The End of Everything

Part 1

The End of Everything is the first of two short stories set before Book 1 of the Shadow series, Bloody Fairies. I wrote this when I was already seven or eight books deep into the Shadow story, because what happens here, at the Bitter Tower, has such a profound effect on everything that is to follow: it is the site of the Muse Nations’ desperate struggle to stem the tide of a vampire army into Shadow, long before they even knew what they were really fighting for.

I hope you enjoy part 1!

They swept in from The Darkness by the hundreds. Maybe thousands. She couldn’t tell, couldn’t count, could barely see. She could not set foot beyond that last gate. It was forbidden. She and her unit had to fight teetering on the edge of nothing, dizzying falls into a seething ocean to the right and left, the only escape down the narrow rocky path at their backs.

She’d never seen this many vampires. They’d come out of nowhere, red eyes and pale skin glowing in the night, and taken the last gate before the alarm even tolled.

Flower ducked a fist that would have sent her flying over the cliff, and swung her broadsword around in a vicious blow that toppled the vampire at the knees. The motion sent her off balance. She rolled, came to her feet and drove her sword up through the ribs of a vampire so tall he blocked out the moon. The creature exploded in a fountain of blood. Way past caring about trifles like that, splattered red, she swung her sword wide, careless, pretty damn sure she’d hit someone undead along the way.

Franco had fallen minutes ago. Bettany screamed three feet away and disappeared under the enemy wave, but her piercing death call just merged in the hubbub of roars, of swords, of the ocean crashing far below. It never occurred to Flower that she, too, might die; she’d been fighting too long now. She punched a vampire in the teeth and followed with her sword, and then Harald had her arm, pulling her out of the fighting, yelling something she couldn’t hear over the roaring in her ears.

“What?” Flower ducked down by the crumbled remnants of a wall, pulling him closer to hear better.

“We can’t hold the tower!” Harald yelled.

“Of course we can hold the tower, we’ve held it for centuries!”

As if to punctuate her words, the last tower burst into flames behind him, bathing the fighting in dreadful red.

Flower grit her teeth. There’d be hell to pay when the king found out.

“We need reinforcements!” Harald yelled. “We’ll fall back to the second tower, but we can’t hold it long. Go! Get the Champion!” He shoved her.

Flower stumbled, righted herself, and ran from the jumping red shadows, her feet finding a sure path. She knew every step of the Impasse, knew which rocks to avoid, and how not to fall off the edge. She’d been here for decades, walked this path every night, but never before had to run for the lives of her unit. The vampires had never dared come this close, not once. Here she could run too fast and not die, look up in dread to find the second tower in flames too, and dart through the narrow space between the forbidding, towering spikes of the first gate, its two halves just offset enough to allow one person passage through, or one person to hold the line. The skeletal branches of the lone dead tree rose before her, bathed red with firelight, red with the rising full moon, red in the shadows of the Bitter Tower, the final sentinel that watched over the Impasse, implacable, eternal.

Flower experienced a cold dart of fear, something almost – almost – alien after all these decades of defending the border, as though the tower might fall like the others. She brushed it off. It could not. She’d reach the tower and raise the alarm and the vampires would be beaten back once again and tomorrow they’d talk of their deeds and the king-

A hand grasped her shoulder from the darkness. Flower yelped and skidded to a halt. She raised her sword, then lowered it at once, relief flooding her blood so hard she felt dizzy at the low growl of the Champion’s voice.

“Flower, report.”

Flower opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out. She gripped the Champion’s sleeve. His face and hair, streaked red with blood, turned him into a stranger in the moonlight. She’d known Valentin for nearly three hundred years, and certainly the Champion inspired respect, awe, perhaps a little fear in all the muses, but never...

“Have they reached this far?” She wouldn’t let herself finish the thought. Her words sounded high and uncertain against the distant cacophony of war. “When were you attacked? The blood-”

“I said report.” His eyes looked right through her, curiously blank tonight, like murderous stone. “How many are attacking?”

“Hundreds,” she said. “Maybe thousands. The last two towers are on fire and the gates destroyed. I was sent to find you. They want to fall back. We’ve already lost half our people.”

“No.” The Champion tightened his grip on her shoulder.

She winced in pain, but did not let it show. One did not show weakness before their General.

“Go,” he said. “Find the king. Tell him we need reinforcements.”

Flower gave one sharp nod and broke free of that grip, trying not to think about how easy it would be for the Champion to kill any muse warrior without breaking a sweat. What a strange thought to have. He strode through the gate, and she breathed a little easier. He could hold off the vampires alone if need be.

Part 2 coming soon