The horses' hooves made a massive, echoing sound as they moved back along the Brooker. Whatever burned across the river hadn’t slowed and Vivien’s eyes were drawn to the glow repeatedly. She was relieved when the Queens Domain rose up on the left and blocked the view of the river and the far horizon. Normally an unlit portion of the city without street lights or housing, Vivien saw tiny lights move among the trees.
“What’s up there?” She asked no one in particular.
“Wisps,” Keary said.
Aidan nudged her horse away from the sharp slope of the hill with his own horse’s shoulder. “Don’t look at them for too long. Wisps are nasty little things. Travellers can feel the urge to follow them. They lure you in, and then they take you right off a cliff or into a bog.”
“Why would they do that?” Viv gasped.
Aidan shrugged. “No idea. I’ve never heard anyone explain it. Maybe they have some ancient grudge against men? Maybe they eat the bodies somehow? Maybe they’re just assholes.”
“I hope they’re contained on the hill… if they decide to wander around down here we could be in a lot of trouble,” Mitch said. “They could depopulate what’s left of the people in a week.”
“Isn’t there any way to stop them?” Viv asked.
“Not that I’ve ever heard of,” Aidan said.
“I’m not even sure wisps are alive,” Mitch told her. “I mean, they seem to do really mean shit, but no stories about them have any kind of agenda or anything… other than killing people. It’s possible it’s just a phenomenon of some kind.”
“How much of that kind of stuff is out there now?” Vivien whispered.
Isaac looked depressed and Aidan glanced at him with a worried expression before he answered. “I honestly don’t know. We can’t worry about that now. Just deal with what’s in front of us. Keep going.”
“When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” Vivien breathed to herself.
“What is that?” Isaac asked.
Viv smiled. “Something my dad taught me. It’s supposed to remind you that panicking is stupid. He used to say ‘If you only have 10 seconds to act, spend 9 of them thinking.’”
In the city to their right, something howled. There was no light other than the stars and though Keary twitched toward the sound, he made no move to investigate. After a long moment, Aidan clicked his tongue at his horse. “Let’s get to the waterfront and see what’s there. We might want to hunker down somewhere until light.”
“We should stop at the hospital,” Mitch said. “Keary’s going to need antibiotics, and probably restitching by someone who has practised on something other than his torn pants.”
“It’s not far out of the way,” Vivien agreed.
Aidan nodded. “Alright, it’d be inconvenient as hell if you died of tetanus.”
“Thanks,” Keary grunted.
They entered the Hospital via the ambulance loading bay and tethered their horses to the railing. While from outside it looked fairly quiet, inside was pandemonium. The lights didn't work so it was almost impossible to see anything in the interior corridors. Aidan immediately pulled out his sabre and it glowed blue.
"Bring that here!" Someone commanded.
Aidan did as he was asked and the others pulled out their weapons, Keary and Vivien their shields. The emergency room suddenly looked less terrifying. "Big guy, get over here with that."
Isaac looked terribly spooked and tried to back into a corner, but he tripped over a pale, skinny leg and let out a startled cry. His hands trembled terribly as he caught himself on the glass wall at the front of the emergency room and outside something howled.
The doctors didn't pause to ask what caused the light. How these worked when nothing else did, they didn't even ask what was going on. They could only respond to the emergencies in front of them. A bleeding chest wound, car crash victim, he'd just come in when the lights went off and the Doctor had been feeling around in the dark trying to keep him from bleeding out. Vivien moved to another area where a nurse was checking an older woman slumped in the waiting room chair. When the nurse looked up and met her eyes she shook her head and Vivien's eyes immediately filled with tears.
"No time." The nurse said firmly. "You sure you can keep that thing lit?"
Vivien nodded.
"Got any more?"
"No, I don't, I'm sorry---" Viv started but the nurse cut her off.
"Never mind, got what we've got." She looked at Mitch, "You, feel like a little B and E?"
"What?" Mitch squeaked.
"Breaking and entering. There's a Woolworths across the street, I want you to go smash the window and bring me every fucking candle you can get your hands on. We've been EMP'd or some shit and nothing is working. We need to get some light in here!" She barked.
Mitch glanced at Aidan who nodded. "Go. Take Keary in case you need the muscle, we'll do the best we can here until you get back."
"Bring that closer in here," the doctor with his hand inside the crash victim's chest said and Aidan quickly complied. "Thank you. NURSE! Get me a coagulant gel and something to cauterize this wound."
The nurse immediately disappeared into the dark and they could hear her make her way through the supply room by feel and memory until she came back with a tube of gel which stank to high heaven, and the cigaret lighter from her handbag. "Best we've got Doctor."
"Then we make it work."
The man screamed once when, after having held the flame on for a good few minutes, the doctor touched the burning hot metal to something torn and bleeding inside him. Keary and Mitch returned in minutes. They'd taken massive bags from the storage aisle and stuffed them with everything that would take a flame. Sparingly, they set candles up about the room and then handed one of the bags to Aidan, who no longer needed to hunch over the doctor with his sabre.
"We need to get light to everyone else," Aidan said carefully.
"Go," The Doctor nodded. "Just leave a handful of candles for when I need to send people for things."
Aidan turned back to Keary and Mitch, "Go back out. Hit the reject shop, home habitat, anything on the surrounding three blocks you think might have candles and bring them here. Just dump them in the emergency room and go out again, we'll worry about getting them through the building, OK?" When the two men nodded, Aidan put a hand on Mitch’s arm. “Hey. Be careful. Don’t take any risks, and don’t fight anything you don’t have to.”
Then they were gone. Aidan managed to heft one of the bags easily enough, but Viv had to drag hers by the handle as she couldn't take its full weight. "Where should we go first?" She looked over at Isaac, his face was sickly green and his eyes wide. “Hey. Come help me with this!”
He moved like a zombie, his limbs jerky and barely responsive. At first, he hardly took any of the bag’s weight but Vivien kicked him in the shin reasonably hard and he swore under his breath. She looked at him sternly and he seemed to resettle himself and hefted the weight higher.
"Make a line to intensive care, NICU and the children's wing." The Doctor told them as he moved on to the next patient. "They'll direct you on from there. The Elevators won't work so you'll have to take the stairs."
To Vivien, the next hours were a blur. The main hubs got light quickly enough, and then, responding to screams for assistance, she started lighting the occupied operating rooms... More than once she pushed a door open to find a doctor slumped on the floor, their patient long since passed... The only thing she could do for them was to leave them a candle and promise to come back to check on them later. After the first few, she stopped trying to rouse them to help.
Isaac remained quiet and pale but he followed Vivien’s instructions quickly enough. The others seemed to make him nervous and the sight of the dead upset him deeply. There was nothing Vivien could do to protect him from it though. Every new room held the possibility of a miracle or a corpse...
"We've denuded the inner city of candles and we've come nowhere near lighting this place," Mitch said.
"There's nothing for it. Make sure you go around and open every window and door to the outside that you can. The air con and ventilation won't be working, the last thing we want to do is smoke everyone to death." He sighed. "They'll scream blue murder about contamination but there's nothing for it."
"How long have we been at this?" Viven asked.
"I don't know, maybe an hour and a half? Two at the most." Aidan said.
"Two and three-quarter hours," Keary said.
They all looked at him, but he'd dumped his latest haul of candles and had started to unload them to take out to the wings.
"At some point, we need to start thinking about the rest of the city." Aidan pointed out.
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"At some point, we need to start thinking about ourselves!" Mitch grumbled.
Vivien stood at the window and watched the sun start to stain the horizon. It'd stay like that, just teasing them with a hint of yellow light, for another half hour at least before it deigned to make a full appearance and change the nature of this nightmare.
"You guys saved a lot of lives tonight." It was the doctor from the emergency room. He looked tired and was covered in blood.
"We couldn't not help." She said quietly.
"You came running in like you knew we were in trouble..." he said carefully. "Everything else is out too, isn't it? The whole city?"
"Yeah," She whispered. She didn't have the heart to tell him that everything was out in the whole world. She couldn't have brought herself to do it even if she'd wanted to. Even if he'd have believed her. “To be honest though, we came in because we needed help. Keary’s pretty torn up.”
"Well, you guys thought real fast on your feet. I’ll have a look at your friend for you." He reached out to pat her shoulder and then pulled his hand back. "First, come here, let me have a look at that."
Viv blinked at him in confusion. "Look at what?" He smiled gently and gestured to her face. Viv's eyes widened and she looked away. "Is it bad?"
"It's dashing." He said. "Don't worry, no one will admit it, but a woman with scars is a badass." He gently probed the wound. "I should have dealt with this hours ago for you, I'm sorry."
"My face isn't exactly a priority right now." She looked at him sadly. "How bad was it?"
The Doctor kept his eyes on his work and said as gently as he could. "It is going to scar I'm afraid."
"No," Viv put her hand on his arm and caught his eye. "Last night... How bad was it?"
He swallowed hard and took his hands away for a moment. "The worst I've ever seen. We lost people. People we shouldn't have lost."
"I'm sorry."
"It's part of the job," he said with a slight shrug. "But last night was... It was like a nightmare. Heads are going to roll once we get everything back up and running."
"Yeah," she said. She didn't have the heart to argue with him.
“I don’t suppose you know what’s going on out there?” He looked at her expectantly.
“Um,”
“No.” Aidan jumped in. “Everything seems to be turned off though, and there don’t seem to be as many people as there should.”
“Better than half the patients and staff disappeared last night. It was like a bloody magic trick. Then the power went and something’s wrong with the backup generator. We’ve been stone knives and bearskin rugs in here for about 12 hours.” He glanced down at a nurse who had slumped to the floor in miserable exhaustion. “Take as long as you need, Tess. We’ve lost everyone we’re going to. For now at least.” He looked at them seriously. “Without power and staff and with people spread out all over the hospital we couldn’t respond to code blue’s with any kind of speed. I’ve barely got enough doctors for one per ward, with a nurse each to help them.”
Vivien moved over to lean against Aidan’s side and watched as the doctor helped the distressed nurse, Tess, to her feet and led her away. “We can’t leave them.” She whispered.
“We can’t save everyone,” Aidan said.
“But we can help them. These people. There’s what, maybe fifty people all up in this hospital. We can help them.”
Aidan sighed and stepped away from her. “I don’t know that we can.” He said. “This is a hospital, they’re here for a reason.”
Vivien’s brown eyes hardened and she squared her shoulders. “I won’t leave them.”
On the far side of the room, Isaac made a sad, pathetic noise and his face contorted in obscure pain. While Keary took over the argument with Vivien, Aidan stopped and watched as Isaac writhed in internal turmoil, his arms wrapped tight around himself.
“Who are you, Isaac?” Aidan asked over the top of the others.
Everyone stopped.
Isaac didn’t answer. He looked Aidan in the eye, then Keary, then Mitch. After a long pause, he sighed and his arms dropped. “I wanted to see you.” He admitted. “He asked me to stop you, and I couldn’t say no… but he’s wrong, isn’t he? About everything.”
Keary put an arm across Vivien and smoothly pushed her behind him, his eyes never left Isaac’s face. Mitch moved forward with his short swords and Aidan continued to hold his gaze.
“Who are you?” He repeated. “You’re working for Justin, aren’t you?”
Vivien gasped.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Isaac said. “Things don’t work the same way here.”
No one moved. No one even breathed. Mitch’s fists gripped the hilts of his swords so tight his arms trembled. Keary kept his bulk between Vivien and Isaac, and Aidan continued to watch.
“I had to do what Justin asked. It would have been madness not to.” He didn’t look away, didn’t flinch. “He’s my great-grandfather.”
The sound that came out of Vivien sounded like choking. So much so that Keary turned to check on her. Her eyes bulged and she rocked back on her feet as though she were going to pass out, but Keary took a hold of her arm to steady her.
Aidan’s expression remained calm. “Which would have to mean…”
“That I’m from here,” Isaac said. “Yes. He didn’t bring me through, I was already here.”
“How did he find you?” Aidan asked.
Isaac shrugged. “I’m not a wizard, I have no idea. But he did find me, or more, he summoned me here, and he told me what he’d done to try to save everyone and that you were trying to kill him for it, and,”
“Wait.” Aidan held his hand up while Mitch, whose grip had finally started to relax, made a gagging noise. “What he did to SAVE everyone?”
“Well, yeah. He said the humans had destroyed the world,” Isaac looked at Aidan helplessly. “He said he’d brought the Dannan here to save them. But something had gone wrong and humans had come through as well, but that it was alright because he’d deal with it.” He slumped back against the wall and dropped his gaze to his feet. “It’s not true, is it?” He whispered. “My great-grandfather isn’t a saviour, is he?”
“He’s a spoiled little brat who felt hard done by all his life.” Mitch spat.
Aidan waved Mitch off and took a step forward. “Justin has probably killed more people in a single night than the greatest monsters in history.” He said carefully. “I don’t know what happened to the humans who didn’t come through. I hope they’re safe and wondering where the rest of us went, but it’s just as possible they’ve all ceased to exist.” He took another step and Isaac raised his eyes. “I need to know how Justin is going to ‘take care of it’, Isaac. What’s he going to do?”
Isaac bit his lip. “If he fails, I’ll cease to exist… if you kill him. You know that, don’t you?”
Aidan nodded slowly. “I do. And I’m sorry about that. I guess you have to decide if you think your own life is worth more than everyone who might still be alive in this city.”
It seemed then that Isaac’s knees gave out and he slumped to the floor. He wrapped his arms around his legs and put his chin on his knees. “He’ll be coming. With Firbolg, and Fomorians from the waters. Maybe others, I don’t know.”
“It’s more likely he’s mostly interested in us,” Keary said. “He thinks Vivien will be his undoing, he may be trying to kill her before she can derail his plans anymore.”
Aidan nodded. “It seems like we screwed up his spell. Enough that he didn’t get what he thought he was going to anyway.” He turned and looked at Vivien, he breathed out and his illusion of composed control fell away. “I don’t know how to protect you.” He admitted helplessly.
Vivien started to tremble and Keary put an arm around her shoulders. “We dig in.” He said firmly. “You wanted to protect the humans.” He rumbled as he looked down at Viv’s terrified face. “Alright. We protect the Humans. And they help us protect you.”
“What about him?” Mitch pointed one sword tip at Isaac, who still hugged himself on the floor.
Aidan crouched down. His expression still verged on hopelessness and he looked Isaac in the eye. “Will you help us?”
“How can you ask me that?”
“Because I don’t have a choice,” Aidan said. “I’m not going to kill you for being someone’s great-grandson, and I can’t make you help… I know what it’ll cost you if we win. But I’m asking anyway. Justin did this. He did it to have power, to punish anyone who was ever happy when he couldn’t be. He’s killed friends, family, he’s destroyed the veil and in the end, we may all be done for.” He put a hand on Isaac’s shoulder. “For all we know, in a few days, we’ll all be dead anyway. This is all there is. These hours. How do you want to live them?”
“I hate you a little bit right now,” Isaac said, and Aidan smiled at him and offered a hand to help him up. Isaac took it and looked around at the others. “It won’t take him long to get ready, I don’t think. The Fomorians were doing something else, he has to get them back here, but even without technology that won’t take very long.”
“Then we get moving,” Aidan said.
“How?” Mitch asked.
“What do you mean how?” Aidan retorted. “You did the same training I did, this is straight up, fortify and defend.”
Mitch shook his head. “You’re overlooking one very fundamental thing, my friend.” He gestured to the window. “Those people aren’t warriors. They aren’t Dannan, and they don’t know you. They don’t even know what’s going on. You can’t just start issuing orders and expect them to jump to it.”
Aidan looked at him helplessly. “Shit…”
“We need a Hunt,” Keary said.
The others blinked at him blankly. Keary rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“There are things out there that no one has ever seen, Skrayling, Fomorians, the old gods only know what else. We drag a couple of spectacular carcases in here, or better yet stampede a live one through town… they’ll fall in line with forting up. Once you’ve got them doing that, the rest will be easier.” He looked Isaac up and down. “You’re gonna have to talk to them eventually. We’re running on your say so here.”
“Thanks,” Isaac said flatly.
Aidan stroked his beard and chewed on his bottom lip. “I don’t like the idea of trying to stampede any of these things through town, that’s crazy. Too much risk of hurting people, but I’m sure we’ll be able to find something big and hairy.”
“What about the Firbolg? Those things were terrifying.” Vivien suggested.
Aidan and Keary both shook their heads. “They don’t look like that anymore, remember?” Keary said.
Vivien frowned, “Oh right, what happened there? They looked like men in the end.”
“Their curse doesn’t exist here ” Aidan said. “It’s probably why they were so eager to help Justin.” He frowned again. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if all this madness leads right back to them, when we peel everything else away.”
“Less conspiracy, more hunt.” Mitch looked at Isaac. “Where’s the nearest nest of scary shit?”
Isaac shrugged, “Everything’s different now. There didn’t used to be a city here!” He went to the window and looked up at the mountain. “But I bet there’s Skrayling up there… The ones that cornered me last night came from that way, they probably wanted to see what the hell had happened.”
“Alright,” Aidan said, “let’s go.”
“What about the hospital?” Vivien asked. “If anything comes through those doors they won’t be able to defend themselves!”
“Is this hero complex going to be an ongoing issue?” Mitch asked.
Viv made a snarky, petulant face at him and stuck her tongue out. Aidan rolled his eyes.
“Keary, stay here with Vivien. Seal up as many of the extraneous doors to this place as you can, and then put some blockages in the entryway to the emergency room. I don’t want large numbers of anything to be able to spill down those ramps.” Aidan ordered.
“I should go with you.” Keary rumbled.
“You should protect Vivien.” Aidan countered. “You’re also the only one with any hope of shifting those vehicles out of the way. Don’t tear your stitches and don’t lose my...,” he coughed then and glanced at Viv. “Don’t lose Vivien. I want her in your sight at all times.”
Keary’s face was a thundercloud as the others geared up and started to leave. Vivien ran after them and stopped Isaac. “Here.” She gave him her shield, and it glowed gently in his hands. “Be careful, OK?”
“What about us?” Mitch asked.
He was ignored as she hugged Aidan tightly. “You come back, OK? There’s no way I can do any of this without you.”
Aidan kissed her hair and winked. “It’s going to be fine. Keary’s the biggest badass we have. He won’t let anything happen to you.”
As the others moved off at a brisk pace up the ramp towards Argyle street, Vivien looked up at the side of Keary’s face. He stared after Aidan’s retreating back and didn’t move for a long time.