I hit the barrier again. This time I was prepared for Gethin's countershot and rolled out of the way before it even left his hand. It hit the wall behind me, and Keeva screamed. The power from Gethin's bolt had latched on to her spell. It went wild. She was spinning out of control, her face contorting in pain. I watched helplessly as she spun faster and faster in the air. With a burst of electric blue fire, she vanished from sight.

I screamed for her. No answer came. My senses trembled with the power of the shield capping the parade ground. I could feel her essence permeating it, but I could not feel her physical presence anywhere. In the sudden quiet, I heard laughter. I turned back to the pentagram. Pure joy lit Gethin's face as he raised the stone knife over Corcan's heart.

"No!" Murdock shouted.

I shouted, too, but too late. He fired his gun. The barrier burst into a fury of white light as it absorbed the bullet, folding in at the point of impact. The bullet funneled inward. Just when I thought it would stop, it grazed Gethin's arm as he brought it down. He recoiled and dropped the knife. The funnel of light reversed itself, bouncing back to where the barrier had been.

"Get down!" I yelled to Murdock. He either didn't hear me or didn't understand. The funnel flattened out at me barrier and exploded outward. It took him in me shoulder and flung him off the ground. He sailed limply through the air and landed with a sickening mud. His body tumbled out of sight into the entrance passageway.

Gethin dropped to his knees. The bullet had only grazed him, but clearly it had stunned him a little. As he stretched one hand out for the fallen knife, he rested the other on the ground. Time moved slowly for me as I stared at that hand. The one steadfast rule of any protection barrier around a pentagram is that only the one who casts it can break it. I stared at his hand, fully halfway outside the invisible barrier. I flung my dagger. He screamed as it pierced him between the knuckles, pinning his hand to the ground. Before he could react, I grabbed the hilt of the dagger and yanked him the rest of the way out of the pentagram. The barrier dissipated immediately.

Gethin screamed and launched himself on me. His fist connected with my cheekbone and knocked me to the edge of senselessness. He straddled me and flailed away as I tried to block the blows with my arms. I swung at him with the dagger. He deflected it, and it flew from my hand. He hit me again.

As he brought his fist up for another blow, he paused and looked up. Blood was running into my eyes, but I saw lights in the sky above us, flickers of blue and green, yellow and pink. They were like fireworks, only moving with a purpose. Gethin pulled back onto his feet and shot bolfs of white light upward from his palms. The lights swirled and danced away from it, but kept coming.

I shook my head to clear it. I could hear chanting.

The sounds resolved into words, a phrase repeated over and over. Ny a wrug agas dhestrewy jy.

It wasn't a chant. It was a war cry. We will destroy you.

I laughed in disbelief. It was Cornish. The People had arrived. By the hundreds, flits spiraled into the parade ground screaming for all they were worth. The Power of their dance surrounded me, filling my body with essence, like the day Stinkwort had performed the sun greeting with me. Only this time it was off the scale. The black mass in my head receded. I dragged myself to my feet. The block was gone. I could tap my essence. All of it. I had my ability back. I picked up my dagger and called out to Gethin. I pointed my dagger at him. "Hey, asshole. Know what happens when you use a knife for a wand? It hurts like hell." Energy coursed down my arm and shot out the blade. It hit him in the head, and he collapsed. The flits swarmed all over him. Gethin struggled and screamed under a fury of color. The flits were screaming right back at him. One broke away and flew toward me, his sword held aloft.

Stinkwort hung in front of me, his body bathed in blood. The flush of battle euphoria suffused his face. "I said we'd get the bastard!"

"You must have called in every clan in the country."

He fluttered back. "Near enough. You okay?"

"It'll hurt more in the morning."

Joe gave me a great big grin. "It always does. I have to stop them before they kill him."

"What are you going to do with him?"

His grin broadened into that impossible smile. "He's a fairy now. We're going to give him fairy justice." With that, he shouted in Cornish, and every single flit vanished. Gethin had disappeared, too. They had taken him. Only one place dispensed fairy justice: Tara, where Maeve ruled with a cold hand.

Corcan had not moved. I bent at his side to check for a pulse. It felt faint, but it was there. I turned his head toward me. Gethin's knife had nicked his cheekbone when it fell. A bead of blood trembled at the edge of the cut. As if in slow motion, it detached itself and dripped. Up. Startled, I stepped back. Before what that meant occurred to me, the droplet floated out of my reach.

It gathered speed as it rose. I watched helplessly as it shot up to the seawall. The sea had not fallen back. The water shimmered where the blood made contact, and a black and sinuous crack appeared. It bulged, turning blacker, and something stepped through. A mass of gray darkness coiled in the air and descended. It touched the ground on the other side of the pentagram and resolved into a mass of quivering flesh. An arm uncoiled, thick and greenly scaled, and then a head no more than a lump attached at the shoulder, with a single bulbous eye and a mass of teeth. I'd seen pictures that I thought were nightmare exaggerations. This was no exaggeration. The Fomorian unfurled, a sickly gray torso supported by thick, black stumps for legs. It smelled like the rot of a thousand fish left in the sun.

It swiveled its body around until its eye found Corcan. It shambled a few steps toward him, and I raised my dagger.

"Back off." I have no idea if it understood me, but it stopped. Its eye rotated up. My body shields activated, the real ones, covering my entire body in a cushion of protection. It felt good to have them back, but I wasn't too thrilled at the cause.

It howled and lifted an arm. A sword appeared, a great length of jagged ebony iron. I couldn't tell whether it had it when it fell or had just conjured it from somewhere. It hefted the sword and eyed my dagger warily. While I held its attention, I used my free hand to work a protection spell over Corcan.

The thing raised its blade and swung at Corcan. In a shower of green sparks, it bounced off the barrier I had made. My protection spell evaporated like a mist. I shot a bolt of energy at the ground, and the Fomorian leaped back. I stepped between it and Corcan and recast the protection.

The blade swung toward me. Dodging away, I clawed my left hand at the air. White lightning crackled from my fingertips. It caught the creature in the chest, and it let loose an unearthly howl. The eye began to glow. My limbs suddenly grew heavy. I could feel some kind of spell draping over me. I tried to shake it off, but I didn't understand how it worked. I crumpled down. The Fomorian came toward me, sword raised. My hands were anchored to the ground. A mistake. I waited until it was ready to bring the sword down, and I tapped into the essence of the earth around me. The ground between us erupted in a shower of mud. The thing lurched sideways, its sword striking my leg with a glancing blow. Red pain lanced through my knee.

I scrambled toward the fallen thing and plunged my dagger into its thigh. It screamed again. A fierce heat blistered up my arm. I jerked the dagger out and fired bolts of pure energy at it The Fomorian flailed wildly, scrabbling away. It flung the blade at me. My shields absorbed the impact, but the power of the thing knocked me off my feet again. I landed hard on my side and felt ribs crack. Curling into the pain, I crawled away. It thrust a hand out and more heat blazed across my body. I smelled a nasty burning odor and realized my hair was on fire. I rolled again, grunting against the pain in my side as I batted at the flames.