Sing for the Dead (London Undead) (11 page)

Stay
,
stay.
If you take human form
,
he will try to Name you.
Stay.

No way to warn Kayden. Her silent pleading was useless and she could only hope he had enough knowledge of the Fair Folk to keep to the form the fae wouldn’t bother to bind.

She needed time.

Luckily, Kayden had stilled under her touch, a low growl the only sign of his continued anger.

“Ah. It’s been so long since I had the company of another fae. Especially one like you. If the high lords of Light sent one of their blades to investigate, I am becoming a threat. The news delights me. So much so, I might show you my great work.” The fae clapped his hands, the motion giving him a childish demeanor before his eyes narrowed. “Whether you can truly appreciate it or not, you will still be of use. It was no small effort to gather this many humans.”

“What have you done?” Horror washed through her as she took in the sheer number of them again.

“Have you seen them? Scuttling about, beneath the ground, less able to see to their survival than rats. The homeless and wretched, the tired and poor, the lost. I gave them a purpose.” The delight in his voice held a brittle edge. “A better purpose than my banishment here, to this forsaken city of mortal wrought iron. I’ve made the filthy humans more than what they would have been.”

Like Kayden’s young friends, the orphans who’d hid and gone missing? Her heart ached. They’d done a good thing to save Ollie and his friends tonight. Otherwise, the boys would have suffered the same fate. The bloodlust began to pulse in her veins, burning away at her control. And she welcomed it—anger and joy mingling as she began to embrace it.

“Ah, ah. We cannot have your mongrel blood ruining this fortuitous meeting.” Magic—not hers—tightened in a clawed grip around her. The pain of it cleared the red haze in her mind and locked away the bloodlust, leaving her shivering. Never before had any fae managed a binding great enough to hold her blood madness in check. The
geas
was more than powerful. She trembled again. Who was he?

He laughed, a cold and ugly sound, harsh against a backdrop of moans from the undead. “Come. See.”

She wrestled her swords free of the net and random bits of bent metal, glad to have found them and not have been skewered when she fell. She followed the fae, Kayden a breath behind her, as the zombies closed in around them.

The fae came to a stop on the edge of the platform, the tunnels stretching out to either side. He threw his hand up into the air and a tiny bit of...something...lit the darkness. Apparently, charms were the primary focus of his power. Some might have decided it to be a limitation. Obviously, he used it to good effect.

“Do you see, my dear? They gather.” The old fae swept a hand toward the mass of zombies standing just beyond the far platform.

“We are trapped here.” Her swords were a small comfort in her grip. Never before had she seen such a solid mass of the walking dead, hungry and reaching for them, held back by an invisible force of fae magic.

“I am too old to be trapped anywhere.” Pricked by her statement, the fae straightened and lifted his chin. “I made gifts for my human servants. Some of the gifts drew the monsters to them, yet the charm I keep holds them at bay. A safety precaution, for now and for future endeavors. Charms, my dear, are a simple tool, effective. It was easy to use them to call appropriate human servants to me, to bind them to my will. I’ve found humans to be incredibly greedy, easy to trick into a bargain. Then, it was simple. Place these bits of power into the hands of my servants and have them act out my will. Humans, alive or dead, do as I wish.”

Perhaps to prove his point, the fae walked forward a few steps and the press of zombies gave way to him. Much farther and he’d leave her and Kayden to be overwhelmed. Instead, he turned to her with his hand outstretched.

“Come, beautiful Sorcha, child of the Morrigan. Did you think I did not know your name? Walk with me.”

She gritted her teeth. More clues were needed before she had the naming of him in return. And without his name, he had both her and Kayden at a great disadvantage. Pride and obstinance were her weapons now as she struggled against the
geas
. “I will not leave my companion behind.”

Thin lips lifted in a contemptuous sneer. “By all means, bring along your pet mortal. But put away your weapons. You’ll have no need of them as we walk. Better advised to scruff your big cat and keep him from charging off into my soldiers. Come, shall we begin our tour?”

A growl rose from Kayden, but he remained at her side. She slid each of her swords home in their scabbards across her back, then reached down to bury one hand in the fur across his shoulders. Not to hold him. No. She had faith in his ability to pick his battles. But to draw comfort? Yes. The press of his shoulder against her thigh gave her reassurance. If this did not play out well, they might not win their way free to the light of day. At the very least, she had a trustworthy ally at her back.

And yet, he’d become so much more. When, how, she didn’t know, only that he had.

“I will not invite you again.”

Sorcha’s attention snapped back to their opponent. Annoyance tinged his voice and her mind raced as she considered why he’d not simply commanded her using the power of the
geas
.

She placed her fingertips in the fae’s hand and he began to lead her, as if stepping onto a dance floor. She tugged Kayden—the big cat remained close enough to brush her thigh with his shoulder.

Beyond the circle of light cast by the old fae’s charm, over a dozen of the faster, stronger zombies snapped and hissed. The same horde Seth’s pack had been chasing? No. There hadn’t been time for those to return and they would have brought the wolves with them. These must be a different grouping. And around them, packed shoulder to shoulder, were hundreds of the mindless corpses. She and Kayden couldn’t eliminate so many, gathered in so close an area. They’d be overwhelmed, no hope of keeping a space clear enough to take the things on.

“A tour of my new army is in order, I think.” They began walking farther along the platform until they could see the whole of it and the tunnels beyond.

Her heart sank. The entire platform was filled, wall to wall, with shuffling zombies. Where had they all come from? She and Kayden had only fought their way through a few dozen on the way in. To get out, they could literally run atop the shoulders of the mass filling the platform to get to the escalators now. If only the dead wouldn’t pull them down.

“How is this an army?” She fought to keep her tone flat, bored. “Soldiers, the most basic infantry, follow orders. These simply wander aimlessly until they happen across a food source.”

“I have seen many wars fought, my lovely berserker, and freedom of thought in infantry is overrated. Their only value is in numbers large enough to overwhelm the opposing force, and in that, I am quite confident.” The fae continued forward, and though the hungry dead gave way before him, the fae-fed atrocities followed close at their heels. “It is only the few elite soldiers that need any semblance of cognizance, and then only to make decisive strikes on my enemies. Even in them, the ability to think for themselves is overvalued and potentially dangerous. I prefer to harness these—simple and easy to lead the herd in the direction I desire.”

“They might be better hunters than the rest, but they are not soldiers.” Sorcha studied them closer. A spark of cognizance, recognition, in those ravenous gazes and maybe a touch of hate, but those eyes were still covered over in the milky-white film of death. Whatever fragment of self that fae blood had tied back into the rotting corpses, it wasn’t enough.

Shriveled fingers tightened around hers, and she halted. They stood there, her arm fully outstretched between them. The old fae grinned, his thin lips stretched across gleaming pointed teeth. “Not yet, no. You see, lovely Sorcha. These were fed on what fae blood I could find here in the city of London. And what is here? A few brownies, the odd troll and random others. I didn’t know there was one such as you inside city limits until you foiled my scouting party’s mission to retrieve the brownie from the Kensington Gardens. None of them was worth keeping to prolong the control. None of them had the strength you do, or the power of your heritage.”

She laughed. “You want to give these the bloodlust? It’s been tried before, old one, and every warlord who tried to use a berserker’s blood failed. It is singular to the berserker and the only way to make more is to breed them.”

And she sent silent thanks to any power listening that zombies couldn’t be bred. Propagation was solely a miracle of the living.

“Oh no. It’s not a question of your berserker taint, halfling.” His words twisted her gut. They shouldn’t have.

Kayden snarled at her side. Her fingers curled in the warmth of his fur.

Tainted. Halfling. She’d heard the labels in the past, enough for them to have become sufficient for her naming. A true naming could be completed with more than given names or surnames. It could have a power over a person if something inside them recognized the label too.

That had been before she’d gained the confidence to find her own identity. And before she’d met Kayden. She was changed now, and more than what she’d been. As she acknowledged it, a bit of the geas’ power over her loosened its hold. Not enough for the fae to notice, if she could keep him talking, distracted.

Amazing, what a bit of self-awareness could do in the face of magic. Like Ollie and his friends, knowledge could set her free.

“If not berserkers, then how is halfling blood better than full-blooded fae?” The brownie. He’d been one of many, the only to survive this old one’s madness. Her anger simmered hotter beneath her skin, the berserker inside her impatient. The power of
geas
tightened around her painfully, but she was beginning to not care.

Wait.

Kayden’s presence washed over her with a true predator’s calm. She hadn’t heard the word in her mind so much as understood it as it resonated through her chest. He didn’t quench the fury, only helped her hold it in check.

Was this the way he controlled the beast aspect of himself?

“The magic in fae blood acts as a boost, yes.” Their host had lost himself in the pleasure of his own clever plans. He gestured to the pack of faster, fiercer undead. “As glorious as they are, they do not follow orders. Sufficient, but we can do better. With you, the effect will be different, give me greater control.”

“The spells wouldn’t work better with the dilution.” Her powers were limited, weaker than a normal fae of the Court of Light.

“It is not about the purity of the blood, for once. It is about the nature of the magic and the resonance.”

Realization washed through her and with it, Kayden’s presence receded. “Death.”

The old fae’s grin widened impossibly farther, until his face half split with the slash of white, pointed teeth. “The humans call it necromancy. And for once, I am fond of the term. We’ll call it that, shall we? Necromancy—power over the dead. And what fae blood would work best to forge the bond but from a fae who’s magic resonates with the coming of Death? Your blood, my dear, will give me officers to lead my army, elite soldiers who will actually carry out my commands.”

No.
No.
No!

“The power of the Baen Sidhe is peaceful. Its purpose is to help the soul find rest.” Horror shot like ice through her veins at the thought that her mother’s blood would be used for anything else. Her mother’s blood was Sorcha’s only redemption. Turn it, use it for such atrocity, would make every part of her existence a curse.

Abomination.

Forget the zombies. If she allowed him to use her this way,
she
would be the nightmare.

“With such an army, we can leave this husk of a city and retake all of the Isles. As the Fir Bolg were driven from the western coast, so shall the Tuatha Dé Danann.” Oh, and his madness continued in a long litany as he named each of the sidhe mounds. Some of those had closed to the human world already, lost. He had been hiding, bound by iron and stone, for a very long time.

“The humans have quarantined the city. They will raise arms against your precious horde.” Perhaps she’d injected too much confidence. His grin only faded a fraction, but the reaction was there.

She needed to buy more time. Ah! But they should have found a diplomat for this nonsense. She was better at destroying things.

“The humans are too short-lived, too shortsighted. They never do anything with the kind of thorough eye for detail the longer-lived races have. They’ve not the patience.”

Well, and neither did she.

Wait.

Again came the sense of Kayden, pressing upon her with an insistent pressure and a sensation of claws pricking against the outer edge of her Self. If shape-shifters could communicate this way amongst themselves, it was a wonder they hadn’t become the dominant supernatural race across the lands above. It would’ve been a distinct advantage. The dry assessment gave her a moment’s relief. And perhaps she’d imagined the sound of Kayden’s chuckle.

“The trick is to ensure the zombies do not feed indiscriminately.” By this time, the old fae was muttering to himself. Humans might have mistaken him for an absentminded professor, the way he blinked his overly large eyes in an owlish way as he patted his robes in search of something. “To simply cut off pieces of you would drive them into a feeding frenzy and besides, you’d bleed out. No, the humans have a clever apparatus for this, perfect.”

“As wonderful a solution as this...trinket might be, I must decline.” She kept her tone formal and tried to withdraw her hand. Shriveled fingers snapped tight on hers, suddenly strong. She found herself held fast in his grip. She tugged, tugged again. Each time, his fingers squeezed tighter around hers until a joint popped. She’d have to rip her hand free from her fingers to pull her arm back. Strong old fae.

“There is no choice for you. How naive of you to think you ever had one. I told you before, your will is mine.” He continued to pat down his robes with his free hand, absently keeping hold of her. She continued to pull—let her arm fall lax, then tug again. Let him think her struggle was limited to the physical contact.