Deadson Confidential: A Drakeverse Urban Fantasy Novel

by N. P. Martin

  “Zee…”

  Zee was on top of Morganna, using her claws to tear into Morganna’s face. “You fucking bitch!” Zee screamed as she kept hitting Morganna. “No one tries to kill my man and gets away with it!”

  With my hand clamped over my neck to stem the bleeding, I watched as Zee rained her fury down on Morganna, but after a second, I realized something was wrong.

  Morganna was smiling.

  Even as Zee tore the flesh from her face, Morganna continued to smile up at her, and then suddenly, the witch reared upward and flipped Zee onto her back, pinning her to the ground with her staff for a second before using the power in the staff to hoist Zee up to her feet and hold her there. Zee struggled, but she couldn’t move from the spot she was in.

  “Let me go!” Zee screamed.

  “I’ll let you go,” Morganna said, strips of skin hanging off her face now. “I’ll let you go forever, succubus.”

  I could only watch helplessly as the crystal on Morganna’s staff glowed a deep red while Morganna uttered some sort of incantation. Then Zee flung her head and arms back as her demon spirit seemed to get pulled from her chest, resisting every step of the way as Zee herself screamed.

  “No!” I shouted. “Stop! Don’t kill her!”

  “Too late!” Morganna all but screamed. “Look what she did to my face! Her filthy spirit will add to the power of my staff now!”

  “Damion!” Zee screamed. “Help me!”

  Zee’s spirit was halfway out of her body now, a formless gathering of deep orange energy that almost seemed to emit its own screams as it resisted the pull being put on it by Morganna’s magic.

  Do something! Don’t let her die!

  “Wait!” I shouted at Morganna. “If it’s power you want, I’ll get you power! Just stop hurting her!”

  Morganna switched her wrathful gaze to me. “There is no power you can give me I can’t take for myself. Accept your fate. Both of you!”

  Zee screamed once more as Morganna resumed pulling on her demon spirit.

  “I can get you the one at the center of it all!” I shouted. “The one who controls everything!”

  Morganna’s bloody face flushed with barely contained rage for a second, and then she snapped her head around to look at me once more. “What are you talking about, boy?”

  A glimmer of hope ignited in me. I hadn’t underestimated her lust for power, and despite herself, Morganna was curious. “You have five seconds to explain yourself before I kill the succubus.”

  “You know as well as I do that someone is at the center of everything,” I blurted out. “Bigger than my father, bigger than everyone. A god among men. I can give you that person.”

  The five seconds were up, but Morganna didn’t move. She just kept staring at me, and I stared right back so she would see the truth in my eyes. “Go on,” she said.

  “The conspiracy is real,” I went on. “You know it as well as I do. But it’s so vast, so complicated, that no one can make sense of it, and no one can work out who or what is at the center of it.”

  “But you can?” Morganna sneered.

  “Yes,” I insisted. “I’ve been researching the Conspiracy for years, the layers of power structures, and I’m close to finding out who is at the center of it.”

  “I’ll do you the favor of not dismissing you as crazy or deluded, for I know a power resides at the center of everything. But,” she said, “what’s makes you, a mere boy, a mere human, uniquely qualified to uncover that power source?”

  “Because,” I said, “no one is more obsessed with finding it than I am. And I’m close.”

  “Close? I doubt that.” She resumed her torture on Zee again, and Zee screamed. “You are lying! Playing for time!”

  “No! I’m telling the truth! I just need time!”

  “Enough!” Morganna shouted and thrust her free hand at me, her power slamming me back against the tree.

  “Damion…” Zee moaned as she turned her head to look at me. “I…love you…Damion.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes as I stared helplessly at Zee.

  No, no, no!

  “Morganna!” I shouted with as much authority as I could muster. “I can do this! I just need time, that’s all!” I looked at Zee’s tortured face for a second, and then back to Morganna. “Keep her soul as collateral.”

  It almost killed me to say it, and Zee looked at me like I had betrayed her. “Damion, no…”

  “I’m taking her soul anyway,” Morganna said.

  “Think about it, Morganna,” I said. “You can kill both of us right now and then take my father’s power, but how far will that get you? You’ll still be lacking, you’ll still have less than the spider at the center of the web, a spider that’s stayed hidden for centuries now. If you were going to discover its existence, you would’ve done so by now, and I’m sure you’ve tried, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have tried. And the closer I think I get, the farther away I really am. I don’t understand it.”

  “Then let me try, Morganna. By letting me try, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. No one has spent more time on the Conspiracy than me. I know things others don’t.”

  “So let’s say you discover this ultimate power at the center of the world,” she said. “What’s to stop you from turning it on me?”

  “You think a power like that would let itself be turned by anybody?”

  “Perhaps not by you, but by me? That’s a different story.”

  “It’s power lies in its concealment. Once I uncover what it is, it can be yours for the taking, Morganna.”

  Morganna stared at me for an uncomfortably long time in the glow of her green light, and I stared right back at her, doing my best to seem like someone who wasn’t lying, who merely wasn’t playing for time. To seem like someone who would follow through on what they were promising.

  And against all the odds, I somehow convinced her.

  “All right, Damion,” Morganna said. “I can give you time. I’m not that short-sighted that I can’t see the bigger picture. You are clearly a bigger picture guy yourself, Damion, which is why I’m giving you this chance.”

  I nodded, a small sigh of relief leaving me.

  “But I’m still taking the succubus’ soul,” she added. “For collateral, as you said.”

  “Damion, no, please,” Zee said.

  I could hardly look at her. “I’m sorry, Zee. There’s no other choice.”

  “Chin up, toots,” Morganna said to Zee. “If your boyfriend here does what he promised to do, I’ll gladly let you go free after.”

  “Wait!” Zee screamed as Morganna resumed sucking out her spirit again.

  “What is it?” Morganna screeched. “I’m tired of all this stopping and starting already!”

  “Damion,” Zee said, resigned to her fate now. “Come here, baby.”

  I felt like Judas himself as I walked over to her, no matter how many times I told myself there was no other way, that at least this way, we both got to keep living, even if one of us did so within a prison. Both of us, actually. My prison would just be bigger. “I’m here, Zee,” I said as I put my hand on the back of her neck and pressed my head against hers.

  “It’s okay,” Zee whispered, bringing fresh tears to my eyes.

  “If there was another way…”

  “I know, baby. I know. Just…just make sure you come back for me, okay? Don’t leave me trapped, baby.”

  “I will,” I said, looking into her eyes. “I would never leave you, Zee.”

  But that’s exactly what you are doing, a voice inside me said, the words like knives stabbing my heart.

  “You promise, baby?”

  “I promise.”

  “Step away now,” Morganna ordered.

  I kissed Zee one final time on the forehead and then took a few steps back, doing my best to keep it together, for she was doing the same for me, accepting her fate without complaint now.

  When Morganna started tugg
ing on Zee’s spirit again, Zee didn’t resist. She smiled and kept her eyes on me the whole time as her spirit got pulled from her body into the crystal on Morganna’s staff.

  And then her body collapsed right in front of me, and it was all I could do not to throw myself to the ground and cradle Zee’s lifeless form in my arms. This despite the fact that it was never her body in the first place, but still.

  “You better keep her safe,” I said to Morganna with more authority than I had any right to. “When I’ve done what I said I’m going to do, I’ll be coming back for her.”

  Morganna smiled. “I know you will. It’s actually rather endearing, to see the love you have for her. It’s been a long time since I felt such love myself, but I can appreciate it in others.” She paused as she stared at me. “You think of me as a bad person, don’t you? An evil person?”

  “You are what you are, Morganna,” I said tiredly. “Nothing I say will ever change that.”

  “Very true. Your pragmatism gives me hope you will succeed were others have failed, Damion. I can see now why my son hates you.”

  “Because I value the truth over personal gain?”

  “No, because you have a moral center my son could never hope to compete with. That’s the real reason he wants you dead. You remind him too much that his soul is empty, which I suppose is my fault.”

  “How is it your fault?”

  “The only reason my son exists at all is because I needed to be pregnant for a ritual I had to perform at one time. After the ritual was complete, I was supposed to get rid of the thing in my belly.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Morganna gave a mirthless laugh before saying, “I’ve asked myself that same question every day since my son’s birth. I keep expecting him to become something else, something worthy of my blood that runs through his ungrateful veins, but he never does. He will always be a degenerate in my eyes.”

  “Can you get him to call off the bounty?”

  “He’ll do whatever I tell him to do.”

  “Then tell him I’m dead and one of the hunters will bring him my head.”

  “Does that mean you’ll be getting revenge for what he did to you?”

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Liar,” Morganna said. “Do what you want to him. Whatever you do to him, he probably deserves it anyway.”

  “So how much time do I have then?” I asked her.

  “Time?” Morganna thought for a moment. “I’m a pragmatist like you, Damion. I will not put constraints on you. I know these things take time.” She stepped forward, coming closer to me, her green eyes boring into mine. “But I will not be made a fool of either. If I think for any reason that you are playing me, Damion, I will make you suffer for your transgressions, along with the succubus you care so much about.” She stroked the crystal on her staff as if to emphasize the point that Zee was her prisoner now. That you talked at all about the mysterious power at the center of the world told me you knew what you were talking about. You know it is not a mere conspiracy, but a reality, and something tells me you might just be the one to crack it all wide open. That’s the only reason you are still alive, Damion.”

  “So how does this work? Do I report to you or something?”

  “Yes,” she said. “As far as you are concerned, you work for me now. Whatever you find out, I want to know about it, no matter how small. Are we clear?”

  “We’re clear.”

  “Good,” she said. “And one more thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “I know I said I wouldn’t put time constraints on you, and I won’t. But if I think you are taking too long about things, I will severe our working relationship forthwith. I’m not a patient person, Damion. I’m too long in the tooth to be waiting around unnecessarily, and I’ve already gone out on a limb here. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good boy,” she said, just before vanishing. “I’ll expect to hear from you soon then.”

  Back at the house, I patched up the wounds on my neck and then sat next to my father as he lay on a bed in the medical room, hooked up to a blood drip. Smoking a cigarette, I sat staring into space, exhausted on every level, hardly able to comprehend everything that had happened in the woods. What hurt the most wasn’t the fact that I now effectively worked for Morganna, tasked with doing something most would say is impossible. No, what hurt the most was not having Zee around. What hurt even more was knowing she allowed herself to be imprisoned for me. No matter how much I told myself it was better than her dying—better than us both dying, along with my father too—I still felt like a piece of shit.

  “Son…”

  My father had awoken, groggy, but okay it seemed. “Hey,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Water…”

  I got him some water and held the cup as he took small sips from it, the water helping to bring him around another bit.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” I said. “I’m sorry for all of it.”

  My father gave me a weak smile as he reached for my hand. “It’s okay, son. You’re still here. That’s all that matters.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is…Zelda?”

  I took a deep breath to control my emotions before answering. “She had to leave.”

  “Leave where?”

  “She’s…helping me, that’s all.”

  “Are we still under attack?”

  “No. That’s all been taken care of.”

  My father nodded as he struggled to keep his eyes open. “Good boy…”

  “Get some rest, Father,” I said, taking his hand from mine and placing it on his chest as he fell back into oblivion.

  Downstairs, I found Mac outside helping to clean up the bodies that had been left behind, many of whom were his own men. “What a fucking mess,” he said to me with more than a little regret. “These were good men.”

  “I’m sorry, Mac,” I said. “I should never have come here tonight.”

  “This is your home. Where else would you have gone?”

  I nodded. “I’m going to need you again, Mac.”

  Mac frowned as he stared at me. “What for?”

  “I’m going after the man who caused all this,” I said. “I’m going after Martin Phillips.”

  27

  Less than a few hours later, I was sitting alone inside an SUV with blacked-out windows, parked in the middle of a sprawling, disused industrial estate within the larger Industrial Zone in the city. While I was still at my father’s house, I had taken a phone from a dead mercenary and given it to one of Mac’s security team, who then called Martin Phillips pretending to be one of the bounty hunters, telling Phillips he had my head and wanted to meet to hand it over. Phillips was so excited by the prospect of having my severed head in his hands, he didn’t even question anything. He simply gave Mac’s guy a time and a place.

  Phillips turned up at the meeting point being driven in a black SUV almost identical to the one I was sitting in. As soon as the vehicle pulled up beside me, Phillips’ men jumped out holding automatic weapons, the same two guys who had beat the shit out of me previously, Barry and Eric. The second the two men exited the SUV, they were both shot dead. Another shot rang out soon after, impacting the windshield of the SUV, killing the driver.

  At that point, I got out of the SUV I was in just as Mac and three of his armed security team surrounded Phillips’ vehicle. “Out!” Mac shouted. “Out of the vehicle now!”

  “What the fuck?” Phillips said as he got out of the SUV with his hands up. “What the hell is this?”

  “Hello, Martin,” I said as I lit a cigarette. “How’s life on the run?”

  “Deadson!” Phillips said, shaking his head in fury. “You’re supposed to be dead!”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “But she said you were dead!”

  “Your mother, you mean?” I took a drag of my cigarette and walked over to him. “Your
mother lied to you because I told her to. She doesn’t give a shit about you…Martin.”

  Phillips looked terribly confused as he stared at me and then the armed men surrounding him. “I don’t understand. Why would she do that?”

  “Don’t worry about that right now,” I told him. “The only thing you need to know right now, Martin, is that you work for me now.”

  “What?” Phillips said. “The fuck I do!”

  I looked at Mac and Mac rammed the butt of his gun into Phillips’ stomach, causing Phillips to fall to his knees.

  “Circumstances have changed, Martin,” I informed him. “For what you did to me, for the trouble you caused, I should be taking your fucking head off right now. And believe me, Martin, I really want to.”

  From the consternation on his face, I could tell Phillips was still trying to work out what was going on, and probably why his own mother had betrayed him. “What the fuck is happening here?”

  “Here’s what’s happening,” I said as I crouched down in front of him. “When you leave here, you’re going to go off and continue to do what it is you do. You’ll still run your little empire, but you’ll move everything underground, where I’m sure most of it was in the first place, anyway. You’ll continue to follow whatever contingency plan you’ve been following so far, staying hidden from the law. The only difference is, from now on, you will come when I call, and you will do everything I ask you to do.”

  “What? Why the fuck should I?”

  “Because, Martin,” I said as I tossed my cigarette away and took out my commando knife. “If you refuse, you’ll die right here and we’ll dump your body in the river along with your men.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, shaking his head. “This isn’t happening…”

  “It is happening, Martin, and the sooner you get your head around that fact, the better.” I put the tip of the knife under his chin. “No one is coming to save you, Martin. Your mother has abandoned you. You’re at my mercy now.”

  Tears came to Phillips’ stoned eyes. “But why would she do that?” he asked, sounding almost childlike.