Hissing for breath, she grabbed at its wrists, but they were like iron. She kicked her heels against the ground and shook her head, but it laughed, a high pitched, horrible sound that ended suddenly as its head disappeared, black blood geysering up from its neck stump. Scarlet appeared behind him, sword having swung right through its neck with such force that she looked like a baseball player who has just swung a home run. Face grim, she kicked the goblin’s body aside and yanked Maya to her feet.
“Stay close,” she yelled, and turned as Kevin joined her side. “We’re pushing forward, they’re falling back!” Maya’s heart was about to burst in her chest, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, goblin blood hot and wet on her cheek, the air smelling like copper. Everybody began to race forward over the grass, a mass of centaurs to her right singing in a deep, alien language that stirred the blood, made her want to run faster despite herself.
“This is fucked!” yelled Kevin beside her, grinning, and clearly terrified. “Did you see me kill that snake guy?”
Maya just shook her head, and then nearly tripped as she skidded to a halt as a band of misshapen men nearly ten feet tall, massively muscled and swinging clubs, came roaring toward them from their left. Scarlet cursed and moved to engage them, and then Guillaume was there, his gray longsword moving with terrible speed to spike and slash and open up the ogres. Kevin hesitated, hung back next to her, head turning from side to side as he tried to watch every direction at once.
Maya stuffed her hand in her pocket and drew out the three acorns, holding them tight. She felt sick with fear, loaded with adrenaline, her stomach so tight it felt like a tambourine, mouth dry, skin prickling. A flayed man, his muscles red and glistening, came running at her, hands outstretched, Kevin yelled something but suddenly the flayed man was down, tripped, and she saw Tim Tom Tot leap astride his back and bash his head in with a hammer. He looked up at her, met her eyes, and she smiled, terrified.
“Thank you,” she said, and then clasped both hands to her mouth. Tim Tom Tot shuddered, his face darkening, and then he let out a shriek, hefted his hammer and came racing right at her.
“A curse on you, a curse,” he yelled, face purple with fury. Kevin stepped in at the last moment, blocking the downswing of the hammer with his upraised blade, and before Tim Tom Tot could react, he whipped it down the haft of the hammer, cut off the brownie’s fingers, and buried it deep, lengthwise, in his chest. Tim Tom Tot dropped the hammer and staggered back, blinking.
“A curse on you,” he whispered. “Your friends will die.” Then he keeled over, onto his knees and then side and lay still. Maya pressed her fingers to her mouth, horrified, stunned, and looked to Kevin, who was staring down at the dead brownie. He looked over at her, and shook his head.
“Dude was crazy,” he said. “
Loco
. Come on.”
He took her by the hand and forced her to begin running again. She looked back at where the brownie lay, and saw instead a slender girl with butterfly wings close by, struggling against three goblins who laughed and jabbed at her with spears, a net having been thrown over her shoulders and holding her to the ground. Even as she watched, a spear sank into her stomach, and the girl screamed and doubled over.
“This is wrong,” yelled Maya, turning to Kevin, who stared at her, not understanding. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This is horrible!”
Kevin shrugged, swung his sword around. “This is what fights are like,” he said, close to apologizing. “People try to kill each other.”
“But we’ll never win,” she said, the feeling sinking into her. “We can’t win this way. This is how
they
win, not us.” She knew it to be true. They had to resist, yes, but this? This was all wrong.
One of the ogres crashed his club into the shoulder of an Incarnadine, and the woman screamed, fell to one knee. Before she could rise, Guillaume slid his blade up under the ogre’s arm, through his armpit and into his torso, drew it forth just as quickly and then ducked as another club came whistling in at his head. The club missed, swung on, and clocked the kneeling Incarnadine in the head, smashing it inwards and knocking her down. Before Guillaume could turn to fight this new enemy, the griffin swooped down from the darkness above, and clasped the ogre with both claws, lifting him aloft as the monster roared in terror.
Scarlet was by her side, clasping her arm, pulling her forward. Maya fought the urge to pull back, to resist, but she couldn’t, where could she go? Instead she followed along, feet heavy and clumsy, trying not to see all the bloodshed around her. Kevin by her side, grim, only half the Incarnadines left, Guillaume gone once more. They left the park, entered the street beyond it. A great and grand building to their right, a courthouse with statues before it, a massive avenue leading up and into the heart of the city.
“Guillaume said to fight our way north to the Central Park,” said Scarlet, pausing to assess the forces about her. Other Seelie were massing at their back. “If we gain the Central Park, we’ll be stronger for it.”
Then a giant turned onto the avenue up ahead, something that dwarfed even the ogres, easily standing some thirty, forty feet tall, a wall of flesh and muscle, clad in chains, a huge beard growing down his chest and tucked under his broad leather belt, from which heads hung, eyes open and rolling. A gnarled, bloodied club the size of a tree hung from his hand, and with a rumble like the earth opening up it spotted them and began to lumber toward them.
“Oh no,” said Scarlet, voice a hoarse croak. “Jack in Irons. We can’t face him. Run!”
A hand on her wrist, dragging her, but Maya couldn’t take her eyes off the giant. A centaur charged it from the side, plunging its spear like a lance into the giant’s upper thigh, eliciting a bellow from the monster. It snapped the spear, and then brought the club down with punishing force on the centaur’s back, snapping it in half and driving it forcefully down to the ground, killing it instantly. Then it turned and started chasing them once more.
Back to Battery Park. Jack in Iron’s appearance had thrown the Seelie force into disarray. They were falling back, knights and brownies, a unicorn and animal folk. Maya suddenly wrested her hand free of Scarlet’s grasp, and stood still. Kevin and Scarlet stumbled to a halt, but before they could start yelling at her, she turned and began to run at the giant.
The giant’s stench preceded him, the smell of rotten meat. He swung his club up over his shoulder, and his broad mouth split into a vast smile, dull eyes locked on her like the bores of two cannons. At the last moment, she stopped, took a deep breath, and threw an acorn at the ground before him.
A huge cracking sound, asphalt splitting, shattering like continental plates, and with writhing, unstoppable force, a great tree arose with astonishing speed right beneath the giant, catching him mid stride. The trunk twined itself sinuously up around one thigh, then wrapped around his torso, branches spearing out to trap his arms. In a matter of moments, Jack was transfixed, the tree groaning beneath his weight, a vast and impossible oak in the middle of 5th Avenue.
Ragged cheers from around them, and Maya was grinning, turning to look at the others as they joined her side. Members of the Unseelie Court were hesitating, drawing back, staring in helpless fury at Jack.
“Look,” she yelled at Kevin, “Now we can press forward, that’s the way to win, to use life, to use life to stop them, not death—“
But her words were cut short by a huge cracking that sent a surge of adrenaline through her, stopped her heart. Turning around, she saw Jack swing his arm free, snapping off the branches that held it. “No,” she whispered, as his vast hand clasped the branches around his other arm, and tore them away.
“Get back,” yelled Scarlet, but Maya was rooted to the spot. It couldn’t be. Something had felt so right. A great leg kicked free of the tree’s roots, and then, with another horrible snap, Jack in Irons stepped away completely from the trunk, untangling himself from its embrace. He loomed over them, a mere ten yards away, and laughed, the sound booming down to where they stood.
“Run, damn you!” screamed Scarlet, and threw herself forward, turning her charge into a dive at the last moment as the club came whistling down. Kevin grabbed Maya’s arm, but she shook him off angrily and fell back, watching with sick, curdling fear in her stomach as Scarlet rolled right between Jack’s legs and stabbed her blade deep into his calf before gaining her feet behind him.
“We have to help her,” she yelled, but Kevin simply shook his head. Jack swung his club with terrible speed behind his legs, forcing Scarlet to throw herself aside, even as another pair of crimson armored women attacked him from the front. Roaring, Jack stepped to the side, and swung his club down and across, knocking away their attacks.
Maya looked down at her two remaining acorns. Maybe both at once? A scream, and she saw that one of the Incarnadines had gone down, pulped by a blow from Jack’s club. The last two were fighting desperately against a mass of black furred wolves, and, beyond them, the battle raged in pockets and shifting lines.
Frustration welled up deep within Maya’s heart. She watched as the second Incarnadine was dealt a smashing blow to the back, and knocked, face down, onto the road, bones no doubt splintered in her body. Jack stepped forward, planted his great heel in her back, crushed her beneath his weight, and then turned to face Scarlet, his legs weeping blood from her countless cuts.
Gritting her teeth, Maya tried to run forward, but was yanked back by Kevin, who simply shook his head. Crying, she turned to watch. Scarlet was yelling her defiance, dancing and spinning away from the club, slicing and spearing her blade at Jack’s legs, but it was as if his skin was made of iron, or thick leather; the blade simply couldn’t get deep enough to really hurt him. Jack was laughing, and Maya realized with horror that the severed heads on his belt were laughing along with him, reedy, high pitched fluting sounds.
“Come,” said a commanding voice, and she turned to see Guillaume. “It’s not safe for you out in the open. Make for those trees there.” She studied his face, searching for some sign of encouragement, but found only stony resilience. He wasn’t even looking at her. Even as he began to surge forward to help Scarlet, Jack’s club finally caught her. Swept her legs out from beneath her, so that she fell heavily down onto the road, cracking her hip against the asphalt, sword skittering from her grip. With a cry of defiance and pain, she made to get up, but Jack leaned down and wrapped his hand around her head, enclosing it in his palm, and, with a savage jerk, tore it off completely.
Guillaume roared a battle cry and ran forward, and Kevin grabbed her arm again, pulled her after him, away, away from it all. Fury, impotence, horror and despair were taking her by the throat, and, stumbling, it was all she could do to follow him.
Maribel was in love. The sensation of flying was like nothing she had ever experienced outside of a dream, but now she was living her childhood fantasies, floating as she pleased through the caressing air. She ruled the winds and currents like a mistress might her abject lover. It was like floating on swells of wind, able to direct her progress with but a thought. Out over the city she floated, hanging vertical but drifting forward where she pleased, feet resting on nothing but the ether. Forward she flew, approaching the towers and warrens of the humans. The cries of her cohorts about her, circling, her vanguard, her protectors, though she needed none.
With but a change of thought, she began to rise. Up toward the blank, black sky, the light of the stars drowned out by the luminescence of the city. Snuffed out, gone. Up into the cold, sharp darkness, rising to where the air was pure, rarefied, biting and clear. The skyscrapers falling below her, the length of the Isle of Apples glowing and glittering like the sequined leg of a whore. Bounded by rivers, the boroughs extending beyond them, but for now, only one place mattered, only one locale. Her Court, her new home, her Island.
Battle was joined below. They had come, she supposed, to wrest Caladcholg from her hand. To win the impossible, to kill her forces and, eventually, face her with nothing but their temerity.
But there was no end to the forces at her disposal. Even as her numbers fell, others came to replace them. There was a legend, she knew, a Greek fable wherein every soldier felled was replaced by ten. So was it now. Whereas the poor Seelie could ill afford to lose a single soldier, one fighting arm. No matter. They would be crushed, they would die, they would bleed out and the Island would be hers, as it was before, as it would be for eternity.
Laughing, Maribel extended her gleaming blade in front of her, began to spin, once, twice, revolving faster and faster for the sheer delight of vertigo, and then cut her ability to fly and let herself fall.
Down she plummeted, turning so that she fell head first, eyes open, hair whipping and snapping about her head, a wild mane that blended with the darkness and thus became the whole sky in its entirety. Down she fell, blade by her side, loose, relaxed, waiting for terminal velocity. Upon reaching it, she closed her eyes. Utterly relaxed. Never had she felt so calm, so certain. Down she plunged, the cement and stone and hard angles and edges roaring up toward her through the tumultuous winds, seeking to crush and break her, to jelly her bones and head. Down she fell, and in that plummet, she sought peace. Sought a moment of calm before the unquenchable spilling of blood.
At the last moment, she asserted herself, leveled off violently, and then began to spear down 5th Avenue, flying over the cars and trucks and motorcycles and courier boys working the late night shift. She turned so that she faced the sky, flew with her back to the road, her head raised so that she could see the passing buildings as they whipped by, not looking at where she went, what obstacles might obstruct her passage. There would be none. Nothing could impede her. Stop her. Nothing would ever resist her will again.
Through the city, and then to its tip. The forces of the Seelie had been beaten back, block by bloody block, till once more they fought on the grassy lawn of Battery Park. The confluence of the rivers behind them as dark as the sky, darker, and grass grown slick with blood and spilled viscera. Spinning back out, she whipped her blade up, and landed on top of the ruined globe that had once stood in the lobby of the World Trade. Gazed out over the battleground, and surveyed the field.