“She’s in there!”
Keva’s voice sounds so distant, but I can still hear the panic in it.
It’s time. I grip the prie-dieu, knuckles turning white around the wood. Heat blazes from my hands, and Sister Marie-Clémence jumps back in surprise as it bursts into flames. I grit my teeth as I pull at my chains, flesh sizzling against the now hot iron, until the wood finally disintegrates, and I break myself free.
“Don’t let her use her powers!” Sister Marie-Clémence shouts, the flames forcing her further back.
The chapel door bursts open, letting through a group of knights.
“Everyone, stop!” a deep voice booms out. Gauvain.
I whirl around, my manacled hands up, blood dripping profusely around my feet, soaking my boots. The man closest to me drops his whip, reaching for his sword instead.
“Drop it!” Gauvain shouts at him.
“How dare you interfere?” Sister Marie-Clémence says. “This is my jurisdiction! Leave!”
“Our Order is no longer yours to control,” Hadrian says, slipping inside with a wide-eyed Keva. “You’ve been deposed”—he checks his pocket watch—“as of two hours ago.”
Sister Marie-Clémence’s face contorts in rage. “I will have you boys sentenced for this!” She motions for her men to seize me. “Get that ogham out of her now! I don’t care if you have to hack her to pieces to retrieve it.”
But the game’s over. She’s played her role, even if a little too well. It’s time to put an end to this charade.
“I wouldn’t come any closer if I were you,” I tell the two knights as they try to corner me against the wall.
Behind them, the fire is growing bigger, fed by my pain and anger, and cutting me off from my would-be rescuers.
“Come along nicely now,” the one who whipped me says, while the other unfolds an iron net used to capture Fey.
I smile grimly. Just as I’d planned.
“Morgan!”
I shiver at Arthur’s cry, see him try to drive past Hadrian and Gauvain, Excalibur flashing angrily in his fist. I try not to look at the horror on his face as his friends keep him away from the flames. This is why I didn’t give him the details, why I wanted him to sleep through the rest of the night.
“Stop,” I mentally tell him, willing him to hear me.
I see Arthur hesitate, looking confused.
“Trust me,” I continue pleadingly.
Don’t make this harder than it already is, I want to add.
I duck as the iron mesh flies at me, missing my head by inches, then blast the two men back with a strong gust of wind, sending them flying across the chapel. Finally, I return my attention to Sister Marie-Clémence.
“I have tried time and again to be understanding,” I say, watching the nun blanch as I stalk towards her. “I’ve worked so hard to get you to accept me despite my tainted blood, as you like to call it. But no matter what I did, you people always found an excuse to turn a blind eye to my efforts and good deeds.”
Someone’s shouting to put the fire out, and I think I recognize my uncle’s voice.
“Yet you do not mind using our powers as long as it raises you from the mud where you belong,” I continue, stopping in front of the old woman, smiling at the fear in her usually malevolent eyes. “But I am done with your hypocrisy.”
Steam fills the room with a deafening hiss as people pour water on top of the flames to douse it. But it’s too late.
“Help!” Sister Marie-Clémence cries out at them.
I grab her arm, digging my fingers in until she flinches with pain.
“Thanks to you,” I say, “my eyes have been opened. I will return to my kind. There, at least, I know I’ll be judged not by what I am, but by what I do. And I’ll let you in on a little secret…” I lean into her so I can whisper in her ear. “The next time you see me will be the last time you do.”
“Over here!” Hadrian shouts.
But as my uncle and his men come rushing at me, I throw Sister Marie-Clémence at them, letting her stumble into their surprised arms. I point at the floor with my index finger, and an invisible hand swipes my blood over the floor in long stroke, tracing a double triangle with a large V on top of its curling edges—Lucifer’s sigil.
I catch Keva’s look and nod my thanks to her. She nods back in acknowledgment. There’s no going back now.
“Morgan, please don’t go!”
The pain and fear in Arthur’s raw voice make me hesitate, but only for a second. I smile sadly at him from across the room.
“Stay safe,” I mentally tell him.
Then I close my eyes, concentrating on the picture of Mordred’s face. Brother, I call out to him, I am ready. Bring me home!
Chapter 32
You need to have lived with the enemy to understand how its mind works. Father Tristan’s words are part of the reason I’m back at Lake High, standing smack dab in the middle of a mass of demons without a single weapon on me.
The sound of Arthur’s shout still ringing in my ears, I scan the crowd, faces sniffing the air in my direction, drawn by the blood still dripping profusely from my back. Saint George’s balls, but there’s a lot of them!
“Well, well, well, what kinda dumbass has decided to land here?” I jump at the sudden voice and scowl at a pimply-faced boy as he ambles over from the other side of the burned-down docks, a large spiked mace weighing his shoulder down. “No longer showing off, are we?”
“Brockton, what a pleasure,” I say through clenched teeth.
The boy sneers at me. “Did ya get lost or something?” he asks, before noticing the manacles around my wrists. “Could show ya where the prison is, case ya don’t remember.”
“Very sweet,” I say, a fake smile frozen on my face, “but I doubt that was Mordred’s intention when he brought me here.”
Brockton frowns so severely, it makes him look cross-eyed. “Mordred, huh?”
I scrutinize him from head to toe with derision, although I know that his presence among all these demons is a sign he’s more dangerous than he seems. “I don’t suppose you’re my escort, are you?”
“I’ve actually got some serious work to do,” Brockton says at last, evidently not wanting to trouble himself with me. “Here’s to hoping you die on your way in,” he adds, flipping me off as he struts off.
Crap.
A part of me was kinda hoping he would take up the suggestion.
I return my attention to the horde of Dark Sidhe and demons I need to go through to reach the school, gauging their mood, and note their interest in me seems to have grown along with their numbers. Time to get moving.
For a second, I entertain the thought of flying over them, but quickly dismiss it. I’m here to make a mark, impress Carman somehow with my abilities, show her I can be useful at her side instead of locked up. And I won’t be able to do so if the first thing I do here is cower before the grunts.
With a resigned sigh, I push my way through the thick bodies, trying not to make any eye contact. My show of confidence seems to work, until I reach the landing docks. Something grunts to my right, feet trample the earth. I duck as a large, hairy arm swipes at me, feeling a serrated claw slice up my cheek before it takes out another demon that venture too close. Ichor sprays out in a dark mist.
Chaos breaks out.
Shouts erupt as demons charge, turning on those trying to push through. I lunge clumsily out of a rusty spear’s way, but a meaty hand closes over my foot, and I fall heavily to the muddy ground. I kick back violently, feel something crunch beneath my heel, and the hand finally releases me. I roll out of the way of spike. A beast howls overhead.
I need to do something.
Need to show I mean business.
I let my power crackle along my skin, then hurl it deep into the crush of demons, blasting them away from me. I quickly push to my knees in the temporary breach, and slam my hand down. Power rips deep into the soil until it reaches the aquifer, then, at my coaxing, hurls back up. Th
ere’s a low rumbling, barely noticeable over the frenzy, before the water punches through the knot of snarling beasts with an earth-shattering roar.
The powerful jet spreads sideways like a giant wall, then the wave crests, blotting out the rising sun. I spread my fingers out, release my breath, and the water comes crashing down like a tsunami, washing demons and Dark Sidhe out like a pile of dead leaves. If leaves could scream in terror.
I raise a shaky hand to wipe the sweat from my brow, and freeze.
No.
No, no, no, no.
I stare at my fingers in incomprehension. The dark spots that the Siege Perilous had left on me are back, spreading to the edges of my wrists like a pair of gloves.
“I was hoping ya wouldn’t come,” Nibs says, eyeing the wreckage from the top of the burned down docks.
“Ah, did that finally draw your attention?” I ask sharply, storming towards him.
If Nibs had come sooner, I wouldn’t have had to make this disgusting show of force, and my hands would still be free of taint.
Nibs eyes my approach with a grimace. “I take it ya’re still goin’ through with yer bullshit mission?”
“I thought my being here made that pretty clear,” I say, still irritated. “Lead on.”
Nibs shakes his head as if to say I’ve gone completely mad, but starts walking anyway, picking his way around the corpses I’ve sown across the fields, his small boots squelching in the mud.
“Have ya considered not killin’ off all her soldiers?” Nibs asks as we draw near a long line of spiked heads. “’Specially considering ya want to get on Carman’s good side.”
There’s a strident sniggering and I startle to a stop.
“Everyone’s on edge with Algol up and shining so brightly,” a disembodied voice says.
I shiver, recognizing the line of spiked heads as Mordred’s. The talking heads are now circling the southern tip of the school’s main building instead of the old fort he’d used as a base. His perfect, if oh-so-creepy, alarm system.
“Hello ladies and gentlemen,” I make myself say with a stiff nod at the heads still putrefying on their stakes.
“It’s soon going to reach its peak,” another says, still talking about that star, the very same I’d been able to see down in Hell.
“I’d give it a few more days,” the long face of a man says.
“And once it does,” the first talking head says, that of Martha, their leader, “the link between here and Hell will be at its strongest, and therefore the most opportune time to free—”
“Balor,” I finish for her.
A few more days, only. Guess I did get here right on time,then.
Nibs lets out a loud, moist burp. “Gotta give it to ya, kid, ya’ve got the balls of a bull on steroids comin’ like this. But if I were ya, I’d worry more ‘bout Carman rippin’ them right off, than ‘bout some locked up demon.”
The heads start cackling again. “Are you so sure?” Martha asks.
“I think the clurichaun’s brains must’ve melted along with its face,” a bald man with decomposing jowls says with a guffaw.
“Nobody asked ya for your opinion,” Nibs retorts, kicking the closest head’s post, “and ain’t nobody that’s goin’ to, neither. Just stick to yer job.”
Without caring for a reply, Nibs trots on ahead, as eager as I am to put as much distance between these creepy heads and us, the cackling of the talking heads following us all the way to the school.
Now that I’m not stealing my way in, I have more time to assess the damage the building has sustained over the last couple of years, and am surprised at the pang of sadness I feel.
The wing where the dining hall once stood is now but an empty, burned down carcass; the façade leading towards the arena is pockmarked from the aftermath of blasts and explosions; and, topping it all, are the blackened branches of Myrdwinn’s decaying Apple Tree. Lake High’s golden days are no more, relegated to tales, and fading memories.
A pearly-white figure pops out from one of the second-floor windows at our approach, and I instinctively flinch.
“There’s a couple loose ones!” Urim shouts excitedly, looking up instead of at us.
Thummim’s dark shadow zooms out of the window next to him with a loud whoop, followed a split-second later by Urim. Both Dark Sidhe heading for the sky-lake, where I can barely spot a pack of demons trying to break free into the surface world.
“Morons,” Nibs says, spitting loudly on the ground. “All that power stolen for nothin’. Though I can’t blame ‘em for gettin’ antsy bein’ all cooped up down here with so many helpless humans so close at hand.”
“But…I thought the goal was to destroy humans,” I say tensely, “so why are the, um, loose demons being chased down?”
“And risk havin’ yer knights take us down, little by little?” Nibs says. “No, no, Carman ain’t stupid. If she wants to win this war, she needs an army. And an army has to stand together. Or somethin’ of the sort. Now come on, Mordred wants to see ya before Her Mightiness comes back.”
With a nod, I pull the heavy wooden door open to let us in. A blast of cool air greets us, carrying a faint smell of rotten eggs, a stark reminder that the Gates of Hell are more open than closed these days.
We turn left into a narrow stairwell, and start climbing towards the KORT room. Each time we pass before one of the slitted windows, I can’t help but look outside at the multitude of demons shifting across Lake High’s grounds. There’s so many of them, even my earlier display of power has barely left a dent.
Mordred’s voice rings out sharply, bouncing off the staircase’s walls before we reach the second-floor landing. “There’s a zero-tolerance policy for those who do not obey my commands.”
“Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum worked fast this time ‘round,” Nibs drawls. “Guess they didn’t wanna miss yer arrival.”
We emerge from the staircase to find a line of six demons kneeling by the wall halfway down the corridor, heads bowed. I ignore the two Dark Sidhe lounging by the windows, my eyes drawn instead to Mordred’s pacing figure. The last time I saw him was in Danu’s scrying pool, moment before he was about to feel Carman’s wrath. I go over every inch of his tattooed body, but whatever Carman’s done to him, there’s no trace of it left.
“The message was clear from the start,” Mordred continues, sounding almost bored. “You do not act, or even think, without my say-so. Anyone who disobeys this edict forfeits his eternal life.”
Spinning gracefully on his heels, Mordred cuts his hand through the air. There’s a gurgling gasp from the nearest demon, then the last in the line falls forward, head hitting the floor with a dull thud.
I suck in my breath at the sight of the blood gushing out of the other demons’ throats, before they, too, crumple into lifeless heaps.
“Good hunting, guys,” Mordred tells Urim and Thummim. “Their oghams are yours to do as you like.”
The two Dark Sidhe grin broadly as they each pull out long knives, then fall upon their victims to carve them up. Bile rises to my throat at the slick sounds of flesh and bones being pried open, and I squeeze my hands until my nails dig deeply into my palms to keep from getting sick.
“Hello, brother,” I call out. “Miss me much?”
Mordred looks over his shoulder at me, his golden eyes cold and distant. Far from the warm welcome I’d hoped, now that I know he’s been my guardian angel all along.
“What exactly do you want here?” he asks guardedly.
A beautiful, crystalline laugh resounds behind me and I stiffen.
“I didn’t think it would be a good idea for Mordred to get you here,” Jennifer says, strutting past me. “But the sight of your bare back is so worth it. Do tell me you were flogged.”
Mordred winces slightly at her words, but doesn’t push her away when she wraps her arms around his waist in a proprietary way. Guess he’s fine with whatever she says or does, as long as she’s his.
“So tell me,” Jennifer cont
inues with her honeyed tone, “how does it feel to not be wanted wherever you go?”
A shout from outside the building saves me from having to answer.
“Incoming!”
A second later, a massive shadow drops from the sky before crashing just outside our windows in a deafening BOOM that makes the whole building rock on its foundations. Jennifer grimaces prettily, leaning slightly over to look out the windows.
“What was it this time?” she asks in annoyance.
“That would appear to be a fishing boat,” Thummim says offhandedly, cleaning himself off with a rag. “Again.”
“But this one looks like it may have taken the forge down,” Urim adds, his usually pristine clothes now covered in gore.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Mordred seems to notice, and says, “Avalon’s been seriously compromised, and is unraveling at the seams. Here faster than in other places, but I’m sure it’ll spread to the rest of the place soon enough.”
“You could save this place if you would only stop what you’re doing here,” I say.
“It is of no concern to me what happens to Avalon,” Mordred says with a light shrug. “This is but a temporary residence until we finally take our rightful place on Earth.”
“You know, I never saw the appeal of ruling over everyone else,” I say, abruptly changing tacks. “You’re constantly hounded by people who want something from you, while at the same time you have to worry about those who want to take your place. It all sounds rather fatiguing.”
“Little people will never be able to fathom what great minds think,” Jennifer says with a smirk, “least of all try to understand them.”
“There’s no need to put yourself down like that, Jen,” I retort.
Anger flashes in her beautiful eyes, but Mordred pulls Jennifer along as he heads back for the KORT room.
“I didn’t bring you here so you could have a hissy fit with the object of my wooing,” he tells me over his shoulder.
I snort back a laugh, enjoying Jennifer’s cringing at the old-fashioned word. But as I follow them down the long hallway, all feelings of mirth leave me, replaced by a sense of doom. I can feel the Siege Perilous’s power flowing out of the KORT room, cold and demanding, making my skin prickle with the need to grab for it.
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