by HP Mallory
I winced at Bill’s metaphor, envisioning all the scars on Tallis’s back. But the Flamels took his comments in stride and they shrugged as one. Nicolas looked up at Tallis with a fatherly gaze.
“I know this seems as though my wife and I have taken leave of our senses but we face desperate and uncertain times, which call for unusual and creative measures.”
Perenelle squeezed my shoulder with a smile. “Should we need you, we shall call upon you. Your conduct in the Underground City, Mademoiselle Harper, gives me every confidence that you shall continue to be our trusted ally.”
Tallis sighed. “An’ is there naethin’ Ah can say tae change yer minds?”
They didn’t reply but judging from Tallis’ nod and sigh of resignation, he must have seen their answer in their eyes. Reluctantly, he guided them to the portal opening that would take them to AE. Our goodbyes with the Flamels over, it was now just Tallis, Bill and I.
And we had a good day’s hike to reach Tallis’ cabin.
Even though he didn’t say it out loud, I sensed Tallis was hurting from losing Jeanne. And why not? If I’d worked out the story correctly, Jeanne had been a regular source of hope for centuries down there.
And her reward was being sealed in for all eternity with the most hateful spirits in existence. I glanced down at the Urn I carried in my arms and suddenly wanted nothing more than to smash it into a million pieces.
***
As we approached Tallis’ cabin, I immediately knew something was wrong.
On the outside, the place looked the same as it always did. But there was something missing that I couldn’t put my finger on. Then I realized what it was: way too quiet.
Tallis took in a sharp breath as he poked something at his feet. Turning it over with his blade revealed one of the Grevels—monstrous demon beasts Tallis kept as pets. Glancing around, I noticed more of the same bodies littering the area. A sense of foreboding overcame me when suddenly the door to the cabin flew open.
Alaire strolled out as casually as if he’d been housesitting and wanted to welcome us back.
He was wearing a frilly, white shirt and red, velvet pants that would have looked ridiculous no matter what, but against Tallis’ cabin in the background, Alaire appeared beyond out of place.
“You have something that belongs to me!” he said to me and pointed at the Urn in my arms.
“It doesn’t belong to you,” I growled at him.
“It’s from the Underground City,” Alaire responded with a slight smile that made little sense, given the situation. “Thus, it belongs to me and I want it back.”
I handed the Urn to Bill as I readied myself for a fight. Tallis attempted to hobble forward but I put my arm in front of him. I was the only one in any kind of shape to take on Alaire.
Slowly walking up to Alaire, I slid my blade free. “You want it so bad? Come and get it.”
“Gladly,” he said and glared at me.
Two axes appeared in either of Alaire’s hands. He aimed the axes at my head and chest, blows which I blocked with my sword. That led to two minutes of us trading blows which only resulted in the clashing of our weapons.
“You know, Lily, you could have been happy with me,” Alaire said with a shrug as he stepped back, presumably to take a small rest from our melee.
“Happy?” I repeated as my eyebrows reached for the black sky. “As your prisoner?”
“I would have given you whatever you wanted.”
“How about freedom?”
Alaire came at me again, his strikes were well planned but there was a recklessness to them that made them easy to avoid. I amazed myself with my own swordsmanship, keeping up with my nemesis like it was no more than a sparring session with Tallis.
“Freedom is overrated,” he said with little interest. “What I could have offered you was worth far more.”
He blocked another of my blows and I, in turn, blocked his.
“The offer still stands, by the way,” he continued.
“And my answer is still no way in fucking hell,” I responded.
Alaire took a step back and dropped both of the axes to the ground as he smiled. “I see we are quite well matched and I have no interest in continuing this tedious game ad infinitem.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means that you should hand over the Urn to me forthwith and spare yourself and your fellow travelers my anger if you do not.”
“Um, yeah, I have zero interest in giving you the Urn,” I said.
Alaire grew frustrated and intoned something as he reached for his axes again. It sounded like a bad impersonation of a Lovecraft cultist but there was nothing funny about the increased speed he suddenly developed. Suddenly his blows became harder to fend off.
“You could have learned to love me,” he announced, his eyes narrowed and hateful.
“I would never love you,” I spat back.
As the tide began to turn, and Alaire’s attacks began to weaken me, a tingle from my blade tickled the inside of my chest. It felt like Donnchadh when he wanted to emerge but less insistent.
“And now that decision will be the reason you die… once and for all,” Alaire said but there appeared a sadness in his eyes that made little sense to me.
I grew calm right before a blaze of blue light washed over me. The light felt cooling at the same time that my wearied muscles suddenly felt reinvigorated. I realized it was my Self taking over, echoing through me and dousing me with an energy that hadn’t been there before.
It quickly became a fair fight again.
Before long, I drove Alaire into retreat. Finally, one of my strokes disarmed him of his left axe, which flew through the air and embedded itself in the cabin wall.
I walked up to Alaire. Meanwhile the blue light that surrounded me continued to glow brightly.
Touch him, a voice within my head suddenly announced.
I reached out and grabbed Alaire’s wrist, and the light of my skin made his skin hiss and burn.
While I tightened my grip, he yelled out, “Malecoda!”
A familiar black portal opened up behind Alaire. Nothing but darkness appeared on the other side of the portal but I could feel an incredible power coming from it. It was as though a giant wind began pulling and sucking at Alaire’s clothing as though trying to pull him into the void of the portal. I continued to grip his wrist but soon I felt myself being dragged forward, towards the portal through the dirt.
My blue light flared brightly in response and I realized I’d have to release Alaire or we both would end up sucked into who knew where. I instantly let go of his wrist at the same moment that he was pulled into the darkness and disappeared. A second later the portal vanished and the blue light that danced on my skin evaporated just as quickly.
I turned around and caught Tallis and Bill staring at me. “I couldn’t hold him,” I said in defeat.
Neither of them responded. Instead, they both just stood there, staring at me. Tallis wore a strange smile.
“What?” I asked, not understanding the reason for their reactions. “We could still go after Alaire…”
“Nae,” Tallis said.
Bill pointed at me and finally spoke. “Umm, Nips… you kinda like changed into a different person there for a second.”
“I did?” I asked.
Bill nodded. “And ya might wanna look at yerself now.”
I glanced down at my naked arms and immediately saw the difference. My skin was a different color, no longer flawless alabaster, a feature of the supermodel package I’d signed up for. Now, my skin had darkened a little, like I’d gotten a tan after a day in the sun.
Tallis walked up to me and ran his fingers down the length of my arm. “This is the first time Ah’ve seen anyone soonburnt by spiritual light.”
I looked at him with uneasy eyes. “What does that mean?”
Bill answered my question. “If I had ta guess, Lils, I’d say yer submergin’ with that thing that lives in yer sword.”
>
“It doesn’t live in my sword,” I answered. “It lives in me.”
Bill didn’t respond but suddenly glanced down at his cell. “Hey, I missed a text in all the excitementation.”
Bill sucked in a tight breath through his teeth. “Fuck.”
That statement made me curious and I walked over to see who was texting him. I saw a picture of a man with bright white wings being held by chains in a dungeon. The smarmy signature of “Ain’t Nothing But A G Thing” told me at once who the text had came from.
Gwydion.
But this time, there was an actual message with it: Meet Jeanne’s guardian angel.
Bill choked out a whisper as he stroked the screen and looked up at us with wide and scared eyes.
“It’s the archangel, Uriel.”
DEVIL IN DISGUISE
Book 7 of the
Lily Harper series
by
H.P. Mallory
ONE
Lily
I came to with a gasp.
Even though every inch of my body was covered in sweat and I had a warm, hairy man’s arms wrapped around me, I was cold… ice cold. The kind of chill you only get when you’ve had the world’s worst nightmare. And coincidentally, that’s what I’d just had.
Not wanting to disturb Tallis, my bedmate, I slowed my breathing. The respiratory exercises Tallis had taught me made that a bit easier.
Slowly inhale through the nose; just as slowly exhale through the mouth, repeat as necessary.
I don’t know how many of those breaths it took for me to calm down. More than three… closer to ten. The entire time I kept thinking about the dream I’d just awoken from.
Most dreams are hard to recall but not this one.
This particular dream had done me the, ahem, favor of running through my head for the last two weeks. For scarcely a few merciful nights was I allowed to enjoy the sweet oblivion of slumber. More often than not, I found myself running through a castle.
Someone was chasing me through the castle corridors, practically right on my heels. The identity of my pursuer continuously changed. Sometimes it was Alaire, with his perfect blond hair, too-wide smile and the same pair of hand axes he had the last time we met. Sometimes it was Persephone, wearing that damned crown with her black hair blowing behind her as she brandished a sword. Tonight’s guest villains were none other than the Spites, that buzzing cloud Pandora unwittingly unleashed onto the world. They could strip the flesh from your bones in seconds...
All around the castle, the sounds of battle echoed in the distance. Those sounds were punctuated with shouting in two different languages and the cries of those dying. One of those voices said words that were somehow familiar, like the sort of things Tallis mutters in his sleep. Other words reminded me of the Latin I’d heard from an older couple on my last trip to The Underground City.
As to the castle itself, it was different to the one I’d played prisoner in for so long. Here, the stonework was crude and rough. It was like someone just slapped the stones together in some spots, a far cry from the refined palace where I spent several months in captivity.
Second, the layout of the corridors was different to that of Alaire’s Castle. So, was this a real place? Or was I a closet architect, suffering from a combination of bad experiences and a long recovery time?
The big Scotsman behind me remained asleep as I finally regulated my breathing. If I woke him up, I had no doubt he’d be very understanding about my situation. But I wasn’t ready for that yet. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t sure if I was ready for anything this day might bring.
I glanced over at the clock on the nightstand: 5:36 AM. Dawn remained at least an hour-and-a-half away but I couldn’t go back to sleep now. I grabbed my fully charged, recently purchased cellphone from the nearby nightstand. I checked it but noticed no one had left any messages, both a relief and a worry at the same time.
I was hoping that one of Bill’s inside women at Afterlife Enterprises would have gotten in touch with me. But now that Alaire had them in the crosshairs, maybe they were just being careful. I put the phone back just as my bedmate’s big arm slid off me. If I intended to make a discreet exit, now was my best chance.
As gently as I could, I slipped out of my lover’s clutches. I was barely free when he started to stir and brought his enormous arm back around. I quickly put my big, fluffy pillow in my former place just in time.
He kissed it and muttered, “Besom” before his steady breathing returned. Crisis averted. If only all my problems could be handled so easily.
Even though there was something else I had to do, I couldn’t help looking back at this magnificent man who’d fallen head over heels for me. Tallis Black was introduced to me as my instructor of the sword and guide to the Underground City.
Prior to that, he was living la vida Grizzly Adams in the Dark Wood. His demon dogs were his pets and he survived by hunting the less formidable predators in the area. When I first met Tallis, he wasn’t the caring, loving man he was today. Actually, he was quite the asshole. Even so, I wanted him pretty much from the first time I laid eyes on him. He may have felt the same, but his excess baggage prevented him from progressing too far. Come to think of it, my excess baggage may have also contributed. A lifetime of being a wallflower doesn’t exactly prepare you very well for love. Ironically, my long imprisonment in Alaire’s castle was what finally cinched the deal for both of us. We’d been lying in each other’s arms ever since.
Still, like every relationship, ours had its challenges. My Scotsman refused to discuss his past, of which all I knew was what others had told me in the Underground City. He also had a problem with giving me enough space lately. Tallis was convinced that Alaire was still after me and since Tallis had taken it upon himself to be my guardian, he stuck close to my side. I’d been sleeping in my bed alone for my entire life. Sharing it with someone now was tricky—any little movement from my partner would wake me up, even in the middle of the night.
Of course, after all the bad dreams I’d been having, maybe that was a bonus. Nonetheless, getting a good night’s sleep was tough—made even tougher when you factored in the vividly realistic nightmares that wouldn’t leave me alone.
I walked nude towards the full-length mirror in the corner of my bedroom. After spending so much time practically naked while I was under Persephone’s influence, you’d think I’d prefer to wear more clothes to bed. But when Tallis gets frisky, our clothes just get in the way. And let’s just say that Tallis is frisky all the time. Being naked was also an easy way to keep track of all the physical changes I’d been noticing in my body too. Yes, though I couldn’t say how or why, my body was changing.
At first, it appeared nothing much had changed while I slept. My skin tone remained inexplicably tan. I hadn’t seen more than an hour of sunlight in the last two weeks, but you’d think I visited a tanning bed on a daily basis. My hair length remained the same, although the color was darker. When I first received this body from AE, my hair was flame red. Now it was more auburn, but I had no idea why. Nor why my body was also changing shape. Despite working out like a demonic warrior ever since I got back, I couldn’t help noticing the curves I’d developed on my former supermodel physique.
I could see the extra fullness of my breasts, and the greater roundness of my rear, as well as the bulking up of my thighs and arms. Tallis, however, assured me that I still looked good. That didn’t calm me down a bit!
I glanced over my shoulder at my man as I recalled my past—the past before I’d become a Soul Retriever for Afterlife Enterprises. When I was alive, I didn’t look anything like I did now. I existed as a helpful, funny girl men chose for friends but never considered asking out. Why? Because I wasn’t exactly attractive. That was the first thing I fixed when I entered the afterlife—my looks. Come to think of it, doing so hadn’t actually helped me at all. Well, maybe my improved appearance had helped me bag my bladesmith. Of course, he’d once said something to the opposite—that he
loved me for what was inside me, rather than outside. But, that’s easy to say when your outside is stunningly beautiful.
Hmm, what if my body continued to change so much that Tallis didn’t love me anymore?
I shook my head as I walked over to my chest of drawers. The day’s clothes were already laid out on top of it, courtesy of my overactive attention to organization. Most of my clothes were getting too tight now with my increased measurements. All sorts of non-fun memories of puberty drifted through my mind. At this rate, I’d have to shop for some new clothes and soon. That was something else I preferred not to think about. I decided to check on my other houseguest who was sleeping in the living room. I slipped out the door as quietly as the unoiled hinges on the door would allow me.
As I gently pulled the bedroom door shut, I heard Bill snoring away on the couch. Yes, he had his own room but he said he was still traumatized from everything we’d been through and wanted to sleep as close to me as possible. I was more than sure if I’d invited him to sleep with me, in my bed, he would have taken me up on it. But, alas, that honor was bestowed on the Scotsman.
The little, roly-poly angel was in his usual sleeping pose: flat on his back, head turned towards the door, cellphone loosely clutched in his right hand. The lock screen blocked whatever he’d fallen asleep watching, but I’d bet it was porn. Bill had a thing for lipstick lesbians and female bodybuilders.
The scattered empty beer cans and fast food wrappers that littered the floor below him were becoming a frequent sight. I didn’t like the mess but if it helped him sleep, I supposed it was okay. The little guy had more than earned it. Naturally, I expected him to clean it up, however, when he woke up.
Looking at him sleeping made me feel protective of him which struck me as ironic, considering he was my guardian angel! Too bad for both of us that he wasn’t very good at his job. Truly, it was Bill’s fault that I was in this situation to begin with.