FORTY
“Is it the end, my friend?
Satan’s coming ’round the bend”
The Crimson Hag explodes from the night, slicing through lavender lights on a cloud of putrefaction, tattered hem of her gut-gown snaking out behind her, to the bizarre accompaniment of “Purple Haze.” She swoops us then shoots straight up to the highest dormer on the abbey roof and perches there.
We’re all on our feet. “How did she find us?” I say. “You think noise draws her, too?”
She sways from side to side, moving only from the waist, creepily reptilian, surveying us with black empty holes where eyes should be.
“I think the bitch is after me,” Christian says. “I’m the weakest Unseelie prince with immortal guts. At least for a while yet.”
“She’s like a bat, isn’t she? It’s not like we weren’t making enough noise. She can’t see so she uses echolocation!” I exclaim.
“Don’t know, don’t care. Let’s bag the bitch,” Christian says.
“How the fuck do we get past her legs,” Ryodan says, and I look at him. I can see he’s got a personal itch on to kill her.
I look at Jo when I say, “What? You don’t feel like dying again today?”
Then Ryodan isn’t standing next to Jo anymore. He’s got me and he freeze-framed me twenty feet away before I could even blink. “If the Highlander says something to Jo about that, she’ll think he’s lying. She might believe you. My men will kill her if she knows. And I won’t be able to stop them.”
I look at him hard and realize for maybe the first time ever he’s telling me a simple truth. “She’s not allowed to know you can’t be killed?”
“Never.”
“Why am I?”
He’s gone. Back to Jo. Got his arm around her, protecting her.
The Hag swoops!
It’s like some weird rock-opera battle that gets even weirder when the next song Lor cued up comes on and Black Sabbath starts playing “Black Sabbath” at about a gazillion decibels. As if the Crimson Hag ain’t disturbing enough, we need that freaky song in the background. Don’t get me wrong, I put it on my playlist because sometimes I like to listen to it. But I got to be in a real mood, because, dude, the song makes me feel unsettled and disturbed and pretty much everybody I ever talked to feels the same way about it.
First thing on my mind is Dancer! I grab him and yell at him to hold on to me no matter what. When the Hag swoops us, we duck like we’re one big wave then freeze-frame in different directions.
She veers at the last second toward Christian and I see he was right. It’s him she wants. But when she just about nabs Lor with one of her bony lances, I realize she’ll take anyone she can get those terrible knitting needles on.
We’re all freeze-framing or sifting, ducking, and dodging. I’m trying to hold on to Dancer and keep an eye on Ryodan, who’s got Jo, and it’s making me nuts that she’s even here, in the middle of this fight. She ain’t got nothing special to protect her except Ryodan and that ain’t enough for me.
I can’t move fast enough, watch out for her, and hold on to Dancer, so I freeze-frame him to the far side of the abbey and dump him with the sidhe-seers.
“Mega, what are you doing?”
“You got no chance against her. I hardly do. Don’t get me killed because I get stupid worrying about you!”
He snaps real cool, “Didn’t mean to be a liability.”
“Well you are, so don’t be,” I snap back. I’d die if something happened to him.
He shakes his head, disgusted, like he can’t believe I’m such a traitor when I’m just trying to keep him safe.
“Take me back. Buy me time to rewire things. We can electrocute her with some of the stuff we brought, snake a live cable around her!”
“We don’t even know if electrocution would work! Maybe she’d just suck it up and use it for fuel!”
“We don’t know it won’t!”
Me and him are nose-to-nose, yelling at each other.
Jo explodes from a blur and stumbles into us. “Hey!” she shouts at what I think is Ryodan’s vanishing backside. “You can’t just dump me here!”
“Don’t you two fecking move!” I say.
Then I’m back down by the tower of sound equipment, where we’re all whizzing around, trying to evade the bitch and figure out how to get past her bony lances!
Ozzy wails away. I ain’t never heard this song through a hundred speakers and Black Sabbath this loud makes the hair on my arms stand up on end. I feel like I really am at a Black Mass and Aleister Crowley himself might spontaneously manifest. It’s funny how songs can make you feel different ways. I wonder if whatever sound it is that the Hoar Frost King collects makes him feel something and that’s why he goes after it.
As I zig and zag, I think about how the things that the Unseelie king created turned out so ugly and incomplete when the Seelie are so beautiful and whole.
And I start thinking how all the Unseelie are after something, and it seems to be whatever they don’t have. Why would the Hoar Frost King be after sound? Things go totally silent when he appears. Because he takes the sound, or because his mere existence eradicates sounds?
Or is it more complex than that? What if the Hoar Frost King is after what all the Unseelie lack on the basest, most profound level? What if he’s the only Unseelie smart enough to go straight for the root of the problem and, unlike the simple-minded Gray Woman who spends her life trying to collect beauty that can never be hers, or the Hag who’s trying to finish a gown that can never be completed, the Hoar Frost King is trying to collect the song they were created without? Is it after the Song of Making? Eating chunks of it, bit by bit?
“Duck, you fucking idiot!” Lor roars, and I roll and freeze-frame. Then folks slam into me from opposite sides and just about squish me flat. I hear a couple of my ribs make protesting noises.
“Dudes, get off me!” Christian and Ryodan are both trying to get me out of there. “I lost focus for a couple secs ’cause I was thinking hard! It won’t happen again!”
“You bet your ass it won’t,” Ryodan says.
Then I’m over a shoulder and wind is whizzing through my hair, then I’m being dumped in the sheep pen!
Me! The Mega! Put out to pasture!
“You can’t stick me down here!” I say, indignant as all get-out. I freeze-frame back toward the action the second I hit my feet but slam into Christian, who noodles me over a shoulder and tosses me back to Ryodan, who dumps me in the middle of the sheep pen again!
“Stop it!” My ribs hurt. They need to quit noodling me.
“Don’t be a liability,” Ryodan says, and is gone.
I blink.
“Feels real good, doesn’t it, Mega?” Dancer gives me a chilly look.
“I ain’t no liability!” I wait until they’re all back down the other end then freeze-frame back to the action. I’m a fecking superhero. Superheroes don’t sit on sidelines.
The Hag is trying to take out Christian.
And Lor and Ryodan ain’t doing nothing to help him! In fact, I can’t figure out what they are trying to do. They’re working hard to stay on opposite sides of her, one front, one back, and they keep whizzing in, only to get blocked by one of those deadly legs lancing out. They retreat, whiz back in, get blocked, retreat, whiz back in, get blocked. It’s a cool, methodical attack, and if they had all the time in the world, it might eventually work.
Might. Eventually.
And so what if it does? How do they plan to kill her? Doesn’t look like the best-thought-out plan to me. I don’t see no weapons on them.
The Hag shoots, straight up and dive-bombs Christian. He stumbles on ice and goes down.
He sifts out then all the sudden he’s right back where he was. Looking startled, like his sift didn’t work the way it was supposed to.
That split-second screwup was all she needed.
The Hag’s going to get him this time!
And nobody even cares. Nobody’s trying to save him.
Black Sabbath sounds more evil with each second, and it’s all getting on my last nerve. I yank out my sword and throw it straight at the bitch’s head. She hears it slicing through the air, veers sharply to the side and blasts into Lor, who goes flying backward.
Then suddenly she’s gone!
My sword lodges in a snowbank. Already my hand hurts from the absence of it.
Christian looks from it to me, his alien, iridescent eyes bright. “You threw your sword for me.” He looks stupefied.
I feel stupefied. I never let my sword go. Unlike Mac, I won’t share in battle. Ever.
Ryodan has his head down, looking up at me from under his brows in a way I only ever seen him do once before, and Lor looks major pissed.
“Dude,” I say, because I got no other clue what to say, “would you, like, toss it back now?”
Christian slides long black hair over his shoulder and flashes me a killer smile. “Princess, I’d build you a fucking White Mansion.” My sword slices through the night, alabaster steel flashing violet fire.
“Where the fuck did the bloody bitch go?” Lor snarls. “I want a piece of her.”
“No clue,” I say, and we all look around warily.
That’s when the sidhe-seers start screaming.