by Ardis, Priya
The yearning in his voice made my insides melt.
“Take off the glamour, Vane,” I asked again.
His shoulders drooped. Eyes closing with a defeated expression, Doppelganger-Matt disappeared. Letting go of my hands, Vane stepped back.
Cold air took up space between us. Too cold.
I leaned forward, a few inches away from the wall.
I put my palms against his flat stomach. I traced the line of Vane’s well-defined chest, his bare skin rigid with sculpted muscles. The differences between him and Matt were small and yet so stark. His eyes stayed clear and focused while Matt’s held all the secrets. His purpose, whether I agreed or not, was etched in the hard lines of his body. The waves of his slicked-back hair added a touch of wild that would never be completely tamed, but it could be softened. I ran a hand across his shoulders—they could bear a surprising amount. I touched a flat male nipple. I tweaked it.
With a strangled smile, he groaned. “Ryan—”
I whispered, “Tell me you love me.”
“You know I do,” he said without hesitation.
Hazel eyes flickered with green. The monster and the man waited, both in agony. I should have been afraid. I wasn’t. I had been wrong. Vane and the monster couldn’t be separated… but maybe they didn’t need to be. With the monster inside him, Vane teetered on the edge of control, but I knew deep down he would not become one. He’d fought that battle fifteen hundred years ago. He didn’t enjoy pain and that made all the difference.
He leaned down for a kiss. I let him in.
I expected it to be brutal. It wasn’t. He gently explored my mouth. A hand trailed the length of my jaw. A finger traced the length of my breastbone and down to bare skin along the top of my cleavage, just above the tapered edge of the gown. He murmured, “This dress is a dream. I’m going to enjoy taking it off.”
Dream. Vision. A thought penetrated the fog of desire. I jerked back.
Vane arched a brow. “I have a condom.”
I bit my lip.
Tensing, he said, “I won’t ask. Not again.”
Not after the maze. I flushed at the memory. Of me straddling him. Of him asking me to choose him. Heat pooled inside me, an ache begged for release. With strained effort, I subdued it. A turbulent sea swam in Vane’s gaze. I pushed away from him. “You don’t understand. You have Matt’s magic. The curse. You’ll lose the visions if we… you know.”
Vane let out a bark of laughter, eyes twinkling in the low light of the hallway.
“How is this funny?” I said in exasperation.
Hands grabbed my hips, pulling me against him completely. “If you think I’m going to pick visions over having you, you don’t know me.”
With just one sentence, the clawing insecurity I was carrying inside me shrank. I finally let go of the want I’d been holding in check and gave free rein to the rampant hunger he’d woken during our first kissed in a dank basement.
My arms wrapped around his neck. My legs wrapped around his waist.
I said against his ear, “I know you pretty well.”
Vane’s breathing deepened. Rough fingers tightened on me, digging deep into skin and soul. He pushed away from the wall.
He took me to his room.
***
I knelt on the ground beside my brother. In one hand I held the trident. The instrument of Poseidon hungered to make the earth rumble. Vane lay still on the ground, his green eyes closed.
“Merlin!”
At the sound of my name, I looked at her. She sat on Vane’s other side. Wind lifted the dark-blond curls around her head like a halo. Tears streaked her eyes. She clutched his hand.
Around us, the giant stones of Kronos’s Circle watched quietly.
Stonehenge.
I glanced up. Red bled across a part of the sky where only yellow should have shown. A round ball of fire burned through the protection of blue-blanketed clouds. The celestial map, rearranged, and a giant gas ball, previously hidden, blazed out from its spot on the hunter’s shoulder. Orion. It was the death of a star. In the sky, it blazed as a fleeting second sun. It would be the death of us. As with any passage, it caused a Fury.
The skies above us turned hazy and shimmered with streaks of color. The Fury bore down upon us. Around us, the refugees waited. Trucks and helicopters readied to speed through to an unknown place. They readied to escape the inferno hurtling closer. The inferno would strip away everything and everyone they knew. Only they, the lucky few, would survive this terrible day.
Brutal wind pelted us with hard bits of stone and dirt, the earth aware of the upcoming inferno. Above us, the sky screamed.
“It’s time,” I told her.
Her reddened gaze lifted from Vane to meet mine. “I can’t,” she said.
“It’s the only way,” I said.
The green gemstone of the Dragon’s Eye glowed on her neck.
My brother had to die. And so did I.
And she would be the one to kill us both.
CHAPTER 18 – THE LION AND THE TIGER
CHAPTER 18
THE LION AND THE TIGER
Everything had changed.
I opened my eyes. The vision had been through Matt’s eyes. I didn’t know what happened to transfer it… Well, actually I could guess. I buried my face deeper into a fluffy pillow and inhaled the clean scent of Vane’s cologne. Resisting the urge to go back to sleep, I yawned and pushed up on my elbows. Muted rays of a setting sun streamed in through a window in Vane’s bedroom. I’d never been inside it. At least the double bed was bigger than the one in his Boston apartment. That one could be more aptly described as a pallet.
I sat up. White sheets caressed my bare skin.
The bed was empty.
A note lay on top of a book and an iPad. I picked up the note to find it was a postcard. I read the bold strokes of Vane’s handwriting.
Find another way, if you can.
I turned the card over, expecting to find a picture of a tropical island. I’d seen a picture of one in Sylvia’s office of Alexa and Grey as kids on surfboards against a backdrop of rainbow-covered mountains, high-rise hotels, and the pristine sands of Waikiki Beach. Instead, the postcard showed the House of Seven Gables with an old-fashioned sailing ship in the harbor. A cartoon witch rode a broom across the top. Ghost-shaped letters declared—Salem, the place for witches.
A command, a dare, a sly bribe, and nothing more than the one line.
I oscillated between screaming and melting at the same time. It was so Vane. The iPad was pulled up to a countdown app, causing me to grimace. The hardcover book had a plastic covering and an AC High label on its spine, the one he’d stolen from the school library. I hugged the book to me and let myself hang on to something tangible from home.
The door burst open. Matt strode inside. Grey followed on his heels, a sword in hand.
Matt halted at the sight of me in bed. “This is Vane’s suite.”
I nearly died from embarrassment. At least the sheet covered me. I pulled it tighter up against my throat, while gaping at them. “What are you doing here?”
Grey smirked at me. “Rescuing you. Not that you seem to need it.”
I asked, “How’d you get in here?”
“I brought a whole army,” Grey said.
“Where is he?” Matt demanded.
Gia walked up. She paused at the threshold when she spotted me. “It seems Merlin was right. I was looking for you in the wrong place.” Behind her, the living room stretched out. The suite was made up of two rooms and identical to the one across the hall. The one Gia and I shared.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
Her voice edged with anger, she said, “Your boyfriend hasn’t managed to kill me yet.”
“It was Oliver.”
“Vane’s still responsible.”
I sighed. She was right. Yet, it wasn’t entirely fair. There were no easy answers.
An incoming text buzzed on Grey’s cell. “Colin says he fou
nd Vane in the cathedral!”
He, Matt, and Gia rushed out.
I cursed. I threw on one of Vane’s shirts and ran across the hall to grab some clothes I left in the room. I ran down the stairs (not wanting to wait for the ancient elevator) and out into courtyard.
A firefight was going on. I wished I had Excalibur. Vane and a contingent of mermaids and wizards faced Matt, Grey, and their army of gargoyles. Fireballs flew across the pristine green lawn. They ricocheted off the lion’s head fountain, destroying it. Blue and green magic battled each other. Matt formed one huge fireball and tossed it at Vane. His eyes glowed with blue brilliance. I barely had a chance to register that Merlin had his magic back.
Vane caught the fireball and tossed it back. He had Excalibur tucked in his belt. The ground trembled where Vane walked, the power of the Earth Shaker roaring within him. Leonidas grappled with Grey. The green-skinned mermaids clanged swords with the beasts.
On the sidelines, I stood frozen. I had friends on both sides. Matt’s brown mane caught the light of a red sky. It bounced off him to his counterpart. Red highlighted Vane’s graceful muscles as he faced off with his brother. The lion against the tiger… in a fight that could have no winners.
Over us, the sky rumbled, echoing my pained bewilderment. The Minotaur rose. I saw its shadow rise above Vane. Green glowed from him. My anxiety increased. Blue began to burn around Matt, and the anxiety became full-blown panic. For a minute, I wondered if it was all over. We’d end up obliterating ourselves before Kronos’s Fury ever got the chance.
I had to do something or I would lose them both. I weaved and bobbed through the battle, straight into the middle.
Green magic surrounded me. I met Vane’s eyes. The monster colored them. It startled when it saw me, but it couldn’t pull the magic back. It was too far gone, drunk on the fight. Blue magic slammed into it. Around my neck, the Dragon’s Eye let out a scream. It echoed mine.
I held onto it. The explosion cratered the earth under me. The impenetrable stone buildings of the rectangle shuddered. The great grey-stone wall cracked and fell like rubble. The cathedral’s rose window shattered with a loud pop.
I felt myself fall.
In the dust, I saw everyone go down as the dueling magic sprayed out.
I lay dazed on the ground.
Only Vane and Matt remained upright. Vane stood, while Matt was on his knees. Vane watched me without moving, his eyes back to a normal hazel. As if he couldn’t move. As if he didn’t dare. Matt ran to me.
I tried to open my mouth to say something, but no sound came out.
His face covered with dust, his eyes tinged with blue, Matt picked me up. He shouted at Vane, “This is your fault.”
“Yes,” Vane agreed readily.
Around him, the mermaids started to get up. Behind Matt, so did the gargoyles. The wizards still lay on the ground. I flopped in Matt’s arms. I told my limbs to move. They refused.
With a flick of his wrist, Vane called Excalibur to him. “She’s mine.”
Matt shook his head. “I’m not letting her go.”
“I could take her.”
“You’re never going to be the right one, Vane,” Matt spat at him. “When are you going to understand that?”
“When I stop breathing,” Vane replied.
“Then you’ll have to stop my breathing,” said Matt.
The sky rumbled again. The clash of magic swirled in the clouds, turning them a muddy mess of colors. Vane stared at it. “Will you not work together?”
“You chose your path a long time ago. It’s never matched mine.”
“Then, I will leave. For now,” he said with finality. “Take care of her, but don’t get used to it.”
***
I woke up in my room. Grey snored on a chair beside the bed. I sat up stiffly and he jerked awake. With a yawn, he raked a hand through his hair. “This is becoming a pattern.”
“The perks of being the champion,” I said feebly.
“You’re up.” Matt and Gia walked in from the living room.
“Vane?” I asked.
“Gone,” Gia said flatly.
I sank into the bed, wishing I could just hide away, knowing I would never be able to hide from myself. I looked at Matt. “You have your magic back.”
“Upari.” Amber eyes lit with the brilliant blue of his magic. The entire bed, chairs, nightstand—every piece of furniture in the room vibrated and lifted off the ground. He let it hang in the air.
“How?”
Matt lowered the furniture. The bed landed with an uncomfortably hard thunk. “Apollo’s curse. My magic reacted to it, but instead of just disappearing, it rebounded from Vane back to me.” He gave me an ironic look. “I didn’t need the Healing Cup. All I needed was for you to sleep with him.”
I tensed. Not from awkwardness, but from worry. “And him?”
“As you saw, he’s still the Fisher King.” Matt glowered.
“He has Excalibur.”
“And I have his trident.”
I confronted him. “Is it true, Merlin? Is your whole plan to run?”
He blinked. “My whole plan is to make sure as many survive as possible.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“What are you talking about?” Grey frowned.
I explained about the evacuation plan—the gateways, the trilithons, and the apple. Gia turned green and crumpled against the doorframe. Grey sank into a chair beside the bed.
“I’m not giving up. As I see it, we have less than a month to figure this out,” I said with determination, foolish or not. I looked at them. “I would rather not do it with a team of one.”
Grey leaned over and put his hand over mine, the one clutching the sheet with a death grip. He squeezed it. “I’m all for saving the world. Joey owes me money for the limo we rented.”
“I just got into college,” Gia said with a small smile. “My mother used to smack me and call me stupid when I was a kid. I’m not going to miss my chance to show her up.”
Smacking wasn’t all it had been. I’d seen her memories when she drank lake water. Her mother had beaten her black and blue. Matt’s eyes lingered on the Dragon’s Eye.
He spoke in my head. “You’re not a team of one, but your refusal to pick a team hurts us all.”
“I did pick, Matt,” I said softly.
“You didn’t pick well.” With those words, he stalked out.
Grey’s cell buzzed. He took it out of his pocket. “It’s Deirdre. I should take it. If you need me, I’ll be downstairs.”
He ambled out.
Gia watched him go. Folding her arms, she leaned against the doorframe. Red hair fell around her face. She smirked. “So, champion, what does it feel like to get bagged by a douche?”
I threw a pillow at her.
“A hot douche,” she corrected.
“Why is this so hard?” I asked her morosely. I already missed him.
Her expression sobered. “He won’t change, you know.”
“I don’t want that.” I met her gaze. “I just need him to bend enough to accept I love him.”
***
One week passed faster than I could have thought possible. Gia and Grey went back to Boston to finish school. I wasn’t going to make it to graduation. I refused to let Marilynn walk across the stage in my place and would get an incomplete for my senior year. Sylvia sent the notifications to the colleges where I was accepted. More notifications than I thought—she filled out several applications for me. I cried when she told me… that she cared enough. Oddly enough, in that moment, I felt the spirit of my mother hovering over me.
Not unskilled with computers, I quickly found Vane’s schedule in his command center. There was no effort made to hide his plans. He planned on traveling the world and building a trilithon in every major city. Each one a hundred times the size of the one he built in Boston. With his core crew of mermaids and wizards, his calculations indicated he could make thirty-one gates.
&nbs
p; Matt wasn’t going to take that lying down.
Believing he could build the gates with the Fisher King’s trident, Matt drove me to the quarries. The long-dormant quarries opened under a storm of environmental protests. The protestors, who’d spent years living in tunnels and tree houses to protect the national park and ancient monument of the Nine Ladies, had only recently packed up and left, thinking their long-standing battle won.
Near the town of Derbyshire, under grey English skies, Matt showed me the stone circle of nine. The upright sandstones sat in gothic silence on a mossy green clearing in a hilly area dubbed Stanton Moor. A tenth stone, the King Stone, sat out of the circle and looked down on the Nine Ladies. It struck me as a little creepy how identical the stones were to what I’d seen in the Kronos Eye. It legitimized the rest of it. The exploding star. The furious sun. A burning sky.
No place to run.
As we drove to the quarry site, I saw a uniformed guard wrestling with a protestor trying to storm past a heavily guarded gate at one of the reopened tunnels. We went past a chain-link fence to the front of the tunnel. We found a fairly isolated area with a giant pile of mined stone. Matt handed me the trident. We spent the next few hours with me trying to open a gate with the trident while he used magic to pull together the trilithon. Translation—he spent hours muttering, pacing, and shouting hocus pocus spells at weird metallic stone blocks.
I spent hours waiting around and getting hungry in between bouts of shooting at said weird metallic stone blocks. I didn’t mind, though. More gates meant more people saved.
However, the metallic rocks never changed state, from rock to gel-shape back to rock as the mermaid song had done to the blocks in Boston. The trident only broke up the stone into little bits. Not ready to give up, Matt got us rooms (separate rooms) at a local inn and we went back to the quarries day after day.
Meanwhile, because they had little choice after Matt’s failure to build a gate, the governments conceded and bargained with Vane. He got resources, cover stories, and however many seats he wanted on the evac trucks. (I had no contact with him. My info came through Matt and Grey. The Queen acted as his go-between. She refused to give me his number on his demand, and the Dragon’s Eye remained firmly quiet. He’d locked me out.) The Council regrouped to help the wizards with the preparations. The wizards flocked back to the school from various parts of the world, knowing Merlin was there. Vane had taken Leonora and Leonidas with him.