Harley Merlin 4: Harley Merlin and the First Ritual

by Forrest, Bella

  “Why don’t they write that kind of thing in the damn spell?” I snapped, my heart pounding. “All it’d take is a little footnote to say, ‘Oh, and by the way, this may cause a huge explosion that might destroy things nearby.’ Seriously, is that so hard to do?” I looked at the shelves around the room, to see if anything had been ruined or damaged. Fortunately, everything seemed to be intact. The power surge appeared to have affected the forcefield and nothing else.

  “Hey, don’t worry,” Wade murmured. “The Bestiary took care of it and, even if it had failed, we’ve got the Aquarium as backup.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve really got to stop doing dangerous crap like this.”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth.” He peered at the cast-iron pot. “Did it work?”

  I put my hand into the bowl. The only thing that remained was my Esprit. No gunk, no eyes, no sticky stuff, just my Esprit. I turned my Esprit over in my hands. The gemstones that linked to Earth and Air glinted in the light, brimming with the same glow as the others.

  At first, I wasn’t sure if it was just a trick of the light, but the diamond and the emerald appeared darker than before. A heart of dark gray marred the previously perfect diamond, giving it a silvery sheen, while the emerald had deepened to an almost bottle-green shade. Slipping the Esprit back onto my hand, I couldn’t help wondering if this was a bad omen. The gems had darkened; did that mean I was now leaning more toward the Dark side of things? Had I used the Dark side of me to perform the spell, giving that affinity the advantage? It worried me, though I didn’t want to say anything to Wade.

  I knew that being of Darkness didn’t make me an inherently evil person or anything, but I felt uneasy about leaning that way. Darkness meant destruction, a lot of the time, and if I broke the Suppressor by force, using that sort of destruction, then what would it mean for me in the long run? Would I become a destructive force with unchecked power? Katherine, eat your heart out. I didn’t like the prospect of that one bit. I needed the two to be in balance if I was going to have any control over my abilities.

  To be honest, it planted a seed of doubt in my head about breaking the Suppressor, considering what it might mean for me. I had a tough enough time trying to control my suppressed powers—what the heck would I be like if they were allowed to run wild? They might take over, change me into something monstrous.

  “Is everything back to normal?” Wade asked. He looked impatient.

  “I think so.”

  He frowned. “Have they changed color?”

  “I think it’s just this light, making them look a bit weird. Or it might be that they’re new stones—they looked a lot older than the previous ones.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I hid my hand from him. “Uh… not entirely. They might’ve gotten a bit darker, too. Now, come on—we should find Alton and tell him what we found out about the Children of Chaos and their turf. I don’t know if it’ll help, since there wasn’t much to go on, but it might. Plus, we should also explain why the forcefield almost disappeared—he’s not going to be happy about that.”

  “You’re sure you’re okay? That was a lot of power you just used.”

  “I’m fine, honestly,” I replied. As exasperated as I was, my heart fluttered at Wade’s concern. “And thanks for diving on me again. If we keep doing this, I’ll need to get head-to-toe padding.”

  He smiled. “Don’t mention it.”

  With that, we headed out of the Luis Paoletti Room and made our way downstairs, walking toward Alton’s office. The halls were weirdly quiet. If it had been nighttime, I’d have understood it, but this didn’t make any sense. There should have been people everywhere.

  “Does it seem a little quiet to you?” I whispered.

  Wade nodded. “I was just about to say that.”

  I froze, grabbing Wade’s arm and pulling him back as a shadow emerged up ahead. It loomed in the doorway that connected this hallway to the next. Hunched and snorting, it stood over seven feet, with bulging muscles and hooves that clipped on the marble floor. Two enormous horns bent out of its head, sharpened to a point. Its cow-like ears flicked back and forward angrily, as though listening for us, while two dark, beady eyes stared down the corridor in our direction.

  “It’s a minotaur,” I hissed.

  Wade shot me a look. “I can see that.”

  “Shouldn’t it be in the Bestiary?”

  “It must have escaped.”

  My heart sank as I realized what must have happened. My mishap with the power surge had likely damaged the integrity of the Bestiary, just for a couple of minutes. Clearly, that was long enough to let a minotaur out of its box. Alton was going to be really mad at me now.

  “You take the left side; I’ll take the right side,” Wade said, bringing up his hands. I nodded and lifted my own palms, urging Fire into them.

  The minotaur snorted and scraped its hooves across the floor. It had barely moved a yard when the first fireball struck it in the chest, stopping the creature in its tracks. Lifting its head, it let out a terrifying roar and pounded the injured spot with its fists. We hurtled a barrage of fireballs toward the beast and hit it again and again. With every impact, it roared louder, the sparks from the fireballs drifting up toward its face.

  “Do you have a Mason jar on you?” I asked frantically, trying to keep up the artillery.

  Wade shook his head. “I’m not Tobe; I don’t have jars stuffed in my jacket twenty-four-seven. This jacket doesn’t even have real pockets. Come on, we need to lead it back toward the Bestiary.”

  Switching to my Telekinesis, I sent out a lasso and wrapped it around the beast’s neck. It struggled against me, but I held fast, pushing my power out. The creature was forced to stagger backward. Meanwhile, Wade continued in his fiery onslaught, the minotaur looking around in apparent panic as it tried to escape.

  Two more figures appeared behind the beast. Astrid and Garrett had arrived, and they had the tools we needed to capture this thing. As they set to work with the green stones and the Mason jar, Wade and I kept up the distraction, keeping the minotaur’s focus on us. If it spotted Astrid and Garrett, there was no telling what it might do. We’d riled it up pretty good.

  Keeping the lasso around its neck, I used my left hand to shoot a bristling fireball at the beast. The sparking orb hit it straight in the forehead. It let out an almighty groan before tumbling to its knees, its head straining against the Telekinesis as I kept it on a tight leash. As it strained and roared, the bright green ropes shot up from the stones and crisscrossed over the beast’s muscular back, pulling it down to the ground, where it finally lay still. Astrid skidded the Mason jar in front of the creature. The minotaur turned into black smoke as it was sucked into the glassware. She slammed the lid on.

  “Nice job!” Astrid called to us.

  “Yeah—nice of you to show up,” Garrett added. “We could use some help in the Bestiary if you aren’t too busy.” Sarcasm dripped from his words.

  I frowned. “Why—what’s going on?”

  “You’ll see,” Garrett replied.

  The four of us hurried through the hallways toward the Bestiary, the Mason jar safely nestled in Astrid’s arms. The corridors were empty of people—even the guards had disappeared. It made for a worrying sight. However, that was nothing compared to what awaited us in the Bestiary. My eyes flew wide as we threw open the huge double doors and witnessed the chaos beyond. Tobe was running around, whipping out jars as he tried to wrangle a mass of smaller creatures back into their cages. Most of the coven seemed to be here, too, helping get all the Purge beasts back behind charmed walls.

  “What happened here?” I asked, fearing the answer.

  “I cannot say for sure,” Tobe replied, in the middle of hurling a small, toady-looking thing back into its box. “A large number of the creatures escaped at once.”

  My gaze settled on one box in particular, which was now empty. “Where’s Quetzi?”

  Tobe followed my line of sigh
t. “No… That cannot be...”

  “Where is he, Tobe?” My voice came out like a squeak. If Quetzi had escaped, then we were in a whole heap of trouble.

  “I don’t know,” Tobe murmured in disbelief. “His box must have opened when the Bestiary faltered, and he used the ensuing mayhem to escape.” He sank down on the edge of one of the glass boxes, a look of despair in his amber eyes.

  Panic cut through me like a knife. This was all my fault. I’d fixed my Esprit, but at what cost? The Bestiary had failed because of me, and now the Purge beasts were everywhere. All the additional security personnel were running around, trying to capture the loose creatures from all across the globe. Big ones, small ones, calm ones, angry ones…

  “The Ibong Adarna,” Wade said, looking worried.

  Tobe nodded. “You could be right, Wade. She hasn’t come this way, but she may be loose in the halls at the back. I haven’t seen anyone come out of there in a while.”

  “Right about what?” I asked.

  “If the singing bird has found a way to free herself, then we are doomed,” Tobe explained. “She will put us to sleep and kill us before we have the opportunity to restore her to her box.”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Wade said.

  “Then you will need these.” Tobe lifted his wing of endless wonders and took out a small box. He handed it to Wade, who removed four balls of dark red wax from inside.

  Wade gave two to me and shot me a challenging smile. “Come on, Merlin—you’re with me. Put those in your ears; you’re going to need them.”

  “Why?”

  “If you hear the song of the Ibong Adarna, you’ll be asleep before you can so much as mutter the capture spell.”

  “You think she’s managed to get free?”

  “That’s what we’re about to find out.” After grabbing a Mason jar from the side, he reached out and, unexpectedly, took my hand. With a sharp jolt that was anything but romantic, he yanked me down the central aisle of the Bestiary, leading me into the darker recesses I’d never visited before.

  As we sprinted through the main chamber, I looked around for Jacob, wondering where he was. With so many creatures on the loose, I hoped he was safe. We pressed farther and farther back, moving down arched corridors where people were chasing Purge beasts. Eventually, we reached a part of the Bestiary where everything had fallen silent. The distant shouts of the others had become nothing more than a muffled echo. Stepping through into a cavernous hall, the walls gilded and carved with intricate designs that spoke of ancient beings and held statues of various creatures that I knew from old legends, my mouth fell open. People lay all across the floor, apparently asleep.

  A beautiful bird perched on the chandelier in the middle of the room’s domed ceiling, ruffling its exquisite feathers. It reminded me of a peacock blended with a phoenix, with a long tail of flowing feathers in every shade of the rainbow, ending in fluffy wisps tinged with white. A curled tuft swept back from its elegant face, its sharp beak menacing in the low light, as vast talons gripped the brass edges of the fixture, jangling the crystals.

  It turned its head toward us, before opening out its majestic wings and soaring down to the floor. Evidently, it had no reason to fear humans, nor did it know we had balls of wax stuffed in our ears. Folding its wings back, it stalked toward us like a feathered dinosaur.

  It paused a short distance away and opened its beak. Part of me desperately wanted to hear this beautiful, fabled song, but I knew that if I tried to listen, I’d end up asleep on the floor. Its long neck vibrated and trilled as the song poured out of its mouth, but neither Wade nor I could hear a note. Instead, we moved slowly toward it.

  Once we were close enough, Wade passed me the green stones. He’d trained me on how to do this, so I hoped I could get it right. Tiptoeing closer, I slid the stones in a circle around the magnificent bird, who seemed so invested in her song that she had barely noticed us moving around her. I almost felt sorry for her. A creature like this shouldn’t have to live in a cage. Then again, I didn’t know the extent of what she’d done, out there in the world. One thing was for sure; she was more dangerous than she looked.

  As I spoke the words of the capturing spell, drawing them out of my memory, the green ropes shot out and lashed themselves over the bird’s sleek back. The creature’s expression turned to one of confusion, her wings thrashing wildly against the ropes. For the first time, watching a capture like this broke my heart. I couldn’t hear her, but I could sense her panic and distress. She didn’t want to go back in the cage, but there was nothing else we could do. I’m sorry…

  Wade placed the Mason jar in front of the bird, and her body swirled into black smoke as she was drawn into the glass center. As soon as the lid was closed, he removed the wax from his ears and cast me a smile. I took the plugs out of mine, too.

  “Nice job, Merlin,” he said.

  “Yeah… thanks.” My heart wasn’t in it. I had a feeling that the Ibong Adarna’s beautiful face, crushed under the strain of the ropes, would haunt me for a while. It was easy to capture the ugly or brutish-looking Purge beasts, but I’d forgotten that there were other creatures too—stunning, majestic beings—who suffered the same fate.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “It just seems like a shame.”

  “This bird could kill you in a heartbeat if it wanted to. I know it can be tough sometimes, but we have to do this in order to keep ourselves and the humans safe.”

  “I know, I’m just being silly.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think you’re being silly. I think you’re being compassionate. I used to feel the way you’re feeling from time to time, but once you learn what these beasts can really do, it changes your mind.”

  Now, this is the reason I like you, Wade Crowley.

  True, he could be a total jerk sometimes, and there were moments where I wanted to wring his neck. But when we shared a moment like this, all of that went away. I was reminded how intelligent and caring he could be… and that was sexier than anything.

  Now, if only there was a singing bird who could make a certain man fall in love with me…

  Twelve

  Astrid

  “If the California Mage Council finds out about this, it’ll be my head on the chopping block,” Alton muttered as he grabbed three foxlike beings, avoiding the sparks of fire that shot up from their tails. They were Chinese Foxes, by my recollection—well-known polymorphs who tricked people into thinking they were old men or lost children. I’d read a few chapters about them a while ago.

  The clean-up was going well, with only a few errant creatures to retrieve. The big ones had long been returned to their glass boxes, but the smaller ones were cunning and evasive, able to hide in all the available nooks and crannies. I myself was dealing with a particularly irate leprechaun. He kept trying to distract me, but if I looked away for even a second, he would be out of my hands and up to untold mischief. I shoved him in one of the boxes and slammed the door before he could evaporate into thin air.

  “Which part of it?” I asked, tension still thick between us. His points had been valid in our former argument, but so had mine—a fact he would hopefully appreciate, or at least acknowledge, someday. Truthfully, had it not been the entire coven’s safety at stake with all of these creatures darting around like maniacs, I would’ve made myself scarce. Cowardly, perhaps, but I didn’t have any taste for confrontation, especially not with my father.

  As it happened, my services were called upon, as Smartie was exceptional at picking up the trace trails of these Purge beasts and tracking the remaining renegades throughout the building. Unfortunately, that ability didn’t reach to the more ancient creatures, whose Purge trails had vanished thousands of years ago. Quetzi happened to be one such ancient beastie. I would rather have faced the minotaur again than have to fend off the mighty Quetzalcoatl and his rare prowess.

  “I don’t need your sass, Astrid,” Alton replied sternly. “I mean all of it. Quetzi goi
ng missing is catastrophic, although I suppose this debacle with the Bestiary could have turned out a lot worse. Still, how he managed to cause so much damage and get out is beyond me.”

  “We’re talking about the same creature, aren’t we? Ancient being of enormous meteorological power, used to be worshiped as an Aztec god? He’s had a long time to think about this.”

  “But why strike now?”

  It was the very question I’d been pondering, and so had probably everyone else. From a practical perspective, there was a lot going on, and maybe Quetzi had used the furor to seize his moment. Although that still left the why. Unless he wanted to teach Katherine a lesson of his own and had decided that we weren’t doing enough for the cause. But then, why would he act alone like this? Why wouldn’t he have found a way to request our assistance, or offered his help in our fight against her—tapped it out in Morse code on the side of the box or something, or gotten Tobe to decipher for him? I knew beasts like him could be extraordinarily proud, but he wasn’t foolish—he would know that there was strength in numbers, no matter how fearsome he was by himself.

  “I don’t know,” was all I could say, which perplexed me. I usually had more answers than this.

  Alton leaned against the box where he’d placed the Chinese Foxes and ran a hand through his hair. “It will take more than an AI to figure out that creature’s thoughts.”

  I shrugged. “No matter what Quetzi has done, we need to find him before he gets us into even more trouble. We can’t just let him slither free and cause this kind of chaos out in the human world.”

  “No… no, we can’t.” He looked to the rest of the Rag Team, who were all busy searching every corner for missing beasts. Raffe seemed to have a knack for it, his djinn giving him an affinity with these Purge beasts. The djinn wasn’t exactly the same kind of monster, but they were both made of Chaos. At that very moment, he lifted two brownies up by their legs and hurled them into their glass box with a satisfied flourish.

  “Everything okay, Alton?” Wade asked, his arm wedged behind a bookcase.