the Dark World, making its inhabitants all the more deadly. She hadn’t called them Night Terrors for nothing. But none of the sovereigns below would know this. She hadn’t had time to warn them.
Directly below Helena was the King she had most wanted to find. He was literally neck and neck with the Nomad Ahriman, both men with their fists wrapped securely around the other’s throat. From the state of their clothing and hair, it was clear they’d been doing this a while and that the two were actually able to cause one another harm, if not mortal harm.
It was distressing for Helena to see William in that state, but at least he was alive. And the moment her eyes settled on him he broke free from Ahriman’s grip, elbowed him in the gut, knuckled him in the face, and turned into the Nomad, shoving telekinetically reinforced power against his enemy’s chest.
Ahriman went sailing. Helena guessed that both inhabitants had done a lot of “flying” over the course of their battle.
William looked up and settled his eyes on her.
Helena.
He was the one who had called her name a few seconds ago. He must have seen her there, floating in her magical cocoon. He’d wanted to help her, wake her up, make her see.
Even now, with monsters dancing their death int
o the world, and the shield failing, and the Kings losing their battles, and Amunet out there somewhere probably boasting in triumph because the bitch had managed to destroy every one of Helena’s cars, William still managed to seek her out of the chaos and find her with his green, green eyes.
He stood tall in the field below her and through his gaze, wrapped her up in his love. Helena felt her inner strength boosted. She felt her back healing faster and the pain ebbing, as if he and his warden cousin had just given her an injection of morphine and sodium amytal.
The thought made her smile. And he returned the smile knowingly.
It’s up to you now, he told her as if he knew something she didn’t. Helena could see that Ahriman was on his way back in. Split seconds alone had passed.
End this, Helena.
She remained trapped in the pull of his gaze for a short moment more, and then he let her go to turn and face the Nomad for the hundredth time.
Helena looked up as out in the field, a light sparked to life, illuminating the late night darkness. It was yellow-white and reminded her of the gradual brightening of a firefly’s thorax. Helena continued to wordlessly look on as several feet away from this light, another one was born.
Then another. And another.
One by one, glowing embers came to life across the battlefield, each a different color, each a different kind. There were twelve in all. Helena looked down at the gun in her hand and suddenly, just like that, she understood. She knew was coming and she knew what to do.
So she tightened her grip on the .357, and prepared herself.
All at once, the lights on the field shot upward in powerful beams, aimed directly for Helena. She gritted her teeth for the umpteenth time that night, took a deep breath, and shut her eyes tight, willing the beams of light to come in.
They struck her simultaneously, slamming into her from all sides. Twelve different kinds of magic converged on one living vessel, and behind her closed lids Helena’s world expanded. She saw endless night and the birth of stars, she felt the desire that came with beholding true beauty, and she experienced the satisfaction of justice well served. She swam in a miasma of shadow and red and came out to float amidst a sea of perfect, brilliant snowflakes. She felt her teeth sharpen into small, perfect fangs, and tasted the ecstasy of blood on her tongue. She comforted the dead and healed the wounded and changed into a hundred different magnificent beasts in order to run through the forest on all fours and fly through the rainbow skies over the Seelie Kingdom on wings of gold.