by Anna Argent
“No, it’s just me. Us. That’s really not any better.”
Stygian checked the time. It was nearly morning, so he decided to go with eggs and bacon. Of course, cooking bacon would summon a hungry horde, so he broke out two packs and lined it up on a giant cookie sheet to go into the commercial grade oven.
Marvel finished off the noodles and put the empty box back in the fridge. “I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t want to be one of us.”
“Maybe she saw you eating someone else’s food.”
She snorted. “I only do that to Garrick, and only because I like to see him turn that lovely shade of crimson trying not to yell at me.” She leaned in and whispered. “He’s afraid of my mad skills.”
“All of us are, honey.”
She beamed at that news and rubbed her hands together in maniacal glee. “Mwoo haha! My work here is done.” As soon as she saw what he was making, she said, “Oooh, bacon. You’re making me some, right?”
“Only to appease the evil overlord.”
“Perfect. You may live.” She started a pot of coffee and put on a kettle for tea. “So, what’s the plan for Echo.”
“What do you mean?”
“How are we going to get her to take the phone?”
“We’re not. We’re going to let her make the decision for herself, like a grown up.”
“Yeah right.” After staring at him for a few seconds, her grin fell. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re really going to let her walk away without any kind of lifeline at all?”
He didn’t want to, but he knew that if he could call Echo, he would. If she called him, he’d come running. Then they’d be together again. He’d see her pretty face and lust after her sweet little body. Their shards would push them together and he’d end up right back in bed, on top of her. Only this time he’d fuck her until he couldn’t lift his head, fully intending to use a condom. And possibly failing.
Hazel had more control over him than he liked. What if she made him forget to use protection? What if she fooled him into thinking he had rolled on a condom when that wasn’t the case?
What if a child wasn’t Hazel’s end game? What if she was only using that as a distraction to her real agenda? And if she was, what was that agenda? Was it something to do with that prophecy Echo had found?
If that was the case, then her end game was huge, because the distraction of forcing them to have a child seemed like a lot of firepower to throw around for something small.
He couldn’t pretend that it would all be fine, that he’d be smart, strong and sane enough to resist the temptation Echo offered—her body and her shards—not when the stakes were so high.
It was better if they had no means of contact. He’d only known her for a few hours. He wasn’t attached. He could still let her go.
Couldn’t he?
He peered through the glass office wall and watched her. She was bent over the desk, working feverishly on drawing the map. Her golden hair hid her face, but he didn’t need to see it again to remember the effect she had on him. That lush, pink mouth of hers alone was the stuff of wet dreams.
His cock twitched under his fly, reminding him just how precariously perched his good intentions were.
After a few seconds, she held it up to the glass, triumphant. He could see from here that it was still the same bunch of gibberish.
He shook his head.
Echo wadded up the paper in frustration and tossed it into the trash. Defeat slumped her slender shoulders, but she persevered. She placed a clean sheet of paper on the desk and went back to work.
“I have to let her go on her own terms,” he said, answering Marvel’s question. “Maybe one day she’ll come back, but whatever she does, it has to be her decision.”
Marvel sighed in exasperation. “You’d make a horrible evil overlord.”
He prayed she was right, that Hazel’s grasp on him wouldn’t prove otherwise.
Harold’s excited voice echoed through the main hall. “I found something!”
He hurried his arthritic pace, nearly stumbling in his haste. Stygian rushed to his side and helped him into one of the cushioned booth seats adjoining the kitchen.
“What did you find?”
The librarian panted for a minute before he had enough breath to speak. “I kept going back to the part that talked about the bearer of prophecy saving the hunter’s soul. Something about it didn’t make sense.”
“What?” Stygian asked.
“There’s no way to save you without ridding you of Hazel’s shards. There is too much of her in you. You’d have to absorb most of another soul—a good one—to have any chance of controlling her influence over you. And the only way to do that would be to kill innocents.”
“Which I won’t do just to balance out my shards.”
“Of course not. So, that left me wondering again if the rumors of inanimate vessels being able to hold shards might be true. It was the only thing that made sense within the confines set out by this prophetic text. And we must stay within the lines of prophecy or all is lost.”
“Impossible,” Marvel said. “I’ve been working on a shard-sucker for years with no success. I was able to force the tech to make nice with magic when I created the stun bullets, but I haven’t had any luck with this.”
“You’ve been working with technology. I’m talking about something else.”
“What?”
Harold bobbed his head from side to side as if weighing the merits of an argument. “We’ve already seen cases where rumors were based in truth. Prophecy often gets misunderstood or cast aside as myth. We can later read it in texts and see where it lines up with history, but that is often after the fact. Hindsight is so much clearer.”
Stygian said, “I don’t follow.”
“It’s like that telephone game, when one person whispers to the next and so on. The last person in line says what they heard, which is typically distorted from the original.”
“Okay.”
“That happens in written formats as well. One scribe reads several texts, often in different languages, then combines them together in a way he or she believes makes it more whole, more cohesive. Sometimes the scribe is right, and sometimes wrong. Do this a few times and something that began as fact—as prophecy—becomes rumor.”
“How does that apply here?” Marvel asked.
“While there aren’t any examples of any host successfully removing shards, there are plenty of rumors that it can be done. Some of those could have once been based in fact. The problem is that many of us have been looking for this cure our entire lives, but have found nothing more than fragmented pieces—too few to determine if extracting shards is possible or not. But what if it is?” His grin was that of a young boy, hopeful and excited.
“I was told it was impossible,” Stygian said.
“Me too,” Marvel added.
“But what if it’s not?” Harold said. “What if we’re at one of those turning points that prophecy is so good at creating?”
“It would be a game-changer,” Stygian said.
Marvel nodded. “Totally epic.”
Harold beamed. “I’ve read about physical vessels before, but always assumed they were the stuff of fantasy until now.”
“Physical vessel?” Stygian asked.
“Theoretically, there are artifacts that an original once possessed, or possibly something they made with their own hands. The records that speculate all agree that it must have been an item that was present at the moment the soul was shattered. Only such an item would have been subjected to the proper magic to align it to an original. Apparently, it’s a vibrational thing, if the theories are to be believed.”
“Do you have this item?” Marvel asked.
Harold scoffed. “Of course not, child. All the possessions of the originals have been scattered and lost over the centuries. My guess is that there could be some in museums, or held as family heirlooms, but it’s not like you can just look at one and know w
hat it is. They’d likely be fairly common items. Jewelry, hair brushes, knives…”
“Then how in the world does any of this matter?” Stygian asked.
“Because,” Harold continued, his excitement contagious. “I scanned the text Echo brought to us for a reference to a container or vessel, and there it was. Right at the end.”
“What did it say?” Marvel slid a mug of fresh coffee in front of the librarian.
He clutched it gratefully in his arthritic hands. “Apparently, Hazel died wearing a locket. If we find it, and we gather all of her shards in one place, then there’s a spell that can cage her within it.”
Lies! Hazel shouted inside his head.
Find it. Cage her! the other voices shouted.
Silence! Hazel roared.
There was no response inside his skull. All his light shards had been muted.
Stygian sat in stunned silence. “You’re saying that there’s a vessel that can contain Hazel’s shards. Outside of my body?”
Harold bobbed his balding head. “Indeed. That’s exactly what I’m saying. And not just the shards that reside in you, but all of Hazels’ shards.”
“Wait a minute,” Marvel said. “Even if you could suck out shards, what would that really accomplish? Would it trap the soul, like in a cage, so it could never get out, or would it allow the soul to become more powerful because it was finally whole?”
“Both, I believe. The original would be extremely powerful in their whole form, but they would no longer have influence over a human host—unless that host chose to wield the container.”
“Why do I keep having flashes of evil Tupperware?” Marvel asked.
Stygian could hardly contain his excitement. “Where is the container? And what about the spell?” Stygian asked. “Do you have that?”
“I can’t help you with the location, but I think I can locate the spell. I believe it’s in a grimoire from the late fifteenth century. I haven’t laid eyes on it since we moved here, but it’s got to be around somewhere. I’ll make it my top priority.”
For the first time in a long time, a little bubble of hope swelled inside of Stygian’s chest. He didn’t let it get too big, but he let it buoy him up just enough to strengthen him. “Are you sure about this?”
Harold gave a timid nod. “As sure as I am of anything. But there’s not much time. When Echo brought the prophecy here, she started the clock. We only have until the next new moon to find the locket and complete the spell. Just a few days.”
“Why?” asked Marvel, frowning. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s magic, dear, not logic. And now that the Witch of the Pageant knows that her time is running out, she’s not going to make it easy for us to shove her in a cage permanently.”
“She’s going to fight every step of the way,” Stygian said. “Her end game is to be whole, but on her terms.” The image of the baby popped into his head, staring at him with Echo’s eyes. “We can’t let her win.”
Harold nodded toward where Echo worked on the map. “Then I suggest you gather our guest and leave immediately. Follow the map. See if it leads you to the locket. Let the light of the bearer of prophecy guide you.”
“Echo isn’t going,” Stygian said.
“She must. The prophecy said that she would find a map and that it would lead you to the vessel. She already found the map. Now she has to use it to guide you to freedom. She can’t go against prophecy.” He said that last part like he was speaking about the laws of physics or the will of God.
Stygian was as gentle with the old man as he could be. “I don’t think she cares about prophecy. She’s translating the map now and sketching it for me so I can go without her.”
Harold laughed. “Let me guess. It isn’t going so well? All she can draw is something that looks suspiciously like the original map itself—completely indecipherable?”
“How did you know?” Marvel asked.
He shook his head. “You all think you know so much with your boom boxes and Internets, when there’s so much you have no clue about whatsoever.”
“Care to enlighten us and our Internets?” Marvel asked with half a grin on her face.
“Reading magical texts and being able to write them down for others to read are two very different skills. It took me twenty years to be able to transcribe prophecy for others to read. There’s no way she’s going to learn to do that in a single night. She’ll have to guide you, just as the prophecy foretold.”
“No!” Stygian said too quickly.
Harold blinked his weepy blue eyes. “Why ever not?”
“Because she has a shard of Hazel in her as well. And Hazel wants to join that piece with mine.”
Marvel stared at him, confused.
Harold did the same thing, but caught on fast. “Oh. I see. Hazel wants a joining of the old-fashioned variety.”
Marvel frowned. “Like wired headphones and landlines?”
The librarian shook his spotty head. “No, more like birds and bees.”
Marvel finally figured it out, and when she did, the outrage in her voice was palpable. “Hazel wants Echo to have your baby?”
“Shh.” Stygian glanced Echo’s way to make sure she hadn’t heard the declaration. “Keep your voice down. That’s not exactly the kind of thing one can easily explain to a stranger.”
“She’s not a stranger,” Marvel said. “I let her in my office. I gave her a phone. That makes her more like family.”
“She doesn’t want to be a part of the family, remember?”
Marvel huffed and poured herself some tea. “I’m not letting her keep my niece or nephew away from me.”
Stygian struggled to control his frustration. “There aren’t going to be any babies. Hazel is not getting her way in this. But part of that is sending Echo on her way before Hazel gathers enough strength to make me forget my good intentions.”
“Can’t you just keep your pants zipped?” asked Marvel, as if he were an idiot.
“He can try,” Harold said, “but Hazel is wily. If she revealed her end game to Stygian, then she had a reason to do so. Very likely so that he’d be able to think of nothing else.”
“Well, it’s working,” Stygian said, as the thought of taking Echo against that wall plowed into him hard enough to shove the breath from his lungs.
Hazel laughed in his head. The rest of his shards let out muffled shouts that sounded almost like warnings.
Harold nodded. “Of course, it is. A simple, but effective technique to use against a young, virile man like yourself with plenty of seed to spread around.”
Marvel wrinkled her nose. “Eww. Can we not talk about Stygian’s seed before bacon?”
“You should warn her,” Harold advised. “She may not realize the danger of your seduction if you don’t.”
“I have no plan to seduce her.”
“Of course, you don’t. That’s Hazel’s plan, not yours. But that doesn’t mean it won’t come to pass.”
Echo looked up and saw everyone staring at her. Suspicion clouded her clear gaze and drew her out of Marvel’s office.
The nearer she came, the more excited Stygian got. He wanted to touch her again, smell her hair and feel her body under his.
He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists so hard they hurt.
He had to remove himself from temptation. He and Echo had to part ways. Period. It was the only way to beat Hazel at her own game.
“Can you show Echo how to do what you do and translate the map or not?” Stygian asked Harold.
“Before the new moon?” He laughed. “Impossible. I’m afraid you’re stuck with her, just as prophecy dictates.”
Stygian had never wanted to wipe a smug smile off the face of an old man as much as he did right now. At least not since his grandfather had died.
Echo was close enough now to hear that last part. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid so, dear,” the librarian said, “but it was nothing bad. W
e’re all delighted that you’re here.”
The suspicion on Echo’s face deepened. She met Stygian’s stare. “Why do you look like you’re going to be sick?”
Since he couldn’t tell her the truth, he settled for a diversionary tactic. “Harold says that there’s an artifact that could trap Hazel. That’s what your map will lead us to.”
Her pale teal eyes brightened. “You mean I can get her out of my head?”
He nodded. “That’s the hope. But we’re going to need that map.”
Marvel lifted her steaming mug. “That’s assuming it’s even possible. As far as I know, lots of people have tried for lots of generations to pry out their shards and no one has been successful.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Harold said. “There are at least two texts that reference this kind of thing.”
“Reference or state?” Marvel demanded.
“The histories aren’t as black-and-white as we might like, but rumors are often based on facts.”
Marvel nodded. “The fact is that there’s no proof that caging shards in some box is going to work.”
“Not a box, a vessel—a vessel that Echo’s map will lead us to.”
“I think I got it this time.” She held up a page of indecipherable squiggles, her expression one of hopeful expectation. “Can you see it now?”
Marvel laughed. Harold cleared his throat and looked at his coffee with studious intent. Stygian took the page and the hand that held it inside his. “I’m sorry, Echo. All I see is a drawing of spaghetti.”
Her face fell with disappointment. “What the heck is wrong with me? It’s just a line drawing.”
“No,” Stygian said gently. “It’s a magical line drawing—one only you can see.”
Echo glanced at her map, then back at the gathering. “You’re not all just playing me, are you?”
Stygian shook his head. “I wish we were.”
“Not me,” Marvel offered. “I’m glad you’re stuck with us. Otherwise, I set up that phone for nothing. I even gave you a really good number—easy to remember.”
“I appreciate your generosity, but I really don’t want the phone. I just want to be on my way, back to my regularly scheduled life.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to take a little side trip with me,” Stygian said.