by Jen Ponce
Through the sheer force of Morgan’s will, Kroshtuka had to believe it to be so.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Reach was crumbling and no one was listening. Gaius tittered as he gazed at his grand plan, written out in runes on the walls of his cell. The power grew and with it his sanity. All the diverse lines of the future were tangling together, knotting, no longer separate time lines his head had to chase.
One, a jagged purple streak, fascinated him. He’d sent it out so long ago and yet here it was back once more, weaving into the strands of his grand plan, sliding into place with its fellows just so. Soon, everything would be exactly as he’d laid it out when first he’d realized he could become a Maker and Destroyer of worlds.
Enter the Source, take its power. So beautiful in its simplicity … except it wasn’t so simple after all. Thousands of babies of all kinds, dead because their souls weren’t able to open a hole big enough for him to squeeze through. He’d almost given up hope until Ravana came along, Ravana and her madness. She’d been a fine workhorse, given a little push. Told the baby was the goal, she went after the answers with a tenacity he had admired. She’d found the answers, too, though she’d managed to bungle the end play. A mere witch and Wydling had managed to outwit her, for the love of all that was unholy.
Even that he’d foreseen, spinning his threads, reading the patterns. Ravana thought she’d trapped him, but he’d guided her to it. He’d been the author of all her plans and she too crazy to see it.
Now, one of his long plays was come home to roost.
Gaius looked up.
Mal looked down. “What am I doing here?”
He stood and brushed off his pants. “You’re releasing me.”
His long, lost child shook his head. How cute he was. So broken. So powerful. “I won’t let you out.”
Gaius smiled. “That pretty lady of yours, the sky captain. What’s her name?”
“You cannot push me into releasing you. Not with dirty tricks and lies.”
“What about the truth?” Gaius splayed his hand and light bloomed between them. A scene played out on that glowing disc, one that Mal would know well. Of course, he wouldn’t remember his own Making, but he would recognize the players, recognize himself. His brother, too.
The cry pleased Gaius, the low moan made his grin widen. Oh, the pain. Such delicious pain. Really, all Skriven should be made so. Soulless creatures aren’t nearly as fun. Though Tytan had been proving himself quite fascinating. If Gaius didn’t have a date with godhood, he would want to place that one on an examination table and study him for the next few centuries.
“Do you understand? I am your maker. At least, I was the author of your existence. I know you’ve long searched for answers. Well.” He raised his arms out to either side. “Come get them.”
“I’m not stupid, for all that I’m broken.”
Agony made his voice jagged and Gaius delighted in it. He was also glad Mal hadn’t immediately taken the bait—the thrill of the chase, so to speak. “My mistake. I thought you wanted to know your origins. I was the one who made you. Made the process anyway. Gave my blood. You are mine, Malphus. Why else answer my call?”
“I don’t know why I came here, but I am not your creature. Perhaps you did donate your blood to that travesty of a ceremony, but I owe you nothing. Everything that I am, I owe to my own hard work. You are nothing.”
Gaius didn’t have it in him to look contrite, so he didn’t even try. “You are more like me than you know. How many have you killed with your power, Malphus? How many did you destroy in the decades you did the Seal’s dirty work? Did you question your duty? Or did you revel in their pain?”
Mal’s fingers gripped the edge of Gaius’s cell tightly. Cracks snaked away from his hold, but he was too focused on Gaius to notice.
“That young girl, the one with all the hopes and dreams? What did she ever do to you to end up dead in your arms?”
A crunch. A bigger crack.
“Have you hurt Zephyrinia yet? Have you held her in your arms and wondered what it would be like to kill someone you love? Oh, you’ve hurt her, haven’t you? Yes. You’ve almost killed her twice? Three times? How many times does she know about?” At the look on his face, Gaius laughed. “Oh, how delightful. Keeping secrets.”
Mal screamed at him, gripping the stones so hard they broke beneath his palms. His power, his magnificent, shattered energy lashed out … and broke the seal keeping Gaius trapped. Power flooded him until he felt as though he would explode with it. “I will never help you!”
Gaius pulled a sad face. “Aw. But you already did.” He lifted his hands and blew Reach apart.
The explosion rocked the Slip, flattening every structure for miles around. Debris from the now destroyed Reach rained down from the boiling skies. Zephyrinia, already worried about her lover’s pain, felt shot through with fear when she didn’t find him in their room. A quick search of the rest of the manse proved he had vanished.
Where?
She darted outside, where all manner of creatures gawked at the destroyed mess that was once an island. She searched the crowd until she found a monster that looked least like a monster and asked, “What happened?”
It turned to her, big, bulbous eyes gawking. “Explosion,” it hissed. “Ravana’s, Devany’s, Tytan’s tower has fallen. Gaius has escaped.”
She thanked it and moved on, her eyes scanning the crowds for Mal. She saw the young teen, the one called Sharps and asked her if she’d seen Mal.
“I watched him walk off about an hour or so ago.” She lifted her finger and pointed. “That way.”
Toward the explosion.
Heart in her chest, Zephyrinia ran flat out, pushing Skriven from her path when needed, telling herself that he was okay, had to be okay, because the alternative was too awful to imagine. She’d never thought about losing him—he was the one who would live after her, he was the one who would have to deal with her loss, not the other way around. She’d never mentally prepared for not having him in her life because she’d never considered that a possibility.
She eventually found herself on the edge of a lake filled with debris, so much so that she could walk out to the island on the rubble left behind. He hadn’t come this far; he couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have survived such a blast, so she should turn back, hunt for him on shore, but she couldn’t stop moving forward, couldn’t stop the painful thrum of her heart as she scanned the jumbled concrete for any sign of him.
He could be at the bottom of the pile. He could be trapped under the water. She might never know what happened to him.
Why had he come here, to this place?
Why hadn’t he told her what he was doing? Asked her to come?
“Mal!” Her voice carried over the water, scaring up some odd gull-like creatures that squawked in protest at her vocal intrusion. “Mal!”
Nothing but the splash of waves answered her.
She continued, eyes scanning, calling out to him, hoping he was somewhere behind her safe and sound.
Moaning caught her ear and she ran to the sound, digging frantically at the rubble. A pale, clawed hand. Not Mal but she dug it out anyway, the creature bleeding and broken. Movement to her left and she darted there, her fingernails breaking as she yanked rocks and wood free. A Skriven, its magic pouring off it like blood. As soon as its hands were free, it exploded from the wreckage and stood panting, eyes full of rage. “He used us.”
She didn’t know what to say to that and so she moved on to the next bit of flesh she could see poking from the ruins and dug. And dug. And dug. Others joined her, she didn’t know when. Creatures with command of magic that could sift through the rubble faster than she … she hadn’t thought to use hers and felt stupid when the digging became that much easier.
Still no Mal.
The wreckage sloped upwards, spilling away from a blackened center like the peeled rind of a banana. She climbed and climbed, moving rubble when she detected life, moving on when they
could pull themselves free or when she discovered they had perished. At the top, she peered into a vast pit, the wink of water below a surprise. Whatever had caused the explosion had blown everything outward from the center.
She searched for Mal’s magical signature, sweeping back and forth until her head throbbed with the effort. So many lives trapped, but no … she stopped, her heart skipping a beat. A sickly red and yellow signature flickered far below. Was it him? The colors suggested it, but they also meant life. How could anyone have survived such power?
How would she get down there?
She cast around her for someone who might be able to help. The first creature she’d pulled from the rubble, the one who had said it was used stood nearby, glassy eyes staring. “Can you help me? I need to get down there.”
For a moment she didn’t think it would answer, then it said, “Will this go against his will?”
She frowned. “Whose will?”
“Gaius Regulus.”
“I don’t know. I wish I knew what you wanted me to say, but I just need to get to my friend below. He was here when the blast happened. He may be hurt.” She turned back to the overlook, eying footholds, wondering how far she would get before the rubble shifted and she fell.
“I will help. Anwen.”
Zephyrinia turned back. “Anwen?”
“What I am called. You may refer to me as she and her.”
Zeph nodded. “Zephyrinia. My friend is named Mal.”
“The broken one. I sensed him as he passed on the way to our father.” Anwen stepped closer and held out a deformed and bloody hand.
Zeph took it and in seconds they were at the bottom. The room was intact, its walls still standing, though the runes carved on them were rent with great cracks from the ceiling to the floor. She swept for Mal’s signature again and found it a few feet above the top of the walls. “There. Can you get me there?”
Anwen did, hooking them both to spot where she saw the flicker of Mal’s life. So dim. Panic caught in her throat making it hard for her to breathe. The Skriven helped her shift rocks and chunks of concrete until she saw his arm. It was his arm, his hand. “Mal,” she choked out and dug harder, desperate to look into his eyes and hear him say her name. “Mal, please.”
Part of the wall of destruction shifted. Anwen shouted a warning, touched them both and hooked them away.
He came back to destruction. He came back to a world made more dangerous by the release of a powerful psychopath. Tytan glanced at Devany Two laying peacefully on the couch, her face slack, unconscious as she’d requested. He’d left her that morning drowsy and satisfied to find Kroshtuka. Morgan had been there, and he’d filled Tytan in on the plan.
It was a solid one and Tytan knew it would work if the fleshcrawler venom hadn’t eaten Devany’s soul. When he’d gone back to talk with Devany Two, she’d agreed readily, so readily he’d wondered why. When she asked him to erase her memories, though, he’d told her he couldn’t.
She’d raged at him. “I don’t want to remember this, any of it. I will give my body to her because I know I’m not real. But I don’t want to share my memories of you with her. Erase me.”
He’d put her to sleep instead, unable to wipe her for fear that Devany wouldn’t be able to find her form after dying and being brought back a monster. He didn’t like going against Devany Two’s wishes, but a small part of him wanted those memories of their night together to rest in the real Devany’s mind. She wanted him but she couldn’t ever say yes, and that was okay. It might be a selfish gift, but he would give it to her, nonetheless.
“Gaius is free.”
Tytan nodded but didn’t look up at Kali. “We need to get her back and then we need a plan. We couldn’t kill him at his weakest; getting rid of him now will be practically impossible.”
She didn’t leave as he expected her to, instead moving so he was forced to look at her. “You both forgot about your tribe. I could see you giving it no mind. But her? Why’d she forget?”
“Tribe?”
“She allowed us to be individuals not an army of mindless killing machines. She saw us for who we are and not what she could use us for, and we became something more than slaves to an all-powerful monster. We became her tribe.”
Tytan didn’t want to talk about Devany or her ‘tribe’, whatever that meant. He just wanted her back so he could return to what he’d been before her death. So he could get rid of the knife-blade of grief in his chest.
“When we bring her back, we do it together. You won’t admit it, but why else bring us here, together? If you’d just wanted revenge on Gaius, you could have gathered her Skriven. But you didn’t stop there. You brought everyone she touched. Don’t tell me you did that for revenge.”
He truly hadn’t known why he had to bring everyone Devany had ever loved here, but Kali was right. It wasn’t enough to transfer her soul the way they had with Arsinua. Devany had died and that damned venom had been eating at her for a long while. “I didn’t bring her children.”
“When the time comes, they must come too. It has to be everyone.”
“Why? What makes you so certain of that?”
Kali shrugged. “Her hyena man will protest, but they must come too.”
He nodded. There would be an uproar, but he would bring them. They deserved to save their mother if there was a chance of it and they deserved to be here if she woke.
When she woke.
“We have to do it soon,” she said. “I’ll begin gathering the tribe.”
Tytan rolled his eyes, the tiniest bit of hope shining through the cracks. “You’re never going to stop saying that now, are you?”
She smiled and said, just before she hooked away, “I think we all need t-shirts.”
He crossed the room and sat on the coffee table in front of the construct. Her hand was hanging off the couch and he picked it up, the skin warm, the fingers slack. “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sure what he was sorry for exactly. One, if he were truly sorry, he wouldn’t use her. He’d make another or barter for one. But somehow he knew it had to be this one, the one who had lived as Devany for so long. She would need the memories and Dev Two held them all … plus a bonus track. “I know you weren’t really her, but it meant something to me that even with her memories of me and all that I’d done, you chose to spend the night with me. I, uh …” He paused, feeling stupid, and glanced around to make sure he was still alone with her. “I just wanted you to know that,” he finished, unsatisfied but unable to put into words exactly how he felt.
He left her and hooked back to Midia to collect Devany’s children for the trial to come. She would probably murder him for bringing them to the Slip, but if she did, it would mean she was alive and in command of her faculties, which was all that mattered.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Elizabeta collected Arsinua and together with the creep Skriven they hooked to a small room somewhere in Tytan’s manse. It was his place still, Arsinua knew, because his magical signature was all over it.
Her lip curled.
“Are you sure this is all you need?”
“This and silence,” she said as she studied the ingredients the crazy woman had spread out between them on the floor. A mortar and pestle awaited and Arsinua curled her fingers around the bigger lodestone, relishing the power that flooded into her. After a moment, she tucked the stone into her armpit to keep it close to her as she mixed the plants, powering the henderson leaves before adding the johnswort. The bulbs would be crushed last, but before that, she had to steep the bostwick petals in water.
“Would you get us a bit of boiling water?”
Elizabeta asked the Skriven—something Arsinua cringed over. She should have insisted the monster remain outside the room and away from her, but it was too late and honestly, she wanted to go home more than she wanted rid of the Skriven. Soon, she thought, I won’t have to look at another of them again.
She strained the weak tea into the bowl that Elizabeta brought her and stirred
in the powdered herbs, chanting under her breath. Intention made magic work and Arsinua had always been excellent at concentrating during spell work. It was why she’d been asked to join the Council, that and her power. She hadn’t had children and so her power was more intense than a witch with kids—much of one’s creative magic went into the making of children, enough that there wasn’t much left over for the parent.
The lodestone that would become Elizabeta’s amulet sat near Arsinua’s knee. She picked it up and held it in her palm, imbuing it with power from its fellow stone still tucked in her armpit. When it fairly hummed with power, she dipped her fingers into the paste and coated the lodestone with it, covering it completely. More chants, a focus of energy, the power of the lodestone transferred to the amulet.
“Fire,” she said softly, and crackling flames roared up from the bowl the paste had been in. Arsinua dropped the amulet into the heat and light and whispered the final word. The flames went out and a puff of smoke rose from the bowl. “You need to pick it up and only you should touch it. Wear it next to your skin and it will make you stronger. It will also let you siphon off magic from the Skriven, letting you work some small spells on your own.
Elizabeta murmured a thank you, her reverent eyes on the amulet she lifted from the bowl. It sparkled with magic, the stone no longer just a stone but shaped into a diamond with a hole in the center. The woman threaded a strip of leather through the hole and looped it around her neck, tucking the stone into her blouse. “Thank you again. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
Arsinua inclined her head, unwilling to accept her thanks since she wouldn’t have been willing to make it under normal circumstances. There was no need for this human to be strengthened or to have access to magic, but Arsinua thought she deserved some power here in the midst of monsters. “Can you take me hom—”