Dream Five, Chapter Thirty-Five

(Anything in asterisks is meant to be italicized.)

Kenna had been cranky for most of the afternoon so I had put her back down about a half hour before Ryodan, Dani, and Lor arrived. The five of us talked in my favorite corner of the bookstore for a while until she started crying into the monitor.

"Is it true that you can tell the difference between her cries?" Dani asked when I stood up. "I think I read somewhere that you can."

"I usually can," I said, frowning a little as a feeling of dread settled in my stomach. "This one is..." I trailed off when I realized I hadn't heard this one before. As I opened up my *sidhe*-seer senses to determine everything was alright, I also invited the earth to do the same.

Horror dawned on me and I couldn't breathe.

"Mac?" Barrons said as he shot up out of his seat, feeling my horror.

I'd had a bad feeling all day, but I figured it was maternal instinct. My hesitancy to send Kenna away. It was the True Magic. That ability of premonition. I'd gotten it before. Alarm bells were clanging in my head. The really loud ones that signal an impending nuclear meltdown.

"She's not alone!" I managed to whisper as I reached for his hand before sifting us into her nursery. Ryodan appeared next to us a second later, and Lor barreled open the door a few seconds after.

"Put her down," Ryodan softly commanded. "We have no quarrel with you."

"Oh, but I'm afraid you do," a voice said. Whoever was holding Kenna was standing in the shadows and I couldn't see them. The voice was male and light, but in a greasy way. Like balding Hollywood agents who call everyone "babe" or a sketchy used car salesman. I didn't like the laughter I could hear in his voice. "You're the King of the Fae now, Old One."

"What do you want with the child."

"She's my hostage," the voice said casually, as if discussing the weather.

"Show yourself," I demanded, my spear in hand.

The voice chuckled before a man with dark curly hair, winged sandals, and a crisp white tunic with gold detailing stepped into the light.

"Return the child, Hermes," Ryodan said. "Don't make me ask again."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," he said with a shake of his head. "You know what Zeus is like when he's displeased."

That's when it hit me. This was Hermes. The actual *Hermes*, mythological messenger of the Greek gods. The old gods weren't just from Ireland. And if a Greek one was here...well, there were a lot of pantheons. Hindu, Egyptian, Norse, Greek, Russian, Roman, Aztec, Mayan to name a few. Each had powerful players. The Fae supposedly killed most of them, but not all. Barrons and Ryodan once hypothesized that there were a few thousand left. Humans used to worship them. Then the Fae arrived and turned humanity against what used to be benevolent gods. The Song of Making had awoken them.

And they wanted revenge.

"What does Zeus want with my daughter?" I asked. And where was Dani?

"What all of us want, O Little Queen," he mocked. "Revenge on the Fae."

"She's just a baby," I said, trying to keep the pleading edge out of my voice. "Leave her out of this. She isn't even Fae, she's human."

"You think we continue to care for humans?" he hissed.

The Fae had impersonated some of the old Irish gods, making humanity think the gods had turned on them so humanity reacted in kind. They must have done it with the other pantheons, too. It had taken a full blast of Dani's infant Hunter powers to kill one of them. Ryodan told us that eight members of the Nine had launched themselves at him but he had grown too powerful and even they hadn't been able to take him down.

Kenna was still crying and I could identify her cry now: fear.

"She's innocent," I said, Barrons feeding me information through our connection, telling me to stall.

"Sins of the mother," he said with a shrug.

"Take me," I told him. His tone made it sound like he wasn't planning on sticking around much longer. There was an atavistic rattle in Barrons's chest as he kept his predatory gaze fixed on Hermes.

"Say again?" the god said as his eyes stopped swiveling from face to face to land fully on me; I'd caught his attention. Good.

"Spare my baby," I told him as I sifted my spear away to my bed in the next room and held up both of my hands. "Spare my daughter and take me instead. Bring me to Zeus. Perhaps he and I can come to an agreement." I had slowly begun to step forward. Some movement behind him had caught my eye. "I am MacKayla Evelina Lane-O'Connor, Wielder of the Spear of Destiny, Defeater of the Sinsar Dubh, Sole Possessor of the True Magic, Queen of the Light and Dark Courts of Faery and I am a much more valuable hostage than an innocent baby. Return her to her crib and I will willingly go with you."

I watched him think and loosen his grip on Kenna. As soon as he had, there was a gust of wind and he was looking down at his empty arms. *Sidhe*-seer and maternal instincts kicked in and I sifted the spear back into my hand as I launched myself at him, driving it into his neck. His blood ran gold as I yanked the spear out before stabbing it down through his chest and into his heart. Supposing gods have hearts and their anatomy is similar to humans. My knees pressed down on his arms as he tried to fight me, but he was rapidly weakening. I yanked out my spear and bent down to his ear.

"No one lays a hand on my daughter," I whispered, "and lives to tell." For good measure, I slit his throat and he died. The room was silent as gold blood pumped from his wounds. I cut open his tunic and sifted a knife into my hand so I could carve a message into his skin: DON'T TOUCH MY BABY. I signed it, writing, FAE QUEEN.

I had to leave him somewhere he'd be found, where the messenger of the gods would serve his purpose one last time. Supposing that was actually enough to kill him. The knife dully thumped to the floor and I holstered my spear before I sifted the two of us all the way to Athens, Greece.

Specifically the middle of the Parthenon.

It took some effort, but the True Magic did as I asked and tied him suspended between two columns. If the Greek gods had returned to earth, my guess is they returned to Mt. Olympus, as in the actual and real earthly mountain. I had just defiled what was left of the biggest and grandest temple ever built to their goddess of war. They'd get the message. I sifted back to Kenna's nursery when I was done. It took all of two minutes.

Once I'd caught my breath, I turned around. Dani, Ryodan, and Kenna were nowhere to be seen, but Lor and Barrons were still standing there.

"Where did you take him?" Barrons asked softly as I summoned a towel and began to wipe myself off.

"Greece," I said casually. "Strung him up between two columns of the Parthenon."

"Athena's going to be pissed when she sees you defiled her temple," Lor told me with a bit of a smile. What I had done would be considered an act of war. He was ready to fight it.

"Good. Where's Kenna?" I demanded.

"Chester's," Barrons said. He was studying me. Usually, he likes it when I unleash the monster. There's a certain glimmer in his eye. Instead, that glimmer was battling with something that almost looked like...disapproval.

"Let's go." I sifted the towel away before holding my hands out to both of them.