Reign of Evil

CHAPTER 56

She was in a deep pool of pain, falling deeper and deeper. As terrible as the flechettes had felt, the bullet in her abdomen was far more awful, introducing her to an ache so profound, she found it hard to think of anything but fleeing from the pain. So she swam away from it, pushing and pulling her soul into a tight little ball where she could rock herself, much like she had when she was a little girl and Hitler’s buzz bombs roared across the London sky like nightmares made real.

She was only remotely aware of hands around her wound. She heard chaos, she heard angry voices, but she was too far away to understand them. But then a single voice came to her.

Sassy.

If she ignored it, maybe it would go away.

Sassy Moore.

She pulled herself tighter until she was cloaked in darkness, just like she’d been in the underground shelter, huddled with the rest of the children, each of them trying to be strong, trying not to cry.

Sassy Moore. You have the power. The wand. The Baen Sidhe. Use it.

How many times with the buzz bombs roaring overhead, their hiccupping journeys heard from even far beneath the surface, had she prayed she could stop them, keep them from doing any more damage? If only she’d had the same power back then as she had now. Fat lot of good that did her against the SEAL commander and his pistol. She saw him draw and heard it bark. Her soul flinched and she pulled in tighter still.

Sassy Moore.

Leave me alone, Garland.

Sassy. The wand. Use it.

Was she still holding on to it? In order to find out she’d have to unlimber herself and feel the pain once again. It seemed hardly worth it.

She felt warmth suffuse her.

I’m too far away to do more. Help us, Sassy. Help yourself. I’ll save the Queen.

She cursed and shot free from her body. Looking down from her great height, she saw the trouble for what it was. She saw the predicament and how she and the SEALs were about to die. She cursed again. This had better be worth it.

She shot back into her body and gasped as the pain she’d been striving to avoid hit her like a dozen buzz bombs, exploding into her stomach over and over. Her back arched. She felt a hand on her and heard the words, “Easy, Sassy. Keep still.”

Bloody fucking pain. She felt along the ground with her right hand until it found the cold iron of the old wand. She gripped it and pulled from it. The wand went from cold to warm as she sucked hundreds of years of built-up power into her body. She sent it swirling toward her wound and felt immediate relief as it began to bind and repair. She pulled harder, her will sucking at the essence of the Baen Sidhe. She worked yet another magic, empathetic magic, sending her pain to those around her, interrogating each of the men’s memories and forcing them to relive the worst pain they’d ever felt. For some it was birth, darkness, light, the transition to breathing air and the panic they’d felt as they left the sanctity of the birth canal. For others it was a gunshot, or a knife wound, or a broken bone, the ends of it pressing through flesh, the very air like acid to the nerve endings. Still for others it was a different kind of pain, a pain of the soul, like when a daughter dies or a wife leaves you.

Sassy hurled pain around her like water flung from a bucket, catching anyone not her. She snarled. She cursed. She gave every one a taste of what she’d felt and more. She sent them to a place where they too huddled beneath the London streets, mothers dead, fathers off to war, homes destroyed, and their entire universe the sputtering, doddering V1 bombs sent by Adolf Fucking Hitler to terrify and destroy.

The more pain she gave the less pain she felt until she was surging to her feet, whole once more, woundless, skin alive, hair moving to unseen winds. Her arms flung out. Everyone around her was on their knees or their backs or curled into fetal positions, heads down, mouths pulled into rictus masks as they relived their own worst moments as well as her own.

Then the wand was empty. She flung it to the ground and screamed.

From nearby came the sound of a hunting horn.

Her mission returned to her.

Garland, she said across her astral channels. I am back.

Good, Sassy. Very good. Now do what needs to be done.

She nodded. She was alive. She was free of pain. She had her powers. But what was it that needed to be done?

Then she knew. Without the wand to mask their presence with its own power, she saw the Tuatha and knew them at once. One was Merlyn and the other was Arthur. They moved from one man to the other, trying to confuse her, but she could see them perfectly, glowing from within, illuminated and pulsating.

She snatched the metal wand from the ground. It no longer held power, but it was still a weapon. She strode toward them and managed to separate Arthur from the others. Still recovering from her spell, the man he inhabited found it hard to keep his balance. He fell twice. Enough so that she was upon him, thrusting the wand through his heart.

As the light went from his eyes, so did the Tuatha. She knew the truth and somehow understood the rules. It could only enter another through touch. She watched it travel near the ground like a miniature dust devil, collecting sticks and leaves and twigs, until it was able to form the figure of a man made from debris and detritus. Then it ran, not toward her, but toward the bank of fog now roiling across the lawn several hundred meters from them.

She turned and found the other.

This one didn’t run.

It turned to face her.

It wanted to fight.

She smiled grimly, knowing that her entire existence was meant for this very moment. Her, Sassy Moore, once a child afraid of her own shadow, now a Thirty-First-Degree Magister Templarus witch of the Fraterni Saturni against the greatest magician of the Western canon–Merlyn.

She began to battle.