Border, KS

EPILOGUE: WHAT KIND OF DAY IT HAS BEEN

“What. The hell. Are we going to tell people?” The Mayor of Border was a man of middling height who Walter did not think was terribly charismatic. Apparently he could turn it on when he had to, but he was not trying to turn it on right now. He looked annoyed, and terrified. He also, apparently, had known at least enough of the supernatural goings on in the city to not be surprised—Andre had commented he was surprised the man had possessed the time to learn about it, around all the infidelity.

“The good news, Mr. Mayor, is that people seem to have no memory of what exactly happened. Some of them remember Antigone screaming in the hallway, but whatever…psychic bologna that was pulled of left them without real memories of what happened.” William Alexander looked ragged, and like most of them he still hadn’t had time to really clean up from the battle. They were debating what to call it, with some favoring the Battle of Border and some the Battle of Eisenhower (after the school). Walter was in the second camp—primarily because he was of the sinking suspicion that there would probably be more clashes later that could usurp the first title.

“Oh, excellent.” The Mayor’s face lit up at the revelation that there was something people remembered. Willard Adler had a vulpine fact and a surprising trim build for his breadth of shoulder; his height combined with his with made people think he was heavy-set, but it was an illusion that his quick movements and energy dispelled. “We can tell everyone—”

“No.” Walter’s voice was firm. The group of people were talking inside one of the computer rooms in the High School, and Walter was leaning against the wall with a cup of coffee. Adler had taken the desk at the front of the room and perched on it. He turned to look at Walter with an expression halfway between bemused and affronted. “No, I’ve seen how this goes enough.”

“Mr. Richards, while I—” the Mayor began again, until Walter cut him off.

“No,” he said again, no less firm. “You’re about to suggest that we blame Antigone for doing something. Scapegoat her. So people think she’s the crazy woman who got the school evacuated because she was high or something.” He didn’t phrase it as a question, just a statement of fact. The mayor, for his part, was honest enough not to deny it. “And I’m telling you, no. I will not let you alienate my daughter from her classmates for something that wasn’t her fault. Find another option.”

Now Adler was all bristle, no amusement. “You are in no position to negotiate, Mr. Richards. What makes you think you have the right to dictate to me what we do?”

Walter made an expansive gesture to the courtyard, where they were cleaning up both blood and some kind of bio-luminescent moss that had grown up where the power had leaked out around him. “Within the last hour, Adler, I killed a god.”

Adler narrowed his eyes. “Are you threatening me, Mr. Richards?” He ran a hand through his thin copper colored hair. “That doesn’t seem very wise, given the state of your employment could very well be reviewed here tonight.”

“No threats, Mr. Mayor,” Walter said calmly, taking a long sip of mediocre coffee. “I am merely stating that in the grand scheme of things wrecking the life of one adulterous mayor is unlikely to cause much problems for the man who just killed the High King of Faerie.”

“And,” William Alexander pointed out, “Police staffing decisions can only be overruled by the city council, as you are more than aware.”

The room was full, with both Faerie Queens, the Mayor and his secretary, Walter and all three of his children, William and Andre Alexander, and Leah Silverman all sitting in it. Walter shared a glance with Morgan, and knew that he was being somewhat unfair—not to Adler, but to his own prowess for deicide. In the confusion and terror of his death and, embarrassing as it was to complete, resurrection, they had lost track of Oberon’s body. They could not be sure he was dead until Morgan returned to Faerie and saw if the compulsion keeping him out was still in place, but powerless and wounded she was convinced he had little ability to harm them. His followers were not the kind of people who would follow a powerless former King.

The mayor scowled darkly, both at Alexander and Walter. Walter did not ask why, in the odd city structure that Border apparently enjoyed, the Mayor couldn’t fire even the police chief—but that was a feeding hand he had no intention of biting,. “And what would you suggest we claim, then, as long as we have people’s memories willing to play along?”

Walter considered Antigone and Siobhan, who were playing silent for the moment—Antigone characteristically in front of an argument, Siobhan quite uncharacteristically. “Antigone,” Walter declared, “Was a hero. She knew something was wrong and she was warning people when things went terribly wrong, and then when something happened everyone started running.”

Antigone blinked, blushing a little bit, while Siobhan nodded eagerly. “Antigone did feel it, it made her sick and she totally would have been warning people if she hadn’t been almost throwing up at the time. Besides, she always wants to be popular, and what’s more popular than a hero.” Antigone blushed even more deeply at the commentary on her almost throwing up, and her desire to be popular.

“Thanks, Bonnie…” Antigone murmured sarcastically.

“We’re not in the habit of deciding who is cool at school in the mayor’s office…” Adler said, before he sighed and waved his hands as if casting the whole situation away from him. “But I honestly don’t give a crap right now. Fine, Antigone is a hero, and it was a gas leak or gang activity or whatever. I’ll have them draw it up.”

Walter shook his head, sighing and smirking a little bit. “You know, Border might rank lower in gang activities nationally if we didn’t blame everything on gangs. Do we actually even have gangs?”

Andre joined him in a matching smirk. “Several, actually—it is a problem.”

“When you have served in this city for more than five minutes, Mr. Richards, feel free to tell me how we can improve on what we do,” the mayor said, collecting his things and giving Walter a thin smile. “Until then, we have a plausible story that people will buy, and the uncharacteristically friendly memory wipe that Oberon gave everyone in the school.”

Morgan hadn’t spoken to the group since the meeting began, when she had explained the circumstances leading up to the fight at the High School; she had been whispering with Tania about their plans. Adler’s words apparently drew her out of that enough that she responded. “He didn’t want everyone dead, he just wanted to…rearrange the real estate in his favor. He was ambitious as hell and more than little bit crazy, but he didn’t want to mass murder an entire High School.” She considered the table for a moment, before she shrugged—apparently having nothing else to say to the Mayor.

“Ok,” Adler said, with a confused look on his face as he headed toward the door. He paused there, looking back. “Should I ask too deeply why my coroner has such intimate knowledge of an insane being from another dimension who wanted to wreck the town? I remind you that unlike the Sheriff, the coroner does answer directly to the mayor.”

Morgan, who had gone back to leaning over and conspiring with Tania, slowly raised herself upright at the tone in the mayor’s last sentence. Her eyes didn’t cool so much as they flash froze, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop. Even Adler, unperturbed and shrouded in annoyance, swallowed at the sudden intensity of Morgan’s expression. “If we discuss the terms of my employment, Mr. Mayor—and I will remind you I am on a contract—we do so at a far more congenial time than this, yes?” Although the sentence was phrased as a question, her tone made it anything but.

Adler mumbled something that sounded like a yes, and quickly found his way out the door with his assistant. The moment he was gone Morgan rolled her eyes and sighed. “What a prick.”

“Don’t blame me,” Tania said helpfully, “I voted for the gangster, not the adulterer.”

He knew that he was dead, which was the odd thing. He knew that there was a separation between his body and his soul and that if left that way, his death would become fatal. He would have chuckled about the idea of death becoming fatal, but he was not in a state of existence where chuckling was possible. Or appropriate, really.

He could see the power inside of him now, all of the different threads of it. They coursed through him like a river—like two rivers together that had long since overflown the banks and flooded the countryside. It was a wonder he hadn’t simply exploded and vented it all in to the atmosphere like a magical nuclear disaster.

That thought almost made him chuckle again.

They were beautiful, and he watched as they now began to flow out of his body. He tried to grasp at them but he could not. They fled from his touch as if repelled, and whatever feeling he still had went slightly numb at the effort. He resolved to not do that again.

What had his daughter been saying…he tried to remember. It had something to do with him not being a cup, but being a tube. He thought that if she was correct then he had to direct it, either out to a person or in to the air and world around him. That seemed like a waste.

It was easy enough to start. The power wanted to go somewhere, and some already head leaked away and sparkled around him like fireflies in the night. It wasn’t like connecting wiring as much as it was like directing a fire hose, but he aimed it all at the fallen Faerie Queen.

Magical energy flowed through him an an almost sinfully delightful experience. He could feel the joy of his body purging itself of the power that he wasn’t supposed to have, and he could watch it flow like the universe’s own pure essence in to the Queen of Summer. She gasped and bolted upright, glowing to his eyes as she was filled up with her power again.

As it flowed out of him it healed his body, for it was the power of life and the growths of the spring and summer. He knew that the Winter Queen’s would have as well, for their power was creative and destructive both—but the destruction had already happened. Wounds closed, cells regenerated, and his body looked better than it had in days. And then it was out of him, leaving his body perfect if dirty.

But it was not so easy to stop as it had been to start. Her power flowed away from what had been his body, but then the High King’s power started to as well. H tried to yank it away but it did not want to. It started to lash back toward the High King’s unconscious form, and he knew that was disastrous as well. He could not let it do what it wanted, so he grabbed it with all the might of (he supposed) his soul.

It lashed about him with agony and he felt what was left of him, of who he had been and who he was now and all his possible tomorrow selves, straining to stay together. It was pain in an existence that lacked pain, confusing and terrible, but he also knew he had to. And he did not need to move it very far. Moved away from the High King, the power seemed confused. It didn’t know what to do, and feared what was coming; those emotions crystalized deep within the power. Literally.

Glittering, gleaming, crystalline shards of power shot off in to the night all around him like an ice storm in reverse. He watched it with awe, for in his current state he could see it in a hundred different colors and hues that no mortal had ever observed. He could not see where they went, nor could he see how many there were—he thought no more than a dozen.

The beauty of it almost distracted him. Attached to the end of that shining power were bristling threads of darkness, snapping at one another. They seemed more like living pieces of feral animals that had gotten lashed together than any part of a power, but he realized what it was a second before it would have been too late.

The gaesa, or whatever it was. The thing that had been a part of the High King and kept the Fomor out, whatever the hell they were. It was a power and a curse and a snarling bit of nastiness. Power to keep them out, and a promise to maintain it—and a piece of whatever they were to act as a spiritual antibody. In that moment, in the state of altered awareness he was in, it made sense. He could direct it anywhere, and as long as it remained together it would remain intact. If it was broken, or if it was let to run out and away like the power of the High King, it would be shattered and lose all of its effect.

He knew he could send it to the Winter or Summer Queens. It had been the plan, albeit a plan that had gone deeply wrong quite a while ago. But there was a chance too much would be lost as he struggled to control it. He could try to splash it out and hope, or let it go and help them fight whatever would come from the great beyond.

But it was too risky, and uncertain. And it was giving up. He had done what he had done in full awareness of the fact that it would probably go bad. And that meant he had to live with all of the pieces of it, including his death and whatever came next. So he didn’t send it to one of the Queens, or let it go.

Directing the power had been hard.

Shutting it off was agony.

He closed it back in on himself, swallowing the power and the responsibility. And this, built with a self-contained energy and a bit of destructive antibody, stuck to him like a brand on his soul—but it stuck. Oddly, as the power and the antibody came together with his soul, it found a tiny bit of glue—a bit of something inside of him that he did not recognize. He knew it was some form of power, and in his state he recognized it had not always been there. But it was a part of him, now, and it helped bind it all together. And as it bound to him it drew him back in to his healed body, the soul searing pain fusing back together the parts of him.

**** ****

Walter Richards sat up with a gasp, his eyes wide and rimmed with tears and stained with blood. But it was a whole breath and a deep one, and the agony that came with it was from having stopped breathing for several long minutes while whatever it was he had just quasi-hallucinated had resolved itself.

Antigone and Siobhan both threw themselves at him and wrapped him in the fiercest hugs they could manage, which did not lack for fierceness. A moment later, heedless of any protocols of Faerie royalty or public displays of affection, Morgan did the same. Walter noticed that tears stained her cheeks as well, and she did nothing to hide them.

“Daddy, I thought we’d lost you,” Antigone told him through her tears.

Siobhan was more direct. “Don’t ever do that to me again, old man, I almost had a heart attack,” she murmured, all caustic bite buried under genuine relief and receding fear.

Morgan waited a moment, and laid a kiss on his cheek before she caught his eyes. “Congratulations, Walter Richards—you just killed a god and lived. Mostly.”

It hurt to breathe still, especially with the three of them crushing his ribs anew, but he was pretty damn sure he could live with having killed a god and lived. Mostly.

END CHAPTER 14.

Antigone Richards had never been someone who strode boldly forward. That was Siobhan’s role; hers was the consideration and calculation, weighing different options to see which was best. They worked well together, but they also re-enforced one another’s predispositions. So when the time came for boldness she was frequently nervous and shaky.

Especially when she was going to have to tell her father that he had to die.

She watched him on the ground, contorting in pain, and she knew that she was right. He arched his back and cried out, his hands clenching in to tight fists of agony. He was fighting it because that is what he did, and every time he pushed himself against it she could see what it did to him. She swallowed against the bile rising in her throat, and reached out to put her hand on her father’s shoulder.

“Daddy, you have to let go,” she said softly, squeezing his shoulder to make sure he was paying attention to her. “It’s killing you, and you have to let it go or it is going to kill you. And it is going to feel like you’re dying, but that’s why I’m here—to help.” She said it with a conviction that belied the shaking in her other hand, and the spidery terror dancing up and down her spine.

“WHAT?” Siobhan, predictably, exploded at the suggestion. “Annie, what are you saying…look at him!” Siobhan gestured to Walter. His eyes were wide, but they were focused on Antigone with a laser intensity. “If he stops fighting it, then it’ll burn him up! He feels like he’s a million degrees already,” she insisted. Sweat did bead his brow, and his face was flushed.

“You’re seeing it backward, Bonnie…it’s burning him up because he’s fighting it,” Antigone responded more calmly than she felt. “It’s the dreams, Bonnie. The dreams we’ve had together. You know what I’m supposed to do.”

Morgan pushed herself in between the two girls, her face confused but determined. “What dreams?” She demanded. “We know you had them but what exactly were your dreams?” Her tone made it clear that it was not a question, and that she would put up with very little prevarication.

Antigone sighed, flushing a bit at the intensity of Morgan’s look. She ran a hand back through her hair, which was lank with her own sweat from fear and exertion and then a great deal more fear again. “In our dreams…we’ve seen what we are, and when we wake up we don’t understand what it means. But we know. Siobhan kills—but more than that she moves people on to whatever is next.” She swallowed a lump in her throat as she remembered waking up crying from the next part. “I…help him die. Help Dad die, I mean.”

“And you think that is now? You have the sense that this is the time when you do that?” Morgan’s voice was not one iota less intense, but her eyes moved back to Walter and softened at the sight of him in his agony.

Antigone didn’t answer directly. “Why can’t you just give up your power?” She asked instead. Morgan glanced back at her, but she looked thoughtful rather than questioning the conversation change. “What stops you from just making me the Winter Queen, or Siobhan?”

Morgan did look like she wanted to resist the topic change, but she bit her lip and shrugged. “Our power is a part of us, bound to our soul. When new power is introduced it mixes with that existing power and bonds to us. When you take power through a ritual or a black knife, it fuses with your existing magic. It can’t be separated afterword, anymore than you could cut out a piece of your own soul and give it away.”

Antigone nodded eagerly. “But Dad doesn’t have any power for it to cling to. I think that is what’s killing him—it keeps trying to fuse to him. He pushes it away but there’s too much of it and it keeps pounding against his body to try to stick. You’re a cup, because you can take the power,” she explained, cupping her hand together. “Or maybe a sponge. But he’s a pipe—if he lets it go then it’ll run right through him, but if he fights it then it’ll get stopped up and explode. That’s what is happening, he’s a stopped up pipe that’s going to burst!” As she spoke her words came more quickly but also more confidently, as she convinced herself she wasn’t mad.

Morgan stared at the contorting Walter for a long moment as she thought about it. “No human has ever managed to take in that much power before. I don’t know if you’re right,” she admitted, her voice rough with emotion. “And I hate that. I hate it!” She shouted, and ice crystals formed on her eyelashes and cheeks where tears had begun to roll. They melted a moment later as she blinked it away, and she shook her head in frustration. “But he can’t be any more dead if you’re wrong.”

Antigone nodded, and leaned over to look directly in to her father’s eyes. “Daddy, I know that it goes against every part of who you are, every bit of you, but you have to stop. Fighting.”

**** ****

Walter stared in to his daughter’s eyes. He could hear her, but she was faint over the rushing of his own blood. It was as if his agony had a sound of its own, even more than the shuffling and scraping of his body as it contorted and twisted largely on its own. But if he focused he could hear what she was saying, and lip reading filled in the rest.

“…but you have to stop. Fighting. Stop fighting right now, and let it run through you. You have to, or you will die.” Antigone kept talking for a bit, and he lost her in the pounding in his own head. He was so hot, so maddeningly hot—but then in waves cold rushed through his body as well, and he felt like his skin should be freezing. The two warred in him and left him sweating and freezing because of it. He knew that she was trying to reassure him, to convince him that he should trust her.

Her voice was calming, even as he was wracked by pain. She’d always been able to cut to the heart of a matter, when she put her mind to it.

And I’m dying and avoiding the point, he told himself around mental screaming. He felt his nails digging in to his own palms and knew his breathing was growing ragged. That moment that the others feared was coming crashing down on him with every passing second, and he didn’t have much time left. His mind drifted with the pain.

“You don’t have much quit in you, do you Walt,” his father said. His father was so unhappy, anger etched in to the lines of his face as Walter told him that he planned to join the Army.

“No, Sir. And you don’t have much trust in you.” He regretted the words, but not the sentiment. Why didn’t his father trust him?

Antigone was still pleading with him. Begging him to let go, and Walter wanted to make those tears in her eyes disappear. And the ones running down Morgan’s face and drifting away as little snowflakes as she pulled on her power. She would try to contain him if he literally exploded, he knew.

“Walter, I don’t know…what if I’m a terrible mother?” Rhiannon asked softly. “I’m…I’m afraid of being a mother. Isn’t that terrible?”

“Trust me, Annie…you’ll be great,” Walter reassured. He leaned in to kiss her gently on the lips, his hands moving to caress her still flat stomach. “I know you, and your heart. Trust me…”

“Daddy, you have to trust me!” Antigone was saying, her voice hoarse and the tears flowing in rivers now. He looked in to her eyes, those lovely summer green and hazel eyes, and knew that she was right.

She didn’t need to doubt. He did trust her, and resolved that if he survived this he would tell her that more. She always doubted herself, but she had a wonderful mind for analysis and consideration, and…

And it’s time, Walter.

He didn’t know if it was his voice, or him imagining someone else’s words in his own voice. His ears weren’t working properly, all he could hear was Antigone. But he knew the voice was right, and it was now or never.

Walter did not have much quit in him, his father had been right on that account. It wasn’t easy, but he slowly made himself quit. Even in the face of the pounding torment he made himself unclench every muscle, stop grinding his teeth, and lay his hands flat on the ground. He stopped fighting for one second.

And in that eternal second, buffeted by the roiling waters of stolen power, Walter Richard died.

Walter hadn’t done drugs, not really. A couple of joints when he was a listless High Schooler who figured he had nothing better to do with his life, but the only substances he had used beyond that were alcohol and tobacco. So he really had no frame of reference for his thought that what drug users were trying to feel like was what he felt right at the moment he first took in Oberon’s power.

It was agony incarnate, like molten lava had somehow replaced the blood in his veins and then further been lit on fire somehow. But beneath that agony there was such sweetness, humming with the very force of creation itself, and it made Walter feel like a God.

He heard a sound, but it seemed to be very far away. He couldn’t place it exactly, although it sounded familiar; but he was too distracted by the intensity of the feelings within him. It was swimming with the power of heaven itself, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he could focus on it anyway. He felt so warm, so deliciously warm.

Something…wait…there were people here, he thought. His thoughts were disjointed, rising and falling like the warmth flowing across his body. Flowing across his face…he blinked against the brightness, focusing for a moment to see if he still could.

“SHIT! SHIT! WHY IS HE BLEEDING FROM HIS EYES?”

That’s what it was, he thought. Screaming. A second later he realized one of the voices was his own, screaming incoherently in pain, as he bled from the eyes and his ears. After he realized that he suddenly realized he was incoherent with pain, and fell to the ground in agony.

**** ****

For a single moment, Antigone watched her father lift slightly in to the air with a glowing aura of power around him. It was what pictures of Jesus looked like in churches, except significantly more blood-splattered. It was strangely compelling, and no one outside the school seemed to be breathing at all.

The moment broke when her father began screaming. Antigone had heard her father making a lot of different noises, all the normal sounds of a living human. But she had never heard him scream in absolute pain and terror. It shook something inside of her, shifted a fundamental pillar of her life that had been immovable to that point. It terrified her in a way she wasn’t sure she could have described before that very moment. But worse than the sound was the look in his eyes. They were glazed, focused on a far off horizon only he could see and nothing nearby. He didn’t even seem to notice that he was screaming.

Oberon screamed and fell to the ground, but that went largely unnoticed. All eyes stayed focus on Walter, whose glow only intensified with each passing second. He no longer looked like a messiah but a sun God, or perhaps the sun itself, and he seemed completely unaware of it. A moment later he began to bleed, slowly at first but then with increasing speed and pressure, from the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth.

“SHIT! SHIT! WHY IS HE BLEEDING FROM HIS EYES?” Siobhan screamed. She had banished her sword and clutched her hands together in panic at a terror she couldn’t swing or snark at. She started to take a step forward toward the glowing maelstrom, hesitant and fearful but with determination in her eyes, until it stopped. All of the light, all of the power flickering through the air like fireflies on steroids, suddenly shot back in to Walter. Awareness flooded back in to his eyes and they looked around in terror as he collapsed to the ground next to Oberon.

Antigone, Siobhan, and Morgan all rushed to his side, kneeling down next to him. His skin was flushed, heated with the power he had absorbed from Oberon through the black knife. His eyes flickered around fearfully, and he tried to open his mouth to speak. Flickers of light escaped his lips, but no words came with it. Each exhalation sent little golden motes in to the atmosphere, dancing and swirling for two or three heartbeats before they faded away.

“It’s killing him!” Antigone said, because she could not think of anything more useful to say.

“You think?” Siobhan said angrily, reaching out to wipe some of the blood away in a shocking disregard for hazardous material protocols. “Why is it killing him? It didn’t kill Oberon!”

Morgan reached out and carefully checked Walter’s pulse, shaking her head. “Because Oberon was a full-blooded Sidhe, and was already used to dealing with power. Walter is mortal, and his body can’t handle it.” She reached up to wipe her eyes with the back of a hand that hadn’t picked up any blood, and Antigone saw tears there. “That’s why I was trying to do it.”

Antigone fidgeted with her hands now, and she saw Siobhan was doing the same. Siobhan because she had to do something or she would break down; Antigone because she felt like there was something she should be doing it. She didn’t know what it was, didn’t know what it could possibly be, but it was there. She felt it in the same part of her that had known how to close the door. It infuriated her that she didn’t know what to do but felt like she should. Tears of anger, and an all-encompassing terror, rolled down her cheeks as she stared at her dying father.

She reached for that knowledge, like someone reaching for a dream after waking. Reaching in to her mental recesses while Siobhan shouted for Morgan to do something. It felt like it was just beyond her mental fingertips, just out of reach. If she just closed her eyes…

The dreams, she thought. The ones where I help him die.

“I’m beginning to think,” Walter grunted as he rolled unsteadily to his feet. “That I may have made the tiniest of mistakes.” He had managed, somehow, to keep the knife in hand during his aerial tour of the courtyard. He put it back in a regular grip. Not like I seem to be doing much defending anyway, he thought grimly.

“Mmm, just now?” Oberon asked, walking across the courtyard to him. He was dressed in dark greens and browns, like something out of a medieval painting. He even had an honest-to-God cloak that was billowing behind him. Normally Walter would have laughed, but the burning pain in his chest made him think better of it this time. “My apotheosis caused glass to explode for what was probably a block, and rain down like the tears of heaven.” He finished walking toward Walter, and held out his hands. “And just now you begin to suspect that a mistake was made.”

“I’m a slow learner,” Walter offered with a shrug. He lashed out at his absolute best possible speed with the knife, and the red-haired faerie simply batted it away like it was nothing. Walter didn’t lose the knife, and he spun it around to try to bring it down from another angle. This time Oberon brought his hand up and slapped at Walter’s forearm. It flared with pain, barely not broken, and in an instant the knife fell out of it and clattered to the ground. The only thing that kept Walter from screaming in pain was the fact that a second later the man’s hand was around his throat, and he had something else to worry about.

He heard Morgan curse, and he heard either Antigone or Siobhan cry out. Walter lashed out a steel-toed boot at Oberon’s kneecap. It cracked but the man gave no reaction. “You see, I knew you had been making a mistake from the moment y-agh—” The man’s comment cut off as Walter brought his fist crashing in to his neck, just below and slightly in front of the air. He spasmed and dropped Walter before stumbling back, his eyes wide in surprise.

Walter wasn’t one to let a man go after a good nerve strike, and moved in quick to close the distance. His foot rose quickly and his shin struck just above the knee on the inside, and Walter had a brief moment of satisfaction as the King of all Faeries dropped to one knee. He tried to follow it up with a punch to the throat, but Oberon recovered too quickly and grabbed Walter’s throat again. Oberon only gave him a moment to consider where things went wrong before the man’s other fist evened out his injuries by breaking some ribs on the other side.

Morgan started to move. Walter was being held so he could see her over Oberon’s shoulder, and she had William Alexander’s dropped shotgun in her hands and spinning in between blinks. It sent a Faerie spinning to the ground in the next second, and Walter could see Oberon starting to call on the fight to resume. With his daughters still on their knees and weeping in the middle of the battlefield.

“Wait!” Walter cried out, croaking around the hand. Oberon stopped, and Morgan stopped, and they all looked at him as if they had briefly forgotten he was there. “I’ve still…got it under…control.”

It wasn’t fair, Walter speculated, to both be laughed at and hurled across the courtyard. He hit the flagstones with a crack, as he tried to protect his most important parts by largely landing on his face. The sharp pain and copious blood streaming down his face told him that his nose had been broken. He tried to wipe the blood away, but all that did was leave his hand covered as well and more heat running out on to his chin.

“You have this in hand, then?” Oberon asked, as he sauntered forward again. Walter looked and saw Morgan standing stunned, and his daughters looking on with wide and terrified eyes. Ryan was trying to circle around with some of the Border police, but the Faeries kept moving with them too. It was one step away from a bloodbath with too many people he cared about squishy and mortal in the middle. “This is what you call that? I wasn’t aware mortal vocabularies had drifted quite so far, so that ‘under control’ now meant ‘well and thoroughly screwed’.”

Walter shrugged, staggering to his knees. That took far more effort than it should, and his breath was only coming in painful threads. With his clean hand he reached back to pat at the pockets on his vest on his back, finding them clean but lacking gun or knife. “I’m improvising,” he grunted softly as he managed to get one foot up.

“What is this, Walter…did you just want to die on your feet?” Oberon queried. “I would have let you live with your daughters, I could have even put you in places I knew would survive. They have so much value, with their strength—I would have even told you about what their potential was.” Oberon finished his casual journey, and this time Walter didn’t even fight as he was lifted up by his throat again. “And I’ve always valued valor and boldness—but this is insanity. I could have let you live, until you defied me—now you must be a lesson.”

“Slow learner…and all…” Walter repeated as he was hoisted off his feet, without so much of a sign of strain from Oberon. “Brachial strike…peroneal strike…should have done…pretty good,” he wheezed out.

Oberon smirked, his handsome features creasing in genuine amusement…and respect. “It has been many years since anyone caught me off-guard like that…and centuries since a mortal did. You should have been willing to serve…a mortal knight has not been seen in a very long time. We would have written stories about you.” Walter kicked futilely, but any witty comeback was literally choked off before it could reach his lips. Morgan shook her head from side to side behind Oberon, and Ryan was still trying to find a way to maneuver. Antigone and Siobhan were holding each other, and Walter could see in their eyes the growing belief that they were about to watch their father die. The look of two young women who wanted to turn away but couldn’t, because they also knew it would be the last time they ever saw their father alive.

“I will let it all be forgiven,” Oberon continued, unaware of Walter’s internal agony, “If you tell me why. What made you think that you could challenge me and win? What made you think that you could stand against the High King of Faeries in all his glory, shining with more power than any of our kind has ever held? Against a man holding enough power to rival the foundations of heaven itself?” He had an arrogant on his face, the sneer of a bully and a tyrant who held all the power and all the cards, and it made Walter’s insides writhe in hatred. “So tell me, mortal, what made you think you could strike down a god?”

Walter tried to respond, but it was lost in the gasping for air and the iron bars of Oberon’s fingers. One hand came up to try to pry at the fingers, while the other flopped around desperately for purchase on anything on his vest he could use. As he struggled to breathe he looked down at the fingers, and Oberon obligingly loosened them slightly and leaned in to hear. “Yes?” He asked, pitching his voice so that everyone could hear it dramatically.

Walter’s fingers closed around the slender black needle tucked in the pouch on his vest and, while continuing to twitch like a fish on a hook, slammed it in to Oberon’s gut.

“I said…” Walter gasped as he was dropped, “Morgan thought she lost her black knife, but I found it when we came back.”

The pressure stopped battering at Walter’s soul, and he had the distinct feeling that he had surprised a God. He saw his fellow police officers and his daughters standing up, but no one spoke for long moments—they just stared at him. The Faeries were equally incredulous. Even Tennyson rolled over from where he was laying in pain to stare in horror.

“What?” Oberon asked, stunned. And then after a moment his whole frame began to quake. He looked at Walter for a moment, and then he changed—the same way that Walter had seen Morgan change before. What Walter increasingly had to admit was magic flowed off the man, until he stood in front of Walter eye to eye. He was broad-shouldered, with dark red hair in a functional pony-tail and a matching goatee. He had blue-green eyes whose shape reminded him distinctly of Aoife and Niamh and the visions he had seen. “You would challenge a god—the High King of the Faerie, carrying with him the power of another close to his own strength and that of the Summer Queen—to single combat?” His voice was as amused as it was incredulous, neither emotion edging out the other or wiping the smirk off his face.

Walter nodded. He turned his back on the man, which from the grumble he heard come from behind him was not something one normally did to a High King, and retrieved the bowie-style knife he had whipped Ninja Grandpa thoroughly with. He turned back to Oberon, and nodded. “Yep. And I plan on beating the tar out of him too, before I go home.”

Morgan looked up from where she sat with sad eyes to Walter, shaking her head. “There are easier ways to commit suicide, Walter.” He watched the determination rebuild itself in her eyes, as she geared herself up to try the same thing that he had already committed himself to. He stepped over and put a hand on her shoulder. “It isn’t your burden to bear, it’s mine.” She started to set Tania aside, but Walter tightened his hand on her shoulder. “Walter…the only way we could kill him was with a goidte dubh. I lost one in Nightmare, and Tania’s blood ruins the other one. The only blood a black knife can taste is the person it is tied to, or it’s useless. You’ll be ground up like beef, but I—”

“Am sitting this one out,” Walter answered simply. “I made the challenge, and I’m not much of a Knight but those aren’t things you normally back away from. So you tell me what, big red and evil, you want to throw down or not?”

Oberon’s chortle was low and ominous, a bass note played from the core of the world. It rumbled through Walter’s bones, and made him seriously doubt whatever idiotic plan he thought he had. But he was committed now, and he hardened his eyes in the face of it. “You do not lack for courage, warrior. You will earn glory in your passing, foolish as it is.” His dark green eyes flickered to his own warriors. “If any try to interfere, kill them. This will be between the mortal and I.”

Almost instinctively, Walter and Oberon both stepped away from the crowds. Walter flipped the knife around to a more defensive reverse grip, holding it out between himself and the Faerie king. “How many of your people have gotten killed because what..you’re pissed you don’t get to go home? Join the club, lot’s of people don’t go home again.”

Oberon sneered, not even bothering to draw a weapon as he moved to begin circling his opponent. “I was their King, and they demanded I give up my authority. You were a soldier, Walter Richards, though even my sources found a record drenched in the black ink of secrecy. Did you step down for your soldier’s whims, or did you lead them?”

Walter first nodded, then shook his head. “I never asked them to do anything illegal. You weren’t made a King, you were appointed—Morgan told me that. You’re a General, not a King, and what we call it when a General doesn’t lay down his arms is a coup.”

“I was a King, and I am a King, and a King I shall be again,” Oberon stated flatly, fire burning behind the emerald of his eyes. “I was appointed in a crucible of fire and death to finally destroy the Fomor, and I did. Then they tried to take away what was mine by right.”

Walter sneered. “A coup. You were a Roman dictator, appointed to solve a crisis—and you had the same choice every Dictator ever did. To give it up a hero, or to seize on it and hold it for as long as you could. You could have been a Faerie Cincinnatus, but you chose to be a tyrant instead.”

Oberon shook his head in bemusement. “Speak to me of the ancient times, pup? I knew Cincinnatus, and I was once awarded coronae by the Roman legions when I spent time as a man among them. They should not have made a king if they did not want to be ruled,” he continued, his voice growing harsh, “and Mab and Titania would never have stood against me if my treacherous twins had not spoken poison in their ears.”

“Your daughters,” Walter said softly, “are both twice the ruler and person you have ever been.”

“Fortunately,” Oberon responded, “You are not.” And with that he blinked out of existence.

Walter’s world exploded in to pain, and he was sent sprawling to the ground gasping. He could feel the imprint of a fist on his chest where Oberon had punched him, and he was reasonably certain that one punch had broken several ribs. He was also certain Oberon had not punched him that hard at all. When Walter looked up, the red-haired king was standing over him with that arrogant sneer on his lips, reaching down for Walter’s throat.

“If you had not been insolent, I would have made this fast,” he spoke, before he flung Walter across the courtyard, skipping over the ground like a skipping stone on a perfect lake.

Tania screamed. Morgan screamed. For that matter, Oberon screamed. The goidte dubh did exactly what it was supposed to, and the magic began to pour out of Tania. It had never claimed that it would be pleasant for either party, after all.

The magic coming out of Tania blazed white-hot, but the white of heat—of yellow fire grown far too intense to look at. Morgan had to look away, but even so she could still feel it. That much concentrated magic, all the magic of a Queen of Faerie, could be felt even by mortals. It crackled with intensity, like an atom bomb held at the moment of explosion, and it lashed out around them. The Border P.D. cars that had come in were pushed back by it for a moment until it pulsed again. Then they stopped moving, but every single window within sight exploded in a deafening and discordant symphony. The shards fell to the ground and another horrible crush of sound rolled over the area, followed by a silence made all the more shocking by the violent sound that had preceded it.

The pulse of power was so strong that it sent all of the soldiers and the police officers sprawling, and then trying to cover themselves from the falling shards of glass. If they were able to take the time to consider it, they would have been thankful that whatever it was had shattered the glass so finely.

The light continued at supernova strength for long, pulse pounding seconds, and neither Tania nor Oberon stopped screaming. When the power stopped Morgan gasped, and blinked her eyes quickly to clear away the after-images. Dark circles danced in her eyes before slowly resolving to the figure of Oberon standing tall…and Tania laying on the ground.

Morgan rolled to her knees and then stumbled to her feet, crossing the distance to her sister in a lurching hitch. The force of the magic pulse had left her knees weak and legs filled with pins and needles like they had fallen asleep, and when she made it to Tania’s side she dropped down to her knees heavily. Shit, shit…oh thank God she’s breathing, Morgan thought as she checked her sister’s pulse. Finally, she looked up at her father with wide eyes.

“What have you done…” She was unable to keep herself from asking as she looked at him. His whole body pulsed with energy that she swore she could almost see; it vibrated underneath her skin with the same power that had just blown out all those windows.

Oberon stared for a moment like he was mustering his thoughts, or he was trying to focus through the world’s most powerful high. And then he snorted, his lip curling a bit. “I have re-ordered some of the fundamental powers of the universe, and that is what you say to me? Cliches?” He chuckled. “We will have to rewrite that response for the history books.”

**** ****

No one seemed terribly interested in fighting any longer, once they had stood up from the massive sonic pulse and checked themselves for cuts from the glass. Almost ignoring the fact that they had been ready to fight to the death a moment ago, both men and Faeries began to move toward Oberon. Walter spared a glance for the school, but couldn’t hear fighting—and whatever happened with Oberon had just changed things so significantly that they all might be dead anyway.

He made his way over to the seated woman, and put his hand on her shoulder. “Morgan, what the hell happened?”

Morgan continued to stare at her father in horror. “He took her power. He stole the power of the Summer Queen, and added it to his own,” she said, with her voice hollow. “I don’t know how…” her voice trailed off after a moment.

Oberon’s voice was almost gentle, confirming what had apparently come to her. “She had two items in your little armory, her spear and her helmet. Either one would have not been enough, but together they formed a black knife of sufficient power. And once I have your power, then I will fuse the worlds together and break the Border, and Faerie will be one with these lands.”

Walter raised an eyebrow and looked at Morgan at Oberon’s words, and she nodded slowly. “Normally the power of a Faerie Queen would destroy anyone who wasn’t worthy, but he must have used the rest of the artifacts he stole to do…something. Even I can’t imagine what.” Walter continued to eye Oberon, hands on the shotgun.

“And the bit about stealing your power?” He asked.

Morgan looked at her unconscious sister. She hadn’t noticed in her haste, but Tania’s features and hair had lost all of their magical disguise—she was back to being completely Niamh. The hair that flowed across Morgan’s lap as she cradled her sister was the fiery red of their birth. “Tania—Niamh—and I both have a large amount of power that is ours, that cannot be stolen except with the creation of a goidte dubh or some very rare rituals. But we also have the power of the Queens, and that is shared between us. As the year grows darkest I gain power from her in a growing wave until I am strongest; but the wave breaks and the flow reverses at the very moment of the equinox, and then my power begins to flow back in to her.” She stroked her sister’s hair softly.

“And now…” Walter began.

Morgan finished. “It will flow in to him. And with his power, Tania’s power, and the full power of the Faerie Queens, he can pretty much screw up reality any way he wants.”

Oberon nodded. “And then Faerie and this realm will merge, and there is no one in the world who can stop me.” He looked at Walter. “I may have underestimated you, warrior. I saw your fight with my child, and have heard those who observe you. You have the heart of a Knight, and with your victory over him you may claim that title. If you kneel to me, then I will let you serve in my court.”

Walter looked at him for a long moment, and then shook his head. He even laughed after a moment, although it was more of a shocked expulsion than it was filled with mirth or joy. “You want to kill tens of thousands of people, and make yourself king. I’ve got exactly zero interest in helping any of that, and I’m pretty sure I’ve sworn a couple of oaths against it.”

Oberon gave a grave nod, and shrugged. “I offered. Look at your would-be Queen then, mortals, and see the fight left in her. She knows what hope you have.”

Walter looked at Morgan, and a part of his heart broke. The normally forceful and commanding woman looked broken herself, holding her sister gently and staring at her father in horror. She looked like a woman who had been tested and found wanting, and did not know how to recover from it.

“We’re not looking for kings here,” William Alexander said in a tone that was almost conversational. “You see, we had a war about that, and—” he continued. He cut himself off by whipping his arm around his body and hurling it at the man. It lanced through the air straight and true, and no magic rose to stop it. Oberon’s head simply seemed to phase out of existence for a moment, as it moved so quickly out of the way and back in to place that mortal eyes could only process it as becoming a momentary phantom.

“That will grow tiresome soon, Mortal…” Oberon said, and flicked his fingers. Alexander was launched off his feet by what seemed to be a gust of wind, but he reacted like he had been struck incredibly hard in the chest. He landed in a sprawling heap, gasping for air, and Walter reached out to grab Andre to keep him from throwing himself at the man. And probably throwing his life away, Walter thought grimly.

“You son of a bitch!” Andre shouted, struggling out of Walter’s arms and blasting at Oberon with his own shotgun. Walter winced at the explosive sound so close to him, and stumbled a step away. It gave him a view of the pellets of the shotgun as they stopped in front of Oberon, and then slowly fused in to one lump, which fell to the ground.

“Dad!” Siobhan’s voice cried out from the school, and Walter turned to look back at her quickly. She seemed mostly unharmed, although she was also splattered with blood. She came with Antigone, Antigone’s crazy dog, Ryan Aquino, and the people they had apparently been fighting. Whatever melee had been happening inside the school seemed to him to have dissolved as suddenly as his own had. The Faeries were speaking in excitedly hushed murmurs, and began to speak quietly to their comrades. “What the hell just happened!” Siobhan exclaimed more than asked.

Antigone moved over to her father’s side, biting her lower lip as she looked at the Faeries. “Oh God, whatever he was going to do he did, didn’t he?” She asked.

The arrival of so many more people had apparently distracted Oberon as well, and he scowled at being talked around in his moment of triumph. “I have always been a fan of mortal music, children, and I must confess one verse comes to mind now: LET ALL MORTAL FLESH KEEP SILENCE!” His voice bellowed and echoed with the power of a command, and all voices in the courtyard of the school obeyed. Unbidden and unwilling, Walter found he not only was not responding, but that he did not desire to respond; and he began to work his jaw to try to speak out of sheer spinal reflex stubbornness.

“And with fear and trembling stand;” Oberon continued, “Ponder nothing earthly minded, for with blessing in His hand, your God to earth descending, comes your homage to demand.” He gave a lupine grin. “For though I may have modified the prayer to suit my needs, it surely stands truer now than it ever has for your mortal faiths. I stand before you a God, and I will have your obedience now or your death.”

Almost as one the Faeries who had come with Oberon fell to their knees and lowered their heads. Walter felt the strength of magical command still in his voice, and his knees quivered with a desire to drop down and do fealty. He gritted his teeth, swallowing deeply and focusing on the spark of anger in his chest at being commanded so by any man or being—and on the hopelessness in Morgan’s eyes. He knew why she didn’t suggest they try to grab the goidte dubh out of Tania’s shoulder where he could see it, and the answer was that how could they even get close enough to him to try?

Hopelessness rolled over him in waves, and he saw Andre Alexander and even Ryan Aquino falling unwillingly to their knees. The pure, raw power that crashed at his mind and battered his soul drove him to try to beg forgiveness for his very existence. Antigone began to cry, and stumbled back, and Siobhan began to let loose a long stream of expletives as she braced herself on her swords.

What is a man to a God? He asked himself, as he tried to stop from falling and surrendering.

“Rank on rank the host of heaven, spreads its vanguard on the way, as the Light of light descendeth, from the realms of endless day…” Oberon continued to quote, stepping between the kneeling Faeries like a messiah, and his power crashed among them even more strongly.

What is a God to a non-believer? Walter found himself asking. A song lyric, of all things, but the music seemed to push a bit of the commandment away from his psyche. What is a God to YOU, Walter Richards? It was his voice but different, and it had the same resonance of power as Oberon’s did. He didn’t know where it came from, but he grabbed on to it for all he was worth. Siobhan and Antigone fell to their knees, sobbing, and Walter stood alone.

“…Comes the powers of—”

“Oh…shut…up!” Walter shouted, staggering a step forward toward the would be god and interrupting his intonation. “You pompous, false idol…asshole!” His words came out in grunts that took a toll of exhaustion on his body, but he kept speaking. “You say…I am a knight of Faerie, oh you…jumped up fascist?”

Oberon glowered, but he nodded. “By our laws any citizen who challenges a Knight and proves victorious is themselves made a Knight. Do you wish to change your mind and save yourself and your whelps?” He asked, with a sneer towards the kneeling Siobhan and Antigone.

If there had been any chance of Walter withdrawing, the contempt on Oberon’s face for his daughters hardened his will into an iron blade. “No, asshole…I challenge you to a duel.”

The Border, P.D. showed up with two patrol cars and a van. They were relatively new and well-maintained, but even if they had been dinky and under-maintained they would have been the most glroious caravan that Walter had ever seen. Out of the now slightly dented car that had hit the Faerie came Leah, and the Alexanders elder and younger. Out of one of the previous cars came a couple more patrol officers that Walter knew, and the Van had two members of a SWAT team in the back. There were ten officers, which matched the back up that Ninja Grandpa had brought.

“Walter, what the hell is going on?” William Alexander barked, in a rare display of broken calm. “We got reports of gunfire and strange crap, and every single student and teacher fled in to the night…but none of them remember what happened.” He had his pistol in hand, and a grimmace on his face as he took cover behind the open door of his car.

“Apparently it’s a goddamn Faerie invasion, Boss, and you’ve got great timing,” Walter said as he ducked behind the car door with the older man. “Morgan and Tania are fighting the big man, and we’re keeping them from being swarmed.” He looked back over his shoulder at that, and the whirling speed-fest that was the fight against Oberon. “Frankly I’m not even sure we could contribute to that one if we wanted to.”

“Walter…” Alexander said, a grimace creasing his weathered face. “We got reports from inside the school…and someone remembered Antigone having a fit before it all started. Where’re the girls?” His voice was strained.

Walter felt his own grimace forming, as his eyes flitted to the school door. “They’re inside. When I left them they were safe, but I don’t know where anyone is coming from in this damn fight. I don’t know if they’re safe, but if they aren’t…then that’s where the rest of the fight is.”

William Alexander looked at the door for a scant second before he nodded gravely. “If that’s the fight is, then that’s where we are. I don’t know what we can do about the end of the world, but we can protect a school and anyone stuck in it.” He gave a fierce grin to Walter at that. “Rangers lead the way?” He quoted with a raised eyebrow, while he pulled a shotgun from the back seat of the car and handed it to Walter.

Walter checked the shotgun to make sure it was loaded, and then nodded back. “Semper fi,” he quoted in return. Alexander looked over his shoulders at the other officers and the SWAT Team, and nodded.

“Alright, we’ve got a goal—take back the school. And in our way…” Alexander gestured at the nine faeries watching them warily. Some of the arrogance had definitely been wiped off their faces, although they still clearly liked their odds. “Time to stop the invasion, boys.”

**** ****

Ryan Aquino was holding his own, but Siobhan desperately wanted to know where all the people who were fighting him were coming from. Because he was surrounded by two men and a woman, and he was dodging for all that he was worth. Blood had splashed on his face from a cut on his brow, and he was favoring one arm. He was damn good despite it, but it was clear he was being worn down—and that was before three more people came out of a classroom.

“Just three more thinnies in here…” One of them reported, apparently having not noticed that there was a fight going on until he reported. The woman stopped him with a hand, and then gestured to both Ryan and the emerging Siobhan and Antigone.

“I think we found em,” the woman said, and as one they began to walk forward toward the fighting. “I’ll take out Titania’s favorite, and you both take out the girls.” The woman pulled out what was a very mundane looking iron knife wrapped in electrical tape, and then a second, and then launched herself in to the fight with Ryan. The other two men drew short swords that seemed to be the same make and accoutrements, and in a flash they were moving toward the two girls.

Siobhan stepped out in front of Antigone protectively, but what stopped the two men was a growling that came from one of the side rooms. The Eisenhund stepped out of it, blood splattered on the iron protecting it and a fire within its eyes. “Oh fine, it gets to be scary, but the fifteen year old who pulled a magic sword out of her own chest is boring? Come on, jackasses, fight or get off the pot.”

They decided to fight, charging at Siobhan with their weapons at the same moment that the Eisenhund leapt at the.

**** ****

Morgan had fought her father before, but it had been over a century since the last time they’d tried to kill eachother. Normal families probably don’t say that, she thought fleetingly around a well-executed parry. While both of them had lost a couple of steps since the days when they were actively leading a war from the front lines, it seemed like he had lost fewer than she had. Or maybe it was that we had an army, and had worn him down, and weren’t ambushed…

The differences were somewhat staggering. It had been one hell of a fight before, and it was one hell of a fight now…but his trick with the portals might just be enough to cost them the day. “So what’s your end-game here, pops?” Morgan asked. Her sword continued to lash out blindingly fast, forcing him to back away from an assault on Tania. He seemed to be focusing on her. Because she’s been fighting the longest, she thought. It made sense, to try to take out the more tired sister and then turn to the fresh one. “You can tell the odds as good as I can…and if we weaken you enough then even a mortal with a shotgun can take out a High King.”

Oberon turned in one fluid motion, and his sword was almost a living thing. It protected its master by dispelling Morgan’s blade, although one strike had come perilously close to sneaking by and opening up Oberon’s side. “Do you think that I would leave it that much up to chance?” He asked as he hopped back to give himself some breathing room between the two sisters. “That my plan would come down to a swordfight in a school?” He sneered at them both. “Do you think for one second this isn’t what I wanted?”

Morgan paused, and cocked her head to look at her father. “You are so full of shit, you know that? Of course it was, you said as much in Nightmare. You wanted us to get caught there, so you could do something here. Ergo, my being here with a can full of whoopass is a flaw in your plans. You even said it a second ago…” She laughed as he scowled at her, like he had suspected his posturing was unassailable. She also saw Titania maneuvering back and around, trying to get a line on Oberon’s side. “You could never fool me with your posing, father—I always saw too much of you.”

Oberon’s face fell with sorrow for a moment, and Morgan’s smirk turned sad as she remembered the filthy and defiant girl who had finally found a way for herself and her sister to Faerie. “Perhaps you did, my Aoife, and perhaps I wish you hadn’t. It is not posturing, child…I will change this battle, and end it. And if you stand against me, you will not live to see my mercy.”

Morgan shook her head, circling around so that to speak with her, Oberon would have to turn her head away from Titania by a few inches. “Your mercy is going to get too many people killed for it to be worth it. And destroy the promise we made when we brought the Border here, and be foresworn.” She lifted her chin. “My father taught me some things are worth dying for, and some things are not worth living with.”

Oberon’s eyes, which had been meeting hers so boldly, slipped away at her last words. The sorrow that had seeped in to his face finally made their way in to his eyes, and they could not meet hers for a heartbeat. He seemed about to say something, but it was in that heartbeat Tania struck.

Her sword lunged for his ribcage, and the force would have rent a lesser man in half if it had been driven home. But Oberon had not grown to the age he was by not suspecting traps, and while the sorrow never left his face he did not let his daughter kill him. He spun with the silken grace of a lunging snake, batting Tania’s sword aside with such force that it flew off and scattered across the stones. His left hand lashed out and grabbed Titania by the throat, lifting her off the ground.

“Shit!” Morgan cursed, and launched herself as well. Her sword struck out toward the arm that held Tania, and it bit in to the flesh before it was battered away. As she did she started to draw the needle-like goidte dubh from where she had concealed it. She lashed out with it toward him and he saw it coming, his own eyes going wide. He grunted and almost dropped his captive from the pain and the fear of seeing the slender weapon and suspecting what it was.

But the one time High King of the Faeries was not without his wits, and he lashed out with the arm holding Tania. She crashed in to Morgan heavily, the goidte dubh plunging into her leg as Morgan went sprawling. The magic did nothing, since it wasn’t tied to Tania at all, but it still hurt and she cried out in pain. Morgan cursed in pain as well as she rolled up to her feet.

“I told you I would change this fight, Aoife, and I will—and the world with it,” Oberon told her ominously as she stood up. He dropped his own sword and pulled something out from his cloak. Small and needle-like, it shone with a fiery inner light despite being pitch black in color. “I am not the only person who ever lost a sword, my daughter…and you are not the only one who knows how to make a goidte dubh.” He held it up in to the light for just a moment, long enough for Morgan’s eyes to open wide in abject terror, before he plunged it in to Tania’s shoulder so deep it all but disappeared.

Morgan walked away from Walter, and swallowed at the sight before her. The fighting in the school hallway had been fun—an excuse to flex, stretch her powers in a way that she hadn’t had an excuse to in a long time. And punting the boy out the door had been the kind of showing off that she used to enjoy. She was one of the most powerful Faeries, witches, and Knights in a millennium. Perhaps one of the most powerful ever.

But Oberon was the most powerful. It was how he had risen to the top and been made High King at all. A desperate people wouldn’t have risked giving someone that much power if they hadn’t thought he was the only person who could save them. In the years of plotting and leading from the shadows, of having his men butcher unsuspecting targets…it was easy to forget how awesome he was in single combat.

Tennyson and Tania danced around him, light glowing around them as they called on their power. It wasn’t a pure burn like a video game or cartoon, but sparkling motes that danced around them scintillatingly. Tania blazed bright orange and red like the heart of a fire, all the changing leaves of Autumn swirling in her wake; Tennyson burned in similar colors but a darker and more muted pallet. But all of their lights paled compared to Oberon, who burned pure crimson and ultramarine without flaw. If they were ridiculously fast he was beyond ridicule, and almost beyond comprehension even for her.

They had been fighting him for long minutes, but only they looked tired. He bore a single scratch she could see, and the other two were bleeding from numerous small cuts. It wasn’t a curb-stomping, but the odds were clearly not in their favor in the long run. They were fighting a losing battle, unless something changed.

“Balls,” Morgan shook her head and sighed. She focused on her sword for a moment, and drew a deep breath. A cold breeze rushed about her, curling around her ankles like a cat greeting its human. Long nights were growing in the world in this season, and she was well in to her power. It would peak on the solstice before breaking, and slowly the balance would tip back to her sister. But in the shadows of November, the Winter Queen ruled. Those same scintilla began to dance about her like snowflakes, but they were all the colors of Winter. Dark blue and light, here and there a blue green, and flickering about motes of pure white. The equal and opposite of Tania’s display, and one half of Oberon’s, burning around her like a halo.

In a flash she joined the fight, her sword lashing out to try for a killing strike to Oberon’s neck. His sword dropped across his back to stop it, but she still scored flesh in his shoulder and sent scarlet blood flying in to the night. He cursed and stepped back, the four combatants forming a square.

“I had hoped you would stay in Nightmare, daughter,” Oberon offered to her by way of greeting, bringing his sword up in a mocking salute.

She matched the gesture, and smirked. “Oh you know me, father, always where I’m not supposed to be. Besides,” she offered with a mock pout, “Why should Niamh get play-time with daddy when I don’t?” She pitched her voice in a childish singsong, her eyes flickering deliberately to the blood on her blade.

“You always had a wicked tongue in your mouth, girl; modernity has done nothing to make it less annoying,” her father responded. They kept moving slowly and deliberately, the three trying to get an edge while the one kept them at bay.

“Oh, I think modernity has done wonders for my vocabulary. I can say, for example, that you always were a douche canoe,” Siobhan pointed out sweetly. “Also, a bag of dicks.”

Oberon glowered, and Tennyson launched himself forward to strike in that moment. He almost caught the older man off guard, but Oberon blocked expertly and responded with a quick kick to the midriff that Tennyson had to jump back to dodge.

“I loved you all once. I fought war against my own kind for your safety, and vengeance!” Oberon growled angrily as he looked back to Morgan.

“You were always a fine father, Oberon…” Tania murmured, her voice soft and sincere.

“And this is the obedience you would give a fine father?” He challenged in return.

Morgan shook her head. “You loved us and we loved you, but loving your children does not a good King make. You upset the balance of power, threw things into Chaos, and wanted to exploit the Border. You wanted to invite chaos for pride,” she accused.

“You were jealous I loved her more,” Oberon accused back, shaking his head. “You hated that I grieved for her more than any of the rest of you, or even your mother.”

Tennyson stepped forward again, but with his blade pointed toward the ground. “And you never forgave me that I let her die. Even though we were surrounded, and Niall was Autumnborn and half corrupted by Fomor and we could barely see him coming. I followed you for centuries and did horrible things in your name to make it up to you, and you never forgave me. Just kept sending me to do your butchery.”

Oberon looked at his son and shook his head. “You are lucky to have served your King so faithfully, and it makes your treason even worse than theirs—to have stayed with me so long and strayed. Perhaps you decided to replace Sile with one of them, boy? One sister as good as another?”

Tennyson flushed a bright red, and before Morgan or Tania could stop him he launched himself toward Oberon in rage.

Oberon’s blade flashed out twice, and Tennyson gasped and stumbled past him to a stop. Two large cuts appeared on his sword arm and on his right leg, gushing blood, and he collapsed to his knees in pain and sudden agony. Oberon turned back to Morgan and Tania, casually flicking his son’s blood off of his sword as he considered them.

“I grow tired of talking. Shall we?” And then he was moving toward them like the inevitability of death himself.

“Shit, help me!” Antigone shouted to her sister when she saw the angry man charging toward her. “I don’t know what I’m doing, for God’s sake!”

Siobhan looked at the man, and swallowed. She ached, from where she had been hurt in the fighting, and the panic that she had fought down with the blue-haired woman threatened to rise back up and overtake her. But looking at the door, something inside of her knew.

“I can’t do it, Annie—none of us can help you. I can stand here and I can fight the guy if he comes through, although he looks hopping mad,” Siobhan pointed out. “Maybe because he has to run for some reason, but I can’t close the door. I don’t know how, but you have to close it.”

Antigone swallowed, and when she didn’t speak Siobhan continued. “Somehow I knew that the sword was inside of me,” she explained. “I felt it when I needed it, but I just couldn’t get to it—until something shifted, and I could. Ignore the crazy guy in front of you, I’ll deal with him. Wen you look at the door and close your eyes…can you feel it?”

Eyes flickering to the man still charging at them, and wondering exactly how far a sight line doors to other dimensions normally had, Antigone closed her eyes. She felt her pulse pounding in her head in her panic, and heard the sounds of fighting from somewhere. She was tired and terrified and wanted to run as fast as she could away from all of this, and she had no idea what Siobhan was talking—

There.

She felt it, a little golden thread of warmth, shining against the cold of the room and the mist flowing out of the open door. She had no idea how it got there or what it was attached to, but there was a little bit of a thread.

“I…I can feel it, but I can’t reach it!” She gasped. “What do I do with it” She asked, looking to Siobhan as she opened her eyes wide. She could still feel it, she hadn’t lost it when she opened her eyes, but it was maddeningly beyond her reach. “It’s like…trying to flex one specific muscle I can’t even see, and isn’t attached to anything I’ve ever used before!” She grunted in frustration, banging the heels of her hands in to her head.

“Don’t think you’ve got to dig for it…” Siobhan pointed out helpfully. She brought her curved sword to face toward the door. But then because she was still Siobhan, she shouted in to the door. “COME ON AND HOOF IT, A-HOLE! WE DON’T HAVE ALL DAY, AND MAMA’S GOTTA GET HER MURDER ON!”

Antigone wouldn’t have thought there was anything that could have drawn her whole attention away from the door, but in retrospect she realized she had been severely underestimating her sister. “NOT HELPING!” She shouted in frustration. “Can you lay off the sarcasm for one damn minute so that we can stop from getting murdered to death by a nightmare from hell?” She shouted in to her sister’s growingly stunned face. Hot tears flashed in Antigone’s eyes, born of the fear and frustration she felt at not being able to close the door; not really made because of her sister’s antics, but lashing out at them.

“I—” Siobhan sputtered, staring at Antigone. But Antigone just kept rolling on in frustration. “Don’t tell me I’m the only one that can make the damn door close, and not…” Her heated words trailed off as something…shifted inside of her. It felt like a stomach settling after a long time being uneasy or nauseous, finding comfort after long churning—except that it was like a part of her soul that did it. It sent a little thrum of warmth through the rest of her, warmth that went from her hands and eyes and hair and every part of her out to the door. Obligingly, it slid three inches closed.

“Murdered to death?” Siobhan asked, and another dam broke inside of both of them. Fear rushed away in a moment and they both started giggling madly. They laughed hysterically in to the face of oncoming murdering to death, and the shifting in the very center of Antigone settled firmly back in to it’s new order. She breathed in deeply to steady herself from the laughter and looked at the door. She had to close her eyes to see it, but she felt the golden glow that suffused every part of her now waiting, and all it took was a push on her own emotions to coax it out in to her words.

“Close,” she spoke, the word resonating in the room. There was a push of energy not unlike that Siobhan had caused, although not nearly as strong, and her ears popped like she had been on a plane. The door swung quickly, moving smoothly and soundlessly as if the hinges were oiled and newly installed, shut just as the man came up within arm’s reach. There was a muffled thump like he ran in to the door and was surprised it didn’t give, and then a pounding. But the pounding faded a heartbeat later, and the mist in the room dissipated away.

Lacey and Monica stared at the both of them like they were mad, which given Siobhan had just summoned a magic sword to kill someone and Antigone had shut a magic door with words…they might be. But then Antigone’s eyes met her sister’s again, and they both dissolved into hysterical laughter once again.

“Murdered to death,” Antigone managed to gasp, as she fought down the laughter before it gave way back to fearful sobbing.

“Murdered to death,” Siobhan agreed, wiping tears from her eyes that weren’t all from the giggles. “Come on…let’s go make sure Uncle Ryan doesn’t need saving too. We have to do everything, I swear.”