Harley Merlin 8: Harley Merlin and the Challenge of Chaos

by Forrest, Bella

  “Ready to read now, my little bookworm?” I released her again. It was an absolute joy to see her in such pain, and I could’ve gone on all day. Unfortunately, my human body had other ideas. I was sorry, beyond words, to have to say goodbye to this shapely physique that had served me so well all these years. But needs must be met, and I could always make a few cosmetic adjustments to Harley’s plain-ass face. I hadn’t lost my Shapeshifting ability, after all. It would be nothing more than a temporary departure from my beautiful self.

  Harley, crying and heaving, stared me dead in the eyes. Bold. “I’m not… reading it! You want what’s in there, you… read it your damned… self!” She smiled, her face twisting up as she collapsed in a fit of bizarre hysterics. “Oh wait, that’s right… you can’t! The great and powerful Katherine can’t… read a simple book.”

  Anger and embarrassment spiked through my chest like a white-hot blade. It was mortifying to know that, even as a glorious Child of Chaos, even as Eris incarnate, I couldn’t read the blasted thing myself. Harley knew that, and she knew everyone was listening. She was trying to put holes in the vision I’d created, by showing my one weakness in front of my cult. I knew what she was trying to do, and that pissed me off even more. She should’ve been on her knees by now, spilling those spells for all she was worth. Even Odette had been easier to break than this, and her mind had been like Fort Knox. Then again, she hadn’t had all of Chaos on her side, scrambling to find ways to stop me. It wasn’t letting up, even though I’d already completed its rituals.

  Sore losers, huh?

  “Why aren’t you killing her?” I whirled around to find out who’d dared to speak. Nobody moved a muscle.

  “Who said that?” I snarled.

  A shaky hand went up as Sloane Bellmore stepped forward. She was trembling so hard I thought she might keel over. “I did, Eris. I don’t understand, that’s all… Why torture her if you can just end it now?”

  “Oh, you don’t understand? Do you think you know everything that’s going on in my head? Would you like to come up here and try to usurp me?” I glowered at her. They didn’t know what I’d learned from Odette, and they didn’t know about the proviso in reaching these lofty heights. But that didn’t mean they could ask. They were nothing. Nobodies.

  She shook her head violently. “No, no, I was just wondering—”

  I didn’t let her finish. Swiping my hand, I sent a torrent of Squelette Chaos into her, gripping my fingers back into a fist. The splinter of her bones cut through the air, the perfect percussion to Harley’s ongoing torture. Her scream was the sound of cymbals crashing as her execution reached its towering crescendo. I broke every single bone in her body, until she was nothing but a sagging heap on the ground. Gasps whispered through the rest of the gathered cult.

  “Would anyone else care to question me?” I smiled sweetly, observing the quaking crowd. It was like the sniveling children all over again, but that’s what I got for recruiting weak magicals. Despite being blessed with Chaos, at the end of the day they were nothing more than mortals. And I loathed mortals.

  I stopped as I reached Davin. He was staring at me strangely, his sensual mouth set in a not-so-sexy grim line. I’d never been too good at reading the male species. Even if I brought forward a magical and poured Empathy into them, forcing them to tell me his emotions, I still wouldn’t have been able to tell how he felt about me now. Still, he was here, and he didn’t look like he was about to bolt. And he’d created the distraction I needed to take down Gaia, using his Necromancy to drag up a face she remembered. Some historical sidekick who’d been Gaia’s human mouthpiece a long time ago. He’d really gone to town on that, so maybe he had the balls to stick around and see this through.

  Stay… I sent the thought out to him, and hoped he heard. Greatness was embedded in my future now, the ink of my majesty already drying. Those who’d joined me would all witness it, if they had the strength. Those who’d opposed me would suffer and die, just as Bellmore had done. Not that I hadn’t been dying for the opportunity to end her. I’d seen enough of her, as Imogene, to rank her as expendable. The same went for most of these folks, if they tried to cross me.

  The world is mine now. Join me or burn with it.

  There were no alternatives.

  Forty-Three

  Harley

  My whole body was on fire, aching like I’d been put through a meat grinder twice. Every bone hurt, and every vein felt as though it was on the verge of collapse.

  And my heart… I wasn’t sure I had one anymore, not in the figurative sense, though the chunk of muscle was palpitating in my chest.

  I’d seen so much horror and tragedy in the past who knew how long, and it’d broken me down into tiny shards, just as Katherine had promised. I was a shell, and I’d seen too much to ever be the same again. Maybe I was no different than the husks that I feared the children had become.

  Now, I understood why soldiers who’d seen the front line had a haunted look in their eyes. I imagined my own eyes looked pretty similar, my mind plagued by those poor, defenseless children having their Chaos forcibly removed. Children I’d known and couldn’t save from that fate. And Louella… I couldn’t think about her without crying, which meant one thing: I wasn’t hollow and heartless just yet.

  I can’t give up now.

  It might’ve seemed hopeless, but I refused to give Katherine what she wanted. I still had some cards to play, and she’d given them to me, keeping me in the game. Without me, she’d have to drift off into the ether like the rest of the Children of Chaos, fated to retreat into her otherworld until she was summoned, all-seeing but unable to act directly. And who in their right mind would ever summon her? In order to roam free, she needed me. I was her loophole, and I sure as heck wasn’t about to cooperate.

  But I needed to come up with a way out of this mess, or I’d have no choice but to become Katherine’s meat suit. A few more of those blasts of torture, and I wouldn’t have the strength to disobey anymore.

  “Now, where were we?” Katherine tapped her chin.

  “I was telling you to stuff it up your—” I tumbled backward as a rush of air hit me square in the chest, knocking me to the ground.

  At first, I thought Katherine had unleashed another bout of torture on me, but this was way too weak to be her doing. I sat bolt upright in time to see a portal gaping open behind Katherine, with magicals spilling out from the real world. Dozens of them, sprinting out, casting spells and curses left, right, and center, while Chaos abilities of all kinds sparked from their lifted palms.

  My eyes darted to the cult members, but they were so stunned by this turn of events that they just stood there. Some of them fell, crumbling at the hands of Remington, O’Halloran, an army of security magicals, and Wade’s parents—I remembered Felicity from our awkward encounter after the Paris Coven visit, and the guy beside her looked too much like Wade for it to be a coincidence. There were more besides them, but I couldn’t put names to all their faces.

  It looked like the big kahunas who hadn’t succumbed to Katherine’s influence had come out to play. And running behind them all, bringing up the chaotic rear, was the Rag Team, including Finch and Wade.

  I wanted to join in, but I could barely lift my hands. Instead, I gripped the Grimoire and watched as the literal armies of good and evil clashed. Santana’s Orishas were buzzing around like ferocious fireflies, divebombing the cult and taking over their bodies, decimating them from the inside out. Next to her, Tatyana was glowing almost as brightly as Katherine, a cluster of shimmering, transparent figures walking at her side. The spirits seemed to grow more solid as Tatyana pulsated, their spooky hands reaching out to grab at any cultist they passed. Their victims screamed as the spirits dragged them away from the living world, the way I’d been warned they could, when I was in the tunnels of Eris Island on All Hallows’ Eve. It meant they were only good for one shot, but that was all that mattered, considering the number Tatyana had brought with her.

  D
ylan pounded through the throng of enemies—literally pounded through them, his fists flying as he brought his Herculean wrath down on everyone who stepped in his path. Behind him, Kadar had taken the reins of Raffe’s body, his skin a vibrant red while black smoke trailed behind him, as he made a bloody mess of the cultists that swarmed to attack him.

  “This is more like it!” the djinn roared, evidently delighted that he could go wild without any restraint whatsoever.

  “You can say that again!” My mouth fell open. Levi, or rather, Zalaam, was hurtling right alongside Kadar, the two djinn taking down huge swathes of cultists at once. Those suckers just couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, and Zalaam and Kadar weren’t taking any prisoners.

  Astrid was standing to the edge of the ruins, gripping Smartie, her fingers blurring as they swiped across the screen. Overhead, I heard a faint buzzing sound. A team of drones swept down over the cultists and dropped bombs that exploded in clusters of entrapment stones, pinning the cultists to the ground with shining green ropes. Garrett followed the drones, shouting out the spell that got the stones to work as he tore through the crowd with a sword in his hand. I had no idea where he’d gotten it from, but it looked ancient, the blade flickering with Fire as he slashed left and right. In fact, quite a few of the allied squad had weapons I’d never seen before—all of them looking like they’d come out of the pages of a dusty tome on ancient magical warfare. O’Halloran had a pair of shimmering daggers, while Remington had a pitch-black saber that seemed to suck light into the blade.

  “Keep ‘em coming, Astrid!” Garrett yelled back as he came to a skidding halt in front of Channing. “You?!”

  Channing nodded slowly. “Guess you weren’t expecting this, huh? Neither was I, to be honest, but I suppose we’re fighting on opposite sides now.”

  Garrett scoffed. “Not gonna go easy on me, are you?”

  “Afraid not,” Channing replied, lifting his palms to send out a wave of Chaos.

  Garrett lunged forward with his sword, the fiery blade cutting across Channing’s arm. Twisting threads of silvery Chaos burst out of the wound, until they shrouded Channing in a glinting mist. He fell to the ground, unconscious. Stella screamed and tried to protect him, only to be swept to the side as Felicity Crowley came charging through, sending out powerful waves of Fire and Air and Telekinesis. Cormac Crowley was at her side, the two of them working in perfect synchronicity. I even saw her roll over his back to shove a blast of Fire in the face of the French nurse, which made my jaw drop. Talk about cool parents.

  I spotted Finch in the fray, running full-pelt at Officer Mallenberg.

  “Finch Shipton, you chose the wrong side, buddy,” Mallenberg jeered. “I should’ve put you out of your misery when you were lying in a coma. Shame there were too many cameras.”

  “Instead of flapping your lips, why don’t you put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye!” Finch sent out a lasso of Telekinesis, wrapping it around Mallenberg’s throat and tossing him as far as he could over the barren landscape. I lost sight of Finch a moment later as he darted back into the crowd, Shapeshifting into about a hundred other people until I couldn’t spot him anymore. I tried to find Wade, too, expecting him to be close to his mom and dad, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  My attention was drawn by the group of preceptors who were ploughing through the cultists like a combine harvester during high season: Rita Bonnello, Oswald Redmont, Lasher Ickes, and Marianne Gracelyn. Good old Dr. Wolfgang Krieger was sprinting right along with them, putting his Organa Chaos to less than healing means, sending fizzing blasts into the cultists that made them drop to the ground like sacks of potatoes. Somehow, Hiro Nomura was with them, too, his two katanas slicing through the enemies, a bloodcurdling shout bellowing from his chest.

  “Shinsuke!” His war cry made several cultists freeze, and I couldn’t blame them. It sounded like the howl of a madman.

  Katherine pushed him to this. She pushed us all to this.

  I glanced at her to try and gauge her reaction, but she was simply watching the whole debacle unfold with an amused smirk on her face. That couldn’t be good. Still, the arrival of this army of good had bolstered that last flickering flame of hope in my chest, making it burn like a bonfire. Even if Katherine wasn’t showing it, I knew she had to be shocked. There was no way she could’ve anticipated this.

  She looked right back at me. “Don’t think for a second that this changes anything.” She winked. “Backups, sweet-cheeks, backups. I think it’s high time I flexed these new muscles of mine, don’t you? Shall we start with death rays? It’s the only thing for a true badass to use, don’t you think?”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  She laughed. “Oh, am I?” I stared in horror as she lifted her hands, a swirling vortex of pure white light forming in each of her palms. She took a breath, about to start firing off her death beams, when the waterfall spiraled away from its rockface and hit her in the chest, knocking her backward.

  I glanced around frantically to try and see who’d done it. The earth shuddered underneath me as vines swept up, wrestling Katherine and the rest of her cultists to the ground. Air whipped up in volatile winds that were focused solely on the enemy. An entire group of cultists were twisted right into the center of a tornado that went zipping off across the barren wasteland of the Garden of Hesperides, taking them far away.

  After slamming into Katherine and stopping her death rays, Water turned its attention to the cultists. Manifesting as a gigantic, weirdly human titan of Water, it stomped on the enemy, drowning them in its swirling legs, their bodies rising with no way to escape the watery body. Fire appeared next, standing beside Water in a similarly humanoid form, like the Human Torch, only massive. Screaming, the cultists went up in flames, some of them trying to run at the legs of Water, only to get caught in the current and dragged inside.

  Gaia’s children are intervening!

  It didn’t seem possible, but it was definitely happening. Even now, tornadoes were appearing all over the place as Air took its vengeance, grasping for the enemy and hurling them away. Now and again, one of our side got caught in the fray, but I supposed that was inevitable, no matter how devastating it felt. This was war, after all.

  The image that the Chains of Truth had shown me burst into my head. The screams, the shouts, the crackle of Chaos, the groans of the wounded. It was all here, in this moment, playing out in real time. My heart beat faster—if this had come to pass, then did that mean the rest would? Had they been premonitions, after all? I tried to find the Rag Team in the midst of the battle, terrified for their lives, but it was like an impossible game of Where’s Waldo.

  My body was wrenched backward. I whirled around, half expecting to see Katherine leering down at me. Gaia’s children had been giving her one hell of a beating, but she was stronger than all of them. The moment she wanted out, all she had to do was portal the two of us out of here, somewhere she could torture me some more. Instead, Wade and Finch were pulling me along, hauling me toward the spot where Jacob lay.

  “What the—”

  “No time to explain now, Sis,” Finch replied. “Trust us… for once.”

  Wade nodded. “We didn’t think Gaia’s children would intervene. But now’s our chance to get the upper hand again.”

  “British asshole, two o’clock,” Finch muttered.

  “Where?” Wade frowned.

  Finch rolled his eyes. “Dude in the suit you wish you owned.”

  I turned to see Davin staring at us, but he didn’t move. What’s he doing?

  Across the ruins, the first portal closed with a snap, only for another one to open right beside us. There was so much going on that it was hard to keep my focus on one thing. I tried to keep my eyes on Davin, but something else snagged my attention. Through the portal that had just opened, I could see a room of some kind, as though I was looking through an Aperi Si Ostium doorway instead of a portal. There, sitting on the ground, pale as a corpse, was Isadora.


  My heart lurched, a gasp escaping my throat. Alton was crouched on his haunches behind Isadora with his hands on her shoulders, heaving breaths into his lungs, looking like he was as close to death’s door as she was. Purple magic swirled around them both, Alton’s eyes black as night, with two purple dots in the center, while black veins spiderwebbed across his skin. Realization hit me—he’d performed the same spell he’d done on my mom and dad, bringing Isadora back from the afterlife. And he was struggling to keep her here, by the looks of it.

  “How is this happening?!” I asked.

  “Not important now,” Finch replied.

  “We can tell you everything once you’re out of here, away from Katherine,” Wade added, as he bent down and scooped me up into his arms. Finch did the same thing to Jacob, struggling under his dead weight.

  “Not quite so romantic, huh? I guess I’ll let you be the hero, this time. Although, my sister is anything but a damsel in distress.” Finch smirked as he hurried for the portal, jumping through with Jacob in his arms.

  I looped my arms over Wade’s head and around his neck as he followed Finch. We were almost at the portal threshold when I heard an ungodly scream tear across the Garden of Hesperides, so piercing and gut-wrenching that it made everyone stop for a moment. Katherine had spotted us. And that scream belonged to her. What, don’t you have a backup for this? I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t want to count my chickens before we were out of this place.

  “GET THEM!” she bellowed. “DAVIN, GET THEM!”

  Gaia’s Children swarmed in on her, tornadoes of Air and Fire spinning around her, creating a circle of flames that blocked her from getting to us. Through the flickering haze, I saw vines shoot up, lashing at her wrists and ankles in an attempt to drag her down. She dispensed with them quickly, but the tornadoes were another matter. Not to mention the two huge titans of Water and Fire that were preparing to stomp on her if she tried to reach us. It was all she could do to keep them at bay, despite her fancy new role as a Child of Chaos. As it turned out, there were some things that even all the power in the world couldn’t stop.