City of Fae

Touched came on for their closing session, and Sovereign played the crowd as though he hadn’t had some half-crazed queen’s construct go at him with daggers, and then battled the spirit of an ancient hound for control. Owning the stage, and the music, his glorious voice touched thousands. I’d be damned if he died tonight. Perhaps, because I was meant to kill him, I’d fight to my last breath to make sure that didn’t happen. Did he deserve to be saved? Didn’t everyone, deep down? Reign wasn’t what he appeared to be and I was only now beginning to understand what that meant. Few had the luxury of being known for who they truly were.

I didn’t agree with the delay in getting the arena evacuated, and I had every intention of setting off the fire alarms once the band got into their stride. Reign would hate me, but really, I’d rather he added it to his list of reasons to hate Alina, than left it too long, and served up twenty thousand people on a platter to the queen. And she really was close. I felt her as surely as I could hear her heart pounding in my ears. My body still buzzed with the remnants of my encounter with Reign, the near miss with the hound, and more … When the queen had taken me, patched me up, and sent me on my merry way to kill Reign, she’d somehow rewritten my thoughts, or tried to. It was likely her suggestion wasn’t sticking because I was running on empty.

What if I flip to the dark side again when she comes? Yet another thing it was better not to think about. At least I could think for myself. Free will was a wonderful thing, and I really didn’t want to lose mine again.

Touched finished up a recent hit. I turned away from the performance to search for a fire alarm, or somewhere I could start a fire. Backstage was a maze of corridors packed with event staff and hangers-on. My presence went unnoticed, thanks to Reign giving me a pass to pin to my coat. My pace quickened as the ground and walls trembled. Hopefully, the grumbling was part of the special effects on stage, and not the queen beneath my feet. Were there tunnels under the O2 Arena? In all likelihood. London was riddled with tunnels, like an ant’s nest, only the ants under London happened to be monsters dressed like every human’s fantasy. My pace quickened and my heart raced. I had to get those people out. The arena itself was just a small part of the vast O2 venue. Outside boasted an eleven-screen cinema, plus countless restaurants, bars, and cafés. How was I going to spook the crowd? It would take nothing short of a terrorist alert to clear the place.

“Alina …”

I spun. Andrews wove his way around the staff toward me. His slate-gray suit and dark-blue coat screamed “cop” without him having to flash a badge. Relief lifted a weight from my shoulders. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d wanted to see him again, and how deeply I’d believed I wouldn’t.

Out of breath, he drew me to one side. “Listen, I have Armed Response rallying outside, but they won’t make a move unless something happens.”

“That’ll be too late.”

He winced, and his lips turned down in a grimace. “I can’t authorize them to storm the arena, I don’t have that much clout. I’ve pulled in enough favors as it is, just to get them here.”

“We need to get these people moving. How long does it take to clear a place like this?”

“Twenty minutes. They have emergency evacuation plans in place. The dome is rigged with over three hundred cameras. As soon as anything happens, the alarms will sound. The cameras are how I found you, actually.”

“Can you get me there? To the CCTV room? Maybe I can spot where she’ll come through.”

“Yes, come with me.” He strode ahead, exuding enough authority so the staff all veered out of our way. “What happened …” he called back, “When you went down there?”

“Um, that’s kind of a long and complicated story. The short version is, I screwed up.”

We didn’t speak again until Andrews escorted me into the CCTV control room. A bank of monitors blinked fifty or so split screens back at us. Three operators gave us cursory glances, nothing more.

“Okay, you can see the entertainment village, the entrance plaza, the arena … even the back of house, where we were. Almost everything from here. Up to sixty thousand people in total.” Andrews pointed out each relevant screen. I leaned in close and scanned each in turn. So many people … So many lives. Mothers, fathers, families, and friends. People with connections to loved ones. Connections I’d yet to make and probably never would. I had to save them. Do something important with your miserable existence. I’d show Warren exactly what I was capable of. The entertainment village, with its cinema and restaurants, brimmed with patrons. This dome was an all-you-can-eat draíocht buffet if you happened to be an ugly-ass spider queen that sucked the life out of people. What would she do? She wouldn’t want them to run, so she’d go about this carefully at first, tentatively, like nursing her web. Spiders set traps.

“Any ideas?”

I calmed my thoughts and tried to focus. Think like a fae, Reign had told me often enough. She wasn’t just any fae, she was the queen, possessed by a fae spirit, and starving. “Maybe the loading areas, somewhere she has the freedom to move. She’ll try not to spook the crowd. She won’t want them escaping.”