Harley Merlin 8: Harley Merlin and the Challenge of Chaos

by Forrest, Bella

  I glowered at her. “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”

  “Did you hear that, kiddos?” She glanced over at the cowering children. “She doesn’t care enough to beg for your lives. She thinks you’re disposable. How heartbreaking for you. I bet you all thought that now that the mighty Harley was here, you’d all be off the hook. Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “You are wondrous, my darling,” Davin purred.

  “And you can shut your trap, too!” I snapped. “You’re a leech, clinging to that evil bitch because you think you’re going to get something out of her. Let me be the first to tell you, the moment you piss her off, you’ll be exploding into a spray of blood before you can even say, ‘I’m sorry, darling.’” I roared the last word, hating his guts.

  He laughed tightly, as though he wasn’t quite sure if I was bluffing. “I like to stay on the side of the most powerful. And the most beautiful. Sadly, sweeting, that isn’t you. And if that makes me a leech, then I am only too happy to suckle upon the supple flesh of my darling Eris.”

  “You make me sick!” I snarled.

  “Put your head between your legs, then,” Katherine retorted. “Even if it doesn’t help with the nausea, you won’t have to see what is coming next. Although, I’d hate for you to miss it. I’ve prepared quite a show. I might even throw in a few pyrotechnics, if I’m feeling particularly dramatic.”

  “I’ll never read out those spells for you. You can scream until you’re blue in the face. You can hurl all the hexes you want at me. I won’t do it. Chaos will protect me.” It was my last-ditch attempt at saving face, in the fragile hope that I might be right.

  Her cold laughter immediately shattered that hope. After all, she knew everything. She probably had my reading out the Grimoire planned to the letter. If she’d known about this spell that she needed since before I’d seen Odette in Paris, then she’d been thinking about it for a long time. Far longer than I’d even known what the Grimoire had in it.

  “You will read out the spells, Harley. Don’t forget, I broke Odette’s mind—like, I literally broke it. Yours will be child’s play, and Chaos won’t be able to do a single thing about it. Chaos rules, remember? No direct intervention. It can’t move the goal posts now. It isn’t allowed. Isn’t that funny? It has all of this power, running through every magical in the world, and yet it can’t stand in my way because of a rule it created. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.”

  I sank back against the tree, trying to think of something to say, one searing comeback that would render her silent. Instead, I was speechless. She’d played her game so well, never slipping up, and we hadn’t even known we were the pieces in play. We’d gone running off in so many directions, always reporting back to Imogene Whitehall, our avenging angel, only to find out that our angel had horns propping up her crooked halo. She’d played the long game, and now it was paying dividends, all of it coming together in exactly the way she’d wanted. I hated that more than anything—that we’d walked right through every hoop she’d set up without question.

  “What, no witty repartee?” Katherine smiled. “Have I finally silenced the Great White Snark?”

  I literally couldn’t think of a single thing to say to her. What could I say? The Grimoire satchel was over by her, too far for me to reach, and we had no way of getting out of here with Jacob unconscious on the ground.

  She’s done it… she’s won. I squeezed my eyes shut as a fierce, angry tear rolled down my cheek.

  All of this had been for nothing. All of my time researching the Grimoire, all of the missions we’d endured to secure it, all of the effort and stress and strain, trying to come up with a way of stopping Katherine—it had all been for nothing. She’d been the puppet master this whole time, and we’d just been dancing on her strings. She’d won, and there was nothing else I could do or say to change that. And now, I’d have to watch as she stole the lives of these children, helpless to lift a finger to save them.

  Thirty-Nine

  Harley

  “Not you, too,” Katherine muttered, as she turned back to the line of shaking children. “You could fill a swimming pool with all these tears. And they’re completely pointless, by the way. Sniveling isn’t going to make me change my mind. So why not be brave, instead? Why not lift those chins up and take it like troopers? After all, you’re serving the most precious purpose that any magical can be gifted with.”

  The kids’ desperate sobbing echoed back, making my heart break. I couldn’t save them. Even if I didn’t have my hands tied behind my back, one of Katherine’s minions would have knocked me down again. Without a direct exit strategy, I couldn’t do anything, and that hurt more than any pain I’d ever endured before. For the first time since I’d started this vengeance mission against Katherine, I felt like a total failure.

  Meanwhile, Katherine strolled in front of the children, continuing her latest monologue of impending doom.

  “It’s high time you all realized I don’t have a hoot to give about your feelings. I don’t care if you suffer. I don’t care if you’re in pain. I dispensed with empathy a long time ago, and if you want to blame someone for that, you can blame your ‘hero’ over here.” She jabbed a finger back at me, clearly wanting me to feel like this was my fault. “Well, her father, anyway. He taught me not to trust anyone. He taught me not to be weak. He taught me not to care. So, in a way, I’ve got a lot to thank him for, though I doubt you’ll all be lining up to congratulate him. It’s probably for the best that I skewered him. Right, Harley? Oh, what’s that, still got nothing to say? Katie got your tongue?”

  Don’t let them see that you’re defeated. I lifted my head as proudly as I could and looked at the children, trying to offer them some comfort. They just stared back in hopeless desperation, their eyes wide and panicked. They wanted me to get up and save them. They wanted me to do something. But I… I just couldn’t. She’d already won.

  “I’m not entirely heartless,” Katherine continued. A gasp of hope went up from the children. “Oh, no, don’t get it twisted, you’re all still going to die, but I’m not going to drag it out for too long. This will all be over soon, and then you won’t have to worry about anything, ever again. You can all die in the knowledge that you’ve given me the ability to ascend, resulting in a world far better than the one you’ll be leaving. And your families, if you have them, will be well rewarded. As for the orphans and unwanted amongst you—you’ll just have to be satisfied with the gift of giving me all-consuming power. Sorry, I don’t make the rules… not yet, anyway.”

  The children howled, some of them crumpling to their knees, only to be dragged back up by the guarding cultists. A few begged for their lives, but the majority were too panic-stricken to do anything but cry and wail. Only Louella continued to hold her nerve, refusing to show fear.

  Katherine came to a halt and raised her arms, standing right in the center of that circular stone slab as she urged the cultists to bring the children forward. Moving as if they’d practiced this, they set each child at equal intervals around the disc, making them look like the points on a clock, with Katherine in the middle. Once they were in position, she smiled and raised her arms. A bright bronze light swelled in her chest, pulsing as she started to speak.

  “Filii chaos hora venit. Ego autem duodecim discipuli et venerunt ad praemium peto. In animabus suis: Ego offerre mea provocatione ad vos.” Her words boomed through the ancient ruins as if she were talking through a loudspeaker.

  The pulsating light in her chest grew brighter as she continued and took a step toward the first victim, who’d been placed at one o’clock on the disc. It took me a moment to realize, but the kids around the clock had fallen silent, their eyes closed. I frowned, trying to figure out what was happening. Their faces were blank, as if they weren’t quite here anymore. In fact, they looked like they were sleeping, their bodies held up by the sheer force of Katherine’s magic. Maybe she has a sliver of a heart. She wasn’t keeping them awake or conscious while she
performed the last ritual. They’d be oblivious to all of it. Though I wasn’t quite sure what “it” was just yet. All I knew was that she’d told them they were going to die.

  I didn’t even see the knife until it was too late. The blade slashed through the air, and my heart lurched, fearing the worst. But the blade didn’t make contact with the girl at all. Instead, Katherine had made a cut in the atmosphere itself. Weird, purple tendrils snaked out toward the girl. They reached her chest, and her body spasmed as Chaos abandoned her, particle by glinting particle, carrying the essence back to Katherine for her to absorb. The purple tendrils poured out, thicker and faster, crashing into Katherine’s chest until the girl went limp and fell to the ground, disconnecting from the magic that had held her upright.

  Is she alive? I leaned forward, desperate to see some sign of life. It was hard to tell from where I was sitting, but she still seemed to be breathing. A shallow movement of her chest and a faint flicker behind her closed eyes gave me hope. But would she ever wake up?

  “You monster!” I yelled, but Katherine couldn’t hear me over the roar of the magic.

  I realized that she’d told the children they were all going to die, in order to scare them. Either that, or she’d been fully prepared to watch them die to succeed. There was every chance that she’d had no clue what would actually happen to them when she began the ritual. You really are sick.

  All I could do was watch, helpless, as she made her way around the clock of children. After each repetition of the spell, she absorbed the Chaos from another child, until her whole body glowed with horrifying purple light, illuminating every vein, every capillary, every cell beneath her skin. Tears poured from my eyes, my heart shattering as the knife darted out, making its cuts in the air, and evaporated the magic of child after child, all of them dropping to the ground, unconscious, as they disconnected from Katherine’s energy. I knew the clock was ticking down to the moment she reached Micah, Marjorie, and Louella. They’d been positioned at ten, eleven, and twelve, and I just knew Katherine had done that on purpose. She wanted me to suffer. She wanted me to feel her victory, in all its horrifying glory. But at least there’s a chance they’re not dead. I forced myself to focus on that as she kept going.

  But they weren’t the only ones I recognized. The two older girls, Sarah McCormick and Cassie Moore, who’d been so close to each other at the SDC, swayed with their eyes closed, completely expressionless, as though they were on a different plane of existence, numb to everything going on around them. At least they’d been spared the pain of this final act. I, on the other hand, couldn’t do anything but watch and try to keep hold of the contents of my stomach. It was awful to watch their Chaos get wrenched away. With every absorption, Katherine got stronger, and soon, she’d be unstoppable.

  Katherine swiped her blade in front of Sarah, the Supersonic girl, and absorbed her powers, just as she’d done with the children who’d gone before. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. I felt I owed it to them, in some strange way. If Sarah hadn’t been cuffed, she’d have been able to run from this. But we were all stuck, in our own way, just as Katherine had planned.

  “Stop it!” I howled. “STOP IT!”

  Cassie came next, just standing there with that same listless expression as the tendrils grasped for her Chaos and made their way back to Katherine. All of the Empath and Morph ability poured out of her, filling Katherine up.

  Mina Travis and Emilio Vasquez were next in line. I couldn’t recall what their abilities had been, or if we’d ever truly found out, but, if they were here, then it had to have been worthwhile for Katherine. I covered my eyes as she slashed her blade across the air, using the tendrils to lap up their Chaos. And I can’t stop her. They were expendable to her, not worth sparing a moment for.

  “You sick monster, you sick monster,” I repeated. I wished I could’ve torn out my eyeballs so I didn’t have to look at those swirling tendrils anymore. If there’d ever been a morsel of humanity in her, it was long gone. Nobody with any feeling whatsoever could do this. Nobody. That’s where Chaos had gone wrong. They’d made the rituals so awful and so strenuous that they probably hadn’t expected anyone to go through with them. And then Katherine had come along.

  Passing through child after child, she reached nine o’clock on the circle. My throat was raw with sobbing, my eyes burning with tears, my heart in pieces. She was almost finished, and that meant she was one step closer to her end goal. A victory I couldn’t stop. That hurt as much as watching the Chaos being removed.

  “Is this worth it? Is it really worth it?” I roared. “You were a mother, Katherine! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Katherine shot me a look. “And look what I did to Finch,” was all she said, as she swiped the blade and released more of the purple tendrils.

  Micah was next, swaying gently as the trance held him. The tendrils hit him, and he fell to the ground, just as the rest of the children had done. I watched for that telltale rise and fall of his chest, finding a scrap of comfort in the sight of that steady movement. They’re alive… they’re alive. If they were still breathing, then it meant I might be able to fix the state she’d put them in.

  “Heartbreaking, isn’t it?” Katherine snickered, her eyes violet. “Two left. Best get on with it, eh?”

  She smiled as she turned to Marjorie, the fledgling Clairvoyant who’d made the choice to go to LA, following Imogene as we’d all done. But it had been Katherine leading the show. It had never been Imogene. Her crocodile tears over the stolen kids had all been part of it.

  With each passing second, the enormity of Katherine’s operation became clearer. Every time we’d thought Imogene was helping us, it had been Katherine, moving another piece into place. She’d had the kids exactly where she wanted them. It hadn’t mattered that we’d brought them to the SDC, thinking they were finally out of harm’s way, because she’d always planned to put them exactly where she could see them. In a high-security facility, run by her, watched over by her, planned by her, until she could swipe them without detection.

  “I’m sorry, Marjorie! I’m so, so sorry!” I wept, utterly destroyed, but she couldn’t hear me.

  “You should’ve kept her with you. I’d still have gotten her, in the end, but at least you could’ve pretended she was safe.” Katherine chuckled as the knife lashed out, the tendrils pulsing, taking Marjorie’s Chaos away forever. As the energy poured into Katherine, she moved to Louella. “And then there was one. I thought I’d save you for last, given all the hassle you’ve caused me. Though, I suppose it all worked out nicely in the end.”

  Louella smirked. “You should have killed me first.”

  Katherine paused in surprise. “Why aren’t you in a trance?”

  “It doesn’t work on Telepaths, apparently. Lucky for me. And I’ve been listening, Katherine. You should hear what I’ve been hearing.”

  “You haven’t heard anything. Stop stalling. It won’t change your fate.”

  “Then why are you stopping?” Louella held her ground. “I can hear Chaos whispering all around the Garden of Hesperides. And it wants to make something clear, you evil cow. Chaos doesn’t want you as its Child, just like the magical world didn’t want you. Like your son didn’t want you. Like Hiram Merlin didn’t want you.”

  What are you doing? I leaned forward, not wanting to miss a word. Somehow, I still hoped she’d get out of this. Maybe, just maybe, she was smart enough to. Maybe she could stop the ritual at eleven, making Katherine fall at the final hurdle. If she couldn’t, then it would be game over.

  “Nobody wants you, Katherine,” she pressed on. “Nobody wants you because your heart is black, and everything you are is pure evil. You’re selfish and self-serving, and you’re not going to get what you want, no matter how much you kick and scream. You could kill a thousand of us, and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. Because the truth is, Katherine, you don’t deserve Chaos, no matter how hard you try and push your way through. You’ll see…
maybe not now or tomorrow, but you’ll see. Forcing Chaos through this Challenge will be the worst thing you’ve ever done, not to the world, but to yourself. I mean, you’ve said it yourself, all of your life… rules are made to be broken.”

  “Nice speech, chickadee, but it’s not going to save you.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” Louella replied, her voice strong and firm.

  Katherine rolled her eyes. “That’s quite enough of you.” The knife shot out and swiped at the air, unleashing the last bout of purple tendrils. A scream tore out of my throat. She’s awake! Oh God, she’s awake! As her Chaos began to disintegrate, flowing into Katherine, Louella turned to look at me, a pained smile on her lips. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Louella had been one of us, one of the Rag Team, and now she was out cold on the floor. And I couldn’t see her breathing. Why couldn’t I see her breathing? Had the trance protected the other children, somehow?

  “Louella!” I shouted, as if it might rouse her.

  But she lay still, her body limp, no hint of life stirring her. One of the brightest minds in the world, and Katherine had snuffed her out. No light would ever shine as bright as she had. And I didn’t know what to do or say. I didn’t have words powerful enough to show how sorry I was. I’d allowed myself to hope that everyone might be okay, after seeing the rest of the children breathing, but Louella… Louella was gone. I didn’t need Tatyana to tell me that. I could feel it. An emptiness, floating across the landscape toward me, and she was at the numb epicenter.

  Two of the cultists stalked toward me, dragging me off the ground and hauling me toward Katherine. They threw me down at her feet, so close to the Grimoire I could almost taste it. But it was in the bag, hidden from my grasp. I stared up as Katherine loomed over me, wondering if I was about to suffer the same fate as the twelve children. Instead, she slashed the blade across my cheek. Blood spilled out and trickled down my face. Sliding the knife back into her dress, she leaned down and swiped her fingers across the cut she’d made, until the crimson liquid dripped onto her palm.