“Welf didn’t hit on you, did he?”
“Not yet, but he was working up to it in the next year or so,” she told me, which made Welf blush crimson.
He tried to recover with, “I’ve been trying to ascertain her knowledge of our world.”
“We had a nice chat about all the different ghosts around here at the moment too,” Susan added politely. “Always hard on the ones that have just lost their lives. I’ve never been on a battlefield before . . . this is quite crowded . . . and loud too. Quite, quite loud.”
“I’ll bet,” I managed to get out. “Going to be a bit bumpy in the near future, but we’ll catch up, Suze. Have you stay with me at the school for awhile even.”
“A school just for mancers,” Susan sighed at the very thought, “I would’ve loved to have gone . . . it will be nice to see it anyway.”
“Better than where you were for sure,” I decided.
Susan didn’t disagree, but wasn’t quite as sanguine on the matter. “I know I was kept against my will, King Henry, and I know the Curator wasn’t a nice man and I surely didn’t like the newer arrivals, but it wasn’t horrible. I was fed and clothed, he taught me to give anima and made me understand what I was. I never bought into his calls for violence, but he’s also the only reason I’m talking to you now, the voices pushed away, instead of being overwhelmed every minute of the day. Before he found me . . . I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think . . . I couldn’t even hear the voices as voices and didn’t know what a ghost was. It was just noise, noise consuming me.” She glanced down at her feet, still covered in nurses slippers. “They still do on occasion . . . no matter how much I try to hear.”
Was fucking Welf of all people who reached out to her, put a comforting hand on her knee. “He was using you for his own ends. You were just anima to him. But sometimes we do find a savior in places we rather wouldn’t. Or an ally in people we rather wouldn’t.” He glanced back at me. “You’ll enjoy living at the school. I miss it myself. Surely the others talked about it?”
“Most didn’t attend or came from other places,” Susan told us. “This army isn’t all of them and even the people who answered his call today weren’t as dedicated as he thought. Some they never allowed me to see. Only him and his most trusted. I think those were the ones still resisting, or the ones further gone than I ever got. I speak a good bit of Chinese, believe it or not, a lot of the kids came from there . . . they’re still at the hospital, you are going to look for them, aren’t you?”
“On the list, Suze,” I said. “One of the bumps I mentioned.”
She beamed at me. “King Henry . . . look at you, you’re a man.”
“Yeah. Luckily height ain’t a requirement on that one, right?”
She laughed. “Seems like you have a lot of tall women in your life, if those that came to help you are any example.”
“Enough of them that one more added in can’t be too much trouble,” I forced out.
“He hated you,” she said. “What did you do to make him hate you so much?”
“I existed.”
“Usually enough in your case,” Welf couldn’t help himself.
Susan caught the tension. “The pair of you aren’t friends?”
“No,” Welf politely didn’t expound.
Me . . . I told the truth. “Punched him the first day of class. All downhill from there.”
“The other men you saw are his friends,” Welf added. “I just came for revenge . . . though I am very glad to have met you, Susan Price. You are by far the nicest Price I have ever met and I can safely say this is the most pleasant conversation I’ve ever had with a member of your family.”
Susan wrinkled her nose at him like all the manners might be too much even for her. “Thank you for explaining more to me about Necromancy, Heinrich von Welf. I wish . . .”
Again the pat on her leg. “So do I,” he told her. “As of now, I can do no more, but who knows what the future brings?”
She nodded, content by that, whatever they were talking about.
“Can I have a word with you outside, Foul Mouth?”
I glanced back over at Susan.
“It’s fine, Little Bro. I won’t really be alone, will I?”
I know she meant the Construct, but I couldn’t help but think about all those voices she’d mentioned. Susan herself didn’t help, calling after me, “Mom likes your girlfriend by the way. She wants to know when she’ll get some grandbabies from the two of you.”
Eureka wasn’t Fresno and even if twilight was getting ready for true night, surely it wasn’t that cold out. Not as cold as I suddenly felt. Didn’t answer her. Didn’t trust myself to speak. Just staggered away from the SUV, Welf walking quietly behind me.
Kept walking.
Didn’t stop until we were a good twenty yards away from it.
“How bad?”
Welf considered this, hands in his jacket pockets. Tall ass bastard. Didn’t have a mark on him. Not even any dirt. Even if you weren’t wounded like the three dumbasses in the ambulance, everyone had some bit of grunge on them, everyone but Heinrich Welf, who let his Construct do all his work. He had Excalibur at his side, in its scabbard. Made him seem more Welf if anything, more aristocratic, more what he was meant to be.
Everything I’m not.
“I’m not a doctor to know the differences in diagnoses—” he eventually started.
“Don’t think it takes a doctor to know hearing voices ain’t good,” I growled immediately, interrupting.
“Foul Mouth—” he tried.
“I knew it was gonna be bad, I just . . . fuck, Welf. I got to cure it. Can’t lose another one. Plus all the people Paine brought. You fought them, you saw! That many we’re just losing track of. What about all of ‘em Paine missed? Wait till those fuckers on the Learning Council realize their Anima Quota is cresting over. They think they’re gonna put Susan down, they’ve got something else coming! Ain’t fucking happening!”
“King Henry Price,” Welf tried again. Him using my full name made me blink stupidly. More stupidly than usual. “Do I have your attention?”
I managed to nod.
“Your sister is . . . astounding,” he said. “She’s . . . no Bonegrinder would ever merit her as a peer if she followed her natural talents, of course, the Art of Constructs is everything to us, even the most ungifted, but she’s a savant. She’s a Wilder and she’s . . . Paine might have harnessed it and used it to his own advantage when it came to anima vials, but she’s quite gifted, Price. What she’s doing shouldn’t even be possible. I could write a dozen papers on it. It’s incredible. She’s incredible.”
I grabbed the front of his suit jacket. “Don’t take kindly to talk about using my sister as a lab rat right now, Welf.”
He glared down at me. Heinrich Welf always had the high ground. “Hit me then, if that’s what you wish. Why shouldn’t you take out your frustration on me again? Seems that’s my role in your life. The one to take your abuse.”
“Role you chose for yourself with the way you treated me,” I rebutted, thinking long and hard about taking him up on his offer.
“And for all I’ve done to you, do you really think me so low as to treat your sister in such a way?”
“Says a man spent most the day wanting to kill his sister.”
That hurt him. “Of which I tried and failed.”
Nothing new there, I thought but didn’t say. Too cruel even for me. Even with Welf.
“And maybe I deserve to fail,” he admitted, shame in his long face. “Maybe you are right, Foul Mouth. Catherine Hayes isn’t a kind woman like your sister is, but . . . maybe killing all the Anima Mad isn’t the answer. Your sister . . . she is Anima Mad. Some of those voices are in her head. But not all of them. As I was saying before you felt the urge to lash out, she’s special. She’s . . . impossible. If I didn’t see her do it . . . if I didn’t see the necro-anima drift about her and into her ears, I would never believe it. Somehow your sister can connect
to necro-shades without an anchor. Ghosts . . . the layman’s term, and no, not a real person, you know that much, but still . . . she talks to necro-shades at will. Does that mean they travel the world? Does that mean the ones we conjure from bone anchors are only small pieces of some larger cloud of necro-anima lingering about us? How much the world lost when some fool Recruiter missed your sister, Price!”
“Maybe it won’t have to,” I said, even if I didn’t feel anywhere near up to the task I saw in my future. Same future with Vamps trying to kill me and the one with King Henry Price on the Learning Council . . . guess I killed you before the fun part got here, Paine.
Welf smiled. Which yes, we should put a monument on the spot to recognize the rare occasion, but don’t worry, it was a rueful kind of smile. “I still don’t believe you can manage it. Not even you. Not even a Maximus. Not even all of the Council, Mancy help us that you’re part of it now. Ignoring, of course, that even with this victory you might still be censured by the Guild or thrown back in the Pit.”
“Yeah, that’ll be taken care of in a couple hours,” I promised. “So don’t get your hopes up.”
Don’t think he believed me, but just you watch. Still, might not have believed in me, but Welf did give one thing I never expected from him. “It seems impossible, but I hope you do, Foul Mouth. I hope you cure it. For her sake.”
Well, I couldn’t just let us have a moment like that. Wouldn’t stand. “Welf . . . do you have the hots for my crazy sister?” I asked him straight up.
Just as I expected, I earned a blush redder than you ever expect from someone that pale. “You are such an asshole!” he told me before walking back over to the SUV.
“If you touch her then I get to go after Vicky,” I teased him.
“Biggest asshole I’ve ever met and I just met Obadiah Paine!” he yelled back at me.
“Or even your mom!”
[CLICK]
Didn’t need anyone to guide me to where Val was.
The crispy, blackened bodies were clues enough. They started human, then turned into nothing but statues of ash. When I saw the first one I realized what Mama Welf’s comment about Val’s artistic side had meant. Was almost pretty the way they were stuck in place like that. Way the ash broke where gravity tugged too hard or the wind whipped the flakes of it away. If you forgot they started as fleshy and as gooey and as full of shit as you did.
Now . . . nothing but carbon.
Fireballs of Doom for everyone.
These people did try to kill us, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t sniffle up like Vick did a moment ago. No matter what Susan says about them being confused ghosts now either. People tried to kill us. Me, my friends, my girlfriend. So Boomworm did what Boomworm does. Seen her do it before, outside her house in Palo Alto. Avenging angel alright.
Missed it too.
Shame, I love seeing her like that.
Scares the shit out of me just like it does everyone else, but damn, man.
Hell of a turn on knowing your girlfriend is a goddess of death and destruction.
Queen of Fire come to cleanse the wicked and right the wrongs they done to the innocent among us. Ultimate arbiter, swift and unyielding in her justice.
The real Val.
The Maximus of Fire.
The Purifier.
I’m glad it’s her.
Fire . . . fire’s a special kind of mantle to bear. Much as I can break with the Earth, I’m glad someone like Val held Fire. I trusted her to do the right thing. Also trusted her to hold it in check. Why I wasn’t scared when I walked through all them ash statues. Knew what a wonderful human being I’d find waiting at the end of them. And I ain’t a person often thinks of human beings as wonderful.
Also knew that as wonderful as she was, she didn’t feel it at the moment. Which just further proves she is one.
Battle had flowed back into the buildings on the side of the highway. Val took it to Paine’s army in their flight. Statue here. Statue there. Didn’t find one running away from her though. Every single statue was turned to meet her, back to where she had chased after.
Three Queens.
Isabel.
Ceinwyn had to have talked to her to know Val didn’t kill them.
Also had to have been the one to tell Val to stay here and calm down. Took a Maximus to know what it was like to channel that much power . . . saw that now. And being there’s only the four of us here, I don’t think it was Moira von Welf giving any kind advice.
Ceinwyn . . . maybe.
Where’s the Lady and her fortune cookie bullshit when you need her?
Didn’t bring no fortune cookie with me, just my trust and my life. Only person gets both from me.
Turned a corner back behind those buildings—not all of them still standing—and there she was. Sitting on the ground, back against a brick wall. Long legs out in front of her, blond hair bright even in the twilight. Street lamps on nearby, made the shadows thick and stretched out all about us, like the world was a fantasy with many suns. Fantasy as the Geo Realm got, still only had the one sun.
Val had her foot shaking side to side, just like she always did when she was lost in thought. Damn foot shaking and her damn teeth clicking, don’t see why the girl ever needs to bother with a vibrator. She wasn’t staring at one of the statues like some shell-shocked loon . . . figured that was a good sign.
There’s a cost to playing a goddess and this is it.
Regret.
Glad she controls Fire, cuz Earth don’t feel no regret about what he did today and I killed a shit ton of Black Elves while fighting Paine.
No regret.
Especially seeing her.
Try Number Only.
“Had a lot of fun without me, I see.”
She smirked across the alleyway. “Knew you were back when I heard Tyson yelling in frustration.”
“Guilty.”
“Like always,” she added, getting slightly nervous as she watched my progress.
I stopped about five feet from her, knowing what she was nervous about. “You ain’t gonna burn me, Boomworm. Got enough anima in me I’m more likely to transmute into steel than combust from anything you fling about.”
She still looked nervous. “There’s this horrible little thought in my head that whispers to me after something like this happens.”
“See if you can. I bet you can. Do it, do it?” I guessed.
No smirk now. “Of course you would understand. Though I don’t know if that’s a good thing considering the chaos you cause most of the time . . . if the respectable half starts listening to the notorious half, then where will our relationship be in a few weeks?”
I pretended to give this some deep thought, all the while inching towards her. Finally, I sat at her side and said, “Fucking in the Lady’s spare bedroom?”
The laugh seemed to drive the rest of her fear away. Fear of herself. Fear that she could hurt every person she came across. Fear that she could hurt everyone she cares about, and being Valentine Ward, she cares about a great many people. Better than drive away the fear, it made her relax. Her whole stature softened, melting against me, head leaning down to touch against mine.
“You smell like dirt,” she accused.
“More like a mountainside.”
“Too bad we missed each other’s shows,” she said.
“Both got the jobs done, both trusted the other to do their part . . . call that a step forward.”
“But we’re better together.”
“I can’t disagree.”
Her eyes sparkled. “We are not having sex next to all the people I killed.”
“Hey, I have some limits, thank you very much. That’s like Catherine Hayes Fucked Up, not King Henry Fucked Up.”
“I tried to get her . . . and Isabel too,” Val added conversationally.
“Have Susan back safe, that’s enough for me.”
She kept staring at the wall ahead of us, especially a black smudge across it.
�
�What’s up with that?” I asked.
“This is the moment where I realized if I made the fire hot enough then I didn’t have to hear them scream anymore.”
I blinked at that, noticing more smudges down the alleyway from us. “I thought I was hardcore.”
Val snuggled into me even deeper and I risked an arm around her shoulders. “All that anima makes me tired,” she muttered.
“You can’t sleep,” I told her. “I have to deal with Ceinwyn then I have something else I think you’d like to tag along for.”
“Do I have to be Boomworm anymore?” she whispered.
“Valentine Ward should do. Does most the time.”
Her arm reached out to wrap around me as well.
“Is it messed up that I’m a bit disappointed you didn’t write VALENTINE WARD LOVES KING HENRY PRICE on one of these walls?” I asked her.
She laughed until she could barely breathe at that one, but when she did get a breath in it was followed by a kiss. “I’m not the one who had to write it,” she reminded me.
“Still . . . not saying you needed to use one of the bigger guys for it, one of the small ones would’ve been fine.”
“Okay, you’ve official passed Catherine Hayes Fucked Up and entered your own realm. You’re all alone at the top there.”
“That mean we get to have sex right here?”
“No,” she said firmly. “Maybe tonight. If whatever you have planned doesn’t take too long. And if we find a nice hotel room willing to take us after we wrecked the interstate. If not, we’ll have to drive a few hours to reach the Asylum . . . we’ll probably have to bunk with Miranda until they can find us a spare house.”
“Or Ceinwyn.”
She covered her mouth at the thought we both had. “That would be worse than the Lady’s guestroom.”
“Probably be living at the school for a while, so we’ll have time to try all of them, but . . . I wasn’t thinking the Asylum or Eureka tonight.”
“Oh?”
“Was thinking London.”
“Oh,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I told her, “you can say it.”
She finally smirked again. “You don’t know when to quit.”
The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6) Page 84