Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson 9)

He turned to greet us, and I could see the hints of the Beauclaire I knew, parts that he’d pulled into his glamour—but he didn’t look like a human. His cheekbones were high and flat beneath eyes like expensive emeralds, clear and deep. Other than his eyes, his coloring came from the sun: his skin would have been the envy of a California bikini enthusiast; his hair, which reached past his shoulders in a thick, straight fall, held all the colors of gold with hints of red. Was he beautiful? I couldn’t tell. He was extraordinary.

“You are just in time,” he said. “I have pushed the last of the humans off the bridge—so I am ready for our little demonstration.”

Goreu huffed a laugh, then turned to us. “He didn’t mean that like it sounded. He encouraged the people who have been working on the bridge to find something else to do. We don’t need to kill people for this demonstration.”

“One of our Council members was convinced we should flood one of the towns—Burbank or Richland,” Uncle Mike said. “It took a while to persuade her that killing that many people would ensure that we’d never get a treaty of any kind with you, and it would play right into the hands of our foes on the Council.”

I shivered, though it wasn’t cold, and walked as close to the edge as I dared. We had a spectacular view, not as scary as the one from on top of the crane the other day, but spectacular. The Lampson crane was to our left, but it was the view of the Columbia and the Cable Bridge that was breathtaking in a different way than it had been from on top of the crane. From the crane, it had looked distant and small. From our current vantage point, it felt like we were standing right on top of it—and it was huge.

Beauclaire raised his hand and said something. It might have been a word, but it sounded bigger than that. It resonated in my chest and in my throat. Below us, under the center of the bridge, the water of the Columbia started to swirl.

Magic, thick and rich and warm as the noonday sun in August, pressed down on me, and I went to my knees. Adam put his hand under my elbow, but he had to wrap his arms around me before I could stand. I breathed like a racehorse, and my face grew hot, then very cold, and still the power moved.

The swirling water started small, but grew until the whole river circled beneath the bridge like traffic negotiating the stupid roundabouts that had been showing up where the four-way stop signs used to be. Gradually, the water moved faster, climbing the banks on the outside edge as the center dropped.

The pressure of the water made the bridge groan, I could hear it from where we stood. Overhead, a helicopter flew in and hovered.

Adam said something that I, consumed by the force of Beauclaire’s magic, missed, his voice just another rumble in my ears and chest.

I heard Goreu’s reply, though it didn’t make much sense to me at the time. “Our helicopter. We called the news agencies about ten minutes ago, but we wanted to make sure this was recorded for the media. We’ll give the footage to the local stations and let them disseminate it. That worked well enough for your killing of the troll.” He looked at me. “She is sensitive to magic.”

Adam grunted rather than answering, and Goreu smiled at him. For a moment, he looked less human to me, too, and I had the feeling that the real Goreu was a lot bigger than his glamour would suggest. But the bridge groaned again, and all my attention returned to the sight before us.

The water on the outside of the whirlpool was level with the bridge deck, much higher than the banks of the river, though Beauclaire’s magic kept all the water where he wanted it. Beyond the whirlpool, the Columbia’s waves grew choppy and white-edged, but the level of the river didn’t appear to be affected.

The whirlpool quit growing, but it continued to speed up and drain the middle to feed the edge until I could see bare ground beneath the bridge. The circle grew until the entire section between the two towers was empty of water. The bridge was shaking under the force of the water that now hit the railed edge before rushing over or under the bridge with twisting force.

Beauclaire spoke another word—and for a moment my eyes wouldn’t focus. When I could see again, there was no more dirt beneath the bridge. There was just . . . nothing, a hole, so deep that, from our perspective, I could not see the bottom.

The fae cannot lie. Beauclaire had told me he could drown cities, but until this moment, I hadn’t really understood what that meant. And this was nowhere near the limits of his power. He might have been able to fake his relaxed stance, but I could feel the magic he channeled to the river and the earth, and there was no end to it.

It took maybe three more minutes, and the bridge gave in to the twisting water, breaking free of its supports and foundations. The noise was tremendous, Uncle Mike’s shook, and I could hear someone’s car alarm go off. For a moment, just after it was ripped from the bank, the bridge held its structure. Then it collapsed, torn apart by the water and by gravity. Some of the bridge dropped into the hole immediately, some of it was carried by the water to bang back into the supports that had held it up. Battered by water and by debris, the supports for the towers slid into the black hole beneath. The water swirled and spat bits of cement, metal, blacktop, and long, snapping cables into the hole until the water ran clean and nothing more fell out.

Beauclaire said another word, a release of some sort, because it was easier for me to breathe again. The hole in the earth closed up, and this time I could watch it happen, the soil building up from the outside and working in until there was nothing but disturbed dirt and rocks where the hole had been.