The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6)

by Richard Raley

  Ceinwyn looked like I’d shot her. If she looked like that now . . . didn’t want to imagine what she was about to look like after I dropped the final hammer. “Thousands if not millions will die if you give that artifact to him. You can’t, King Henry. Even for family. Not for Susan or JoJo, not for Tyson, or me, or Valentine, none of us.”

  “You can stop choking me with your hug,” I managed to tell Val, who finally let up a little bit.

  “King Henry, this is—”

  “This was my night,” I agreed, “which led to that pile of puke everyone’s been ignoring. The Curator. Lot of gloating, lot of knowing he has me by the balls. Could’ve even forced me to leave with him then, but he didn’t of course. Wants me to suffer for these next few days knowing what’s coming. Playing with his food.”

  “He might be lying,” Ceinwyn tried to find an out. “It could be a gambit knowing your family history.”

  “There was a photo,” I dashed her hopes, “Susan and Isabel together . . . looking like Susan. Now that I think about it, Isabel changed into Susan for a split second back at the Ouroboros. Only I thought it was Mom, something to fuck with my head. Congrats to her boss, he did a much better job of it.”

  “You can’t—” Ceinwyn started again.

  “I fucking know I can’t!” I yelled. “But he thinks I will. Fucking smart, that man. Genius even, I’ll admit it. Maybe smarter than me. But he’s got blind spots. Big ones. Maybe bigger than mine. Had us a conversation on them and he never even noticed what I hinted at. Thinks all this in the Pit was his work, his plan. Doesn’t realize what I’ve been doing to make it happen or what I’ve learned here. Never expected I had the World-Breaker on me the whole time. Even had the Three Queens raid my shop just to be sure it wasn’t there.

  This concerned her as well. “Is Tyson—”

  “He’s fine. We knew. Planned for it.”

  A squint overcame those ageless eyes. “Did you indeed?”

  “One of the little things I held back on,” I admitted.

  A blond eyebrow rose up, slightly impressed. “Which one?”

  “The small matter. Not the one that would upset you. Which . . . we’ll get to it. But this . . . I knew the Curator would take the bait if my shop was empty. Also knew I might need some leverage with how all the politics might go here. So I prepared some anima trackers in dummy artifacts, put them in the safe in my shop floor. Then Tyson watched for them, all those cameras he installed finally doing their jobs. After the Three Queens left with the trackers, Pocket and Jesus took over. All so we could learn where the Curator kept his hideout.”

  She blinked at me. “Even for you . . .”

  “I know.”

  “Even for you,” Ceinwyn was the one yelling now, “you thought that was the small one? How amazingly stupid! What if they didn’t stop at your shop? What if they attacked Tyson and Victoria? But no, it’s worse. Your stupidity is only eclipsed by the danger of what you had Pocket and Jesus undertake! Finding the Curator’s hideout? Do you know how many have died trying the same? How many Recruiters I’ve lost for even nearing his territory? It’s even worse for ESLED. And the Vampire Embassies . . . hundreds dead!”

  Val raised her hands to get us to calm down before I fired back at Ceinwyn. “Pocket and Jesus are fine. Tyson called me this morning. It got a little rough, but they’ve gotten out of the danger zone and are returning to your shop as quickly as they can. Outside of needing to check for someone following them, they seem fine. Tyson wouldn’t tell me more than that . . . or if they know where the Curator is located.” Val glanced at me. “Time to remind your boys there’s a girl on the team again.”

  “My boys?” I teased her. “Way you and Jesus got to joking sometimes I thought he might steal you from me.”

  “There’s another miracle to add to the pile for this disaster,” Ceinwyn couldn’t keep her sarcasm from flowing despite the good news that completely undercut her worries. “So assuming they managed to find the Curator’s hideout where no one else has—not ESLED, not Eva Reti, not Fines Samson, not even the Divine Falschein—assuming that, now what? Leverage . . . yes, indeed, King Henry. You went big. Again. Might even be enough leverage to let everyone forgive all your realm-jumping. But we aren’t telling anyone about that because we don’t do stupid things.”

  “I told you she’d be mad,” I whispered at Val.

  “She’ll calm down.”

  “It’s not even the really bad one.”

  “She’ll calm down about that too. Eventually.”

  Ceinwyn got to her feet, started pacing up and down the greeting room. No Cheshire Cat smile now, but if she had a tail it would’ve been twitching all about. “At least they’re alive. Bigger fools than you are.”

  “I’m a horrible influence,” I agreed.

  More pacing. More huffing. More occasional glares from those bright blue eyes. “So . . . leverage. You have it now. More than enough. Enough to waste it all, I’m guessing? We take what they learned and mount a rescue operation that would be even more dangerous than what Jesus and Pocket just attempted? We go into the lair of the beast? For Susan? That’s what you want?”

  I shook my head, dirt eyes darker than usual. “No need for rescues. That’s some special bullshit, ain’t it? Soon as I tell him I have the World-Breaker on me, he’ll set up a meet and we’ll do the trade. So . . . don’t need to find him. No need for some rescue operation or an assault on the dread fortress. Just need to show up, get Susan away from him, and escape.”

  Worry drove Ceinwyn to new heights of authoritarianism. “You are not going alone—”

  “I know I’ve proven I’m capable of doing some insane, unthinkable shit this week, but really? Do I look that fucking suicidal?” I interrupted her.

  A breath slowly escaped out of Ceinwyn as she tried to calm down. Take Auntie Badass blushing over Auntie Badass being worried about me. Where you at with those smooth moves, Poug? Or you too busy spreading word about the Book of King Henry?

  “What’s your plan?” Val asked softly. “You must have one. You don’t quite like it judging by how grumpy you are, but you definitely have something coalescing by now.”

  “One? Got fifty.”

  “Only need the right one,” Val pointed out. “Preferably not one that lands you back in the Pit with all your precious leverage spent. Especially now that you’ve gotten me excited about moving away from London.”

  “Thing is . . . as long as I don’t go to the Learning Council with it—and why would I with all the spies seem to be working for him—the Curator’s practically begging me to bring backup. More backup I bring, the more people get to witness his glory and the more magnanimous he gets to be in sparing them. So, what I’m thinking is: we give him what he wants. We give him a show with a sizable group, then we give him a World-Breaker . . . just not this World-Breaker.”

  Val smirked, getting it. “The same trick you used on the vampires.”

  “Wilder or not, he’s an artificer just like you, not an anima-blind vampire,” Ceinwyn got all Genghis Khan on my hopes.

  “I know that. Why I can’t do a half-assed job on faking it this time. Still gonna be a fake, but it needs to be the best rush job I’ve ever done. Needs to look real. Needs to feel real. I’m not delusional with hope, that ain’t ever been me. Us walking in there, doing the trade, and it goes off? Ain’t gonna happen. He’ll figure it out. So what I’m doing is buying minutes. Buying seconds even. Told me he’s got over two-hundred patients in his asylum now. Got to assume half of those are children or too far Anima Mad to be useful. He’ll have to leave some behind, to watch over the others. Isabel, Three Queens, him, plus few dozen Wilders, maybe a hundred we get unlucky. We go in with a tight group, I buy us a few minutes with my fake, then we fight our way out and we run. Two days to make the fake, I can do it, Ceinwyn. We can do it.”

  “You’re in prison,” Ceinwyn seized on a far away point to keep up with the dream dashing. “If he doesn’t know about the World-Breaker
or what you’ve been up to—”

  “Bribed my guard. Five million dollars,” I said. “Knowing the Curator, he really wants me to save him some money and kill Watson tonight when I get broke out. Do got to wait to start the breakout then. After that . . . clock starts ticking. Three days to the meet. Don’t know if I’ll kill Watson or not, do know some serious iron fisting to his balls is in order . . .”

  “You are not doing any of this, King Henry,” Ceinwyn went so authoritarian she started growing a tiny little mustache. “Bad enough I played along with you in the Geo Realm, but there you were safe. Safer than I ever could have imagined. Also, whether I want to admit it or not, you spent six months planning this theft, and I take that as a sign of growth on your part. This Curator plan isn’t. This is you running off into the wild at the merest provocation. This is regression. Three days of some stitched together plan that I can tell you aren’t even sure will work. Forget my concerns regarding the World-Breaker. I am not allowing you to throw your life away like this.”

  When I ever deserved that much conviction? That much care for my safety? Don’t know. Do know that there were a lot of people out there worth tons more than me. Ceinwyn was one, but so was Susan. “You’re my Auntie Badass, not my mom. Days of you treating me like a kid are supposed to be over, remember?”

  It was Ceinwyn who reached out and grabbed me this time, thin-fingered hand on my thick, bulky shoulder “Your mother sacrificed her last years with you so you wouldn’t end up like Susan,” she smashed some serious emotion into my gut. “I’m sorry, King Henry, but I can’t agree to this. Not a child, I know. But I wouldn’t allow anyone I know to do this. Not with the Curator, not after all he’s ruined and all he’s killed. If Pocket and Jesus have found his hideout then perhaps arranging an attack on it in the next three days would be feasible, but you and a few friends—”

  “More than a few, taking everyone I can pull in who would be interested in fighting, including you,” I rebutted heatedly right back at her. “We can do this, Ceinwyn. We can save my sister, get her away from him—”

  “If your sister is a Bonegrinder then she’ll be even further gone than your mother was when you were recruited, King Henry. There will be nothing to save. I know how false the promise of pictures can be. I know the moments of sanity they can fake to try to fool you. Trust me: there’s nothing in there but madness.”

  I shook my head vigorously in denial, knocking her hand away. “He said she was still mostly there and he’s taught her how to give anima to a vial. That means she’s not getting any more saturated with it. I don’t expect her to be my perfect sister who always did the right thing, but enough of her will be left for me to save one day.”

  “He’s lying and deep down you know it.”

  “No, Ceinwyn. He’s not. The truth hurts me more.”

  Silence as we both struggled to field our next offensive, our next attempt to make the other side see how correct we were. Still caught in that anonymous Guild room somewhere up above us, all those months ago. Took her to the Geo Realm, accepted me as a peer, and still. Maybe that was some of being an adult too, arguing without it all ending in tears.

  Was hard on Val.

  Sitting there.

  Torn.

  Being silent.

  Wanting to support both of us.

  Eventually, Ceinwyn gave in before my defiant ass. Her lips were no longer smiling. Were so unhappy they looked like they never had smiled. “Even if we save her from the Curator . . . Ultras aren’t allowed to be Anima Mad, King Henry. You know the law, you know what will happen.”

  Val finally said something, pure brilliance lighting the darkness, “If he’s to ever actually cure Anima Madness then he’ll need test subjects, won’t he? Susan would be the perfect choice for that role. All we would need for her is an exemption from the Lady. And . . . we do have leverage, remember?”

  “Perhaps,” Ceinwyn admitted, her ageless eyes looking just a little old for once. “Six months of planning for you . . . some of the best political backstabbing I’ve ever done from me, Pocket and Jesus risking their lives, and you just want to blow it all up again? On a chance? On a fake? Seconds of an edge, was it?”

  I grinned some canine for the first time in a couple days. “Lot less ordering and a lot more questions. That mean Auntie Badass coming around to my plan?”

  “Plan . . . more like a prayer,” Ceinwyn muttered, not sure who to. “Don’t take it as agreement, but explain it all from the beginning.”

  I could do that.

  “You and Val leave here in an hour, get to the airport and travel to Fresno. Long trip, so you need to get a head start, also won’t be a bad idea for you to be gone once Massey notices I’m not here in the morning. I wait until Watson comes to lead me out, so the Curator doesn’t get prematurely suspicious that something is up, then once I’m out I travel over to the Geo Realm with Watson and . . . take care of him, I guess.”

  “Maybe Poug will have a non-lethal way to deal with the guard,” Val tried to find a start to this that didn’t include cold-blooded murder.

  “Sure . . . Sean Watson, Black Elf Sex Slave. After that I go back for one more Vault run—stop rolling your eyes, Val. It’s not about being greedy,” I told her, “I’m looking for info on how a World-Breaker is created. Something, anything. Every second counts, remember?”

  “And you want to see what’s in Massey’s safe,” she corrected.

  “That too,” I admitted. “Anyway, hopefully with some help on making a World-Breaker, I take our first big gamble of this plan and travel from the Guild Vault to my shop in Fresno.”

  Ceinwyn’s face went alert, any trace of time washed away once again. “Through the Geo Realm the whole way? With your little surfing trick? You’ll never make it even if you go ten times the speed you did with me.”

  Another woman would’ve ordered me not to take the dangerous path, Valentine Ward just gave me another one of her looks. Not the Do the Right Thing look, but the Oh, You Are So Crazy and I Love You For It look. “He’s not talking about geo-surfing. He’s talking about traveling directly from point A to point B.”

  “So you can teleport?” Ceinwyn got annoyed. “Then why did I have to experience a Black Elf hitting on me while I wore a nightgown?”

  “Better to say I’m working on it,” I corrected. “Haven’t got the straight through part yet and landing is a bit rough. Call the place you visit the In-Between. It’s, uh . . . a bit dangerous.”

  “How dangerous?” Ceinwyn growled.

  “That’s what makes it the first big gamble.”

  “How dangerous?”

  “Two-hundred feet almost killed us,” Val informed on me.

  “Two-hundred feet! London to Fresno is five-thousand miles!”

  “To be fair, it was only his second time,” Val defended.

  The somewhat flimsy argument from her apprentice started Ceinwyn pacing again. “Not even near the Curator yet and it already sounds suicidal.”

  “Listen,” I tried to calm her down, “I have a hunch it’s not space, just knowledge of the two destinations. I know my shop, plus I’ve spent the last week traveling to the Vault and back. I can do this. Might even arrive before you two do. Which is good. That way I’ll have time to start in on the fake World-Breaker before everyone else turns up. Oh, about that, gonna need a working phone from one of you before you leave. Might as well be productive while I’m waiting on Watson to show and I’ve got some markers to call in. Rather go into this outnumbered five-to-one than ten-to-one, ya know?”

  “I still haven’t agreed yet,” Ceinwyn reminded me.

  ”Not much more to tell you. Make the fake. Do the trade. Get Susan. Fight our way out. Pull a deal with the Learning Council and the Guild still . . . hopefully ESLED kills the Curator in whatever raid they carry out. I just want my sister, Ceinwyn. Not being a hero. Not out for revenge. Much as I want it. Just want Susan.”

  It wasn’t Auntie Badass that tore into me, it was the girl that
had lost her father and grandparents as a child and her mother at a barely older age. “Will you trade one life for another, King Henry? T-Bone for Susan? Valentine for Susan? Me? You might be.”

  “No one’s being forced into this,” Val countered, which was quite a lot from Val since she idolized Ceinwyn more than I even did. “King Henry is merely telling us what he’s doing and asking us if we’re willing to come along. We all know the risks, we all know the costs. Yes, we might die. That’s always a possibility in the supernatural world. It was a possibility the first time we ran afoul of the Curator too. We lived then. Well, even if you don’t come, Ceinwyn, even if you try to order the both of us not to go . . . it’s time for me to help him save his sister. If I don’t, I’ll never be able to look Christmas in the eye ever again.”

  No argument to be made after that.

  Just a decision.

  Come on, Auntie Badass.

  Know you’re in there

  I know it sucks too.

  Why it took me so long to accept it.

  But it’s real and it’s what we have to do.

  Ceinwyn was silent for a long while as she thought it through.

  Got to jump.

  Again.

  You know it.

  Val restarted her nodding move Ceinwyn’s direction, but I waved her off. Next, her hand on my knee started pinching me and I clamped down so she stopped. Truth was . . . I wanted some Ceinwyn Dale intellectual, see-all-the-outcomes weighing and judging for this. Not sure this was the day, but one of these days I’d go too far and people like Ceinwyn and Val would be the only ones with a chance at talking me out of it.

  So I needed her to—

  “We’ll go forward for now,” Ceinwyn eventually decided.

  Fuck yes!

  The tension inside of me evaporated. For about three seconds . . . then I remembered that last stitch I still hadn’t yanked out. “Valentine and I will rush to the airport,” Ceinwyn continued, “Escape from your cell by all means. We can handle that, I suppose, say you were forced into it if we have to. Travel to Fresno with your little stick and if you survive, craft the replica. Make your calls. Build your team. Think carefully on who you include. Quality and loyalty must be weighed against each other. Do all of this, very well. But I have a term. If I arrive in Fresno and I don’t believe the fake is realistic enough, or I don’t believe you’ve mustered enough of a force for us to take Susan and get out alive, I’m calling it off, King Henry, and I need you to trust my judgment.”