“You want to go out there?” Rudi asked.

  “You want to die in here or out there?” Collette asked the youth as she pulled back the bolt on her machine gun.

  “Yippee-ki-yay!” Rudi replied, brandishing his MP40.

  Collette reached back and retrieved the sword from the altar. She placed it in Ethan’s right hand and, with Rudi, helped Ethan to stand.

  The three made their way to the crossing of the transept and then around to the right wall. The collapsed roof had fallen largely into the center of the nave and onto the south side, leaving this aisle largely unobstructed. An enormous pile of debris lay where the wall at the end of the nave had collapsed, but the door on the north side wall was there as Ethan had remembered it.

  “There!” Ethan exclaimed. “Through that door.”

  The windows on their left looked out onto the terrace. Ethan could see shapes moving beyond the glass but little else. They moved up to the doorway.

  The screams of the dragon split the air. Ethan wheeled at the sound, as did Collette and Rudi, looking up through the shattered roof overhead.

  The spire of Mont Saint-Michel stood against the blackened sky. Fafnir, his wings wide, alighted to the side of the spire’s steep roof, his wings folding around the tiles as his legs fought for purchase in the stone work. The Demissie-beast rose as well, the empowering appendages of taint arcing up with him. His form had coalesced once again, the black taint weaving like veins through the monstrous horror that was his visage. He swept up the side of the cathedral, his talons tearing at Fafnir’s wings, the hideous barb of his tail slashing to strike at the dragon’s heart.

  “We have to save him,” Ethan shouted, his face fixed toward the spire.

  “Do you know how to work that thing?” Collette asked Rudi, nodding toward the machine gun in his hands.

  “Sure,” Rudi answered. “Point the end with the hole at the bad guys and pull the trigger.”

  Collette shook her head and snatched the gun out of Rudi’s hands. “Pull back the bolt here, like this, to arm it. You release the clip here, like this, and put a new one in here, like this. Aim down and to the right when you start firing—the recoil will push the aim up and to the left with every successive shot. And short bursts! Don’t empty a clip all at once. And stay with me—we don’t want to be changing clips at the same time.”

  She pushed the gun back into Rudi’s hands.

  “Yeah, OK,” Rudi said. “I knew that.”

  Collette turned to Ethan, nodding toward the sword he was gripping in his right hand. “So what do you plan to do with that?”

  “I’m going to cut the power,” Ethan said.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to cut those lines of taint,” Ethan said. “If I can separate that monster from its source of magic, then I think Fafnir will have a chance of stopping them.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Rudi asked.

  “Keep those slimy grey things off of me while I do it,” Ethan said.

  “OK,” Collette said.

  “And one more thing…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve got a sword in one hand and my other arm’s useless…”

  “And?”

  “Could you open the door for me?”

  “This is some rescue,” Rudi grumbled.

  Collette pulled on the door. It swung open easily. Sword in hand, Ethan charged out onto the terrace.

  It was deserted. Ethan glanced to his right past the low terrace wall. The side of the abbey dropped ninety feet below him to a garden space on the rock of the island. The thick fingers of the taint were rising up out of the sands surrounding the island, arcing upward over the stone like a shifting, gelatinous wave of darkness, never touching the walls of the mount until they arced over onto the terrace above.

  A piece of one of his dreams came back to him.

  This was his favorite time. The foundation stone of this place was a focal nexus of karma—a wellspring of peace and joy. The sands surrounding it had been touched by the taint and hovered menacingly about it, but when the tide came in around its base, it cut off the darkness, driving the taint back deep into the sands and letting the stone rest.

  Beyond the sands spread the waters of the English Channel. There was safety, Ethan knew, within his sight and yet impossibly far away.

  The blade of the sword erupted in flame. Ethan yelled incoherently as he charged along the wall, swinging the blade in long, powerful arcs. The blade cut into the taint, severing the strands like stretched elastic, the tendrils snapping away and dissolving with each blow.

  He heard the rattle of a machine gun behind him.

  “Hurry, Ethan!” Collette shouted. “They’re coming!”

  Ethan glanced back toward the spire.

  Figures were falling like drops of water from the Demissie-beast, clawing across the broken roof and dropping back down onto the terrace. The Grey Gentlemen were coming for them.

  “Wadu!” Rudi cried, the MP40 jumping in his hands. “Wadu! Wadu!”

  A line of the Grey Gentlemen fell beneath the hail of bullets, but the flow of the creatures, their dead eyes fixed on the humans on the terrace, seemed endless.

  Ethan’s sword lashed outward again over the wall. The taint snapped with a sick, sticky sound, another set of tendrils evaporating.

  A group of Grey Gentlemen collapsed into dust even as another phalanx stepped forward to take their place.

  “Keep cutting!” Collette shouted. “Rudi! I’m out!”

  Rudi tossed a magazine to Collette, then released another burst into the horde approaching them. “They’re not stopping!”

  “Cut faster!” Collette shouted.

  The waves of grey figures nearly filled the terrace. The rattle of the machine guns was interminable, but Ethan could see that they were losing ground. The Grey Gentlemen had pressed them into the corner of the terrace near the statue. The taint was shifting out of reach from Ethan’s blade.

  There was nowhere left to go.

  “Collette!” Ethan cried.

  She turned to face him.

  “I can’t save him!” Ethan shouted. “I’m so sorry!”

  “No, Ethan,” Collette called as her gaze drifted past the outer wall, “you already have. Look!”

  Ethan turned and gazed out across the flats.

  The sea was coming across the sands.

  “Victor Hugo said that the tides around the mount,” Collette shouted, “move faster than a horse can gallop. They cut off the island from the world—much as Atlantis was once cut off, Ethan. They shield the blessed island.”

  Collette turned back to face the horde, her jaw set as she once again began firing into the encroaching monsters. “Of course, it doesn’t hurt if they have a little help.”

  Ethan set his jaw and raised the sword as he stood between Collette and Rudi. The horde was upon them. Ethan’s blade cut wildly through the air, keeping the Grey Gentlemen away from Rudi and Collette as their guns emptied into the mob on either side of him.

  The waters rushed in a torrent from the channel across the surrounding sands. It was an unnatural tide—as though the waters had been held at bay, then suddenly released. A wall of water was approaching the island at an incredible rate, the foam caps of the leading waves reaching toward the mount.

  The first of the waves crashed over the tentacles of the taint. The embodiment of darkness reacted at once to the waters, writhing and melting like a slug in contact with salt. The waves rushed around the rock of the mount, dissolving the tendrils of darkness, robbing the creature above of its powers and support.

  Ethan glanced up at the spire. The monstrous taint creature quivered uncertainly, trying to back down the spire. Grey figures began dropping away from its form, exploding into clouds as they fell, their grey dust drifting and disappearing in the wind.

  Fafnir struggled to the top of the spire. Ethan could see the weariness and the triumph in the ancient dragon’s countenance. It sprang headlong against the taint creature, knocking it free of the spire and outward. The last of the tendrils of taint from the sands about Mont Saint-Michel were cut off by the raging sea in that instant.

  The hordes of Grey Gentlemen on the terrace exploded quietly into dust, choking the air around them.

  Ethan followed the descent of Fafnir and the creature, running to the low wall of the terrace with Collette and Rudi.

  The Demissie-beast raged as they fell, trailing grey clouds of dust in the arc of their descent, clawing at Fafnir, but the dragon clung fast to the creature. Then, drawing in a deep breath, Fafnir breathed into the creature’s chest.

  The blast erupted just as they were tumbling past the outer wall toward the angry waters below. Fire and grey smoke exploded up the outer wall. Collette, Ethan, and Rudi all leaped back, but when it dawned on them that they were still alive, each peered down the smoke-obscured wall. They could see nothing.

  Ethan leaned over the edge: nothing. He strained, listening for any sound that might tell him the fate of the dragon and the demon he had fought—the demons he had been fighting down through the countless millennia.

  The crashing of the sea against the shores of the mount were all that he heard.

  Ethan sighed, closing his stinging eyes against the smoke.

  Wind blew against his face…the sound of the crashing waves sounded nearer.

  Ethan opened his eyes.

  The smoke parted in a tumbling rush of wind. Soaring straight up the wall was the enormous form of Fafnir. The beating of his wings scattered the thick layer of grey dust from off the terrace. The smoke dispersed in great, rolling waves in the instant gale. Ethan stumbled backward with its force toward the statue at the edge of the courtyard where all this had started, what seemed now to be an eternity before.

  There, at the feet of the statue, Ethan found his camera. Drawing in a coughing breath, he bent over and set down the sword, trading it for the camera—shaking the disgusting powder off its case and blowing the lens clean. He looked up, searching the sky, but could not see the dragon against the sudden appearance of the stars.

  Ethan’s eye was caught by the statue of Saint Michael beside him.

  “He was the commander of the army of God.”

  Ethan turned.

  Collette was walking toward him across the terrace. Her blouse was torn at the shoulder and heavily smudged. She picked up the sword with the cruciform guard with a casual ease in her right hand.

  “Who?” Ethan asked.

  “Michael,” Collette replied, coming to stand with him as she looked up at the statue. “An archangel…a protector.”

  Ethan felt a breeze through his hair. The smoke was clearing from the terrace, blown by an offshore breeze.

  A distant roar echoed around them.

  Ethan and Collette both looked up into the parting clouds. Moonlight shone down through the break in a glorious soft light.

  Fafnir, his wings spread, passed in silhouette across the moon.

  “Hey,” Collette nudged him, “shouldn’t you be filming this?”

  Ethan smiled.

  “No,” he replied. “I want this memory just for myself.”

  Chapter 25

  Homecoming

  “That was quite a stunt you pulled in there,” Collette said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Collette and Ethan watched as the dragon wheeled overhead, dancing around the moon for a time.

  “That act with the sword in the cathedral,” Collette said. “You knew the sword was a memory icon. I saw it flash across your eyes when you took it from the statue. You staged that whole thing so that Benoit would take the sword from you and connect with the memory. Did you expect him to stab you with it, or was that just a bonus?”

  “I thought I might be able to get out of the way,” Ethan shrugged.

  “You did,” Collette smiled. “He would have killed you otherwise. Did you know that fate is actually one of the innate talents of some dragons? I suspect it’s one of yours. I told you I thought you were lucky.”

  The dragon took one final turn over the abbey and then turned northwest, flying across the waters of the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel.

  “So you fulfilled your promise,” Collette said quietly.

  “Yes,” Ethan nodded. “Where do you think he’s going?”

  “Jersey Isle, I hope,” Collette said with a smile.

  “Near Manhattan?” Ethan asked.

  “No! It’s a set of islands in the English Channel. He needs to recover. But I think he can now manage it without our help.”

  “Our help?”

  “Well, there is the soul of a dragon in you,” Collette said with a smile. “And within Rudi…say, where is he?”

  “Probably hacking into my bank account by now,” Ethan said, looking around the terrace. “But if I’m supposed to be a dragon, and Rudi is supposed to be a dragon, and everyone seems to be something…who does that make you?”

  “I thought you knew,” she laughed. “I’m Collette.”

  “Yes, Collette,” Ethan replied. “Collette who carries that sword with remarkable familiarity. I’ve seen you spin a blade like that before…Tsanya.”

  Collette raised her eyebrows.

  “My, you are remembering!” Collette smiled.

  Ethan leaned back against the low wall surrounding the terrace. “So you’re a faerie…from Georgia.”

  “And who are you to say that the gates of Tír na nÓg can’t be outside Atlanta?” Collette asked, fire flashing in her green eyes, her eyebrows raised. “Have you ever actually been to Stone Mountain?”

  “No,” Ethan laughed. “Can’t actually say that I have.”

  “Magical place, that is,” Collette said, then sighed. “But the truth, Ethan, is that we don’t know where to find Tír na nÓg any better than you do. The Seelie that were left behind—those few of us—took the same path that we offered the dragons. Now we need you, all of you, to help us find the way back to Tír na nÓg—to open the gates before it is too late. That’s why I found you. That’s why I arranged to bring you here.”

  Ethan drew in a deep breath. “This was all your doing, then?”

  Collette nodded. “I didn’t know about Sojourner until it was too late. I thought she might be taint-taken. It wasn’t until after she dumped me back at the London Bureau that I figured out whose side she was on. By then I’d lost track of both you and Benoit. I had to use Jonas to find you again.”

  “Farben,” Ethan scoffed. “He led that Demissie creature right back to us.”

  Collette looked away, frowning. “How was I supposed to know his contacts were with the Grey Gentlemen?”

  “Well, that makes two rookie mistakes.”

  “Don’t start with me, Ethan,” Collette sighed. “I’ve had a long day, and I am still heavily armed.”

  Ethan nodded. He gazed back across the water. The dark figure of the dragon had nearly disappeared from sight.

  “What about him?” Ethan asked. “What will happen to Fafnir?”

  “I don’t know,” Collette murmured. “Hopefully he will help us. There’s a war being waged, Ethan.”

  “Someone else said that to me,” Ethan said. “Sojourner Lee.”

  “She’s right,” Collette nodded.

  “She said she would meet us here,” Ethan said, looking around the terrace as though hoping to see her suddenly appear. “Is she gone? Did she give her life up for us?”

  “I don’t think so,” Collette replied. “She is one of the most resourceful creatures I have ever met from the Time Before. It doesn’t seem to be in her nature to die. I think if the Grim Reaper himself came to call on her, he’d blink first. We know she survived the Dweller in the Chunnel—she contacted Lois, after all. Still, she didn’t come, and that’s not like her.”

  The sound of hurried footsteps interrupted them. Ethan and Collette looked back across the terrace.

  Rudi was running toward them.

  “Can we go now?” Rudi asked. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Ethan replied. “And where did you run off to?”

  Rudi pointed at the iPad bag over his shoulder. “Left this by the altar in the church. Thought it might come in handy.”

  “Maybe,” Ethan said with a grimace. “You get any connection on that thing here?”

  “This?” Rudi replied. “Hell, yeah. I can connect anywhere, man. It’s a talent of mine.”

  “Then find me a hospital,” Ethan said.

  “No sweat,” Rudi said, pulling out the iPad. Its glow illuminated his smiling face. “Hey, there’s about fifty messages on here from Farben wanting his iPad back. He says he’s at the hospital in Calais and there’s a substantial reward. Do you think we should collect?”

  “Later. First, we need to find out all we can about Sojourner Lee,” Ethan said, then turned to Collette. “So you think she’s alive?”

  “Somewhere,” Collette said. “Which is why we need to find her.”

  “We?” Ethan asked, surprised.

  “Well, we should probably get that shoulder looked at first,” Collette said. “And, no doubt, we’ll need to file a report with my assignment editor. Fortunately, you still have your camera—not to mention one very impressive sword—we’re going to need that where we’re going.” Collette paused for a moment, then looked back at Ethan. “You know, a CNN reporter and her permanent cameraman could go a lot of places in the world and do a lot of good.”

  “Why, Collette,” Ethan replied, “I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

  The End

  Appendix: "The Old World Has Passed Away…"

  “This is the way the world ends…not with a bang, but with a whisper.”

  — T.S. Elliot

  Quaternarian Cosmology

  The ancients may have had it right after all: the universe is made of four basic elements. That they completely misunderstood these elements is hardly surprising.

  The four classical Babylonian elements were Sky, Sea, Wind, and Earth. These were reinterpreted by the Greeks as Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, with a fifth element in the center called Aether. The Hindus, Tibetans, Buddhists, Chinese, and Japanese all added this fifth element in various forms, calling it some form of space. This was the gate through which both karma and taint were drawn out of the world—and also through which the Seelie passed into their own alternate existence.

 

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