Harley Merlin 6: Harley Merlin and the Cult of Eris

by Forrest, Bella

  Santana slumped forward on the table, sweat glistening on her brow. She was breathing heavily, rasping in air. Raffe hurried to help her, shaking her by the shoulders until she blinked her eyes open again. She looked really pale, her expression dazed.

  “Santana? Santana, what’s the matter?” Raffe urged.

  “My… Orishas. I felt something.”

  “What did you feel?” Wade jumped in.

  “Someone… Someone killed the Orisha in Alaska,” she gasped, pain etched on her face. No sooner had she spoken than a blinding flash exploded in front of her. As the sudden blast faded, I saw an orb of bluish light hover above the table for a moment, before it frantically dove inside Santana.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, my heart pounding in my chest.

  Santana shook her head slowly. “I… I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

  It became clear a moment later, when a second flash erupted in front of Santana and whizzed inside her. If the Orisha in Alaska was dead, then that meant only one thing—that second bluish orb was the Orisha from Purgatory, and Finch’s duplicate was gone.

  This was all going horribly wrong. And after the gigantic failure of the last week, I’d had just about enough of things taking a turn for the worst.

  The door to the Luis Paoletti room burst open, and Leonidas Levi stormed in, flanked by armed security magicals and a sheepish O’Halloran. All of their Esprits were lit up, itching for a fight, with Atomic Cuffs poised and ready.

  I stared at them all, wide-eyed. There was no way they could have known where to find us. But they had. And we weren’t getting out of here without a serious fight.

  “You are all a disgrace to the SDC! Look at you, you selfish, nasty, vile little wretches!” Levi bellowed, beyond furious. “I give you chance after chance, and you think you can pull the wool over my eyes? You appall me, every single one of you.” He turned to me. “But you! You think you can just do whatever you like, with no consequences. Well, that’s about to change. Not even I can overlook breaking a criminal out of Purgatory. Speaking of which, it looks like you’ve saved us the trouble of tracking this spiteful little creature down.” He sneered at Finch.

  “H-How?” I managed.

  He snorted. “It looks like I’m not the only one you’ve made an enemy of with your dangerous games. I received an anonymous tip that the real Finch wasn’t in Purgatory anymore, and I had the officers there look into it. I knew you had an evil streak in you, Harley Merlin—how could you not, considering where you came from?—but I didn’t think you could stoop this low. Then again, what else should I have expected? You’re just as bad as your half-brother, no doubt. And both of you were stupid enough to get caught in the act!”

  “Katherine…” Finch muttered, his eyes flashing with anger. “Spiteful bitch.”

  “A nice trick, using those advanced duplicates. I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference, but then, I don’t associate with criminals—I don’t see the intricate details that those duplicates missed. But the officers did. Oh yes, they knew right away!” Levi spat. “When the officers confronted it, that Orisha had the decency to float away, which led us right here. The officers wanted to capture it, but I’m very glad they didn’t. If they had, you might have had the chance to weasel your way out of here, and we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?”

  I glanced at Santana, who was slumped against Raffe, tears streaming down her face. I had no experience of it, personally, but I figured losing an Orisha had to be a painful ordeal. They were part of her, and she’d just had one torn away.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Levi glowered. “As well you might be, Ms. Catemaco. You are an accomplice in this, which makes you as culpable as these two, in my book.” He jabbed a finger at Finch and me. “At any point, you might have said no or come to me with information. I would’ve protected you. But you chose them instead, and you’ll be suitably punished for that.”

  I stood my ground. “You leave her out of this.”

  “You should learn when to shut your mouth,” he snapped back. “You have nowhere to run to now. Anything you say will only make it worse for you. Not that I’m banking on a lenient sentence. In fact, I’d be inclined to insist on the harshest punishment they can offer. Then you might learn your lesson, Harley!”

  “This isn’t possible,” I mumbled, more to myself than anyone else.

  “Oh, I can assure you it is very possible.” Levi snorted. “I bet you thought you had everything all tied up with a neat little bow, didn’t you? This must be quite the shock, to find out you aren’t nearly as clever as you think you are. Well, let me tell you how surprised I was when I received a call, a few minutes ago, telling me that someone had killed Harley Merlin in Alaska. Do you know, I almost shed a tear; I was so shocked and distraught that someone had done something awful to you, because I was foolish enough to believe you were trying to better yourself. And then, while the seminar leader was still on the phone, I heard him scream and tell me you’d disintegrated into thousands of bluish sparks and faded away.”

  Crap…

  “It hit me then, what you’d been up to. I remembered how those last duplicates had disintegrated. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.” He sneered at me. “Whoever gave me that anonymous tip should get a bottle of champagne, because that was the cherry on top. That was the moment of absolute certainty. Indeed, it gave me precisely what I needed to see you put away, for the rest of your life, where you can’t harm anyone, ever again. You’ve finally proven yourself to be the real criminal that you’ve always been. I should’ve known you’d turn out exactly like your father.”

  Anger and confusion bubbled up inside me as I fought to speak. “You don’t understand, Levi. You’ve got it all wrong. Yes, I broke Finch out of Purgatory, but it was only so that we could—”

  Levi slammed his fists down on the nearby table. “I don’t want to hear another word out of your mouth! You have said quite enough. Anything else you want to say, you can say at your trial, before they haul you away to prison.” He shot a glance at O’Halloran, who still looked uneasy. “O’Halloran, have your men arrest everyone and take them to the cells. There will be an investigation as soon as the proper authorities arrive, and it will end with these disgusting Shiptons in Purgatory. I would stake my life on it. You have no cards left to play, no tricks left to pull, and nowhere left to run. Nowhere.”

  I glanced at the secret door we’d come through, knowing there was one place we could run to. But could we get there before the security personnel apprehended us? Even if they didn’t, they’d chase us through the coven until they caught us. Levi had us cornered, and we were going to have to fight with everything we had to get out of this.

  Forty-Six

  Harley

  Wade stepped in front of me, his arm across my chest. “You aren’t taking her, or us, anywhere. Not until you hear us out. You might change your mind if you knew what we’d been through and why we did what we did.”

  “We deserve the right to speak. I assure you, you will want to hear what we have to say,” Tatyana added. My heart swelled at the sight of my friends forming a line in front of me, even if I knew it was useless. Even Isadora had joined the line, though I noticed Krieger and Alton kept back. Their fate was less certain, but if Levi was involved, it didn’t look too good for them, either.

  “This is bull, Director Levi.” Dylan put his Herculean might between the Rag Team and Levi.

  “What harm is there in listening to what we have to say?” Astrid chimed in, already tapping away discreetly on her Smartie. I didn’t know what she was doing, but I doubted any of the skills in her extensive armory could get us out of this fix.

  “You don’t need to do this, Father,” Raffe spoke, his tone menacing. Santana was still leaning on him, utterly heartbroken, and I didn’t know who was in charge anymore—Raffe or the djinn. It had been touch and go between them in Tartarus, and I got the feeling that Raffe had come back with the djinn nud
ging his way to one hand on the steering wheel.

  Levi scowled. “The less I hear from you, the better. I might have expected such deeds from this unruly mob, but I thought you would have been sensible enough to stay out of it. I can see that your actions here are my failings as a father. I ought to have kept my eye on you at all times. With that thing inside you, I should have put you under lock and key years ago.”

  Raffe snarled. “You’d have liked that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Director Levi, we should talk about this privately.” Alton stepped in before the djinn got any ideas. “Why don’t we go to your office and discuss all of this in a less tense atmosphere? It will make sense to you, once you’ve heard the truth of the matter. Come now, we should be civil about this. There’s no need for Atomic Cuffs and armed guards.”

  O’Halloran glanced at Levi. “Sir?”

  “Arrest them now.” His voice was eerily calm.

  With a reluctant nod, O’Halloran and the security personnel advanced on the Rag Team. There was nothing I could do to stop them, not without getting us into even more trouble. I doubted “fighting a horde of security magicals and taking out the director of the SDC” would look good on my résumé. Still, that didn’t lessen my desire to do something… anything, to get us out of this.

  The Chaos in my veins pulsated with anticipation, begging to be used. I can’t feed you right now, Darkness. I was pretty sure my mother hadn’t meant for me to go all Rambo with my Dark side, despite her warning to feed it whenever it was hungry.

  “Hey, get your hands off me!” I snapped, as the security personnel strode right up to me and slapped a pair of Atomic Cuffs on my wrists, doing the same to Finch. Levi wanted us first, by the looks of it. I expected to feel the sapping energy of the Cuffs at work, but they burned instead.

  I gathered my Chaos into myself and fed the energy down my arms. It sputtered against the Cuffs, pressure gathering beneath them like a bubble. I pushed again, feeling the connectors crack, and the sapping power of the Cuffs drifted away harmlessly. It looked like I was wearing them, but I could still feel my energy brimming in my veins. It wasn’t stopping me the way it should. Good.

  On the other hand, it looked like the rest of the Rag Team were coming to a pretty grim conclusion, judging by the resignation coming off them in waves. The security personnel clapped Atomic Cuffs on Alton’s wrists next, and then Isadora’s. My aunt looked back at me with a reassuring smile. She’d definitely been in worse scrapes than this. I just hoped she could come up with some way to escape, now she had the Cuffs on. She wouldn’t be able to use her Portal Opening abilities with those things sapping her. I didn’t want anyone spending the rest of their life in Purgatory because of me, although that was probably a little self-centered. They hadn’t gone to Tartarus and plotted the cult infiltration for me. They’d done it for the world, and the terrible things Katherine would do to it otherwise.

  I almost lashed out at a guard as he yanked Santana out of Raffe’s arms and slapped the Cuffs on her wrists. I noticed Raffe about to spring for the guy, when Wade shot out his arm and held him back, with a slow shake of his head. The red flash in Raffe’s eyes subsided. Neither Raffe nor the djinn was stupid. They knew how dire the situation was, and punching security personnel would only add to our sentence. Whatever that might be.

  One of the guards was just about to clamp a pair of Cuffs over Tatyana’s wrists, when the ground shook violently. A few of the security personnel toppled over like tin soldiers, while the one who’d tried to cuff Tatyana staggered backward. I glanced at Wade in alarm. There was a very slim chance this was just a regular old earthquake, but I knew all too well that the interdimensional bubble wasn’t affected by that sort of thing. Which left one horrifying possibility…

  The SDC was under attack.

  As soon as the thought crossed my mind, another shudder rippled through the Luis Paoletti Room, knocking me back into the table. Wade had his arm around my shoulders before I even knew what had happened. Another shock ricocheted through the floor and the walls, the savage vibrations shaking the beds. Jars and vials of spell ingredients tumbled from the surrounding shelves.

  Alarms blared all around us, red lights flashing. The security magicals’ radios crackled with terrified voices, an underscore of screams ripping through the speakers. I dodged a falling jar of sharp tools, a few jeweled knives thudding into the table where my torso had just been.

  “What’s happening?” I hissed at Wade.

  “I think she’s here,” he replied, confirming my own guess.

  A sickening rumble tore through the coven, a crack splintering across the floor. The inner windows of the Luis Paoletti Room shattered into a thousand jagged shards. Over the radios, desperate voices cried out for help.

  “The Bestiary! It’s the Bestiary!” One, solitary voice exploded through the speaker. Time seemed to freeze, all of us staring at the radio where the voice had come from.

  Alton paled. “The Bestiary is failing.”

  Another gut-wrenching rumble shuddered through the room, the bronzed glow of the interdimensional bubble rippling in fractured waves, spitting and sparking like a frayed wire. It was similar to what I’d seen when Jacob accidentally broke the bubble in the training room, but far, far more terrifying. This was on a coven-wide scale, and the cracks were getting wider with each rumble. The walls thrummed with pent-up energy, and that energy had nowhere else to go but out.

  I hit the deck as a massive explosion erupted from the far side of the Luis Paoletti Room, blowing right through the decimated door. All the windows and glass jars burst into a waterfall of glinting fragments that skittered across the floor. A huge crevasse opened in the hallway opposite, dragging chairs and tables down into the abyss, where the pressure of the bubble crushed them into nothing. It was like watching a black hole devour a planet, drawing everything around it into the gaping emptiness. Soon, it would reach us.

  “We have to get out, now!” I yelled.

  For the first time ever, Levi didn’t argue with me. He took the lead, rushing out of the office and into the main body of the coven. We followed him, even those of us with Cuffed wrists, leaping over the fissure that was getting wider, dragging more and more things into it. One of the security magicals stumbled at the lip of the hole, teetering for a fleeting moment, before he fell headfirst into the darkness. The sound and sight that followed didn’t bear repeating. It was like watching a can get crushed, only that can was made of flesh and bone and had been flattened to a pancake before it dissipated in a flurry of ashes that glinted bronze in the dark pit.

  Cuffing us and taking us away didn’t matter now, even though a few of the security magicals were keeping a suspicious eye on us as we ran. No doubt they thought we’d done this, too. But this was all Katherine’s handiwork. It reeked of her.

  The corridor beyond the Luis Paoletti Room was far worse. Enormous cracks spider-webbed across the bubble that was holding everything together, with blinding light bursting through them. Sparks jumped toward us in white-hot flecks, the forcefield around the SDC phasing in and out in a way that made my legs turn to jelly. If this thing collapsed, we’d all be crushed inside it, the dimensions colliding in the most horrific way. I could see Balboa Park through one of the sputtering fissures as everything inside the SDC spilled out into the human realm, the bubble trying to divert its energy wherever it could.

  In the hallways, screaming people sprinted for their lives, trying desperately to jump the cracks that were opening in the floors. One got sucked out of a gap in the wall. His howl sent a chill up my spine. I had no idea whether he’d been squashed, or he’d simply been spat out into Balboa Park. I hoped it was the latter.

  “The kids… oh my God, the kids!” I stared at a group of frightened children huddling together on the opposite side of one of the interdimensional ravines. If I could’ve leapt to them without being sucked in, I would’ve. Judging by the way the ravine was devouring the walls and the paintings and the chairs and the
carpets, however, I knew I’d never have made it.

  At that moment, Bellmore barreled out of the nearby corridor and grabbed the first child by the hand, leading them away in a terrified train. I prayed they’d find a way out of here. There had to be protocols for this type of thing. Glancing at Levi, I started to doubt it. He looked like a lost, scared little boy who’d been backed into a corner by a rabid dog, with no way out. Besides, the exit to the Fleet Science Center was on the opposite side of the coven, and there was an enormous crevasse between us and that exit.

  I whirled around as someone grabbed me. It wasn’t Wade—he was standing right in front of me, staring in silent shock as the SDC fell.

  “There’s no time,” Finch hissed, his hand tight around my forearm. “We need to fix this before we’re all burger patties.”

  “What do you—” Before I could finish my sentence, Jacob had torn open a portal, and Finch had dragged me through it, leaving the rest of the crew behind. I heard myself scream “Wade!” as the portal snapped shut again, separating us.

  “What the hell, Finch?” I roared as we staggered out into the crumbling Bestiary.

  He narrowed his eyes, breathing hard. “We need to fix this before this whole place collapses. You’re the only one who can stop the Purge beasts from getting out.”

  I looked toward the towering atrium that shot up the center of the Bestiary. Tobe was curled up on the ground beside it, a trickle of blood meandering from his mouth. It looked like he’d tried to stop it with his bare hands and gotten a nasty shock. I could see his chest still rising and falling, which gave me hope. If Tobe had died trying to save this place, it would’ve broken me, there and then.

  A mass of energy twisted up the wire veins of the atrium. It was going to blow, any minute. And when it did… it was game over, not just for us, but for the rest of the magical world. Covens would collapse all over the world, if they weren’t already crumbling.