by Joy Nash
Arthur pressed on, hardly daring to hope. “Summon them.” When Mab seemed to dismiss the idea, he added, “Unless, of course, you’re afraid of what might happen if you do.”
Would Mab take the bait? He braced himself for her next blow. Waited for her to laugh and resume the fight.
“Afraid?” Her brows went up. “Oh, I think not, Arthur.”
“Then do it,” he shouted. “Summon my father’s relations to witness my challenge.”
Another long moment passed in which Arthur once more thought he’d lost. Then the ruby nestled in Mab’s cleavage flared. The stones worn by her seven adepts responded, gleaming blood red in answer. They took up a pulsing rhythm, glowing like hot coals alight on the dark moor.
The breath flooded out of Arthur’s lungs. The summons was not limited by distance. It would reach every Druid who possessed a fragment of Mab’s touchstone. Every Druid bound in fealty to the alpha.
“It is done,” Mab said. “The clan is summoned. Your worthless kin will soon bear witness your defeat.”
Arthur forced himself not to react. His gambit had worked. He’d gained a bit of time. How long before his father’s people arrived? A few hours? More? Would they join his challenge, face death and enthrallment in an effort to defeat Mab? None of them had taken the risk seven years ago. Maybe none would now.
He turned toward the house. Cybele stood in the doorway. Their gazes touched; grim understanding passed between them. Then her eyes suddenly shifted to a point behind him.
“Arthur! Behind you!”
He spun around. Mab stood with arms raised high. Not a spark of hellfire emanated from her hands, but he felt her magic nonetheless. It rippled from her body in undulating waves. The ground around her turned dark and began to move.
No. It wasn’t the ground that was moving. It was the mass of tiny, writhing creatures upon it. He watched in horror as they surged toward him. The wave reached and crested the garden wall. Spiders. Thousands, maybe millions, each no bigger than a fingernail. Were they real? Or simply an illusion? From this distance, it was impossible to tell.
The leading edge of the horde formed an undulating line. It seeped in his direction like a spill of black oil. Arthur braced himself. White flame leapt into his hands.
“Arthur.” Mab’s clear voice rang out above the swarm. “Give yourself up. You can’t win. Not against me.”
“You’ve broken the terms of the duel. The clan—”
“I told you, sugar. I decide what’s going down. If you’re hankering so bad for a fight we’ll do it here and now. As for your precious kin, the only question is whether they’ll find you dead or enthralled when they arrive.”
The arachnids swarmed closer, flooding the rose beds. They enveloped the apple tree in a dirty, shuddering blanket. Arthur sent his hellfire up the staff, swirling the magic around the crystal before sweeping it across the garden.
The swarm scattered to avoid the flames. But was it the true reaction of living creatures? Or had Mab simply adapted her illusion to counter his attack?
The door to Tŷ’r Cythraul slammed behind him. Good. Cybele must have taken shelter inside the house. He glanced behind him. No, goddamn it. She’d closed the door, all right, but she was running toward him.
She reached his side. “Holy crap,” she said in a horrified whisper. “Do you think they’re real?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Get in the house.”
She shot him a repressive glance. “Fuck that.”
The swarm was regrouping. Arthur eyed its renewed advance uneasily. “Sod it all, Cybele. Be reasonable. You don’t have hellfire. If those things are real, you can’t fight them. “
“I can cover you. Make you less of a target for Rand and Hunter and the others.”
The others—? With all his attention on Mab, Arthur had forgotten about her thralls.
“Rand and Hunter to our left,” she said calmly. “Evander on our right. Draven and Blade on the roof behind us. Don’t know where Clay’s got to.”
Arthur’s gaze darted to the cluster of Druids on the moor. Luc, who was in no condition to fight, was the only adept left among the dormants.
An orange fireball scudded into the ground fifty feet to his left.
Hunter. Arthur swore viciously. “No way is his aim that bad,” he muttered. “What the fuck’s he playing at?”
“He’s not playing.” Cybele’s voice held a distinct note of satisfaction. “He’s confused. I’ve blurred our position and set illusions of our bodies in seven different spots. They’ll be blasting everything but us.”
Arthur was damn glad to have Cybele by his side. She might not be an adept, but her magic was uncanny in its inventiveness. He gave up any notion of herding her to safety. Safety didn’t exist, anyway. He blasted another round of hellfire at the spiders. This time, they barely paused in their forward motion.
Cybele sucked in a breath. In seconds, the swarm would be on them.
“Come on.” He grabbed her arm.
With Mab’s laughter following, they bolted for the house. Arthur threw himself at the door and wrenched at the heavy brass knob. It came off in his hands.
“Fuck.”
“Hurry,” Cybele panted, her hand on his back. “Do something else. They’re almost on us.”
Arthur poured a blast of hellfire into the door’s lock. The metal didn’t even heat. He redirected his magic into the door itself. The oak remained uncharred. A line of fire along the edge of the door failed to melt its hinges.
“Arthur!” Mab called. “Give it up.”
The spiders swarmed up their legs.
Cybele screamed and slapped her pants. Arthur fought the urge to do the same. The tiny creatures raced up their bodies, slipped under their clothes, scrambled into their hair. They burrowed into ears and nostrils. It was hard to see or even breathe. Cybele made a choking sound and ducked her head inside the neck of her shirt. The creatures were real. Horribly, terrifyingly real.
Hellfire blasts landed on their right and left. Too close. Cybele’s illusions were faltering. She dropped into a crouch, shoulders hunched toward the door, arms shielding her head. An inch-deep mass of spiders swept over her. It was the last thing Arthur saw before the things swarmed into his own face.
“Ready to surrender?” Mab called.
Not quite. Arthur turned his magic to the sky. Angry weather rushed to his aid. Dashing spiders out of his eyes, he tilted his head back and steered the clouds into a single dark formation directly overhead. Lightning cracked. Thunder boomed.
Rain poured down, pounding with all the intensity of Arthur’s rage and fear. The drenching downpour succeeded where hellfire had not. Spiders dropped out of his hair and fell off his arms. They slid down his legs and disappeared into cracks and crevices in the ground.
He wiped the last of the creatures from his eyes and lifted his head in time to see Mab land in the garden. She faced him with wings high and eyes blazing. A word summoned her favorites to her side. Rand and Hunter touched down on her right, Evander on her left. Their alpha’s crackling red nimbus expanded to envelop the three men. Within it, their eyes burned red and their bodies blazed with opalescence. The rubies at their necks glowed.
Upon contact with the heat of Mab’s power, Arthur’s rain hissed into steam. Rand handed something to his mistress. She accepted it, and then turned with arms outstretched, lifting the object into Arthur’s view. With a jolt of horror, he beheld his enemy’s offering: a ring of twisted wood set with a glowing ruby sphere.
“Arthur Camulus, this collar is your destiny. Accept it freely and I will allow you to stand at my side. Reject it and you will grovel at my feet.”
“Get this through your thick head,” Arthur shouted. “I will never be your thrall.”
“You’d rather go to Oblivion?” Mab tilted her head as if considering. “I’m so sorry, sugar, but that’s just not an option. I want you alive.”
Beads of sweat broke out on Arthur’s brow. He angled Merlin�
��s crystal toward his enemy and fought to keep his voice steady. “Forget your threats. I hold the power here.”
“Do you?” Her white teeth flashed. “For someone who’s holding all the power, you’re talking a mighty lot of bull. That ol’ staff might as well be a stick of dead wood, with a lump of coal set on top, for all the damage it’s done. You know what I think? That thing in your hands is nothing but a prop. And a piss-poor one at that. Give it up, Arthur. Admit you’ve lost and salvage at least a little of your pride.” She held out the collar. “Here. Come and take it. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t make me bring it to you.”
Arthur brushed her words away, as if they were stray cobwebs. He let them seep through the crevices in his awareness, barely noticed. He turned his focus inward, where myriad ancestral memories drifted in his murky subconscious. A preternatural calm descended upon him as he sorted through the remnants of his forebears’ lost lives.
A single thought—a vivid snatch of a memory spoken in the voice of a long-dead ancestor—caught his attention.
Power is weak.
It made no sense. Not at first. Then, in a flash of insight, Arthur understood.
Mab possessed powerful magic. She ruled the clan with brutal purpose. Viewed through the eyes of the boy he’d once been, she’d seemed invincible. Now, as a man, Arthur pushed aside that frightened boy’s nightmares and considered Mab in a new light. Weakness propped up her power. What fear had driven her to amass such terrible strength? What lack within herself drove her to rule with such vicious might? What horror lived in her nightmares?
The answer came to him. He saw it clearly, because he recognized it so intimately. Mab shared Arthur’s own worst fear.
Betrayal.
Arthur didn’t know what lay in Mab’s past, but whatever it was, it had driven her to rise above her peers, and then use her position to curtail every freedom of the Druid clan. She craved control. She made slaves rather than releasing new adepts to freedom. She wrapped collars around their necks and tethered their magic to her own. She had no friends, only subjects. She stood alone and trusted no one.
He darted a glance at Cybele. Her expression was solemn. But not panicked, or even despairing. She trusted him, Arthur realized. She still believed he would win.
“I need you to make Rand and Hunter think they’re blind,” he said tersely. “For ten seconds. Maybe fifteen. Can you do it?”
“Yes. Just say when.”
Arthur nodded, then lifted his eyes to meet Mab’s contemptuous gaze. “If you want me to wear that thing you’ll have to place it around my neck with your own hands.”
As he spoke, he concentrated on Evander. Cybele’s father was the only free adept in Mab’s circle—the only Druid Arthur could use for the ruse he had in mind.
“Now,” he muttered.
Cybele released her magic.
“What the fuck—?” Rand and Hunter staggered backward, looking wildly about. Mab’s head swung toward them.
Arthur launched his own illusion. Evander seemed to lift his hands. Dirty brown-green hellfire crackled on his fingertips. “Forget those idiots!” Evander bellowed. “Look at me, you bitch.” He flicked his wrists, flinging two burning lashes at Mab’s head.
“Wha—” Mab spun around. “Why, you fucking bastard!” She loosed a stream of hellfire at her lackey.
Arthur launched himself at Mab, dropping the staff as he leaped into the air. Magic couldn’t defeat her? Bugger it, then. He’d break her bloody neck—if he could get his hands on her before she realized what was happening.
He’d nearly reached her when her Mab’s magic broke through his illusion. The false Evander abruptly evaporated. The real Evander was on his knees, screaming, his body alight with Mab’s burning magic.
“What? Why—?” He stretched out his arms to his mistress.
Mab spat a curse. She swung around just as Arthur’s fingers closed on her neck. He twisted with a savage motion. His fingers slipped as Mab’s hellfire blasted him into the air. Flailing his arms and legs, wings flapping wildly, he sailed up and backwards. The ground race beneath him.
He slammed into the house, his spine flattening painfully against unforgiving stone. His skull smacked the sill of a third floor window. He heard something crack; pain lanced through his wings. Mortar and bone, snapping together.
The agony left him gasping. For what seemed like an endless moment he hung suspended, arms and legs flung wide, his body pinned against the stone facade of Tŷ’r Cythraul. A strangled cry came from below. He looked down. Cybele was staring up at him with wide, frightened eyes, both hands covering her mouth.
The stone wall at his back shuddered. An ominous vibration ran up his spine. He started to fall. He tried to resist the pull of gravity—tried to fly, tried to rise through the tumbling stone. His broken body would not obey.
He plummeted heavily. Tŷ’r Cythraul fell with him, its stone facade splitting apart like a giant jigsaw puzzle. He hit the ground amid a crushing wave of jagged rock and broken mortar.
He rolled with a furious roar, flinging the wreckage of his childhood home off his back like a dog shaking water. Dragging his broken wings, gasping with pain, tasting mortar and mold, he clawed his way to the top of the rubble. Cybele. Where was Cybele? He looked about like a madman. His heart seized when he spied a pale arm protruding from the debris.
Spitting curses, he scrambled over the rocks. A firelash yanked him back. He tumbled down a slope of stone and landed on his back. More wing bones snapped. A fresh round of stabbing agony left him gasping.
Mab loomed over him, a nightmarish smile on her face. The collar destined for Arthur’s neck rested in her hands. The light of the ruby thrallstone stabbed his eyes. Firelashes coiled agony around his body, binding his limbs and pinning his torso to the ground. He peered up at Mab through a daze of pain and despair.
“You belong to me, Arthur. Your body, your mind, your magic. All that you are is mine.”
The twisted wood turned crimson. The collar gleamed wetly, as if slick with blood. Sparks spun around the ring. Gathered. Separated. A gap appeared in the circle.
Mab pulled the arc of wood apart, widening the space Arthur’s neck would pass through. He cursed and tried to strike out. His body refused his command. He was caught in the web of Mab’s power more securely than any hapless insect was ever trapped in a spider’s web.
A groan passed his lips. Satisfaction flared in the alpha’s eyes. “Seven years of waiting,” she murmured. “Now, at last, you’re mine.” She glanced to her right and left. “Come and look, boys.”
Hunter’s grinning face moved into Arthur’s line of vision. “Can’t wait to play with you,” he chortled. “Once that collar’s in place.”
“Fuck off,” Arthur growled.
Hunter’s grin widened. “Oh, ho. Big man.”
Rand shouldered in beside Hunter. Arthur’s heart stalled. Rand held Cybele in his arms. Her body hung limply, one dangling arm swinging slowly back and forth. A nasty gash on her forehead dripped blood.
Mab frowned. “Dead?”
“No, ma’am,” Rand answered. “But as near to it as I reckon a person can get.”
The alpha shrugged. “I’ll leave her survival in your hands. If she lives, she’s yours to guide and collar.”
“No worries. I’ll take fine care of her.” Rand’s teeth flashed. “Maybe I’ll let even Arthur watch me do it. If he’s a good boy.”
“Oh, he’ll be a good boy.” Mab smiled down at Arthur. “Seein’ as he’s got no choice in the matter.”
Arthur lay helpless and panting, awash in pain. His heart raced as Mab bent over him. The collar came closer. The alpha’s magic flared. His vision turned red. He twisted his head, desperate to avoid the heat of the ruby and the touch of the slick, crimson wood.
A white spark caught his eye.
Merlin’s staff. He’d dropped it before going for Mab’s throat. It lay now half-buried in the rubble of Tŷ’r Cythraul. The crystal, caugh
t between two stones, was just visible. White sparks swirled inside it.
Not illusion this time. True magic. Magic that Arthur hadn’t called.
Magic that called to him.
Mab’s eyes blazed a triumphant red. The collar was just inches from his throat. Rand loomed behind his mistress. He’d flung Cybele’s battered body face down over his shoulder. She swayed slightly. He steadied her weight with his palm on her arse.
That hand tipped the scales. That big hand with its fingers spread wide over Cybele’s buttocks, squeezing, kneading. The sight flipped a mental trigger in the darkest part of Arthur’s consciousness. Hatred—raw, scorching, elemental fury—boiled forth. It spilled through his chest. Invaded his limbs. Flooded his brain.
A high, piercing tone filled his ears. Mab’s hellfire restraints snapped like twigs. Arthur leapt to his feet, roaring like a beast. He flung his left hand up, swatting the collar out of Mab’s hands. The force of his blow knocked her to the ground.
A word Arthur had never heard before—guttural, unimaginable sounds—erupted from his throat. The syllables reverberated like a gong struck by a god’s hand. Merlin’s staff vibrated. The rubble weighing it down shook, then simply disintegrated. Its crystal touchstone exploded in brilliant waves of hellfire.
The relic rose from the ruins of Tŷ’r Cythraul. It hovered in the air, spinning and spitting white fire. A second word—as unknown and unbidden as the first—left Arthur’s lips. The staff shot like an arrow toward its master. It slapped into Arthur’s open palm. As his fingers closed on the twisted wood, a nimbus of brilliant power enveloped his body.
He caught one clear glimpse of Mab’s terrified face through the chaos of his magic.
Then his vision went white and he knew no more.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Cybele woke to a pounding temple and a stabbing agony in her lower left leg. Her ribs hurt like a bitch, too. Must be a few cracked bones in there.