The Lily Harper 8 Book Boxed Set

by HP Mallory

  When she arose, her nether parts were glistening with the juices I aroused in her. With the expert intent of a blacksmith forging a new blade, she guided my member inside her… at last. The impact of entering her, never mind that she was the only woman I cared about so deeply, nearly relegated me to the former weakened state Alaire just resurrected me from. She growled in frustration and her legs once more locked around my waist as her hands grasped the back of my neck.

  “Now,” she groaned, her voice suddenly so low that I feared Donnchadh was closer than a few moments away. “I need you, all of you…”

  I took her and she surrendered to me with the enduring passion of a final goodbye. I felt like I was setting off for war, one that I would never return from. But I would return, I promised myself. I would return to rescue my lover from the likes of Alaire. I could only hope it would not take me long.

  Her growls and cries became more primitive and less coherent and I was no different in that respect. I tried my best to delay the inevitable moment we were rapidly approaching but Lily refused to be denied. For her, there could be no later. A loud, animalistic roar erupted from her throat when we finally climaxed in concert. It was the sweetest expression of female satisfaction I ever heard.

  As her exhausted body slumped against mine, finally spent from all that we shared with each other, I promised my Lily as solemn an oath as any I had ever contracted before.

  Ah will come back fer ye, Besom, come what may. Neither pain nor threat o’ death could ever keep meh from ye, the only woman for meh. For Ah love ye, Lily Harper.

  ***

  Alaire returned just as Lily pushed herself off me. I had no doubt that we had ravaged one another for the full twenty minutes we were allotted, although it felt like no more than twenty seconds. And now we faced a separation that would seem like an eternity.

  But eternity it would not be. As God was my witness.

  This time, Alaire was not alone but flanked by two of his desiccated Watchers along with an ogre who was carrying my sword. He took one look at Lily and me with our disheveled hair and sweaty, red faces and Alaire’s confident smirk instantly disappeared, replaced by a hard, flat line. It warmed my heart to see him so obviously displeased.

  “It is a very good thing, Black, that I am not, by nature, a jealous man,” he said with a voice as flat as his hips. He snapped his fingers and one of the Watchers approached me, obediently unlocking my restraints and releasing me. I rubbed my hands together for the first time since being captured.

  Alaire snapped his fingers again, making the Watchers jerk to attention. “As time is a small luxury, my barbarian acquaintance, these fine fellows will escort you to my Maserati waiting outside. It will transport you across the desert that surrounds the inner city of Dis. You shall be safely deposited on the outskirts of your precious Dark Wood.”

  I permitted myself a small smile. “Come now, Alaire. We both moost agree that naught was ever precious aboot the Dark Wood, not even in the best o’ times.”

  I stood up, half expecting my legs to collapse under the burden of my weight. But Alaire’s magic was good. My legs held firm and my stance was balanced. Nodding at my escort, I walked toward the door. The Watchers, the ogre and Alaire followed close behind me. So did my Lily.

  At the doorway, I stopped, and my heart seemed like it was ready to burst in my chest. I turned to face the woman who had so surely stolen my heart and I nearly swayed under the weight of her sadness. Alaire glared at me in obvious annoyance but I simply ignored his hateful, suspicious eyes.

  I took a deep breath, raised my head and spoke in the old language: “I love you, Lily Harper. May the fibers of strength run through you and bless you with victory over your enemies.” Whether she understood my words or not, I did not know.

  “Tallis,” she sobbed.

  I looked down and closed my eyes. I had said my piece. Now I was ready to face my next round of punishment. Punishment because I could never trust Alaire’s word. Being safely delivered to the Dark Wood was certainly not part of my destiny. I plodded onward, pushing my weary feet through the tar of my bleak desperation and melancholy.

  There was nothing more I could do for Lily, not here and now. Furthermore, I owed it entirely to her good grace, quick wits and strength of character that I now walked out of this place as a free man. To honor her sacrifice, I intended to leave, regroup, and devise a plan that would surely secure her freedom. But I was currently far from feeling up to the task. It would require more than a mere human to defeat Alaire. And on that point, I was stuck.

  This plan would require time and clear thinking. I was pleased to know that Donnchadh was within Lily because he would ensure her survival. But it was Alaire’s desire for my Lily that had me mostly concerned. I did not know how she could avoid his advances. For all I knew, perhaps had not been able to avoid them since she had been returned to herself. It was a subject I chose not to ponder as it interfered with my ability to plot.

  I could hear my besom sobbing as I walked out of the dungeon, down myriad hallways of what was once my castle. Her whimpers haunted my mind like restless ghosts, urging me to take my vengeance sooner rather than later.

  True to Alaire’s word, there was a vehicle awaiting me at the main gate. The Furies and more Watchers escorted the vehicle and patrolled the bridge that connected the castle to the mainland. I could feel every one of their eyes tracking me as I walked out to the open passenger door. The ogre strode ahead of me, placing my sword in the rear of the vehicle, as carefully as one might handle freshly spun glass.

  Before climbing into the vehicle, I stopped and looked back at the castle for the last time. Standing at the main gate were Alaire and my Lily. His smile mixed with her tears had become a painfully common theme now. I nodded reassuringly to Besom, trying to silently reassure her that everything would be all right. I would come for her. As soon as I could.

  I watched her drop her head down. It broke my heart as surely as did her pitiful sobs that still pealed inside my head.

  I sat down in the vehicle and watched the door close by itself. The engine started a moment before the vehicle rolled forward, driven by an unseen entity. The Furies cawed and took flight while the Watchers and the ogre turned to see me go. I spotted a state-of-the-art video screen that was installed in the center console. As the horseless carriage barreled across the barren landscape, the screen suddenly flickered on. Once again, I was confronted with the hateful visage of Alaire.

  “Tallis Black, my oldest adversary,” he began with a thick sigh. “Right now, I could ask if you are surprised to see me but A: I know you aren’t; and B: I couldn’t hear your answer anyway.”

  I rolled my eyes while the recording prattled on. “Now, I hope you aren’t getting too comfortable with this free ride home I offered you. Given our shared history, you must have expected me to provide you with a plot twist, am I correct?”

  “Of course,” I muttered. In the end, all of his promises were vapid and empty.

  “I’m not sending you back to the Dark Wood by the most direct route,” he continued. “I know, I know, don’t even say it! As a prior master of this city, you must know every possible exit from every level that would return you to your place of exile. But I am quite sure you must have already guessed that I’m not interested in watching you wend your way home… not anytime soon… actually, not at all.”

  I could not say I was surprised.

  His face darkened as he went on. “No, I seek a different type of sport altogether. I want to watch you howl and rage, my old friend. I want to watch you beg for your life while it is slowly taken from you.” Then he chuckled. “Of course, you never expected anything less from me.” He leaned forward toward the camera, his fists balled at the sides of his head. “Long ago, I decided to not only fuck you harder than you fucked me those many centuries past, but you are going to feel every painful inch of my proverbial dick when I shove it up your ass.”

  The locks on the doors clicked into place and
a seatbelt spontaneously wrapped around me. The strap strained audibly as it tightened over my chest and waist.

  “This Maserati will take you to the one place in which you can’t take a shortcut or find your way home.”

  I squeezed my hands into my own fists as soon as I realized the final destination of the vehicle.

  That insufferable smirk popped up on his face. “Do give my best to everyone.”

  I yanked one arm free of my restraint and slammed my fist into the console screen. The screen warped before breaking around my hand, and Alaire’s smug expression became a collage of purple, green and red. Pulling my fist back, I saw the blood on my knuckles. I glanced back at the broken screen just in time to see it blink off.

  The engine revved again as it picked up speed.

  While I was expecting the worst, even I never considered the lying bastard would send me to the place where I was now going. The darkest, coldest, harshest place in the Underground City: the ninth and final level.

  “When it was made the nest of so much ill…”

  - Dante’s Inferno

  TWENTY-ONE

  Tallis

  I greedily scarfed down the last power bar I found in the glove compartment, before I could see my breath freeze in front of me. My body shook with the cold as the pervasive chilliness of the the Underground City’s lowest level filled the vehicle.

  I turned up the temperature on the heater, aiming each vent directly on me, and setting the gauge as high as it could go. But despite all my effort, the windows continued fogging over with the unrelenting frost. Snapping the seatbelt back into its vacant position, I took a moment to wipe the window so I could take a glimpse of my new surroundings.

  It was on a rare occasion that I ventured this deep into the City, even when I was its master. Once every few decades was enough for me. And I only traveled here for good reason.

  The Asylum, as we called the ninth level, was not a relaxing or happy place to visit, not by any stretch of the imagination. No, a massive, conglomerate structure, it was comprised entirely of hospital insanity wards. The whole level was continuously dark and freezing, housing the worst of the worst, including those from Terra and the rest of the Underground City.

  Dwelling in those cells were the traitors and bastards that betrayed everyone and everything they ever knew. Any souls found inside these walls were truly beyond redemption of any sort. Alaire probably considered this his version of poetic justice, given our history.

  A thick fog descended over the entire complex. I could not see much; only vague shadows and gray walls of mist when they passed the car. More than once, I caught a fleeting image of something odd, one of the local denizens avoiding the headlights from my transport, I assumed. I wondered if Alaire programmed the car to take me right into the center of the compound… directly to Him.

  It suddenly seemed appropriate and Alaire even hinted to as much in his message. Seeing the Arch-Traitor could also be the most uneventful part of this entire endeavor. Thanks to the ice that interred him, he could not do anything worse than look upon me angrily.

  The vehicle moved on for some time at full speed before it finally began to slow. The gears made a mechanical, rattling sound that warned of a breakdown if nothing were done to prevent it. Alaire had yet to find a vehicle capable of withstanding the permanent iciness for very long.

  The wipers and defroster had to work without ceasing in order to push away the icy sheet that continually formed across the windshield. I barely made out the great entrance to the main building as the vehicle came to a grinding, then a screeching halt. Before I could respond, the back hatch popped open. Something dark skittered in and yanked out my sword before bolting into the building proper.

  In the light beams from the headlamps, I saw a flash of leg. Apparently, a reptilian imp had just stolen my last remaining asset for survival…

  “Bloody bastard!” I yelled after it, realizing what this now meant. I was human and now unarmed and in the worst level of the Underground City.

  Part of Alaire’s design, to be certain. He knew I could not survive without a weapon especially in my current human state.

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I had to survive. Lily needed me. I pushed open the door, which creaked on the hinges in the icy air. I shook and flexed my fingers and toes to keep the blood flowing while shifting my legs from side to side. My bare chest ached as the permafrost tried to form on it. My torn, stained trousers scarcely kept the cold off my legs. A lesser man would have been dead already from such an icy onslaught. But even without Donnchadh, I was no ordinary mortal. Druid blood still flowed through my veins and even now, in this place, I drew strength in that knowledge.

  I whispered the words of my ancestors and sparked an internal fire to protect myself from the worst cold. Steam rose off my head and shoulders and my body temperature rekindled in response. I could probably maintain my inner fire for some time. But my strength was its only kindling, and such a spell would wear out eventually.

  I glanced at the Asylum’s arched gate with trepidation. Even with my advanced skills, the beasts dwelling within it were no trifling matter. I required every weapon, strategy and skill at my disposal in order to make my way back to the Wood. But first I had to arm myself again. As I finally got out from the vehicle, the door creaked shut and the car suddenly pulled away as if it, too, were seeking warmer weather. Hearing the rattling motor, I doubted it would even make the distance back to the checkpoint. Facing the gate once again, I prepared to enter my worst nightmare.

  ***

  There was no escaping the cold. The ubiquitous fog saturated the walls of the Asylum like an icy blanket. The “lobby” was thick with it. I stepped inside one of the massive oak doors and immediately caught the sculpture of a snake. The entrance was rather large, leading to a waiting room of sorts. The space was littered with broken, unused chairs that were piled high or set out in uneven rows. In a few of the chairs sat men and women who were totally covered in hoarfrost. A massive circular desk, heaped with stacks of innumerable files, took up the center. A creature that could have almost passed for human glanced up from his endless tasks and meaningless work. He was filling out charts and filing admission paperwork. Everything was covered in a thin layer of freezing, white ice that hung everywhere.

  “Assss I livvvve and breeeeathesssss.”

  Through the mist, I watched a creature that seemed to take the shape of a curvy woman. Her body proportions were perfect to the eye, like a well-balanced blade. When I approached, the fog pulled back from the desk, and I saw the fiend for what it truly was.

  “Margreet.”

  She was the keeper of the Asylum and without her blessing, I would have a hell of a time getting past this waiting room.

  She leapt over the desk and approached me with slinking, violent movements. Her figure may have passed for human in the half darkness but the rest of her features were as serpent-like as they could be. Coiling and bundling up her body inside a nurse’s outfit that could have come from Persephone’s wardrobe, her human face reared up into mine.

  “You’ve got a lot of ballsssss to dare come here unarmed,” she said, hinting that she intended to take advantage of that fact.

  “Mah fight isnae with ye, Margreet,” I told her, holding up my hands. “Ah jist need ta know which way the imp went with mah sword.”

  Margreet ignored me for a moment as she balanced on her thick tail and slithered back and forth in front of me.

  “What if I help you?” she asked, flicking her very human tongue as she passed by my front. I balled my fists and attempted to channel more strength away from the fire growing inside me in case any violence erupted.

  “Margreet, dinnae play gam…”

  “Even down here, I hear sssssstories,” she interrupted me as casually as a friend might. “More than a few of them involve Alaire and hissssss plansssss for thisssss ccccccity. And don’t get me ssssstarted on what he’ssss ssssupposedly doing with thosssse Retriev
erssssss.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Aye, she could have been lying about what she had just said about the Retrievers in order to get my attention. But she never had any love for Alaire and now she sounded as though she were willing to tell me more. “What have ye heard?”

  She slinked back toward her desk. Resting against its frozen edge, a short tower of folders cracked and fell to the ground, sounding like glass breaking. One of the bodies near us twisted its head as much as its freezing muscles would allow. Margreet hissed and hurled a block of files at the soul. Turning back to me, she waggled a finger in front of my face.

  “I think you know what I want; tell me before I sssssspill anymore sssssecrets.”

  I absolutely knew what that old spy desired: she wanted her previous body back. Truth be told, if I were still the master when Margaretha Macleod met her end in front of a firing squad, I would have kept her as a concubine or at least made her one of my own agents. But Alaire, had no use for the woman, much less for her talents, so he cast her into the pit with the other liars and sneaks, dooming her to file the paperwork of the damned. The snake body was just Alaire being an arse on top of it.

  “If ye hear as much ye say ye do,” I said carefully, “ye know Ah’m nae the master anymore and, therefore, can’t help ye.”

  She shrugged indifferently. “Doessssssn’t mean you couldn’t get me sssssome other corporeal being.” Margreet slithered back over the desk into her chair. “Oooh, well… maybe it’sssss jussssst wissssshful thinking.”

  “If ye can point me towards the imp what’s got me sword, Ah will help ye if Ah can, Margreet.”

  She studied me for a moment, her unblinking eyes calculating the sincerity of my words. Then she finally nodded. “On one point, all the sssstoriessssss agree, Tallisssss Black… that you are eternally a man of your word.” Then she pointed her scaly arm to my right, indicating an open set of double doors.