by C. T. Phipps
Robyn smirked. “How about you, Ms. Earhart?”
“It is no longer my place to serve as the guardian of the gods,” Kim Su said, gesturing forward. “Do as you wish.”
A door appeared behind us.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I wouldn’t put it past Kim Su to give us a door that led to New Jersey then slam it shut behind us so she could move the Dryad to someplace safe. I loved my mentor, but she was a tricksy one and fully capable of pulling a fast one on people she ostensibly loved or cared for. So when we emerged in an Eden-like garden that didn’t so much glow with magic as was magic in a physical form, I was surprised.
The Grove, an apt name if I ever heard one, was an enormous garden of enormous beautiful trees all encircled a much smaller but more beautiful green-leafed maple tree. The maple tree was next to a pond as covered in leaves that floated against the water. A spectacularly beautiful woman with chestnut-colored skin and long, flowing green hair was sitting naked by its trunk.
It was difficult to describe just what was about the Dryad that made her so lovely as she wasn’t any extreme in form. She wasn’t too tall, too short, athletic or buxom, but possessed a kind of balanced form that seemed to contain the whole of the world. To look upon her was to look upon the Earth and that was enough.
The Dryad, or Goddess of the Forest, was looking at a Monarch butterfly the size of a puppy and waved her hand over it. The butterfly transformed into a wolf then loped off into the forest. That struck me as a bizarre abuse of nature. Then again, if you were faced with someone who could legitimately argue that she was nature, would you tell her she was wrong? It was impossible to not fall a little in love with the woman just by looking at her and I was filled with a warm worshipful adoration that made me want to my knees before her.
I looked to my companions and expected to see the same level of reverence but instead found Alex frowning as if he was about to step in the ring at a mixed martial arts tournament. Robyn’s expression didn’t look any better and I could tell this was an encounter she’d been looking forward to for a while. Kim Su looked irritated and came up from behind to pass us, heading to the front.
We all ended up stopping behind Kim Su as she took a position in front of our group and stood between us and the Dryad. I was annoyed to realize the goddess wasn’t even looking at us, instead staring at some ants that were an inch long and building a hill in front of her.
Kim Su cleared her throat into her fist. “Goddess of the Forest, I, Kim Su, Holder of the Akashic Record and Chosen of the Earthmother who is your mother, do address you. I beseech an audience in the name of the Spirits Above the Universe. I speak before the Shaman of Bright Falls and Chosen of Raguel, Third Grandmaster of the Intercepting Fist as well as Warden of the Sun, plus your daughter, who is Beloved by the Trees.”
I leaned over to Alex. “Did you know we had any of those titles?”
“Yes,” Alex said softly.
“Cool,” I said, unsure what else to say. I’d never been a Chosen before.
The Dryad didn’t respond for a moment. “Do I know you?”
Kim Su frowned. “I helped the Brotherhood of the Trees create you. I beseeched the chance to bind your avatar to this world so the magic of the United States wouldn’t die or be corrupted. So there would be a place for shapeshfiter and fae in this part of the world. I’ve saved you from literally dozens of threats over the decades.”
The Dryad concentrated for a moment. “Sorry, no.”
Robyn muttered something indecipherable but I suspected was an encouragement to get on with the judgment.
Kim Su looked embarrassed. “You gave birth to Robyn here. She was raised by your loyal guardian Andrew Taylor. Your orders got Dave Johnson killed trying to keep her from meeting you. You know, the unicorn?”
“The unicorn is dead?” the Dryad asked as if hearing a neighbor had lost their cat. “How unfortunate. I shall have to make another.”
Kim Su looked surprisingly frustrated. She balled her fists and looked furious. “There was a time when this would have meant a great deal to you.”
“Time?” the Dryad asked. “That is something this world has a great deal of and a thing I’m often confused by. Beginnings, middles, and ends. I prefer things to function in cycles. There is a spring and a fall, yes, but they simply give way to each other before coming back around.”
That was what I’d felt when I’d touched the bone fragment: apathy and boredom. She possessed an aloofness that didn’t care for humanity any more than a beloved pet at best or an annoying insect at worst. Humans were mortal, fragile creatures which were more interesting in the moment than the long term. We might die, but there were always more of us to replace the ones who’d fallen. I wasn’t going to find any spiritual enlightenment here—no matter how pretty she was.
Robyn stepped forward. “You gave birth to me. You gave birth to my brothers and sisters who were all left to die. You could have saved them. You could have raised them all yourself. Their deaths are on your head.”
“Life is not a gift, young child,” the Dryad said. “It is not a punishment. It simply is. You are not a person given this world, you are a part of it. You may be born or you may die in the womb. You may live a long life or you may perish. Each of these things enriches the cosmos and provides its own consequences for reality. The problem for you is that you think of yourself as important when we are all just trees in a much larger forest that carries on without us.”
Okay, the fact she could articulate all of that eliminated the last bit of sympathy I possessed for her. “People are not just trees. People are people and you should have empathy for them. You should care what happens to them.”
“Open the cocoon of a butterfly and it will never be able to fly,” the Dryad replied. “Death, disease, starvation, and hunger are as much gifts to you as pleasure as well as thought. Indeed, thought has ever been a curse of human beings. Better you should rely on instinct and not trouble yourselves so much.”
Robyn raised her fists then lowered them, tears streaming down her face. “We’re nothing, aren’t we? Just the result of you screwing a bunch of guys to amuse yourself.”
The Dryad had gone back to looking at her ant hill. “I am bored of this conversation. You would not exist if I did not mate with mortals and life is my gift as well as my curse to you. It was your destiny to survive while your siblings did not. Take the power that is your birthright and use it to grow powerful. Mate with the mortals around you or do not. It is your choice to grow as you see fit and spread your branches. I have no interest in it.”
“Screw it,” Robyn said, taking a deep breath then looking at me. “I don’t know what I was looking for here but this isn’t it. You don’t have to fulfill your promise to me.”
“I am ready to banish her,” Alex said, his body filled with a kind of lethal energy I hadn’t felt when he’d faced the Visigoth. “She is a goddess not worth worshipping and it’s better if mortals find another.”
Kim Su looked down, defeated. “I wanted this to be different. To give mortals a taste of the divine they could rally behind.”
“I know,” Alex said. “Help me.”
She didn’t answer.
“Your power will allow us to do it quickly,” Alex said, looking at me. “The Grove will cease to exist and the spirits can move on to another part of the Spirit World. Bright Falls will be diminished, but it still has many magical places, some linked to the Grove, some not. It will continue to be a special location for decades to come until it is not.”
“Worth it,” Robyn said.
Between the three of us, I was certain we could banish Queen Bitch Tree. That didn’t seem like the way this should end, though.
“No,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Let me try something.”
“It’s over,” Robyn said, her voice defeated. “I’m fine, really.”
“I’m not,” Alex said, his gaze narrowing. “Power and immortality does not make a god.”
&n
bsp; “No,” I said, reaching over to take Robyn’s hand. “Trust me.”
“Why does everyone want to hold my hand lately?” Robyn said, confused. “I mean, hey, you’re cute—”
“Just give me your damn hand,” I said, not in the mood. Drowning will do that to you.
Robyn did so.
“Thank you,” I said, taking a deep breath.
“Jane, what are you doing?” Kim Su asked, looking hesitant to stop or help me.
“Making use of all your training,” I said, looking at her. “You know, what I’ve been practicing for a year on.”
“My training is bunk!” Kim Su said, raising her hand. “Why do you think Alex went off on his own?”
Kim Su wasn’t telling the truth, but I appreciated her distraction. It made it easier to read Robyn. I’d been able to read corpses before but never a living person. I’d always thought it against the “rules” of my power, but I realized now the biggest thing blocking my power had been I’d thought there were rules to magic. There weren’t. People imposed rules on magic in order to make sense of it but like classical music’s rules weren’t the same as grunge; it was really the feeling behind it.
I found myself feeling Robyn in a way I’d been unconsciously feeling Alex for a time now. I picked up her feelings of anger, outrage, and loneliness. I’d picked up her desire to be her own woman. I picked up the fear that had blossomed in her heart as a child that she’d never been good enough for a mother she’d conjured in her mind—a mother that the Dryad had lived down to every misgiving about. I managed to copy virtually her entire life and put it in a little glowing spark in my free hand that I stared at.
“What is that?” Robyn asked, looking confused. “What the hell did you just do?”
“Probably something stupid,” I said, looking at the glowing star. “Pretty much the story of my life.”
Robyn looked at me with a smile that surprised me. It was one of the few times I’d ever seen her genuinely happy looking. “Jane, I’ve seen enough of your life to know you have never done anything stupid.”
“I agree,” Alex said, looking at me.
“Thanks for the pep talk,” I said, walking over to the Dryad. “But I don’t need one.”
The Dryad looked up. “I said begone.”
I put the spark against her forehead. “You can smite us with your smiting after we give you a taste of just what hell you’ve put your daughter through.”
Kim Su started to speak. “Jane—”
But it was done.
The Dryad’s eyes, previously emotionless pools became all too human before her mouth opened in an expression of mixed shock as well as horror. Then, almost as if she’d never existed, she was gone. It was a flicker of light like the kind that occurred whenever I shifted from human to deer form. She was there, then not.
The Grove changed around me, going from a beautiful eternal summer to a depressing fall, all of the leaves having fallen from her tree. The trees around us also looked like they’d lost their vital spark. The magic hadn’t died, hadn’t even weakened really, but it felt different. I’d changed it and the goddess who embodied it.
“What have you done?” Kim Su said.
“No goddeer clue,” I said.
Robyn looked at me then the bare tree before shrugging. “I don’t know what you did, but I’m glad you did it. It doesn’t make up for what she did, though.”
“Vengeance is a thorny path,” Kim Su said. “Something-something, pretend I said something wise.”
“I like you, Kim Su,” Robyn said, obviously having figured out who she was. “You’re a truly awful mentor.”
I looked around the Grove for some sign of the Dryad. After a few minutes of looking around, I decided to give up. “Well, I think we’ve accomplished what we set out to do. We still have to find Jones’s ghost and put him a containment unit with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man but I think this is enough for one day.”
“Oh, I heartily disagree,” Jones’s voice spoke from the other side of the Grove.
A gunshot rang out seconds later.
I turned around to stare at the sight of John Jones in his original form, white suit and all, carrying a coal-black gun I recognized as a modified LeMat revolver from the Wild West era. My father was obsessed with old guns like this and said as a signature Confederate weapon, it was the perfect bad-guy weapon.
The gun made me sick looking at it, as it seemed to pulsate with an aura about it that reminded me of the time I almost drowned, seeing Alex suffering, and all the fears I had about my mother never returning home. I didn’t need my supernatural senses to know there was a demon inside the gun since I recognized the horrible feeling I was experiencing as the same one I’d had around the Big Bad Wolf.
Jones, himself, looked bemused at my presence and there was a triumphant grin on his face I didn’t understand. It took me a second to notice he looked slightly different with the lines from his face gone and a few inches taller. His aura was raw and powerful despite its corruption and I could tell this was his astral form. Not quite a ghost as I’d thought, but his soul unbound from a physical form with probable full access to his magic.
Crap.
“Grandmother!” Alex shouted, distracting me.
I turned around to see the fallen form of Kim Su, my master, holding the side of her stomach as a terrible black stain was growing next to her kidneys. It reeked of demonic magic, and I meant that in a literal way. I could smell sulfur, brimstone, rot, and a dozen other terrible smells coming from the wound.
“Oh hell,” I said.
The Devil Gun. Hell cannot create so it must imitate what greater individuals have made. I wondered why Phillip believed Jones could defeat Kim Su, Raguel said. It turns out he has sent a piece of the Morningstar with him.
All of which would have been a lot better to know a few minutes ago. I wasn’t stopping to think about it, though, because I was pulling the Merlin Gun and firing at Jones. “You son of a bitch!”
None of the three bullets hit him. Instead, they stopped in midair and dissipated.
Crap.
Jones laughed. “Remember, these guns rely on your power to destroy others. I am a very old and powerful wizard. I am like Harry Houdini and David Copperfield. You, my dear, are doing card tricks at children’s parties.”
I shot at him again, weakening myself when I should have been trying to find another way to dispatch him.
“I wouldn’t underestimate her,” Alex said, trying to cleanse Kim Su’s wound as best he could. The fact she wasn’t dead told me Jones wasn’t quite as powerful as he thought. Still, I didn’t have any doubt the gun couldn’t finish her off. I wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Give me Robyn,” Jones said. “You’ve apparently killed the Goddess of the Forest, but the magic is still here and I can bind this place to her. It’ll be better than nothing.”
“Like hell, Jonestown,” I said, not exactly doing a great job with my comebacks. I kept the Merlin Gun trained on him. “There’s not a damn thing you can say to me that would make me do that.”
Jones kept the Devil Gun aimed at me before making a circular gesture with his other hand. Instantly, Robyn’s father, Andy, appeared by his side. He was bound much tighter in the roots than Robyn had left him, but also had numerous burns on his face. It indicated he’d been tortured.
“She will come if she wants to see her father again,” Jones said, softly. “Tell you what, I’ll make it easy. You can give over her or Kim Su. I don’t really care. Either one will please my master.”
Yeah, this wasn’t a good situation.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I’ll do it,” Robyn said, stepping forward.
“Like hell you will,” I said, keeping my arm in front of her.
“I’ll do anything to protect my dad,” Robyn said, her voice calm and resolved.
I glared at her. “Okay, genius, what exactly would prevent numbnuts over here from killing us all once he’s got you? Because t
he first thing I think when I think of John Jones is not trustworthy. Actually, it’s the Martian Manhunter, but evil asshole is the second.”
“I give you my word,” Jones said, slick like a serpent.
“Goddess dammit,” I said. Why did so many supernaturals have to be men of their word!
With that, Robyn stepped forward, her hands raised.
“Yes, come to me,” Jones said, chuckling. “I’ll even give you what you most desire in the world, Alex. I’ll tell you where my master is presently located. You will find a hefty bribe that shall soften the blow for Robyn’s loss as well, Ms. Doe.”
“I don’t sell out my friends,” I said, staying close behind Robyn. “Not for money, not for anything.”
“You’ll find the benefits of being a wizard outweigh moral compromises like that,” Jones said, getting a distant look in his eye. “I’ve done unimaginably terrible things my younger self never would have believed himself capable of doing. Some because of my master’s influence, others because of the way the magic influences me. Magic is power and I wanted more of it to do good until more became my good.”
“My heart bleeds,” I said, having crossed halfway across the area between me and Jones.
Alex was still at Kim Su’s side, muttering a prayer that caused the black blood to turn white and dry up, like powder. Alex was some sort of priest in addition to being a mage and that seemed to have some benefit against the Devil Gun’s magic.
“Not another step,” Jones said, lifting the Devil Gun and aiming it at my head. “Look what you’ve done to this place, Jane. You think I’m evil? This place has stood for a century as a bastion of what is pure and good in this world. A purity sullied and destroyed by mankind. We’re a plague, you and I, along with other humans. It’s why we need to be controlled and transformed into something better.”
I stopped in my tracks, but Robyn kept walking with her head down low. I believed, in that moment, that she was fully prepared to die to protect her father. I admired that in her, even as I looked down to Ranger Taylor and saw him trying to speak. I believed he was willing to sacrifice himself for her as well but couldn’t speak because of a spell muffling any noise.