What Dusk Divides: The Frost Arcana, #5

By Clara Coulson

"The clock was sitting at a minute to doomsday, and the seconds were racing by."

After their failure to stop Abarta and Vianu from summoning the Wild Hunt, Vince and his allies are left scrambling to find a way to save Kinsale—and the world. So when Kennedy provides them with a single long shot that might just do the trick, they assemble a tired but determined team for a dangerous mission.

Venturing into the ancient and mystical forests of Tír na nÓg, the team seeks out the godlike being of mayhem known as the Morrígan. But the forests are fraught with dangers beyond belief, and the Morrígan, in seclusion for over a millennium, may not want to be found.

To make matters worse, Abarta's forces pursue Vince's team, upsetting the forest inhabitants and leaving destruction in their wake. Faced with the might of ancient Tuatha relics, the wrath of creatures woken from long slumbers, and the ire of a goddess who will not bow to anyone beneath the faerie queens, Vince and his allies face their toughest challenge yet.

But Vince will not give up on the city he calls home, or the broken human world trying so desperately to heal. So he throws himself headlong into this challenge, willing to fight to the bitter end. Even if it destroys his life. Even if it destroys his humanity. Even if it destroys something fragile and precious he didn't know he possessed.

What Dusk Divides is the fifth novel of The Frost Arcana, an action-packed urban fantasy series set in a post-apocalyptic world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knite and Day Publishing
• Release date: Nov 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393369462

Clara Coulson

Clara Coulson was born and raised in backwoods Virginia, USA. She holds a degree in English and Finance from the College of William & Mary and recently retired from the hustle and bustle of Washington, DC to return to the homeland and pick up the quiet writing life. Clara spends most of her time (when she's not writing) dreaming up new story ideas, studying Japanese, and slowly reading through the several-hundred-book backlog on her budding home library. If she's not occupied with any of those things, then you can probably find her playing with her two cats or lurking in the shadows of various social media websites. To stay up to date with Clara's books, please subscribe to the Firebolt Books newsletter: https://www.firebolt-books.com/newsletter

Book preview

Part I

But Hope

Chapter One

Ten Hours Till Dusk

Four faeries sat in a circle, knocking back potions like vodka shots.

The battle to save the city from the machinations of Vianu the elder vampire had ended in failure twenty-four minutes ago, and everybody needed a pick-me-up. Not only because our moods grew poorer as the destruction of Kinsale drew closer with each passing minute. But also because the horde of vicious vampires in the park had fought fast and fiercely, and some of us were currently being held together by the equivalent of duct tape and crazy glue.

It was hard to concentrate on saving the world with a death rattle in your chest.

The first round of drinks consisted of prototype healing potions I’d pillaged from Watchdog R&D and stored under my bed, meant to be used in the event I caught a bad case of evisceration by vampire on the way home from work or play. While the potions couldn’t heal iron wounds any better than our natural healing factors, they would succeed at fixing all our regular injuries slightly faster than our faerie blood could manage. What they didn’t heal I had enough bandages to cover up, so we could at least appear to be fully functioning people.

The second round consisted of stimulant potions mixed by the great Tori Melville. They shocked your system into overdrive and allowed you to soldier on for twice as long as your body would normally allow. When the potions wore off, you suffered a terrible crash and slept at least a whole day away. But since we only had ten hours left until the Wild Hunt arrived to destroy the world, and some of us were likely to die before we reached the limit, we all considered the crash an acceptable tradeoff for giving us enough energy to try and prevent the next apocalypse.

While we waited for the potions to take full effect, we turned our ears toward the door of my war room and listened to the faint voices emanating from down the hall. In my living room, Saoirse, Odette, Drake, Mallory, Granger, and the least-injured sídhe soldiers were trying their best to interrogate a man whose mind contained a vast wealth of knowledge but whose brain had been totally fried in the process of obtaining it. The husk of Nolan Kennedy could produce information about practically any topic relating to Tír na nÓg. But in order to get the right information, you had to ask the right question in just the right way.

It didn’t sound like anyone was having much luck.

Indira, seated opposite me, grunted as her dislocated elbow popped back into place under the healing potion’s influence. Having regained the use of her arm, her first move was to dig around in her jacket pocket and produce a tube of hot-pink lipstick. Which she applied to lips that were still slightly puffy from where she’d been punched in the jaw by a vampire. She pressed her lips together to get the spread even, then said, Much better.

Strange, said Orlagh through clenched teeth, how the little touches always improve your mood the most. Her back was up against the wall, ramrod straight, while Boyle stitched up the iron wound on her upper chest. During the chaotic battle, she’d explained a minute ago, a vampire had hurled an iron rod at her heart. Orlagh, dealing with four other vamps at the same time, hadn’t been able to deflect it until it pierced the skin just above her breast. The wound was shallow, thankfully, but her entire shoulder was inflamed from the iron contact, and the swelling had reduced her dominant arm’s range of motion.

Boyle snipped the end off the thick thread he’d grabbed from my first-aid kit and tore open a pack of medicated gauze to cover the wound. Faeries didn’t get serious infections, but a dirty iron wound healed slower than a clean one. The fae body found it hard to shake off the effects of iron, primarily because it burned the soul just as badly as it burned the flesh.

There, Boyle said as he stuck the last strip of tape over the edge of the gauze. All done.

Orlagh slumped and let out a sigh. It hurts more than I anticipated.

Iron always hurts more than you anticipate, I said, easing myself away from the wall. My entire abdomen felt like it was full of boiling water, each breath a chore, as the healing potion rearranged the pieces of my bullet-blended organs. It should have been working a lot quicker, but the bullet the unknown asshole sniped me with had an iron tip. So the potion could only heal the peripheral damage done by the bullet’s kinetic energy. Any piece of me the bullet’s tip had actually touched was shit out of luck.

You need a stitch job too, Whelan? asked Boyle, gesturing with the needle.

Don’t know yet. I peeled the wad of loose gauze off my abdomen. The bleeding had slowed, and the gaping hole under my ribs was much smaller than it had been a few minutes ago. But I’d have to wait until the potion finished up before I got a verdict on the extent of the iron damage. On my back, where the bullet entered, I could feel the burn was just a pinpoint. The bullet had been totally normal, except for a tiny piece of iron on the end. Not meant to kill a faerie, but to stun them.

And stun me it did, right at the crucial moment, I thought bitterly.

I’d been one second away from derailing Vianu’s attempt to summon the Wild Hunt to Kinsale, one step from wrecking his blood-soaked summoning circle, one breath from victory against a powerful vampire lord. Then some dickwad shot me in the back and left me bleeding at Vianu’s feet. And, of course, he’d fled afterward, too scared to hang around when our own sniper, Mallory, caught sight of him and started shooting back.

A hired gun was my guess. Some mercenary whose fear of the sídhe had been overridden by the mountains of money Vianu inherited along with most of Agatha Bismarck’s underground business empire. I really hoped Vianu hadn’t paid the guy up front. Because if he hadn’t, the man would leave this besieged city empty-handed, since his employer was now a melting pile of ice chunks in the middle of a park.

Need a hand cleaning up? Boyle asked me as he dumped the remaining contents of the first-aid kit on the floor and started doling out shares to each person. You’re still moving a bit sluggishly.

Low on energy. I grabbed one of the rods on my weapons rack and hauled myself off the floor. My knees almost buckled. I used too much to cast that freeze spell, and now it’s catching up to me. The stim potion should dampen the fatigue shortly, but it’s going to be a little while before I’ve got enough magic in my coffers to cast even the most basic combat spells.

I huffed. Just what I need with the Hunt on the way.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Orlagh readjusted her shirt to cover her chest and carefully slid on her tattered uniform jacket. "You killed sixty-four vampires, including an elder, with a single spell. Which may very well have broken some kind of record. And you demonstrated such pinpoint precision in the casting that not a single bystander was injured despite the immense power outlay."

She paused long enough to throw me a look that indicated she thought my possession of so much power was suspicious, and that she planned to find out the truth about the strange new energy source I’d acquired after breaking my soul glamour.

If she solved the mystery before I did, I hoped she told me the answer.

Until half an hour ago, she continued, I would have said that level of spellwork was beyond a half-sídhe, not to mention a practitioner your age. If I was you, I would be proud of what I’d accomplished.

I would be proud if I’d stopped Vianu before he finished the summoning ritual. I took a deep breath to steady myself before I let go of the rack. But I didn’t. So any small sprout of pride that might’ve been growing among the weeds in my head was thoroughly crushed by the weight of the Hunt’s imminent arrival as it rolled over all my other concerns. All I feel right now is a growing sense of dread that makes me want to vomit all over the floor.

Or maybe that’s just your intestines hanging out, muttered Indira.

I glanced down to find that, sure enough, a tiny piece of my small intestine was poking out of the hole in my gut. I pushed it back into my abdominal cavity and tugged my shirt down to cover the mess. I think I need more cleaning power than gauze and alcohol pads can provide. I took a step toward the door. My fingers are caked in so much blood, they’re starting to stick together. I’m going to go wet some washcloths and…

The next thing I knew, Boyle was holding me up by my arms and Orlagh was crouching beside me.

What happened? I murmured, my thoughts fuzzy.

You blacked out for a second, Boyle said.

Orlagh checked my pulse with two fingers and pulled up the hem of my shirt again to examine the hole, which was drooling a lot more blood than it had been a minute ago. Think that bullet grazed a major blood vessel, and you tore it just now by moving in the exact wrong way. The hemorrhage caused a sudden drop in blood pressure.

She grabbed another wad of gauze and gently pressed it to my abdomen. The tear should heal pretty quickly. But until it does, you should probably allow someone to help you along. Unless you want to add a concussion to your list of injuries.

Shaking off the lingering dizziness, I pointed a finger to my right. Bathroom’s that way.

Boyle slung one of my arms over his shoulder and half carried me down the hall, Orlagh following a step behind us. Boyle deposited me on the lid of my toilet and leaned me back against the tank as Orlagh grabbed a handful of washcloths from the cabinet and wet a few in the sink. She indicated my bloody shirt, which prompted Boyle, unbothered by notions like the difficulty of acquiring clothes in the post-apocalypse, to simply tear my shirt right down the middle.

I was about to complain, when I noticed the horrified look on his face.

Orlagh, who’d been shuffling over with the washcloths, let out a gasp and dropped them on the floor with a wet plop. Good gods, she whispered, who did that to you?

My gaze dropped to my chest. My heavily scarred chest.

Oh. Right.

Most faeries who had iron scars acquired them in battle, so they generally came packaged as cuts or puncture marks made by various pointy weapons. Such scars were viewed as badges of honor, signs that a warrior had triumphed over a faerie’s greatest weakness.

Scars that were acquired by accident, on the other hand—like those obtained on Earth through carelessly touching something made of iron—were dealt scorn and ridicule. They were considered a sign that someone didn’t take their fae heritage seriously, didn’t treat it with the right amount of reverence.

And as for scars that signified torture by iron, a faerie’s worst nightmare?

Well, those provoked a great and terrible pity within all fae who saw them.

Orlagh and Boyle looked upon the chain-shaped marks that would forever mar my skin with such absolute despondency that, for a second, I was convinced they were actually going to cry. But they were battle-hardened soldiers—born and raised in Orlagh’s case—so they packed away the pain in a little box in their brains and replaced it with a more distant sympathy that didn’t compromise their hardline faerie logic.

Orlagh spoke gently, Those are old scars. From the purge?

I nodded. The day I was outed as fae. A group of men snuck up on me, wrapped me in a chain, and beat me up.

Boyle scowled. Were they punished?

I thought about that for a second. The cops who’d turned on me had never been formally charged for their actions; if they had been, none of them would still be breathing, because the fae justice system condemned to death anyone who tortured a sídhe scion with iron. But that didn’t mean they hadn’t suffered for their mistakes.

Those men lived in terror now, every waking moment of their lives. They had since I’d been publicly exposed as half sídhe. Now, they knew just how badly they’d fucked up all those years ago, knew what kind of retribution I could drop on their heads at a moment’s notice. All I had to do was point the finger at them, say the magic words, and everything they cherished would be ripped from them by the unstoppable power of their faerie overlords.

They would suffer as much as I had when they wrapped me in that chain and kicked me senseless. They would suffer worse. And then they would die.

The existential fear of that probable torment would plague them for the rest of their days. It plagued them so much already that it had caused all of them to quit the force shortly after I rejoined. Merely seeing my face, hearing my voice, was enough to make them piss themselves. I had become their worst nightmare, just like they’d been mine during the purge.

So no, they weren’t technically punished, but…

They got what they deserved, I said. They got enough.

Good. Orlagh picked up the washcloths. Then let’s get you cleaned up.

Orlagh efficiently scrubbed the blood off everything north of my belt and applied two square bandages with an extra wad of gauze tucked underneath to my exit wound, so my intestines couldn’t flop out again. Once she finished, she sent me off to my bedroom to change my torn and bloodstained clothes.

As I stood in front of my disordered closet, I considered putting on the shabbiest clothing I owned, in anticipation of another dirty fight. But something that might’ve been pride led me to dress in my best instead. I threw on a clean pair of designer jeans, brand-new black work boots, a crisp white button-up shirt, and an expensive tan coat that fell to my knees.

If I died today, at least my corpse would look nice. Also—

Someone knocked on my door while I was admiring myself in the mirror.

I hurried over and yanked it open, revealing Saoirse on the other side. An air of nervous excitement hung around her, even as bone-deep exhaustion weighed down her normally upright posture and flattened her every expression. She’d been abducted by the vampires after yesterday’s catastrophic raid operation and spent the morning in their clutches, being brutalized and fed upon. She was only on her feet right now because a Watchdog healer had seen to her after she was rescued from Vianu’s ward array.

She deserved a long break, after all she’d been through. But the only way to make her take one would be to knock her out. And Saoirse would kick my ass to the moon and back if I forced her off her feet during so critical a time, when the city needed its few competent leaders to shoulder the strain of yet another damaging attack on Kinsale’s crumbling infrastructure.

She had already made it abundantly clear to me when she first took the position as Watchdog captain that I was not to ever prioritize her well-being over that of the city. She was just one human among millions, she’d claimed, and that made her replaceable.

I didn’t believe that statement was entirely true.

Hey, she said as she gave me a once-over, are you feeling better?

My abdomen felt like it was filled with acid, but Saoirse had better things to do than worry about me right now, so I replied, Much. What’s the word?

Drake got a lead on a possible method for stopping the Hunt. Saoirse lightly punched my arm. I take back my earlier reservations. It was a good move, recruiting him. He’s smart. A little creepy, with the yellow eyes and the tiny fangs. But very intelligent, and far more good-natured than I thought he’d be.

Bear in mind he doesn’t actually work for us. I stepped out into the hall, swiftly closing the door behind me so Saoirse didn’t see the pile of bloody clothes on the bedroom floor. He technically fulfilled his remaining obligations to me by helping us fight this battle against the vamps, so he’s free to go whenever he pleases.

Do you think he’ll bail? She massaged her right arm, which must’ve still been sore. She’d suffered a bad break in the ulna, and when we first met up after the battle, she’d been wearing a sling to pin the arm in place while the healer’s magic sealed the crack.

The spell seemed to have finished its job, as the arm looked fully functional now. But as I’d learned very well over the years, healed did not mean painless.

Oh, Saoirse, I thought solemnly. I wish you didn’t feel compelled to push yourself so hard. If you don’t stop trying to keep up with practitioners and faeries and literal gods, you’re going to…

Nah, I think Drake will stick around, I finally answered as I set off toward the living room. The Hunt is a danger to every living creature on this planet, including him. So unless he wants to relocate to the Otherworld, or Mars, he has just as good a reason as us to stick around and work to stop it. Though if we fail to stop it in the end, I’m a hundred percent sure he’ll portal off to some safe house to ride out the devastation. Guy’s developed a keen sense of self-preservation, growing up under Vianu’s thumb.

Well, he’ll never be stuck under that thumb again.

No, I said, he will not.

We reached the living room entryway to find everyone packed inside. The sídhe had clustered in one corner, the Watchdogs in another. Drake sat on the floor in front of my coffee table, and Kennedy sat in the middle of my couch, the same place I’d left him before I ran off to fight Vianu. The blank slate of a man literally hadn’t budged, not even to take a sip of water or eat one of the snacks I’d set out for him.

I would have found it sad, a human being reduced to nothing but a shell, with no personality whatsoever, no wants, no loves, no hopes, no dreams—if Kennedy hadn’t been such a massive dick.

Now, I wouldn’t say he deserved this horrible fate.

But he certainly didn’t deserve much better.

I plopped down in my recliner and addressed Drake. Saoirse tells me you got something out of him?

Drake held up a piece of lined paper he’d snagged from one of the notebooks stacked on my bookshelf. On it, he’d drawn a replica of the summoning circle Abarta had used in Maige Itha to complete the first stage of the Ritual of Hollowfiends. I had Wikipedia man here break down each element of the circle to see if there’s something about the spell construction that we could possibly undo with a spell of our own. There isn’t, unfortunately, because this kind of bullshit is never that simple to clean up.

He poked the paper with his finger, indicating a particular section of the circle. But, during my questioning, our compendium of all knowledge here inadvertently revealed a potential alternate solution to casting a counterspell: hijacking a part of the original ritual.

Hijacking? I said. In what way?

He poked the paper more emphatically. You remember this part of the circle, don’t you?

I snatched the paper from his hand, examining the drawing up close. The part of the circle he’d indicated was the part I’d damaged right before Abarta cast the spell. The circle had backfired on Abarta as a result of my sabotage. But I had apparently failed to destroy any elements critical to actually summoning the Hunt, as the spell had still gone off.

At the time, I figured Abarta had lost some sort of extra benefit that particular element of the circle would have granted him in relation to the Hunt, but I hadn’t known what type of boon it could be. Perhaps it was some kind of immunity to being targeted by the Hunt, or…I took a harder look at the design of that portion of the circle.

The circle was extremely complex, a product of a very old and convoluted style of magic. There were so many symbols and lines and shapes laid overtop one another that it was hard to break them down into their most basic components. But I managed to pick out a few key elements whose functions I recognized. When I added all those functions together, they produced a vague impression of what that circle segment’s sum total had been meant to achieve.

Control, I murmured. This is a control factor.

It was, Drake replied. Until you destroyed it.

This would have given Abarta the ability to directly command the Hunt?

That’s what Wikipedia man claims. Drake shrugged. He hasn’t been wrong yet.

I see. I settled back against the cushion of my chair. Abarta wasn’t going to let the Hunt roam around Earth as it pleased. He was going to guide it from city to city, with no stretch pit stops in between, to inflict maximum damage and rack up as many mortal casualties as possible. The back-to-back attacks would have overwhelmed the initial sídhe response to the crisis, forced the courts to send reinforcements to Earth and further diminish the strength of the defenses left on the home front.

The perfect storm in which the newly awakened Tuatha could launch an attack on the fae, Saoirse said, sinking down onto one of the recliner’s armrests.

Exactly. I wrung my hands in my lap. I’m certain that’s what Abarta is working on now. Breaking into Maige Mell to start waking his old pals.

Maige Mell is heavily protected though, said Boyle. Queen Mab designed those defenses herself. How’s he going to get past the wards, or the guard battalion?

The same way he’s been one-upping you fools all year, Odette snapped. He’s smart. He’s strong. And he’s stubborn as fuck. Guy’s an old god with a clear goal, the most dangerous sort of deity you can be.

So you say, muttered one of the other sídhe soldiers. "There’s no evidence he’s really Abarta of the Tuatha—"

Orlagh shut the guy up with a hard glare. This isn’t the time to play petty politics. Call the man what you will and ignore any narrative that doesn’t toe the official line, if you need coddling like a child to prevent yourself from quaking in your boots under the threat of a truly dangerous enemy. I don’t care what you name him. I don’t care what you think of him. All I care about is that you give me your best in the effort to stop this man from harming the people of Earth, and the people back home. Clear?

All the soldiers, except Boyle, straightened up and muttered, Yes, ma’am.

Back on topic then. Orlagh looked to me. "During your conversation before the battle with the vampire lord, the King of the Cats claimed he had informed our queen of the events that took place in Maige Itha, including your supposition that our adversary may attempt to assail Maige Mell in short order. I take this to mean that we need not concern ourselves too much with said adversary’s designs on Maige Mell for the time being. Correct?"

Neither Tildrum nor M-A-B will make any overt moves that indicate Abarta is a major threat, I answered, "but since Maige Mell already has an active guard contingent on site,