Iron Bones

  A deep-seated fear began to take hold, and I looked for any place to hide. There was a large boulder to my left, and I crouched behind it, holding my breath as the sound of thunder echoed in the distance. Something was coming, out of the valley, and its footsteps shook the mountainside. I wanted to run, but there was no place to go.

  I began to hear screams all around me, as ghostly figures rose up.

  The Unseen.

  Between worlds, they were, between life and death, caught forever in a loop from which they couldn’t escape. I recognized them as my people—both Light and Dark Fae—and they were running, trying to escape whatever force was approaching. But as I watched, they fell, one after another. In droves they died, screaming and as they hit the ground, they vanished into mist, going down in ghostly flames. The smell of burning skin surrounded me and everywhere I turned, it clogged my lungs as the screams grew louder.

  “Where the hell am I?”

  I crept from behind the boulder I was hiding behind to another, bigger one, but a thumping of drums echoed from the other side of the mountaintop, growing louder. Something was coming. Something huge and dark and terrifying.

  I had a feeling of déjà vu. I have been here before. I’ve run from this before.

  I scrambled to remember, but my memories were foggy, and all I knew was that I had woken up to find myself in the forest. I knew my name was Ember Kearney. I knew that I was a tralaeth. I knew that I worked…who did I work for? I couldn’t recall, it was on the tip of my tongue, but not quite willing to come forth.

  Another rush of ghostly figures came racing by me, fleeing whatever it was that lurked in the darkness. I stared into the sky, awaiting the monster who was poised to come striding over the hill, traversing the hilltops, leaping from mountain to mountain with his great threshing rod, rooting out the Unseen who were dying around me, their misty forms vanishing as I watched.

  There was a moment when I could feel him rising up. He was coming now, and he sensed that I was there, and that I was still alive, unlike the spirits who milled around me.

  I stood. It was no use hiding, no use secreting myself behind a rock. The storm was gathering, and there was no shelter.

  “EMBER, EMBER! WAKE up!”

  Angel’s voice echoed through the mist. I struggled to follow it, to follow her lead out of the ghostly fog that wrapped around me like a burial shroud.

  “Ember!” This time her voice slid through the edges of the Phantom Kingdom and pulled me out, like a quivering baby from its mother’s womb.

  I shot up in my bed, screaming. “Don’t let him get me! Don’t let him catch me!”

  “Ember, you’re okay. You’re here, in your bed. Come back to me, love. Come back.” Angel held my shoulders, shaking me lightly until I opened my eyes.

  I was in my bed, covered in sweat, and she was holding me then as I burst into tears and rested my head on her shoulder.

  “There, there. You’re safe. There’s nobody here, nobody’s after you.”

  I choked on the phlegm in my throat, coughing. She leaned over to my nightstand for a box of tissues, handing me one, then she grabbed the water bottle I kept by the bed in case I was thirsty at night. I swallowed a mouthful of the cool liquid, dabbing my eyes. Coughing again, I blew my nose and pulled my legs up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them and resting my chin on top of my knees.

  “Fucking hell, that was terrifying.” I nervously glanced around the room, but in the gentle light of the bedside lamp, there was nothing out of the ordinary. The shadows made me nervous, though. “Can you turn on the overhead light?”

  She obliged, flipping the switch to flood the room with light. “Better?”

  I nodded, blowing my nose again. “Yeah, better. Was I screaming?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. I had gotten up to take a piss and I heard you screaming on my way back to my bedroom. What the hell happened? Nightmare, I assume?” Angel sat on my bed, folding her legs into the lotus position. She leaned back, resting her hands on the mattress behind her. In her pajama shorts and long sleep tunic, without her makeup, she looked more cute than gorgeous. She didn’t look thirty, that was for sure.

  “No, I don’t think so. Not exactly.” I paused, shaking my head. “I think I was in the Phantom Kingdom.”

  Angel paled. “Phantom Kingdom? I’ve never heard that term before and somehow, I have a feeling that before you’re done explaining it, I’m going to wish I never had.”

  I groaned and leaned back against the headboard. “I don’t know much about it, but it’s like the Dream-Time. It exists outside of time and space. There, all worlds can intersect—this world, the dream world, the spirit world. It’s not limbo, but it’s definitely a place where spirits wander who haven’t gone to their rest. I’m really not clear on it, so that’s about all I can tell you.”

  “What happened?” She settled in as I told her about the dream. “So, you didn’t really know who you were. I mean, you knew your name but…”

  “I knew my name and that I was Fae, but not much else. I couldn’t seem to remember anything about my life.”

  “I hate to state the obvious, but do you think that the ‘he’ you were terrified of seeing represents your grandfather? Could this dream be triggered by what happened at Ginty’s today?” Angel gave me an apologetic smile.

  “I know it sounds all Psych 101, but that was a major shock to your system. Couldn’t it just be a nightmare brought on by a combination of all the crap that went on? After all, the Fae were dying around you, and that’s happening in TirNaNog and Navane right now. And some ominous male figure that seemed huge was coming closer. Your grandfather would be an authority figure in terms of the way we usually think of grandparents, so he would be ‘bigger’ than life, perhaps?”

  I thought about what she said. It made sense, but it didn’t click the way things do when they finally fall into place. After a few minutes, I shrugged.

  “I don’t know, I really don’t. But I’m sleeping the rest of the night with the light on. And a bag of chips in hand.” I opened my nightstand and pulled out the half-finished bag of potato chips that I had stashed there. I offered Angel one but she shook her head.

  “Thanks, but I’m good. If you need me, I’m just in the next room.” She headed toward the door. “Do you want me to leave the overhead light on?”

  “No,” I said after a minute. “Just leave the small lamp on. It will be enough.”

  But as she shut my door behind her, I began to panic again. I slipped out of bed and slapped the light switch, once again flooding the room with light. I pulled out my tablet and began flipping through old shows on Vex—a streaming video service. After finishing off the bag of chips, I was calm enough to lie back down, but it was at least another hour before I was able to drop off to sleep again.

  WE DRAGGED OURSELVES into work, me with a quint-shot latte in hand. Both Angel and I were tired, me from my nightmare and lack of sleep, Angel because she had apparently stayed awake for a while to make sure I didn’t call out again.

  Herne was waiting impatiently, a worried look on his face.

  “Everybody into the break room. I have news.”

  As we entered the room, Ferosyn was sitting at the table, looking distinctly out of place. The Elfin healer was Cernunnos’s eldest medic, though he barely looked old enough to shave. I glanced at Herne. He planted a quick, worried kiss on my lips.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to drop by or call this morning.” Sometimes Herne showed up to drive into work with us, or he would drop by for breakfast if he hadn’t stayed the night with me. The house he rented was luxurious and spacious, but somehow we ended up at my condo more often than not. But even when he was busy, he usually called me in the morning.

  “No problem. It was a rough night but I’ll tell you more about that later.” I nodded at Ferosyn. “I take it we have news?”

  “Yeah, and it’s not good. I have no idea what the hell to think, but
maybe we can brainstorm ideas. Long story short, what he’s found makes it clear this is an attack on the Fae.” He had pulled his hair back into a long braid that hung down his back, and he was wearing a green muscle shirt that showed off his biceps and tight black jeans that hugged his ass.

  “I wish we had time to cuddle,” I whispered. “And I’m not talking just sex. You smell so safe to me.” And he did. Herne smelled like sun-ripened cornfields, and wildflowers in the meadow, and the scent of cinnamon and spice on a cool autumn evening. All things wild and free and wonderful, and yet everything that spelled hearth and home, wrapped up tight together in a very handsome package.

  He gave me a curious look. “You’re really shaken. What happened?”

  “As I said, I’ll tell you later.”

  “Not Ray—” The threat was implicit in his words.

  “No, it wasn’t him this time. Something else. But I want to hear what Ferosyn has to say first.” I slid into a chair, and Angel sat down beside me.

  Herne introduced Ferosyn to Angel and then took his place at the head of the table. “All right, the floor is yours.”

  Ferosyn let out a slow breath. “I’ve made some discoveries about this virus. I examined blood drawn from all the victims—they kept samples from the deceased, luckily. The virus was mutated—a poison was introduced into it, and that poison now transfers with the virus as it’s passed from Fae to Fae.”

  “A poison? So it is an attack, then?” Viktor asked.

  The healer nodded. “Yes, it’s an attack. But there’s more. The nature of the poison makes this particularly deadly. The base was created from meteoric iron.” He let that information soak in.

  I tried to make sense of it. “Iron? No wonder there were blisters and burns on their throats and bodies. How does the virus pass?”

  “I’m assuming the virus was intentionally used to contaminate something consumed by the target-zero patients, and then passed as contagion. I don’t believe that it’s airborne. If it was, both TirNaNog and Navane would already be laid to waste. I think it has to be from some form of contact. I’ve notified the emissaries from both Courts to start questioning people. It might be kissing, it might be sexual, it might be bodily fluids. We just don’t know. The fact that it was an engineered virus means that it was deliberately constructed for one purpose: to wipe out the Fae race. Since it’s magical as well, we have to watch for more than the typical variants.”

  “Can you cure it?” I asked.

  “Cure it?” He rubbed his forehead. “I’ve barely discovered the cause, let alone the cure. That will be my next task. I’ll get on it the moment I return to Lord Cernunnos’s palace. I understand that all the first victims ate ginger chicken at Fae Day. You might find out who was manning the station, and go from there. If we can find out who did this, we might have a better chance on knowing how to stop it.”

  “We’re on it.” Herne stood and Ferosyn rose, bowing low. “I’ll have Viktor run you back to the portal. We’ll talk to you as soon as we’ve discovered anything.”

  “M’lord…” Ferosyn paused for a moment. “Another thing. Meteoric iron is a rare commodity. There isn’t much of it in the world, and the Fae are far more susceptible to it than any other form of iron. Not only this, but this particular iron comes from an ataxite meteor, so whoever’s behind this wasn’t looking to just mess with the Fae. I’m deadly serious when I tell you that whoever it is, is out to destroy the Courts. Someone with that much hate in his heart has got to be dangerous.”

  Meteoric iron was found in a scattered few meteorites, and ataxite meteors—which had a higher nickel content—were rarer still. It would take some serious searching, perhaps for years, to find a meteorite of that class.

  “Understood,” Herne said. He motioned to Viktor. “Can you run Ferosyn back to the portal? You know where it is.”

  “Yep. Your back yard.”

  “That’s right.” Herne waved as Ferosyn followed Viktor out of the room.

  “Well, that answers one question,” I said, slowly pulling the box of doughnuts to me. “It’s deliberate, and it had to be planned out in detail. Whoever instigated it had to find a source of meteoric iron, and ataxite on top of it.” The very words shook me up.

  “What do we do now?” Talia asked, quickly typing notes onto her laptop.

  “Start searching for any sources of ataxite meteorites that cropped up recently, or were sold recently. There are markets out there devoted to collectors who look for meteoric iron.” Herne rubbed his chin, thinking. “Perhaps whoever’s behind this bought a piece. We can’t overlook the possibility. Yutani—how much have we found out about the catering company?”

  “Very little so far. If the source of the poison was the ginger chicken, that gives me more to go on. I’ll do what I can to find out who was manning that station. I should have something in an hour or so.” He pulled his laptop closer, burying his nose in the screen.

  “I don’t know if it has anything to do with what’s going on, or perhaps it was just brought on by working the case, but my dream last night feels related.”

  I told them about the dream, slipping into a mild panic as I laid out the events that had occurred. “I was hiding from whatever it was. All around me, Fae were dying. Light and Dark, it made no difference. But they were ghosts, they weren’t actual people. I think they were dressed differently than most of the Fae dress today, so maybe I was seeing into a different time period. I couldn’t escape. Whatever it was, it was so huge and powerful.”

  “Just like the other night. When you went into trance in your bathroom and you were in a circle and something was coming for you,” Talia said, glancing up from her keyboard.

  “Yes, and if you remember, I burned my fingers. I still have the welts.” I held up my fingers. They were on the mend, but the raised bumps were still there.

  “If you are dreaming about what’s happening, then we should dissect everything you can remember. I wouldn’t want to ignore anything that might help us. Angel, why don’t you record everything Ember can remember about both incidents? See if there’s anything you can dredge up that you left out.” Herne headed for his office. “I’m going to contact a few friends I have, see if there have been any stirrings against the Fae from any of the major hate-groups lately.”

  With that heavy thought hanging over our heads, we moved into the rest of the day.

  BY THAT EVENING we had accumulated a lot of information, but none of it was usable yet. We had to leave on time in order to meet Kamaria at our new house to deal with the ghosts. Yutani and Viktor decided to work on rebuilding the broken fence posts in our side yard until she arrived. They headed outside as Angel and I cautiously entered my bedroom.

  “Holy crap.” I stared at the walls. In what looked like blood streaming down the freshly painted walls were the words “Get Out Now.” On one hand, the sight freaked me out. On the other, it pissed me off.

  “Is that blood?” Angel asked.

  I walked over to the walls. It was dried, whatever it was. I leaned in and sniffed it. There was the faint scent of ozone crackling in the air.

  “I don’t think it’s blood, but I have no clue what it is.” I stared at the letters, wondering if I should touch them. I reached up, then paused. But I had learned the hard way about touching things when I wasn’t sure what they were.

  “Let me,” Angel said. Before I could stop her, she rubbed one finger down the “O” in “out” and then pulled her hand away, staring at the congealed glop that rested on her skin. “I have no clue. It feels nasty, like slime.”

  “Ectoplasm,” Herne said from behind us. “Leave it alone so that Kamaria can get an accurate reading on it.”

  “Ghost-poop?” Angel asked, laughing.

  I cracked up then, grateful for the chance to laugh. “Oh man, we have a rude ghost on our hands.”

  Herne grinned, shaking his head. “Well, that’s one way to put it.”

  He paused as the
doorbell rang. Talia was downstairs, waiting for Kamaria, and a moment later we heard footsteps coming up. Talia came first, followed by a tall, lithe woman with flaming red hair, with Yutani and Viktor behind her.

  “May I present Madame Kamaria?” Talia said, inclining her head toward the woman.

  The medium was probably in her mid-forties. She had a dancer’s build and wore an off-the-shoulder top—a brilliant crimson—and a long flowing black skirt. A delicate silver and black shawl was draped around her shoulders, caught by a silver clasp in the center. Her hair was long, almost the color of her top, and flowed over her shoulders. She wore ballet flats, and she was carrying an old-fashioned carpetbag.

  Kamaria looked at me, then held out her hand. “Ember Kearney?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s me.”

  She held my hand for a moment, gazing into my eyes.

  “You are at a crossroads, my dear, and very shortly will have many decisions to make. Be prepared to choose, or the choices will be made for you. But the spirits show me no more than that.” She glanced around the room. “Your house is riddled with spirits and ghosts and past memories. Luckily, most will be easy to deal with. But there is one creature who is problematic. If you’ll give me a few moments.”

  She didn’t wait for further introductions, merely shooed us out of the room.

  “Should she be in there alone?” I asked, worried. The poltergeist had nearly taken my head off with a paint can lid and then tagged my walls with graffiti. I wouldn’t put much beyond it.

  “She can more than take care of herself,” Herne said. “Kamaria is scary wicked when she wants to be. Her parents were Russian, and she grew up steeped in the tales of her homeland. She was born a medium. Her mother was told that her daughter would grow up under the shadow of ghosts, and so she accepted Kamaria’s fate and fed her mythology and legend for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so the girl would have a grounding to help her cope with her gifts.”