Chapter 32
“Thomas. Glad to see you made it.”
The Immortal stood by the fountain in the center of Logan Square, watching me approach from the north. The park itself is a small circle, enclosed by the roundabout in Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Six gravel paths radiate out from the fountain like spokes in a wheel, with grass and trees in between. I walked over the crosswalk toward him and stopped at the edge of the north pathway.
“Johannes,” I growled. “I’m here. Now where’s Lajoie?”
He just looked at me for a few seconds. We stood maybe seventy-five feet apart. Lamp posts illuminated the park, letting me see his face clearly. Finally, he nodded, and a figure in a full-length hooded cloak—presumably another of his cultists—walked around from the other side of the fountain, escorting a conscious and ambulatory Henri Lajoie.
“Are you alright, Henri?” I called out to him. He nodded slowly but didn’t say anything.
“I keep my word, Thomas,” Johannes said. “He is free to go, as soon as you come here and take his place.”
I shrugged. “Let’s get this over with,” I muttered, as I began to walk down the path toward the fountain. As I reached the brick-lined circle of gravel surrounding the fountain itself, the cultist let Lajoie go.
“Go, Henri. Adrienne is waiting for you across the street,” I said.
He looked at me. “Quinn,” he croaked, “they’re going to kill you. Don’t do this.”
“We all have to die sometime. Besides, I owe you. Now go.”
He stood still for another moment, just looking at me. Then he started limping his way past me down the path from which I’d just come.
Johannes was still looking at me calmly. As soon as Henri walked past, however, I acted. No witty repartee or clever one-liners that could give away my intentions. Instantly, a curved blue shield sprang into life, momentarily protecting us from the Immortal and his acolyte.
Of course, he’d been expecting a trick, and within a fraction of a second, I felt the impact as he began to hammer my shield with blasts of energy.
“Go! Run!” I shouted at Henri.
Despite his injuries and the obvious pain it caused him, he reacted quickly and started sprinting with everything he had toward where Connors stood beckoning him her way on the other side of the crosswalk. She couldn’t stand up to the Immortal or his acolytes, so her primary job was to get her injured partner to safety.
Meanwhile I was slowly backing up, already feeling the strain of maintaining the shield against the Immortal’s powerful onslaught.
“Really, Thomas?” I heard him call out to me. “Did you honestly think that would take me by surprise? Do you forget that I know you?”
I almost didn’t hear the cracking of a twig behind me. I snapped my head around and saw at least two more cultists circling around through the grass, one on each side.
“I know your every move before you make it, Thomas,” he called. “Time to accept reality and meet your fate with some dignity.”
I didn’t bother replying, as I was too busy drawing my replacement Glock from its holster and turning to confront the new arrival to my left. He had just cleared the tree between us and raised his hand to cast some spell, but my first shot went through his eye before he had time to get it off. He fell as I spun around to face the next target. I shot at him, too, but he was fast enough to drop to the ground right as I fired, my bullet going just over his head.
There was a metal lamppost flanked by two benches to my immediate front, to the right of the gravel path on which I was still standing. I dove behind them just as my shield collapsed, a massive blast of white-hot energy cratering the cement where I’d been standing a second before. From my prone position, I saw the other cultist pushing himself back to his feet, apparently temporarily disoriented by the flash of the Immortal’s spell destroying my shield. I took a half second to aim and put two rounds into his head. He slumped back to the grass.
“Really, Thomas, must we do this?” the Immortal called out again. “Hiding behind a lamppost like a frightened child? Put down the gun, my boy. You can’t win, and you know it. You’re very powerful, certainly, but don’t forget that I’m the one who taught you your strength. I’m older, smarter, and far stronger than you. Accept the inevitable already. You’re only making it harder on yourself.”
“Are you done?” I grunted. I struggled to my feet—my multiple severe injuries of the past few days weren’t handling all this exertion well, rapid healing or not.
He just stood there, calm and collected, looking for all the world like a mildly irritated father disciplining a disobedient child.
“Are you ready to submit?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Hell, we’re just getting started.”
“What’s your plan, Thomas?” he asked. “You can’t kill me. You can’t defeat me. You can fight me, but at the end of it all, I’m still going to skin you alive right here next to this fountain. And then, just for your insolence, I’m going to track down your detective friends and kill them. You’ve accomplished nothing.”
“Not nothing.”
Before he could say anything else, I gave a sharp whistle.
Aengus, Rachel, and my mother all dropped their masking spells at my signal. While I’d kept Johannes focused on me, they’d silently moved around us, forming a triangle with the fountain at its center. Each of them wore one of Eitri’s magic-dampening rings, which they wordlessly activated now that they no longer had to focus on masking themselves. A bright light flared from each of their hands as the svartalf magic was released and the dampening field came into being.
I knew the spell was working because I was inside the triangle, too. It was an interesting feeling, being cut off from all magic—almost like going blind, I suppose. What I hadn’t counted on, however, was the loss of my magical healing abilities causing all my recent wounds to flare into fiery pain at once. I dropped to one knee, struggling to deal with the physical agony combined with the sensation of powerlessness.
But if it was bad for me, I couldn’t even imagine how the Immortal must have been feeling. He’d been connected to the magical fields around him for tens of thousands of years. Longer even than any of the Fae—much longer. He’d told me they’d become a part of him, that his life was tied to their flow. If I felt blind, he must have felt deprived of all his senses along with his ability to breathe. Good.
All three of us within the bounds of the triangle had staggered under its effects. I’d even known it was coming and was taken by surprise at the sensation. The remaining cultist—the one who’d brought Lajoie out when I’d first arrived—had fallen to the ground. Johannes was still on his feet, but I could see he was disoriented. That’s what I’d been hoping for.
I fought through the pain to stand back up, then I raised my gun, saw the Immortal through my sights, and pressed the trigger. I rode the recoil up and back down, pressing the trigger again exactly as the front sight returned to my target. And again, and again, and again. The Glock held sixteen rounds. I’d used four on cultists, but I put the other twelve directly into the Immortal’s chest without pause. I watched him stagger back under the repeated impacts.
The slide of my gun locked back on an empty chamber. I quickly slammed in another magazine, released the slide forward, and repeated the process for sixteen more rounds, putting all of them into his upper torso until I saw him collapse. I then tossed the empty Glock aside, reached into my coat pocket, and pulled out one of Eitri’s grenades. I pulled the pin and threw it where he lay next to the fountain, then dove back down just before it exploded, sending shrapnel flying in all directions.
I struggled back to my feet.
I could see Aengus shouting something at me, but I couldn’t make it out. I hadn’t worn ear plugs, as I’d decided it was more important to be able to hear small noises before the shooting started than to protect my hearing after the fight began, and twenty-eight rapid-fire gun shots followed by a grenade were enough to leave my ears ringing. Thanks to my healing abilities I wasn’t afraid of long-term hearing damage, but it meant I couldn’t hear much else at the moment.
He was on one knee, his shirt covered in dirt and grass stains. The three of them had all known I was going to throw the grenade, so they’d dropped to the ground to get out of the way of the fragments and shrapnel. Aengus was pointing at something.
I followed his finger to see what appeared to be several more cultists in motion on the other side of the park, coming over a low hill where they’d apparently been waiting. They were far enough away that they were outside the effects of the triangle—Johannes had clearly anticipated an attack of some kind on his own position, and he’d left a reserve force, just in case. They must have decided to get involved once they saw their leader go down.
I almost smiled. They were in for a surprise. Before they could maneuver to attack Rachel, the closest ringbearer to their position, another group suddenly appeared to their left.
My mother was Lord Marshal of the Arcanum, and the Arcanum was under threat. She’d mustered every available ranked member who could get here in time. Three were busy maintaining a complex containment spell around the entire park, keeping any bullets and magic within its perimeter and ensuring no civilians bothered us for the duration. The rest, a half dozen Arcanum Sorcerers of the Second and Third Rank, were tasked with fighting any cultists Johannes brought along, keeping them off our backs so we could focus on the Immortal himself.
When the group Aengus pointed to revealed themselves, our own reserves dropped their masking spells and hit them hard in the flank. Fireballs, blasts of electrical energy, hurricane-force winds, and an earthquake hit them all at once. One lightning bolt went wide and struck a tree, which promptly exploded into burning splinters. It was eerie, seeing all that but being unable to hear through the ringing in my ears.
More cultists joined the battle from somewhere. It seemed Johannes had positioned multiple groups to cover different angles. And just as I saw them begin unleashing their silvery heat spells against our reserve, movement out of the corner of my eye dragged my attention back to the fountain.
The Immortal was slowly pushing himself back to his feet. That was irritating. I hadn’t counted on my initial attack to be enough to kill him, but I’d been hoping.
I had to trust my allies’ ability to take care of themselves—I couldn’t help them from inside the triangle, and they couldn’t help me from outside it. Aengus, Rachel, and my mother needed to focus on maintaining the dampening field to keep Johannes vulnerable; the rest of our forces were too busy fighting cultists to enter the field and help me. I was on my own for this part.
I drew my kukri from a sheath on my belt. I’d left it behind for the ambush in Pennsport, but Logan Square wasn’t a confined space. And considering the Immortal was responsible for Charlotte’s death, I thought it fitting her gift should help me return the favor.
Knife in hand, I limped my way in his direction to finish what I’d started, noting almost as an afterthought that while the grenade hadn’t killed the Immortal, it most assuredly had finished off his cultist.
Johannes looked up just in time to see me, blade held high over my head, about to swing it down into the top of his skull. He might have been hurt, but he was still the strongest, most powerful being I’d ever encountered. With lightning fast reflexes, he reached out and grabbed my wrist in a vise grip, his other hand locking around my throat. My left hand clutched the hand choking me, and we struggled momentarily. Even without external magic, he was already shaking off the effects of my initial attack and recovering his strength.
Within a second of us grappling, I recognized he was stronger than I was, especially considering my now-painful injuries. I couldn’t overpower him with brute force. But old and experienced as he was, I highly doubted he’d ever bothered training in close-quarters combat. Why would he when he’d been all but a god for millennia? I wasn’t much of a hand-to-hand fighter myself, but at least I’d wrestled a few times within the past two centuries.
I stepped forward with my left foot and twisted hard, bringing my left elbow up and around, dropping it down onto his right forearm with as much force as I could muster. It was enough to bend his arm, breaking his death grip on my throat. That gave me an opening to continue stepping around him, sliding my right foot back toward his right side and moving my left around behind his legs. My left arm reached around his back, snaking under his armpit. He still had control of my right wrist, holding the kukri away from him and keeping me from doing anything useful with it. I needed to change the equation entirely somehow but wasn’t sure where to go from here. As we struggled in that position, my left foot ended up behind his heel and he tripped backwards onto me.
The burn on my back was my only recent injury that was healed enough not to be affected by being cut off from magic. The stab wound and surgical scar, on the other hand, did not take kindly to me falling directly on them on gravel, especially with Johannes’s weight on top of me.
The wind was knocked out of me and I almost blacked out from the pain. The kukri went flying. This was problematic. I couldn’t maintain my grip as he turned on top of me—before I knew what was happening, he was straddling my chest with both hands locked around my throat, his face a twisted mask of rage.
“How…dare…you!” he snarled as he choked me. My ears were still ringing, but I heard that well enough. “I…am…a…fucking…GOD!”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t breathe. I struggled to remove his hands from my throat, but I had no strength left. The world was going dark, and I realized I was going to die, that this evil, insane, murderous son of a bitch was going to win after all.
Then, out of nowhere, I suddenly felt my magical senses return—the triangle had failed, and we were connected once more to the energy fields around us. I didn’t know what happened, and I couldn’t exactly find out in my current position. But Johannes’s head snapped up and he looked around, before turning his attention back to me. His snarl turned to a dark grin, and he started to laugh.
“That was a clever trick, Thomas, cutting me off from magic so I’d be mortal. I didn’t expect you to bring so many friends, either. But no matter. It didn’t work. You’re mine now, boy.”
He loosened his grip on my throat slightly, still making it difficult to breathe, but no longer killing me.
“It seems my acolytes have already taken care of one of your friends, despite your best efforts. Once they’ve dealt with the rest, I still have plenty of time to peel the skin from your flesh and complete the ritual. I win.”
“Hey, asshole! You’re not the only god on the playground!” someone shouted.
It almost sounded like Adrienne Connors, but it couldn’t be—she’d left minutes ago, she was getting Lajoie to safety. Johannes turned to face whoever had just insulted him, his expression more quizzical than angry.
But then his expression suddenly changed to fear and confusion. He recoiled in horror, his hands coming off my throat as he rocked back and scrambled off me.
I gasped as air suddenly filled my lungs. I didn’t know what the hell had scared him, but I also knew I didn’t have time to find out. Whatever it was, it had given me an opening.
This time I didn’t hesitate. I had only one weapon that might take out an Immortal now that the magical fields around us were restored, and I needed to act before he recovered. I didn’t have time to wrestle with the decision, to shrink back in fear of what it meant, to second-guess myself. Not this time.
I found that place, the burning heart of magic, the wellspring. The spot he’d taught me to find so long ago. I concentrated its power into the smallest spot I could control and unleashed its fury inside Johannes’s chest.
He didn’t scream—he didn’t have a chance to make any noise at all. A bright burning light glowed in his eyes for a half second, then his entire body burst into white-hot flames as he cooked from the inside out. He collapsed silently backward into the fountain, which flash boiled into a curtain of steam around him. I rolled away, coughing.
When the steam passed and I could breathe, I opened my eyes to see someone standing at the end of the path. Bleary-eyed, I couldn’t quite make out who it was. I saw what looked, for a second, like a tall woman with pale skin, dark hair, and a feathered cloak, wreathed in darkness. Nemain? Or was it Badb? Whichever, where had she come from? Had Aengus called the Tuatha Dé?
Then I blinked, and I could see it was Connors, running toward me. What was she doing here? She was supposed to be making sure Lajoie was safe. Before I could ask her, the world went dark.
I dreamed, then.
For once, it wasn’t a nightmare. I was floating in a void, then slowly I started to see something indescribably magnificent. The cosmos came into being, but I wasn’t seeing it in only three dimensions. I could see the entire multiverse—our universe and its infinite possible permutations, the Otherworld and its own cosmology and all of their variants, and still other realms beside, all moving and interacting together in an eternal, endless, incomprehensibly complex dance. Wherever two or more universes swirled around each other, I saw a glowing, iridescent energy connecting the two and spiraling fractal tendrils into each. I understood instinctively these were the lines of magical energy that emanated from the connections between realities, the flow of magic through all existence across time and space.
For a few seconds, I couldn’t just see everything that existed, in this universe and the rest. I could see everything that ever had existed, and everything that ever could exist. For one brief moment, I was omniscient.
Then I woke up.
I knew I’d just seen something important, but couldn’t quite remember what it had been. I opened my eyes to see Connors bent over my head, saying something to me. I couldn’t make it out. I shook my head, and suddenly I was back to reality.
“Quinn!” Connors was shouting. “Wake up!”
I forgot about my dream entirely as I struggled to concentrate.
I looked at her. Had she been the Morrigan for a second? Had the Morrigan been here? It was all still a bit confused and hazy.
“I’m awake,” I groaned, and struggled to sit up. “What’s happening?”
She looked me in the eyes, as if trying to see if I were concussed. “It’s over, Quinn. I called on the Morrigan’s favor, and it worked. He got scared and confused, just like Nemain promised. Then you got him. I don’t know what the hell you did, but you fried the son of a bitch. Almost cooked yourself in the process.”
“That’s good,” I grunted, my voice hoarse and raspy from being nearly choked to death. My vision of her now made sense. I’d almost forgotten about Nemain’s promise to the detectives outside the gates of the Black Fortress. It had only been last week, but it seemed a lifetime ago.
I was exhausted, and completely beat to hell. I wanted to sleep for about a year. But then I suddenly remembered something.
“What about the others?”
She looked grim. “Rachel got a good knock when a lamppost fell on her, and I saw at least a couple of other sorcerers down. I don’t know how bad it is. Your mother is taking care of the wounded right now. Johannes’s remaining soldiers surrendered after they saw him get barbecued; Aengus is dealing with them. You’re hurt, too. Don’t move too much. I’ve got an ambulance on the way.”
Great, I thought to myself. More hospitals. Just what I needed.
I shook my head again.
“Have to make sure,” I gasped, then I rolled up to a sitting position.
She looked concerned but didn’t try to stop me. Between the pain and the exhaustion, I had to take a second to catch my breath before actually standing up. Then, leaning on Connors, I staggered over to the fountain to see Johannes’s body.
She hadn’t been exaggerating when she said he’d been barbecued. He was burned to a crisp, his charred corpse lying in the fountain, slightly soggy—most of the water had been boiled off, but there were still a couple inches at the bottom.
He’d told me, two nights before, that only the strongest effort could break the bonds tying his life to the magical fields that permeated reality. It seemed a direct internal hit from the weapon he’d taught me to wield, the heart of magic itself, was enough to do the trick. But just in case, I sat down on the edge of the fountain and gestured toward the kukri lying a few yards away. Connors understood.
Once she’d handed me the knife, I swung my legs over into the fountain and dragged myself next to Johannes’s corpse. With my dwindling strength, I raised the blade as high as I could manage and chopped down into his neck. It was thoroughly burnt, and there wasn’t much resistance, his head falling off cleanly as the kukri hit the bottom of the fountain. Then I sat back up and looked Connors in the eye.
“Now it’s finished,” I told her.