The screams died down within an hour, and as the sun sank below the mountain the defenders looked out from behind their newly erected barricade and through the protective light barrier at an offensively quiet and still building. Not a single enemy had stuck his head out. Justin had screamed obscenities for a while but then he too had fallen silent.
“Is it too much to hope they killed him?” Mitch asked.
“If they had, I wouldn’t be here,” Isaac said calmly. His eyes had taken on a glassy look, he spoke rarely and no attempt to engage him had been able to draw him out.
“That may not be true,” Keary said. They were hunkered down behind an old olive green combi van with rude jokes spray painted on the back. “We have no idea what the rules are anymore. You’re here.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s too late to undo that?”
Isaac’s expression didn’t change, but he did pat Keary’s arm. “Thanks, man.”
“Anyone seen Vivien?” Mitch asked.
Aidan rubbed at his eyes and thunked his head back against the van. “She’s in Town Hall. No one was hurt, which was blind, dumb, stinking luck to be honest, but she’s got this manic drive to get the front line medical stuff ready.” He shrugged helplessly. “I think it’s so she doesn’t have to think about anything else. She didn’t cope well with the fire...”
They fell silent, and in the murky twilight, other defenders came down Campbell st in pairs. Each pair carefully rolled a metal 44-gallon drum on its side between them. When they hit the barricade they parted and began to place the big drums around the open area between Town Hall and the barricade.
“What’s this?” Mitch asked.
The overweight woman who marshalled the workers and still had her improvised lochaber axe strapped to her back smiled at him as she came over. “Fireboxes. We cannibalised the old chairs from the concert hall in the Grand Chancellor for wood. It’s going to get cold out here, and those Molotov’s of yours will need to be lit before you throw them.”
“Thanks, you’re a wonder ” Mitch said, painfully aware he had no idea what her name was.
“Dorothy Porter,” she said with a wry grin, “but everyone calls me Mammy.”
Keary chuckled, “Of course they do.” He gave her a respectful bow of the head. “It’s an honour to fight beside you Mammy. I like a lady who doesn’t waste her bullets.”
She laughed. “I didn’t think anyone would notice, but I couldn’t have hit the side of the building with that shotgun over this kind of distance. I just worried if I didn’t go through the motions no one else would either!”
“You don’t have to explain to me,” Keary assured her. “It’s obvious you’re no coward.”
Mammy looked over the barricade and through the light barrier to the distorted shape of the Mures restaurant. “What do you think they’re doing in there?”
“Arguing I imagine.” Keary grinned. “They obviously weren’t ready for any resistance, and they really weren’t ready for fire and magic.”
“Do you think they’ll leave?” She asked.
Keary shook his head. “Afraid not. If they were going to run they’d have done it by now. My bet is they’ve called for reinforcements and now they’re waiting for their backup.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” Mammy said as she shifted the straps that held her axe in place. “What do we do?”
“We dig in ” Aidan told her. “There’s nothing else to do.”
“I don’t suppose we could negotiate with them?”
Aidan looked at her carefully before he answered. “You know we’re not in Kansas anymore, right?”
Mammy nodded, “You may not be a munchkin, but you’re not a young man either.”
“We can’t negotiate with them, Mammy.” He said with more confidence. “They don’t want our food, or our shelter, or whatever they can scavenge from the city… they want to kill you. Their vengeance has been on a slow burn for thousands of years, and nothing anyone can say will dissuade them from pursuing that goal.”
“What about the crazy guy?” Mammy asked. “We could all hear him yelling.”
“He wants to kill us!” Mitch quipped. “He probably doesn’t care so much about you, but since we’re here on your side, he’s over there on theirs.”
“I suppose that’s clear enough for the moment.” Mammy’s expression clearly said that she was going to run down a more satisfying explanation when this was all over.
After she’d left, the others hunkered down, keeping their eyes averted from the flaming drums, to preserve their night vision.
“Do you think this means that the others will be able to get off the island?” Mitch asked.
“I hope so,” Aidan said. “This first lot might not have, but if they really are calling in reinforcements it might mean dad and the others can get back across the water.” He pulled at tufts of grass disconsolately. “Or the others might prevent their reinforcements from coming, so we’ll only have to deal with these. I don’t know if they’re sophisticated enough to know that they shouldn’t leave enemies behind them.”
“Justin wouldn’t want to leave them there,” Keary mused, “but you made a point to Mammy I hadn’t considered. The Fomorians hardly care about us at all, they want to punish humans, not Dannans. I doubt he’s as in control of his force as he hoped, and I haven’t seen a single Firbolg, have you?”
He looked around quizzically and everyone shook their heads no.
“What does it mean?” Mitch asked.
“I’d bet London to a brick they’ve abandoned him,” Keary explained. “They got what they wanted, their curse doesn’t exist here, so they don’t need him anymore. He was carrying on like a total nutter, he was never that mad before. I think he’s a stupid pawn, and his so-called allies are all just itching to drop him like a hot rock.”
“Can we use that at all, assuming it’s true?” Aidan asked.
Keary scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe. I suppose we could abandon the humans and make a break for it. If I’m right, the Fomorians will ignore us.” His expression showed quite plainly though, that he didn’t expect anyone to go for that. “Course if you try it, your girlfriend might skin you.”
Aidan coughed uncomfortably. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I only met her like, yesterday.”
“If you say so,” Mitch said, “but you two are really touchy.”
Aidan frowned. “Wait, who are you talking about?”
“Vivien, nimrod. Why, who are you talking about?” Mitch laughed.
Keary remained silent and Aidan watched him with a growing suspicion. “Not Vivien.” He said evasively.
“Well if there’s someone else, be careful about your signals, man,” Mitch advised. “Cuz you’re well down the road of convincing that girl that you’re hella into her.”
Not even Aidan’s stunned expression could convince his best friends that he wasn’t, in fact, leading Vivien on in any way. He worried that they’d bring it up with Vivien. He worried about what she’d say. He worried that he was making everyone crazy for no reason. At least, he thought after he gnawed on it for a while, Tess knew what was really going on, so at least she wouldn’t be confused.
Hours passed. Aidan and Mitch never moved from the front line, Keary and Mammy had been on their feet the whole time while Isaac ran messages back and forth. Much to their disgust, the families were evacuated from the Grand Chancellor and moved back to the hospital. In line with Town Hall, Keary had overseen the construction of another barricade complete with fire drums and stockpiles of Molotov cocktails. When that was done, he went back to Aidan.
“We’re going to need you.”
“For what?” Aidan asked.
“We’re out of cars inside the shield, and I want physical barricades around the enclave in case it fails. I don’t want them to just be able to march around and come at us from the Hospital side.”
Aidan looked at him suspiciously. “That makes sense… what exactly do you want me to do about it?”
Keary wriggled his fingers. “Shake some buildings down. They’re made of brick, bricks are basically stone. Stone is Earth. Come earn your keep.”
“You want me to knock down buildings?” Aidan demanded. “I’ll be on my back for a week!”
“One sword won’t win or lose it for us out here, but barricades back there well could. Get off your arse fearless leader.”
Mitch chuckled under his breath. “Hey, send me someone to replace him! I don’t wanna be short staffed up here.”
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The two friends made their way back through ‘no mans land’ and were let through the only unbarricaded door to Town Hall. They could then go through the old building and come out on Collins street at the rear. Keary pointed to the corner of Argyle and Collins streets.
“Start there.” He said. “We want to block off Collins and Argyle there.”
“Easy as that huh?” Aidan groused.
“Just knock that one on the corner down and pull it this way a bit, that way you get the whole gap with one building.”
“Do you want to do this?” Aidan snapped.
Keary held his hands up in the air and affected an innocent face. After a few moments to indulge in a glare, Aidan shrugged out of his sabre harness and dropped it on the ground next to him. He then crouched down and put his hands on the road. “I hate you.” He muttered to his friend.
All Aidan’s muscles tensed one after the other as though he were lifting a weight or having a fit. He trembled slightly, and that trembling spread from his body into the road then travelled visibly forward into the base of the building. For almost a minute nothing happened. Keary opened his mouth to comment but then all the windows on the target building exploded out in a shower of glass and bits of metal framing. Screams came from Town Hall and the Hospital building as people rushed to windows to see what had caused the noise.
Keary put his arms above his head and waved them. “It’s OK!” He yelled. “It’s OK, just some controlled demolition!”
The building began to sway alarmingly back and forth. From inside came the sound of concrete on the verge of buckling. As the terrified civilians watched, the sway turned into a twist like the building was trying to uncork itself from the ground. Finally, with a massive crunch, some inner structure gave out and the building collapsed. Most of the rubble tumbled, as though perfectly aimed, into Collins and Argyle streets, effectively blocking them off. Keary went to put a hand on Aidan’s shoulder to congratulate him, only to find his friend had collapsed backwards.
“Shit!”
Keary carried Aidan into the Emergency entrance to the hospital and Vivien met them there. “What the hell happened, is he hurt?” She demanded.
“He’s fine, he’s just blown out,” Keary said. “He knocked a building down for the barricade. Turns out it was more than he had.”
“Shit!”
“I already said that.”
She glared at him as Dr. Benson brought out a gurney. “Put him here.” The Doctor said.
“You better get back out there,” Vivien said. “Make sure you have runners ready in case anything happens, I’ll get anyone I can to come help. Right now I’m hoping they’re resting rather than sitting around worrying.”
“He’ll be OK, Vivien,” Keary said quietly. “I promise. It’s just hard work knocking a building down.” He sighed. “It was a waste too. If we can’t get the other corners covered there was no point.”
“The witches spell might hold,” Vivien said. “We can hope.”
“Hey…” He touched her arm. “You doing OK?”
She looked up at him with haunted eyes. “I burned those people to death.” She whispered hoarsely. “There’s nothing OK about that.”
“You protected these people. And you probably saved my life.” He squeezed her arm with his massive hand.
Vivien’s bottom lip trembled and it seemed like she might cry but then Aidan groaned and opened his eyes and she sobbed in relief. “You’re OK!”
“Don’t yell,” Aidan groaned. “There are jackhammers in my head.”
“Sorry, sorry.” She leaned forward and cuddled him as best she could.
“S’OK. I’m OK.” He winced when Dr. Benson flashed a little light into eyes to test his pupil’s response. His hands trembled where he tried to rub Vivien’s back reassuringly. “Gotta get up. There’s like, what? Two more buildings to tople, at least.”
“Three. There’s a side street to the Highway on the bridge side of the building.” Keary said.
Vivien glared at him. “He can’t do it! Look at him.”
“I’m inclined to agree.” Dr. Benson said. “I’ve never treated a wizard with exhaustion before, but you don’t seem fighting fit to me.”
“I don’t have to be. I can lay up for a week once this is done, but the shield might not hold…” Aidan sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the gurney. “Which ones are the biggest issue? I better do them in descending order in case I run out of juice.”
“The cut through to the Highway, then the corner with the dentist, then the corner with the office building.” Keary ticked them off on his fingers. “The cut through is closest, they’d find that first. The other two are at the back, but if they go around to their left it’s uphill and we can put some snipers in the buildings to make them nervy. They’re more likely to try coming up the Highway and then cutting in because they know we’re not over there.”
“OK. OK.” Aidan slid off the gurney and swayed on his feet for a moment.
“Hold on!” Vivien hurried to the corner of the room and grabbed a wheelchair. “If you’re going to be an idiot at least don’t fall over. I’ll push you around.”
“Viv---”
“I’ll push you around!” She cut across him when he tried to argue.
Keary watched Aidan sink down into the chair and then nodded. “I’ll be out front. Where’s Isaac?”
“I don’t know, he wasn’t out front with you guys?” Viv asked.
“He was running messages last time I saw him,” Aidan said. “He’ll be around somewhere.”
Keary stared at Aidan but didn’t say anything. Vivien gave the big man a wave and then pushed Aidan out through the sliding glass doors. They disappeared into the darkness to the right.
“This can’t kill you, right?” Vivien asked as she navigated the obstacles on the ramp, with the wheelchair.
“It never has as far as I know,” Aidan assured her. “I might not be particularly useful for a while though.”
She huffed as she worked his weight in the chair up the ramp, and sighed in relief when they reached the top and the flat road beyond. “How close do you need to be?”
“Get me level with the theatre there. That’ll be enough, and then I’ll drop the brick building on the corner where the physiotherapist was.” He said.
“Cool… I had to go there when I blew my knee out playing rugby. Bad memories.”
Aidan laughed. “Well, stick with me and I’ll show you some sweet, sweet closure.”
She pulled up in front of the Theatre Royal and put the breaks on the wheels. There were posts on poles out front for a ballet and a cabaret performance which would have starred a beautiful youth in a dress with a flurry of feathers flying around them. Sadly she wondered where that performer was, if they made it through the mist. If any of those who didn’t were still alive.
“What now?”
“Now I take off my shoes,” Aidan said.
“Who what?”
He laughed. “Normally I’d use my hands, but I’m afraid if I bend over I’ll get a headrush. Feet are fine.” He toed off his shoes and then pulled off his socks and put his bare feet on the road. “Oh! Cold. Don’t worry, this one’s smaller than the last one.”
“Will that make it any easier?” asked Vivian.
“I gotta assume so. If it makes it harder I’m in trouble.” He smiled at her and then closed his eyes.
Just like before, one by one his muscles all tightened and he began to tremble. His breathing got harder and out from his feet grew a trembling that spread forward towards the building. When he grunted with the exertion, Vivien put her hand on his shoulder to comfort him and suddenly her knees felt funny.
Aidan’s eyes popped open and his trembling stopped, while that of the building increased dramatically. It twisted almost ninety degrees on its base with a massive grating sound, and then almost delicately slid over onto its side, in a perfect pile of rubble that blocked off the cut through to the highway. Viven blinked stupidly while Aidan looked up at her with his mouth hanging open like a landed fish.
“What the hell was that?” They asked each other in unison.
Aidan grabbed for the hand she had begun to pull away. “Hey, are you OK?”
“Yeah, I mean I felt weird for a second but… shit, you really knocked that thing over.”
He shook his head. “There’s no way I could have done that by myself. I don’t feel any weaker at all.” He looked up at her in wonder. “You’re like a battery.”
“Like a,”
“Have you ever done magic before?” He pressed. “Did anything happen? Um, moving stones or water, gusts of air where there shouldn’t have been? Anything?”
“No, nothing like that, not ever. I mean,” she glanced around as though she might find answers in the darkness. “I knew you guys could do things. I just assumed I couldn’t because, well, you know my dad isn’t Dannan. I’m only half so…”
“You should still be able to do something, historically halflings aren’t common but they happen and they’re always more than human.” Aidan protested. “There’s always something, even if it isn’t exactly like what we do. We didn’t really have time to talk about it.”
“I’m telling you, I’m twenty-three years old and I’ve never so much a levitated a matchstick.” She gestured to herself. “I’m perfectly ordinary.”
Aidan pointed to the building. “Viv, I couldn’t have done that on my own. I’m not my father, I don’t train with the gifts, OK. It’s hard work and we were never supposed to use them in public anyway. The energy, the power to do that… it came from you. And you’re not even tired.”
She stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. “What do we do now?”
He drew rapid circles in the air next to his face. “Wheel me round, lady. We’ve gotta do the other buildings.”
Vivien half expected to take a step and fall. After all, Aidan had been so wiped out after he dropped the first building, but she wrapped her hands around the chair’s grips and turned him, feeling no more fatigued than she had before. Where Campbell street met Liverpool, the building they should drop was the Menzies medical research centre but Aidan shook his head.
“We might need what’s in there some time.” He looked up at her. “I’ve got you to help me, we’ll splat the dentist and that old building there to cover the Liverpool street section, then the side of the courthouse building there. Keary already stripped it, and I should be able to just pull the side we want down.”
“You seem really sure about this.” She said dubiously.
He held his hand up to her. “Won’t know till we try.”
The buildings fell perfectly. Not effortlessly perhaps, but without the sweats and the shaking. When Aidan was done, both approaches were blocked with rubble, and he grinned up at her proudly. “No harder than a workout. You?”
Viv said the first thing that popped into her head. “I’m hungry.”
Aidan laughed and squeezed her hand. “Come on, one more corner.”
It was past midnight, at least Keary assured them it was, and Aidan was still stuck in the wheelchair. Every time he tried to stand he swayed alarmingly and his vision swam. Vivian insisted on pushing him around everywhere. At Aidan’s insistence, they weren’t forthcoming about the extent of Vivien’s involvement in the demolition. He couldn’t say why he was so shy about sharing the nature of his sister’s gifts, only that with Justin’s focus already on her he didn’t want to draw any more attention.
Vivien wouldn’t let Aidan go all the way down to the main barricade. Whenever he tried to suggest it she shouted him down. Instead, he stayed inside Town Hall and stared hard out one of the upstairs windows at the shadow of the restaurant.
“They’ll come just before dawn,” Keary said. He’d come up behind them silently.
“What makes you say that?” Viv asked.
Keary shrugged. “It’s when defenders are generally at their most tired, the eyes can’t focus well,” he glanced sideways at Aidan and grinned. “And, of course, Justin is an unimaginative bonehead, so he’s reasonably predictable.”
“How far away is dawn, then?” Vivien asked.
“About two hours, but I doubt they’ve got the exact time so it’s a case of being ready from now,” Keary said. “Will you be back on your feet any time soon?”
Aidan sighed, “honestly, I doubt it. I want to be, obviously, but I’m a liability to you right now.”
“Well, we changed the on-point team about half an hour ago and fed them some caffeine so… we’re probably as ready as we’re getting.”Keary said. “Has anyone seen Isaac?”
“Not for hours,” Vivien said.
“This may be too much for him,” Aidan said sadly. “It’s very possible he won't survive what’s likely to happen.”
Keary and Aidan shared a significant look, but Vivien looked sadly out of the window into the dark and didn’t see it.