Quiver of Cobras (The Fractured Faery Book 2)

by Helen Harper

  Amellus, who still hadn’t moved a muscle, flashed me an ugly smile. ‘We’ll be seein’ you.’

  ‘That sounds like a threat,’ I told him.

  His smile broadened. Then he left too and I was all alone.

  I closed the door, double-checked no one was still hanging around and spying on me, then hastily dug out the shell phone. ‘Morgan,’ I hissed. ‘Are you there?’

  There was a crackle and then his reassuringly deep voice spoke. ‘I’m here. Are you alright?’

  I felt a heart-warming tingle that his first thought was for me and not for whether the oath breaker had worked. ‘I’m fine,’ I told him. I quickly explained all that had occurred since he’d gone. ‘I can’t tell whether the oath breaker worked, but Rubus is certainly not looking good. Maybe I should have tried to hit him or something, just to tell.’

  ‘No,’ he rumbled. ‘You’d have given yourself away. If he trusts you properly now, we still might able to use you. It won’t be for much longer, I promise you that.’

  ‘I know.’

  There was a pause. ‘I’m sorry that I did that to you, Madrona. With the fake proposal.’

  ‘It was what we’d planned. And it worked a treat.’

  ‘Yes, but…’ His voice trailed off.

  I immediately understood. ‘There will be time for that later. What’s the next step? Are we going to give Mendax the sphere?’

  ‘We’re supposed to meet him in the next hour. I think it’s for the best. I’ll send a different team to the warehouse to confront Rubus. It’s good news that he’s backtracking to an old hideout because at least we’ll know where to find him. As soon as we have confirmation that the oath breaker has worked – and assuming Mendax doesn’t try anything stupid – I’ll pass over the sphere. I know you have doubts but we need that thing destroyed. We’ll demand to watch him do it so we know for sure that he’s done what he’s promised. He doesn’t seem to have let us down so far.’

  I nodded. It was exactly how I would play things. And Morgan was right: it did indeed appear that Mendax was more trustworthy than we’d given him credit for. Whether Rubus was out of action or not, the sphere was too dangerous to leave lying around. ‘I’ll come and meet you at the library.’

  ‘No.’ Morgan’s words were growing indistinct. ‘Stay where you are. We might still need you there in case someone returns. It’ll give you a chance to look through everything properly. You might find details about Rubus’s Plan B, whatever the hell it is.’

  I grinned. More snooping. Excellent. ‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘Call me once it’s done.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘The second it’s done, Morgan.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘I mean it,’ I warned. ‘If you don’t, I’ll come after you and hurl insults at you for the rest of your natural life.’

  ‘That might not be so bad,’ he replied softly. I drew in a breath. ‘Take care, Maddy.’

  ‘You too,’ I whispered.

  You too.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was strange walking through the deserted corridors. Of course, there was only one place that I wanted to rummage through. I didn’t pause or allow the pile of forlorn, uneaten cupcakes sitting on a table in the television room sway me from my purpose. That was the sort of focused, unerring super spy I was. Instead, I made a beeline for Rubus’s bedroom. Amellus, the anti-grammar bouncer, wouldn’t be guarding its entrance now.

  I found it curious that the door was locked, as if Rubus had expected to leave it unguarded. I rattled the doorknob and patted my hair in case someone had slipped in a hair pin when I wasn’t looking that I could convert to a handy lock pick. Then I shrugged. I was blowing my cover by blowing open the door but, given what was about to happen less than a mile away, I reckoned I could justify it.

  Morgan had shown me once that magic could be used to break a lock delicately but I reckoned my method was more fun. I raised my right hand, pointed it at the door and, for only the third time in what was left of my memory, called on a stream of attack magic to blast open the lock.

  The first time I’d tried this, I’d flung out magic towards a sniper who’d been some distance away. The second time, in my tiny bedroom, I’d been quite controlled. Those facts probably should have occurred to me now.

  This time, with the door less than a metre away from my outstretched hand, I completely obliterated it in a mini-explosion of flying splinters and wood dust. I shrieked and ducked down, trying to cover my face and eyes. Clearly, I didn’t know my own strength. I was forced to pause for several moments and pick out the offending shards of sharp wood from my skin. I could feel beads of warm blood on my cheeks, nose and forehead. No doubt I now looked like I’d been attacked by a vicious swarm of bees. I grimaced. Great.

  Blinking away the sting of tears – a physical reaction, not an emotional one – I edged into Rubus’s room. The scent of his overpowering aftershave still lingered. I hadn’t paid much attention to the actual room when I’d entered it that one time before because Rubus himself had been present. Now that his looming figure was no longer confronting me, I could appreciate its sparse tidiness. The bed was neatly made with a white coverlet and plumped pillows. There was a small cabinet with some papers on top and a wardrobe with an open door and surprisingly few clothes inside. The only untidy part of the room was a corner occupied by a mountain of what I guessed was dirty laundry. A door to the left led into the ensuite bathroom. It was a larger room than mine but it was hardly the Ritz.

  For no other reason than to be perverse, I grabbed the corner of the pristine coverlet and wiped the last of the blood off my face. It smeared the white fabric in a particularly pleasing manner. It was Rubus’s fault; if he’d not locked the door then I wouldn’t have been forced to blow it open. It served him right for being so security conscious.

  With my mark on his lair well and truly established, I started to look around. I was hoping for a handy folder marked ‘Plan B’ but nothing jumped out at me. I flicked through the pile of papers on the bedside cabinet. Some were scrawled with nonsensical notes, some with maps and directions.

  Every single page had the same doodle – a little drawing of Chen’s magical sphere. I snorted; Rubus was a man obsessed. I crossed my fingers that someone would film the moment that he learned the truth – I wanted to see the expression on his face when he finally found out that we’d had his stupid sphere destroyed. I could feed off his disappointment for years; it would almost make dealing with that slimy wyrm Mendax worth it.

  Poor, poor Rubus, I thought fondly, although I also reckoned the loss of the sphere might be the making of him. With no route back to Mag Mell, he’d have to concentrate on life in this demesne instead. If I had the potential to be a semi-good faery and put my past behind me, so did he.

  Abandoning the papers, I swivelled and looked slowly round the room. Where next? Afraid to get too close to the pile of unwashed linen in case the lingering scent of Rubus’s aftershave rose up and attacked me, I headed into the ensuite bathroom. It was scrupulously clean. There wasn’t even a skid mark in the loo.

  I opened the mirrored cabinet hanging over the sink. If I’d been expecting several bottles of Viagra then I was disappointed: apart from a slim black case, the cabinet was empty.

  Stretching up, I grabbed hold of the case and flipped it open. One half contained a syringe and a small glass bottle; the other half held two small opaque plastic tubes.

  I thought of the track marks I’d spotted on Rubus’s arm and the occasionally drawn look to his features. I picked up the bottle, fascinated. Heroin, maybe? Or some kind of soluble pixie dust? It seemed incredibly bad practice to inject yourself with your own drugs when you were fully aware of the addiction issues. If Rubus were indeed a dust addict, he’d certainly kept it quiet.

  I twisted the bottle in my hands. There was no label on it other than a tiny R etched into the glass. So Carduus marked these drugs separately, then. Perhaps it was a special formula designed just
for Rubus. I was rather disappointed that he allowed himself to be so weak.

  Returning the bottle to its place, I turned my attention to the plastic tubes. I couldn’t work out what they were for. I picked up one, frowned and unscrewed the little lid, peering inside. It was empty apart from an odourless liquid. Even more befuddled, I glanced inside the second tube. There was something in there. I shook out the contents. Two small black discs fell out. Despite their colour, they appeared translucent. Frowning, I gingerly held them up to the light. What…?

  My jaw dropped in dismay as an epiphany hit me. Contact lenses – these were coloured contact lenses! I held one up to my eyeball. My vision darkened slightly when I looked through it but it didn’t take a genius to realise that these lenses had nothing to do with poor eyesight. They were for cosmetic purposes only.

  My fingers scrabbled for the glass bottle, the one with R etched into the side. I threw it down hard onto the tiled floor, smashing the glass and spilling the contents. Then I knelt down and, avoiding the shards, touched the liquid. It seared my skin almost immediately. Hissing in pain, I hastily turned on the tap and washed it off as best as I could.

  I was trying to bank down my growing horror but it was next to impossible. The burn of the liquid was familiar. The last time I’d felt a similar sensation was the night when I’d awoken on the golf course when I’d poisoned myself with rowan.

  I closed my eyes. I’d told Rubus that one of the side-effects of my poisoning had been a prolonged glamour. The only part of a Fey that couldn’t be affected by a glamour was their eyes – and Rubus had coloured contact lenses hidden in his bathroom cabinet. Black contact lenses. The only person I knew with black irises was Mendax.

  Abandoning the mess in the bathroom, I whirled back into the bedroom. I flung off the blood-smeared covers on Rubus’s bed and tipped over the mattress. There was nothing. With my heart rate increasing, I stalked over to the wardrobe and threw open the double doors. There was nothing inside apart from a few coat hangers and neatly ironed shirts. Then a thought occurred to me and I slowly turned to the huge pile of dirty laundry.

  I wasted no further time. I launched myself at it, hauling the clothes to the side. When I’d pulled off enough of them to see what lay underneath, my body sagged in defeat. The charred edges of a safe greeted me; it could only be Chen’s safe, the one Mendax had said was in his possession.

  The worst thing was that he hadn’t lied. The incontrovertible truth that was punching me in the face over and over again was that Rubus was Mendax. The way both their eyebrows twitched … the strange, high-pitched quality to Mendax’s voice … the mysterious illness which had affected Rubus…

  Fey could usually only maintain a glamour for about ten minutes. I’d dropped the gift of how to keep one up for a longer period into Rubus’s lap. Everything was starting to make sense. Even Rubus’s overpowering aftershave fitted; no doubt he’d slathered it on while he was in his own body to mask his pheromones and prevent me from connecting any familiar body scent with Mendax.

  I thought of the mysterious jars in the laboratory, the ones that Carduus had been so keen to keep me away from. Now I knew exactly what was inside them. The smell had been familiar because it lingered in the Metropolitan Bar after Morgan and his faery friends cured my own poisoning. It was nux – the only known antidote for rowan poisoning. Carduus had a large supply that was intended for Rubus alone because Rubus was repeatedly injecting himself with rowan to maintain a glamour. And that tracking spell that Carduus had supposedly created to locate the sphere didn’t existent; he’d made it all up so we’d be more inclined to pass the sphere over to Mendax for safe-keeping. I was such a freaking idiot.

  Every single thing that had happened until this point was because Rubus was playing us. He was truly a master manipulator. I thought I’d been so clever; I thought I’d steered Rubus exactly where I’d wanted him to be and that I was in charge. In reality, he was the puppet master all along. And unless I stopped Morgan from handing the sphere over to him in the next hour, Rubus would have manipulated his way to glory – and to global genocide.

  ***

  I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. There wasn’t a single faery left anywhere near the premises. I no longer had any illusions that they’d all gone to the old hideout by the docks; no doubt Rubus had commanded them to wait near the rendezvous point so they could witness his sickening triumph.

  As I sprinted out of the building, I fumbled in my pocket for the shell phone. If I could contact Morgan, I might be able to warn him in time.

  ‘Morgan!’ I yelled, narrowly avoiding entangling myself with a lethal-looking pram and an even more lethal-looking baby whose mouth was contorted in a petulant scream. I shook the shell. ‘Morgan!’

  I pelted off the pavement across the road, just as a heavy truck trundled up and slammed on its horn. It wasn’t going to brake in time. I didn’t want to be squished Madrona at the best of times and I certainly didn’t have time for it now. Without making a conscious decision, I flicked out a hand and slowed down the seconds so I could squeeze past in front of it. As soon as I stepped back onto the pavement, I flicked my hand again to disperse the magic. There was a roar of sound as time reasserted itself. I wasn’t supposed to do that; the magic used to slow down time wasn’t supposed to be good for this demesne. But as the alternative involved a certain apocalypse, I reckoned I’d be forgiven.

  Praying that it would be third time lucky, I yelled into the shell again. ‘Morgan! I need you to listen!’

  I heard only static. Either Morgan didn’t have his own shell with him or I’d hit a communication black spot.

  I ignored the stares from the other pedestrians. I didn’t care if they thought I was crazy – it was their sorry lives I was trying to save. They might never know that was I trying to be their saviour but you didn’t need to be recognised as a hero to be one.

  At that thought, something odd snapped in the back of my mind and a jolting shudder went through me. I shook it off; I didn’t have time for that, either. I had to get to Morgan and I had to get to him now.

  I drew on the time-altering magic again. The world around me blurred, the humans virtually freeze-framing like some strange tableau. I’d never maintained this magic for more than a few seconds and I knew there might be consequences for extending it to minutes rather than seconds, but I wasn’t sure I had a choice.

  I ran. Beads of sweat broke out across my skin, as much from the exertion of maintaining the time magic as from sprinting. My body trembled and I couldn’t tell whether that was because of adrenaline or fear. I cursed to myself. I was a damned faery; surely, the least I should be capable of doing was flying. I was like an idiot savant without the savant part.

  All around me the world moved in slow motion. I dashed past faces frozen in comical expressions – the lovesick eyes of two teenagers holding hands, the scowl of a traffic warden approached by the driver of an illegally parked car, the astonished look of delight on a baby’s face as it tried to reach for the dancing mobile strung over its pram. Even the birds in the sky flapped their wings with a painful lack of speed and I expected them to start falling out of the sky. But as far as they were concerned, nothing was different. I was the one with the remote control on fast forward; I was the one with the power; I was also the one on whom all their lives depended.

  I skidded over the bonnets of the cars at the traffic lights and put on a final spurt as I rounded the corner and the library came into view. They were all standing there – Morgan, Finn, Artemesia. Mendax – or rather Rubus – was there too.

  Morgan’s hand was outstretched and I knew exactly what he was handing over. I pelted forward, reaching the group just as my grip on time slipped and the seconds and minutes returned to normal.

  ‘Stop!’ I shrieked. I barrelled towards Morgan, snatching the small box out of his hand in the nick of time. The ugly scowl that crossed Mendax’s face was so similar to one I’d seen Rubus display that I knew I was a fool for not havi
ng realised the truth before.

  I threw myself up the library steps and twisted to face them all while hugging the box containing the magical sphere to my body.

  ‘The mad bitch has completely lost the plot now,’ Finn said. Despite his words, he seemed to have an inkling that the sphere had to be kept away from Mendax and manoeuvred himself between us.

  Morgan was also bemused. And wary. ‘What’s going on, Maddy?’ he asked softly.

  ‘He … can’t … have … it,’ I gasped.

  ‘We’ve been through this. It’s got to be destroyed, not hidden. It’s the only way to be sure.’

  I shook my head vehemently. ‘He’s. Not. A. Dragon. It’s a glamour. He’s been … fooling … us … all along.’ I panted. Every word was a struggle. My lungs felt as if they were about to give away and my heart was thumping so hard it was about to burst out of my chest.

  All three of them turned and looked at Mendax. ‘I can see why she’s called the Madhatter,’ he remarked. ‘She’s insane.’

  I clutched my chest. If anything, the pain was spreading. I heaved in short, shallow breaths and gulped for air. ‘Rubus,’ I whispered. ‘That’s Rubus.’

  The man in question let out a high-pitched laugh. ‘See? She’s nuts! I’m a dragon. I’m not a fucking faery! Do I look like Rubus to any of you?’

  ‘He can’t be Rubus, Maddy,’ Morgan said. ‘We’ve spent hours in his company. Rubus could never maintain a glamour for this long. None of us can.’

  I bent double, using my body to shield the sphere as well as trying to regain my lost breath. ‘I did.’

  ‘You were poisoned.’

  ‘So’s he!’

  ‘Pah! Why would I poison myself?’ Rubus shuffled to the right as if to overtake Finn and get closer to me. Fortunately the Redcap was canny and used his larger frame to keep him back.

  ‘Because I told you,’ I said, straightening up. The pain in my chest was easing slightly. At least now I could talk without sounding like a faked sex tape. ‘I told you what happened to me. Like a fucking fool, I told you that rowan poisoning enabled me to stay in a glamour for hours. You took that information and used it. Give it up, Rubus. You’re not an old dragon any more than I’m a glorious heroine. You’ve been several steps in front of us the entire time. Well, now you’re behind. You’re not getting your greasy hands on this sphere. I’ll die before that happens.’