What Dawn Demands Read online

  What Dawn Demands

  A Novel of The Frost Arcana

  Clara Coulson

  What Dawn Demands

  Copyright © 2019 by Clara Coulson

  Cover Design by Christian Bentulan at http://coversbychristian.com/

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  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

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  For more information:

  http://www.claracoulson.com/

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  To contact the author, email [email protected]

  Contents

  I. The Day

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  II. Is Darkest

  Six Months Later

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  III. Before Dawn

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  To Be Continued

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  About Clara Coulson

  To all the people who watched me endlessly moan about the length of this book and didn’t block me on social media.

  Part I

  The Day

  Chapter One

  Three Weeks after the Zombie Invasion

  Emhain Abhlach was a scenic island. It lay off the coast of the Seelie Court, so the sky was always a perfect blue, a bright sun beaming overhead. Crystal-clear water lapped at the sandy shores, the waves gentle and rolling, no storms on the horizon. The temperature was warm but mild, and a constant breeze caressed your skin, coaxing you to take a relaxing stroll along the beach or to nap in the fields of soft grasses that bordered the shallow dunes. Apple trees dotted these grassy hills, boughs hanging heavy with ripe fruit, an invitation to pick a delicious midday snack.

  All in all, the island would’ve made for a lovely vacation destination—had I not been here to confront a traitorous god.

  My portal spit me out at the end of a weathered dock, the only place a portal could deposit you, because the rest of the island was surrounded by a powerful magic barrier. Manannán mac Lir didn’t necessarily mind if you dropped by for a chat, but he wasn’t foolish enough to allow anyone to traipse around his island without a thorough screening first. As I shook off the disorientation of tumbling through the void between worlds, an array of wards embedded in the boards beneath my feet activated, and a heavy pressure encapsulated my body for roughly ten seconds, sharp pricks of magic poking and prodding me to determine if I was a threat.

  The wards decided I was not a threat to the likes of the mighty sea god.

  In some ways, they were correct. But not in the ways that mattered today.

  Once the wards released me from the binding pressure, I took tentative steps toward the beach, unsure what sort of defenses the barrier spells might employ if I made any movements that could be interpreted as hostile. Three boards from the end of the dock, hard static crackled across my skin. The hair on my arms and neck stood straight. The nerves in my extremities shot confusing signals to my brain, a mixture of pain and indeterminate temperature. The muscles of my face twitched wildly, eyelids beating like a drum.

  But despite the discomfort, I came to no harm. I easily slipped through the charged wall of the barrier and emerged onto the fine white beach of the sea god’s home. That was either a sign Manannán wasn’t planning to kill me, or that he was planning to kill me in person. And while I preferred option one, as any fragile mortal would, both possibilities allowed me the opportunity to get a word in edgewise before the spells started flying. An opportunity I planned to use to the fullest extent.

  A winding stone path led from the beach up a steep hill, until it terminated at the front gate of an ancient castle. Said castle was five stories high, made of rounded, wind-worn stone, and covered in creeping mosses that painted a subtle mosaic of blues and greens across the gray stone backdrop. The structure didn’t appear to be guarded by any people, or creatures, but the ward array etched into the exterior walls was so far beyond anything I could hope to breach that I chuckled at the mere idea of trying as I started up the path.

  My laughter lasted only a moment, however, and was carried off in the wind, which seemed to grow stronger for each step I climbed farther from the beach. Almost as if the air itself was urging me to leave, to abort this reckless mission.

  I ignored the warning.

  As I neared the end of the path, the metal gate rose before me with a high-pitched screech, and several wards around it deactivated with a subtle flicker. Manannán was inviting me into his home. Which was mildly concerning, since he knew this wasn’t a friendly visit. But I didn’t hesitate or slow my pace, even though my brain was screaming, “It’s a trap!” Because if I wanted to pull off my own ploy, I had to appear confident.

  I strode through the gate. It didn’t close behind me.

  Across an overgrown courtyard, leaning against the ornate frame that belonged to a set of ten-foot-tall wooden doors, was Manannán. His posture was casual, but there was a tension to his muscles that spoke of resignation. He idly scratched at his thick beard as I approached, his lips drawn into a pensive line, his dark-green eyes churning like a stormy sea.

  When we were close enough to speak to each other without shouting over the wind, he said, “I was wondering how long it would be before you showed up.”

  “Did you over- or underestimate?” I stuffed my hands into my pockets and took on the same fake casual air.

  “Over, actually. I thought you’d take more time to recover from your ordeal in Hel.”

  “And by that, you mean you didn’t think I’d show up at all. Because you figured I’d be dead.”

  He didn’t confirm or deny the accusation. He merely stepped into the front hall of his castle and motioned for me to follow him inside. I trailed after him into a corridor straight out of medieval Ireland, with hand-fashioned metal sconces nailed to the walls, rich but well-trodden carpets covering roughhewn stone floors, and colorful tapestries hanging from the rafters that depicted the great feats of figures whose names had been lost to time. The soft but interrupted glow from the sconces filled the grand hall with a thousand shadows, and if Manannán was practically anyone else in Tír na nÓg, I’d be worried about hired assassins lurking in the darkness.

  Manannán stopped about halfway down the corridor, where it was bisected by a narrow secondary hall. He turned to face me and said, “I’ve been betting with myself
about your next move, Whelan, based on what I know about your personality. And I figure you’ve been weighing three options for the past few weeks:

  “You can attack me in retaliation for my misdeeds, which would be foolish but not beyond the scope of the things you’ve done before in relation to Abarta’s plots. You can threaten to report me to the Unseelie queen for assisting Abarta’s efforts to wrench information out of the man who drank from the Well of Knowledge, and use that threat to wheedle concessions out of me. Or, for the sake of vengeance, you can skip the threat part and go straight to tattling on me, then sit back and watch the show.”

  “Which option did you put your money on?” I ground my heel into the carpet, fraying the old fibers.

  “It was a fifty-fifty split between options two and three. But after learning how much damage your city suffered under the neamh-mairbh onslaught, I leaned toward option three.”

  I shook my head. “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  His thick eyebrows arched. “Really? You’re not going to report me?”

  “Don’t have to. M-A-B already knows what you did. She knew the moment you did it because her minion, Tom Tildrum, has been watching me twenty-four seven. She will punish you as she sees fit, when she sees fit, for your treachery against the courts, regardless of how I choose to personally retaliate against you for the harm that came to me and my friends as a result of your deception.” I tugged my left hand from my pocket and tossed its contents at Manannán. “Catch.”

  Manannán plucked the Christmas ornament from the air. “A direct attack against a god, Whelan? Really?”

  “Of course not. I’m faerie born. This is a trick.” I spoke the activation word.

  Suddenly, the entire hall dimmed. To my sight. But to Manannán’s, it went pitch black.

  “You can thank Rian McGrath for the helpful illusion spell,” I added.

  As Manannán cursed in annoyance, I darted to the left. While we’d been bantering, I’d used my peripheral vision to observe both adjacent corridors and locate a set of stone stairs curving toward the basement level. I hit the stairs running and practically flew down, guiding myself with small bursts of air so I didn’t crash into the tight walls or tumble forward and crack my skull open.

  I landed at the bottom with a few stumbling steps before regaining my balance, then quickly scoured the hall laid out before me. It was cramped at this end but widened as it went on, ending with an imposing metal door that Manannán had helpfully left open when he’d returned an item to the room that lay beyond just a few minutes before I arrived on Emhain Abhlach.

  What was the room that lay beyond the door?

  Manannán mac Lir’s vault of treasures.

  Chapter Two

  One Week after the Zombie Invasion

  “So if I give you this, you’re going to lead me to your boss, right?” I said to the orange tabby standing on the sidewalk in front of me. I’d spent the last two days trying to summon Tom Tildrum. First by merely saying aloud to dead air that I wanted to meet with him. Next by attempting an actual magic summoning that backfired so badly my hair still smelled like smoke. And finally, by following around every stray cat I could find until they either flopped down for a nap or started rummaging around in the garbage. My frustration level had been so high by the time I found the orange tabby standing on the street corner, waiting for me, that I was amazed I hadn’t suffered a stroke.

  Of course, there was a chance I still would have a stroke, if the cat refused to lead me to Tildrum.

  It hadn’t budged the first three times I’d asked politely, instead staring with bright brown eyes at the can of tuna fish in my hand I’d been using as a bribe for the other cats. When it didn’t respond in any way to my latest question, I sighed in resignation, then used a pinch of magic to peel back the lid of the can.

  I set the can on the sidewalk in front of the cat, who sniffed at the fish a couple times before digging in like it was some kind of gourmet kitty meal you used to see in those silly commercials. Figuring the cat wasn’t going to do me any favors until its belly was stuffed, I plopped down onto the sidewalk beside it and leaned back against a bent streetlamp.

  Hayworth Street, which had taken a beating during the vampire-sponsored zombie invasion, was practically deserted. At least half the structures in the area, most of them apartment buildings or small office complexes, had been ravaged by the raging fires that swept through vast swaths of the city when unprepared practitioners panicked at the sight of the vicious zombie horde and started flinging fire spells with abandon.

  By this point, those on Hayworth Street who survived the zombie onslaught had long come back to pick through the ashes and recover what little of their lives survived the flames. Most of them were probably camping out in the temporary tent cities Connolly and his buddies at City Hall had erected to house the homeless thousands until the residential reconstruction efforts began in earnest next week.

  Right now, emergency personnel and countless volunteers were still picking through the charred rubble for corpses. The last living survivor of the zombie invasion had been found on Monday, trapped inside the basement of a partially collapsed duplex, surviving on emergency rations he’d smartly stowed away in anticipation of another apocalyptic event.

  That man would be just fine. But the city at large? That was another matter. The extent of the damage to Kinsale during the attack far exceeded anything the city suffered during the collapse. The cost to rebuild would be astronomical, as Connolly kept reminding me at the daily emergency task meetings a couple dullahan dragged me to every morning. So high, in fact, that it would make more sense to abandon the city altogether and disperse the population to other nearby cities. And that was exactly what the fae leadership would be doing right now…if it wasn’t for the vampires now lurking in Kinsale’s shadows.

  If the faeries surrendered Kinsale’s protected status in the wake of the Pettigrew coven’s incursion, it would prove to all the other vampire covens lurking out in the stretches that the fae leadership was unstable, and the protected cities vulnerable. They would take it as a sign the other cities were ripe for the pillaging, and when vampires attacked in force, the body counts, the human body counts, were always unacceptably high. Thousands could die. Maybe even millions, depending on how emboldened the vampires became, how far and wide the cancer of vampire ambition spread across the continent.

  The only chance of preventing that metastasis lay in restoring Kinsale and defeating the Pettigrew coven. And that was a very high bar to climb over, not only because fixing the sheer amount of damage done to the city would take an estimated five to seven years, but also because the vampire elder Vianu was leading the coven’s new fledglings from inside Kinsale. I’d been hoping and praying that Vianu hadn’t been the one who slipped past the city’s barrier during the zombie attack. But of course, my hopes had been dashed.

  I’d woken up four days ago to find a dead bird nailed to my front door. In the bird’s twisted talons had been a blood-spattered note written in elegant cursive that promised my slow, horrible, and painful demise would come at a time when I least expected it. The note was signed “Vianu,” and I had no doubt it was genuine. I’d only met the vampire lord briefly, but in the time he’d held me in the air by the throat and threatened to violently kill me if I attempted to escape from him or his dull-witted assistant, Leonard, I’d gotten the gist of Vianu’s personality: bold, self-assured, and decidedly theatrical. The menacing note was exactly his style.

  So now, in addition to all my other problems, I had the weight of a fight with an elder vampire hanging around my neck. A fight I had practically no chance of winning. At least not yet.

  A vague plan had been percolating in the back of my head during the countless hours I’d spent helping with the post-invasion cleanup. Hours of backbreaking manual labor to clear heavy debris. Hours of delivering supplies to thousands of people who’d lost everything they’d worked so hard to regain after the collapse. Hours of sad discoverie
s of bodies of all ages, broken and burned and beyond recognition. Hours of mindless repetition and intentionally numbed emotions that invited creative thinking to keep your mind off the staggering horror of a disaster situation.

  A plan to defeat Abarta, once and for all, and everyone in his growing circle of loose allies. Agatha Bismarck and her mob network. The dark elves and the redcaps. The Pettigrew vampire coven. And even Manannán mac Lir, who’d coldly led me into a trap that almost cost Saoirse her life and forced me into a battle that damaged the illusion of humanity I’d desperately clung to for decades.

  I had a bone to pick with every one of the players in this convoluted game of blood-soaked ambitions, but I didn’t currently possess the clout to challenge any of them in a meaningful way.

  I needed to obtain that clout. And I had an idea of where I could get it. That idea was why I’d ended up here, sitting on the sidewalk next to a cat.

  “Can you hurry it up?” I muttered as the cat paused to lick its chops.

  The cat gave me a flat look before returning to the can for another course of smelly fish.