by J. P. Rice
He broke down and plopped down on the floor next to me. I patted him on the shoulder, and Cheryl moved in closer to do the same.
He smashed his trembling lips together and thought for a moment. “Like I was nothing.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“He threw me away like I was nothing more than a piece of trash stuck to his boot,” he said and sighed in disgust. “I knew the man had done some dishonorable things in his day, but I grew to ignore the faults. He was a devil, the same as a God to the humans. The top of the chain. The final link between the demons and the grand devil. The original.”
“I understand.” But I didn’t understand everything. I thought the original devil had died. It wasn’t worth bringing it up now. “It’s like finding out your favorite baseball player has been corking his bat.”
“What?” he asked, his wart-covered face riddled with confusion.
“Never mind.” How could I approach this? I thought about the plan Cheryl and I had developed and winked at her. “Listen. Since we’ve been here, we’ve realized that this might not be the best place for us.”
“You can’t leave,” he said coldly. “You’re the only ones that make me feel sane around here.” He tried to smile, but his trembling lips wouldn’t oblige, and he ended up with an awkward, confusing expression.
“It’s just that we expected the devils to be as noble as the Gods.” I hoped I was keeping a straight face because some of the Gods were anything but noble. “We aren’t against the magic or the mission, but the mission is for the benefit of the leaders. If we don’t respect the leaders, then what are we doing?”
I could see the hamster wheel starting to spin inside Dweezil’s head. His facial contours twisted as years’ worth of recognition appeared to be hitting him in waves. Tears galloped down his face, jumping from the tip of his pointed chin and drizzling onto the floor.
“It’s okay to admit you made a mistake. We have.” Either I had convinced Dweezil to come to our side, or I had just signed two death certificates. “So, what’s our big honor?”
“It’s no honor,” he blurted. “He’s taking you two on another mission.” He made quote symbols with his fingers. “Under the guise of a mission, he plans to kill both of you. The three of us will be joining him on a trip to St. Louis.”
Cheryl asked, “Why is he going to kill us?”
“Because you witnessed him running from the enemy.” He lowered his head, defeated. “Because you can tell everyone how cowardly he acted. There have been some stirrings lately concerning dissatisfaction of Bruceras. If this story gets out, he could be run out of the Red Cavern. Three devils have died in the past few days. Three.”
He took a few deep breaths and continued, “And he lost the Devil’s Glove. One of the most powerful relics in the world. So with him standing on shaky ground, he can’t afford to have a story highlighting his cowardly ways making its rounds.”
I could tell the fact that Bruceras had run was affecting Dweezil in more ways than one. Everything he had built this man up to be was a complete farce. I still thought he was missing a key aspect to this scenario.
“Why do you think he asked you to join us in St. Louis?” I asked.
A fiery streak of recognition bounced around his teary eyes and he lowered his head. “How stupid of me. I’m the third witness.”
Even after Bruceras had thrown him to the enemy, he had still been blinded by his obedience. The odious stench of servility didn’t wash away easily. Everything was dawning on him now.
I said, “Listen, we’ve been talking about a plan to get him before he gets us. With your help, we could make it happen.”
“We can’t compete with him.” His eyes widened in fear. “He’s a devil. A lord.”
Those words hurt my ears.
“I understand magic a lot more than I’ve been letting on.” I paused and gave Cheryl a chance to come clean. Instead, she sat against the wall, chewing her bottom lip nervously.
After a brief spell of silence, Dweezil admitted, “And I may have a bit more power than I’ve shown. I need to make a few more stops and then I’ll return, and we can talk again.”
Dweezil wiped away the tears and composed himself with a few heavy exhales. He dabbed his cheeks with his sleeves and climbed out the top. I felt numb. Dweezil hadn’t committed to anything, and for all I knew, he could be running straight to Bruceras to tell him every detail we’d just discussed.
My heart pounded, and Cheryl said, “We don’t have a choice. Even if Dweezil chickens out, we have to do it ourselves. Bres is going to kill us. There’s only one way to stop it.”
Her calling him Bres struck me as odd.
“Dweezil would make everything so much simpler,” I told her. “Bruceras trusts him more than anyone else. He has access to many things that we don’t. He likes you. Maybe you should work on him.”
“I’m not whoring myself out,” she said, raising her voice. “I’m still not over my experience with Aka Manah.”
“No.” I waved my hands in front of my chest. “I wasn’t suggesting that at all. I mean, just be nice to him. Maybe pat him on the back gently when you talk to him. It could be the difference between life and death.”
“I guess I could do that,” she said, calming down. “I don’t know what he’s thinking either. Bruceras is going to kill him too.”
“I don’t think he’s accepted it yet.” Moisture leaked from my palms. I wondered if Dweezil was ratting us out. “He’s still floating down that river in Egypt known as Denial. Years of blind loyalty will do that to a person. But soon his boat will spring a few leaks and he’ll have to face a harsh realization.”
Dweezil returned about fifteen minutes later.
The splotchy rash on his neck and face told me that this was hitting him hard. He collapsed dramatically to the ground and curled up on his side.
I looked at Cheryl and gestured with my eyes for her to take action.
She rolled her eyes and patted him on the biceps. “There, there. There, there,” she said in a monotone.
I shot her a dirty look. She had been through a lot, but our lives were on the line. I said, “I know this is all a big shock to you, but we need to set this plan.”
“And what is your grand plan?” he asked with no emotion in his words.
“That’s what we need you for,” I explained as I sat down next to him. “Obviously we will need to distract Bruceras somehow and launch a sneak attack. That’s probably our best bet.”
“So what? You’re just going to wave your hand around, and say, hey look over there?” He pointed at the wall for added effect. “And then bop him on the head?”
I answered, “That’s a much more simplistic version. If you two could distract him, I have enough magic that I could either kill him or hurt him bad enough that we could finish him off.”
We went back and forth for a while as we tried to devise a cohesive plan. It was difficult because we were in the dark about the details of the mission. Dweezil had informed us that Bruceras wanted to take the Harp to St. Louis to cause a never-ending winter there.
I wondered if the devil knew about a certain wizard who lived there. He wasn’t the type of wizard you wanted to piss off. He was on the list with the Sphinx and the Morrigan as someone I didn’t want to get into a brawl with.
Unfortunately, none of that mattered right now. I’d been there when Mike Merlino’s world had been turned upside down. I needed to secure Ice Heart’s flute to get back into his good graces. If that was even possible now. I wouldn’t blame him one bit if he told me to fook off.
“Hey Dweezil. You have any idea where Bruceras keeps Ice Heart’s flute? I had a run in with him before I came here and I’d like to settle the score,” I lied. Sort of.
“It’s in the elbow pocket of his duster. I take it out every day when I clean his clothes. I’m not even sure he knows it’s in there to be honest. He asks me about it every time he travels to Pittsburgh to use it.”
Pe
rfect. “What do you think about snagging that for me so I can taste some sweet revenge?”
“Stealing from a devil?” he said, his eyes bulging from his head. His years of subservience were hard to shake.
“To be fair, it would be more like borrowing from a devil who was planning to kill you.” I clenched my teeth and grinned.
“Let me see what I can do,” he responded.
That helped greatly, but it didn’t solve the entire problem. The Morrigan’s birdies couldn’t get into the Red Cavern. Even if Dweezil could get the flute, I still had to figure out how to smuggle it out of here. Hmmm. Her crows did travel to St. Louis.
Another thought hit me. If I summoned Ice Heart to the Red Cavern, it would kill him because of the temperature. He wouldn’t be able to re-form like he had that day at the park. He could melt partially and keep turning it back into ice, creating a track to glide on, but he couldn’t spend an extended time in a hot place like the Red Cavern. He would be in a constant state of regeneration.
His cryokinesis would be the only thing he could concentrate on, and I could kill him easily. I would need to find a remote area away from the other demons for that. But that plan wouldn’t do anything to help with Mike.
If I could get the flute to the Morrigan and she could pass it along to Mike, he would look like a hero. And maybe he would take a little sympathy on the plight I had faced. A better plan was to get the flute from Dweezil and have the Morrigan’s avian crew pick it up in St. Louis. Then she could give it to Mike.
That left more work to do. I needed to send a message to the Morrigan and get confirmation from her. If she approved, we needed to devise a tracking system for her birds to find the flute. It wouldn’t solve the overlying problem, but eliminating Ice Heart would help a bunch of Pittsburghers sleep better.
Later that night, I waited until Cheryl fell asleep. I pried open my skin to get to the Raven’s Eye and held my thumb over it. When it started to glow, I tapped it three times.
Chapter 26
A computerized voice said, “Please record your message.”
I pulled my wrist closer to my face.
“Mo, I think I can get Ice Heart’s flute,” I whispered. “We will be going to St. Louis. Can your birds pick it up out there?”
I sat back against the wall with my knees against my chest. The Morrigan could respond in ten seconds or ten days. A burning sensation centered in my wrist and I looked at the eye. It was blinking, which meant there was a message.
I tapped the eye twice and the Morrigan’s voice came through, “I can help you out. When you get there, tap the eye seven times to mark your general location. After that, tap it once to mark the exact spot of the flute. You’ll have to stand in that spot for five seconds so I can get the coordinates. My crows will take it from there.”
I tapped the eye three times again. “Please record your message.”
“Mo, make sure you give it to Mike Merlino and tell him I am so sorry about what happened. He’ll know what I’m talking about. And Mo. Thank you.”
I assumed the Celtic Gods had heard about the destruction at Mike’s house. Did he blame me? I certainly blamed myself. But if I could get the Dagda’s Harp and end the suffering in Pittsburgh, he would see that it was all for a greater goal.
Was it enough, though? Mike’s house had burned down, his adopted son had used the Devil’s Glove, which caused insanity, and the status of his unborn child was up in the air. People could move to a new city, but Mike couldn’t just replace the damage that had occurred.
First Alexis, then Mike. I couldn’t watch any more families being torn apart.
I’d lost Darabond over five hundred years ago. Then, I had been blessed with children, only for them to die unnecessarily. Even though we hadn’t been a real family, they had been ripped away from me.
After they had died, my father was the only family member left. I didn’t count my mother as family. When I’d lost him, I felt empty. Still do.
Dealing with the constant pain and trauma had turned me into a callous individual. A cold, distant person who would rather avoid someone than take the chance of being hurt by that person. I’d seen the worst the world had to offer, and I’d participated in some of it.
I didn’t want that to happen to these other families. Their hearts were filled with love. Even Mike, who operated in a dark world, was a soldier of light. I kept going back to our conversation when we were detained at Octavius’s.
He had talked about how he just wanted to be a family man. His magical ability and looks, coupled with Pittsburgh’s acceptance of the supernatural meant he could have any girl he wanted, for the most part. He could be out partying every night with a different girl if he wanted to. And no one would blame him for it.
Instead, he fought against the bad guys, then went home to his family. He didn’t need the tickertape parade. He didn’t need a big crowd cheering for him. And here I was, five hundred years his senior, and jealous of his noble ways.
I wanted a family so bad that I was ready to build one around my dragons. To start a proper family, I would have to give up on Darabond. Could I do that? Just thinking about it caused my breathing to become husky and labored.
Or I could start a family with Alexis. There were a lot of single moms out there. Owen had been right about my current lifestyle not being conducive to raising a child. If I chose this path, it meant that I would have to give up this life of adventure. I would have to give up my dragons.
Or would I? What girl wouldn’t want to grow up with a family of dragons? She would be well protected. As I continued thinking about it, my head started to spin. There was one person I went to when my mind was swimming. My father.
He’d always been there to help me sort out my thoughts. When I felt like I wanted to go on a murderous rampage, he was always there to talk me down from the ledge. Now he was gone. Darabond was gone. My children were gone. I had no family.
I’m sure if my father were around, he’d lecture me about the adoption process and tell me that it wasn’t as simple as plucking a cantaloupe from the grocery store display.
I only had my scrambled head and myself to rely on now.
I got woozy and my vision failed. No. No.
I blinked my eyes open and felt the harsh light pouring down on me from above. Escape didn’t cross my mind this time as the metal cuffs locked my arms to the silver chair. The door to my right opened and shut as the movie screen lowered from the ceiling.
Agramon entered my field of vision in his normal snakeman form with spider legs protruding from his sides. He leaned in close, rubbing his slimy, reptilian cheek against mine. I fought off the urge to vomit as he leaned in closer to my ear.
“Welcome back,” he whispered.
I didn’t say anything and waited for the film session to start. The projector shot a beam toward the screen, but it was blank. I could hear the projector running and the still crackle of film sound, but nothing appeared. A few more seconds passed, and I wondered what was happening.
“Aren’t you going to ask?” Agramon backed away from me.
I wanted this to be over as soon as possible, so I played along with him. “Why isn’t anything on the screen?”
“The screen only plays your deepest fears of your past. Not your present or future,” he hinted.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s quite simple really,” Agramon explained. “You call on me to help you deal with your deepest and darkest fears.”
“I don’t call on you. You pop up unexpectedly,” I clarified.
He walked out of my field of vision and said, “Semantics. One way or another, I deal with your fears because you won’t do it. Right now, your biggest fear isn’t about yourself. You’re growing as a person. It’s good for both of us.”
He strolled back in front of the blank screen.
“Both of us?” I asked, confused.
“Of course,” he confirmed, and a sinister smile took form on his reptilian face
. “Sympathy is the ugly stepsister of fear. When you sympathize with someone, it is only natural that you fear something bad might happen to that person. You are afraid for someone else. Likely an alien feeling for you.”
“Fook you, asshole,” I returned. His words stung, but he wasn’t wrong. After my children died, it was hard to feel bad for others when I’d been through so much.
Agramon moved in front of the blank screen and stuck his forked tongue out. He was enjoying my anger.
“I know what this is about. Alexis,” I revealed.
“That is one half of your greatest fears right now.”
One thing had been dominating my thoughts recently.
“I know what it is. I fear that Alexis might end up in a bad situation. And the other has to be Mike and his girlfriend. I can’t get them out of my head. I feel horrible about that and I fear she might lose the baby.”
“Yes. You are maturing. It only took a little more than five centuries,” he said, mocking me.
Maybe I was evolving. It seemed like a good thing, except for the Agramon factor. Worrying about other people was a form of fear that the demonic spirit would take advantage of. But how could I not worry about Alexis and Mike? Or his girlfriend? Or his son who could have suffered mental damage from using the Devil’s Glove?
In the past, I would’ve said, ‘Sorry about your luck’ and moved on. But now I had a personal connection with Alexis and Mike. My pounding heart and husky breathing proved that I did care about them. I was scared about their futures. Perhaps it was a motherly reflex. I’d lost my own children, and with them, I’d lost a part of my soul.
Perhaps I was latching onto Mike and Alexis to fill the void. To give myself purpose. More purpose than hunting down ancient relics. What was my legacy?
“They aren’t your children, you know,” Agramon said, reading my thoughts.
I tried to stand up and blast him in the mouth, but the restraints locked my arms to the chair. “You son of a bitch.”