Courts and Cabals 2
Page 19
“Yes, Lark, please tell us your riveting tale.”
Both of us jumped when Venus spoke from her perch on a piece of shattered gym equipment. Neither of us had heard the elevator ding or any other announcement of arrival. She was just suddenly . . . there. She gave me a wink before turning her attention back to Lark. She didn’t look anything like the woman last night who’d worn mom jeans and fed me my favorite meal.
“It is probably best that we start training,” Lark looked a little uncomfortable to be in his true form around Venus.
“No,” she hopped down from the equipment as nimble as a cat, “I believe Cameron has the right to know who he’s learning from.”
Lark gave her a hard glare, but then relented. “Fine,” he sighed and flourished his hands dramatically. “It was all blown out of proportion. Some human heard a loud-mouthed Fae talking, they were both drunk, and the facts of the case got muddled in the retelling that is common in early recorded history,” he jabbered.
“Get on with it,” Venus casually picked up a hyperdense plate, that weighed five hundred pounds, and tossed it from hand to hand like it was a tennis ball.
“When we first met,” Lark looked annoyed that she was rushing him, “I told you I was the right hand of the Queen, sent to this realm as the first liaison, falsely accused of being corrupted, and then banished from the Faerie Realm,” he recounted, and I nodded. “I did leave out a little part. Once they made my brother the Satyr Prince, I might have led a little rebellion to try and retake my rightful place,” he shrugged like it was no big deal.
“The rebellion failed, and I was cast back out, but the tales of the fighting were all the rage for an eon afterward. Like I said, some drunk Fae was talking about it in a bar in this realm’s Middle East a couple thousand years ago. A guy hears it, scribbles stuff down, and the next thing you know, I’m a footnote in the most famous book ever written. Something that gets horribly overblown over the next few thousand years.”
“Most popular book ever written? What . . .?” realization hit me harder than Peter’s fist. I felt like I stopped breathing for a second. “Failed rebellion . . . cast out . . .” it all made sense, and it utterly terrified me. These things around me were so much greater than I’d thought forty-eight hours ago. They crossed so many cultures, and in Lark’s case, was the literal embodiment of evil.
“I don’t know where they came up with the name Lucifer. The Fae at the bar probably called me Lark and it was lost in translation, or he was too plastered, or both; but,” Lark added when he saw my face pale, “I never rebelled against the Queen. That part is important. Thinking that my brother is God was a stretch, but I guess it fits the narrative too well for the writer to pass it up. If anything, Puck is the monotheist’s Michael to Maeve’s God; but it’s all just a bunch of bullshit anyway,” he concluded, and shot a glare at Venus.
“What?” she asked innocently.
“Now the boy is never going to like me. You always do this,” he stamped his hoof hard enough to cause more damage. “You tell every new person that I’m literally the devil, and then no one wants to come to my poker night.”
“No one wants to come to your poker night because you cheat,” Venus fired back, but she was grinning from ear to ear.
“Cheating, you want to talk about cheating . . .” the two devolved into an argument about something that happened six hundred years ago, and I just sat there stunned.
“What the hell have I gotten myself into?”
***
“So, you’re the devil, Lucifer, the morning star,” I stated. I don’t know how much time passed, but Venus was gone, and Lark just stood there next to me.
“I’m Lark Cottonclove, and I should have been the Satyr Prince. I can’t help the stories humans told thousands of years ago, or continue to tell themselves today. Honestly, I didn’t even think it was a thing at the time, but then, the Church sprang up around the carpenter boy, and grew like a weed until it had barbs in everything,” he shook his head over a missed opportunity.
“You were the snake in the garden that tempted Adam?” I tried to remember my Sunday school lessons.
“No,” the Fae’s face brightened. “If anything, I was Adam in that scenario,” he stated. “I was new to the “garden” aka the mortal realm, and sent by “God” aka Queen Maeve. The serpent is definitely Venus, who also might be Eve, but none of this stuff with a tree and forbidden fruit ever actually happened. It’s all a cautionary tale,” he shook his head. “The only think I chowed down on was Venus’s pussy; so, if that’s the fruit from the tree of knowledge people are talking about; then it was quite educational.”
“Okay, enough,” my head felt like it was about to explode. “Is anything even real,” I muttered to myself.
“Some of it,” Lark replied, “but probably not as much as you want,” he shrugged. “History is written by the victors, then us Fae went through it with a fine-tooth comb, and worked it to our advantage. We’ve been fucking with your civilization for millennia; influencing your culture, weakening your magic, and a lot of other things for our own amusement,” he shrugged like it was no big deal.
“I’m exhibit A,” he looked a little sad about that. “I fell in love with this place, and what do the Fae do . . . they turn me into the devil, and tell all humans I’m the Father of Lies. It’s genius; getting an entire population of billions to turn against someone who’s trying to help them, but that’s what Maeve does.”
A small smile turned up the Fae’s lips, and I noticed he did that whenever he talked about this Maeve. Whoever she was, she still held the respect of someone she’d royally fucked in the ass. That was some awesome power.
“I’m going to tell you something you probably already know deep down in your gut, but this will drive it home. Humans are kind of the running joke of the realms, no offense.”
I took a ton of offense to what he said, but that didn’t stop him.
“You’re a really young species, and your grasp on magic is rudimentary for ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent of your mages. Ever since you climbed down from the trees, and started walking on two legs, one superior race or another has been yanking your chain. You’re weak, easily manipulated, and very short lived. Everyone looks down on you.”
“Well, fuck you too,” I shot back, but all that got out of him was a laugh. “We’ve done some pretty big things,” I countered.
“Oh sure, all your science,” he made it sound like he was talking about ghosts pre-Revelation. “Here’s a truth bomb for you . . . no one is that impressed.”
I felt my cheeks heat with anger. “You want to talk about bombs. We’ve got fucking A-bombs, probably enough to destroy this realm, and all the others too,” I was swinging for the fences.
“That’s true,” Lark conceded the point, “but what use is the biggest stick if you can’t use it. You can’t drop an A-bomb on Vegas to take out the cabal. All you’ve done is use your greatest weapon against yourselves. That’s not a good track record.”
My fists clenched hard enough I felt like my bones were going to burst through my flesh so I looked like Skeletor.
“Easy, Cam,” Lark made calming gestures. “I don’t know why you’ve got your panties in a bunch. You’re hardly human anymore. Maybe a quarter at this point, and that’s a good thing.”
“Wait,” my anger evaporated. “You know what I am?”
“Yes,” his voice wasn’t carefree anymore.
“What am I?” I pleaded, and grabbed the Fae’s four fingered hand.
“I can’t tell you,” he sighed, but I could sense he wanted to. “I’m bound by court, covenant, blood oath, royal oath, and several other oaths that would literally tear me to shreds if I broke them.”
He was being dead serious, and that just pissed me off more. “Does Venus? Her children? Lilith?” I fired away into the dark hoping to hit something.
“Ask them if you wish, but I can tell you one thing; your being here will lead to great, or terrible, t
hings. Only time will tell.”
“Well, that’s cryptic as fuck. Thanks for the fortune cookie bullshit,” I glared at him.
“Enough about us,” Lark waved aside the biblical conversation, and my origins. “I’m here to teach you about that bit of power you got burning away in your gut.”
It was hard to move on from such a fundamental question of my being. It was like I was an inch away from grabbing some ass, but couldn’t get there. It was fucking frustrating; still, I needed to know about my Fae gifts. Peter was right. If shit had gone down in a crowded place, I would have killed a whole lot of innocent people.
Ser Fredrick’s power had helped me fight Peter a hell of a lot better than I could have beforehand. If I was being honest, the ability to finally punch at a supernatural weight class had me salivating. I sat up like a dog ready to beg, and the Fae smiled knowingly.
“Let’s start with the basics,” he began. “What do you remember about the troll?”
“Um,” I searched my memory. “He was strong, but I heard not very fast. I don’t remember him ever having telekinesis or fire powers. He could change his appearance and do that stepping between worlds thing. Other than that, I’m not sure.”
Lark nodded as I spoke. “All Fae have glamour to some degree. Some might just be able to affect their bodies, while others can conjure a world around them. May I?” he reached forward like he wanted to place a hand on my head.
“Why the hell not,” I nodded.
I thought something was going to happen, like Amanda, the Anima mage’s mindfuck, but all I felt was warmth spread through me.
“Yes,” Lark nodded and removed his hand. “First off, don’t expect to be as strong as the troll knight.”
That was a bit of a disappointment, but even a weak troll was a hell of a lot better than the strongest human.
“The passage of power in the bleeding grounds is designed for Fae to Fae. Your otherness,” he kept it vague, never shedding any light on my actual lineage, “has a symbiotic quality to it. If I had to wager a guess, you were able to absorb eighty percent of the power. You should be fairly strong, and definitely faster than the troll; you can thank your human side for blunting that weakness. You have to be quick to lay a hand on Peter,” he gestured at the broken room, “so, we’ll mark that in the win column.”
“You should be able to work glamour, and maybe even step safely into the Lands Between. Another plus, you likely won’t have the same cold iron weakness as the rest of us; so, you should count yourself very lucky, Cam,” the Fae grinned. “Peter will make you into a proper warrior.”
I didn’t feel very lucky, and there was still a lot I didn’t know, but the knowledge was a start.
“The first thing we need to do is be able to access your power. Think of it like a separate conduit. Your precognitive ability is likely a part of your otherness lineage, and activates automatically. You’ll get better about using that gift with time, and the same is true of your Fae gifts.”
“In my fight with Peter, I couldn’t do both at the same time,” I relayed my revelation that stopped the fight.
“That makes sense. You’re effectively changing your body’s radio from FM to AM. The magical energies interact with you differently, but you probably won’t be able to ever use both consecutively. However, I might be talking out my ass. I’m an expert on Fae gifts, not your otherness.”
“Interesting,” he knew what I was, but not how I worked. Since Lark had been around for basically forever, that said a lot about the possibilities. Namely, it was something I definitely hadn’t encountered before.
I also relayed to him how I imagined the white ball of fire that seemed to spring forth when I needed it. It was a good place to start the training. It turned into visualizing, chanting, meditating; anything to bring on the Fae gift without a serious emotional trigger. Despite all that effort, we got nowhere in the next four hours.
Then . . . eureka. I checked my phone to see an email from Peter. It had my training schedule on it, and it seemed to encompass all my free time from now until the end of time. I saw his face in my mind’s eye, and there it was; the ball of power just waiting to be utilized.
“Well, it ain’t perfect,” Lark found my trigger funny. “We’ll fix it, but it’s what we’ve got to work with. Now, let me teach you how to do a glamour,” the grin on his face looked a little like Lucifer; not the biblical one, but the Tom Ellis one from the aptly named show. “Trust me, Cam, this shit will change your life.”
He was right.
Chapter 13
The only light in the hotel room was the laptop screen on a low-power setting. The blinds were drawn except for a slight sliver to peek out of. Vernon stood looking through the crack in the blinds, his eye to a telescopic lens, and his dick in his hand.
“Ah,” he gave a groan as he drained the main vein. It was tough to fit his tip into the Gatorade bottle, so the possibility of spillage was an issue. Still, he didn’t take his eyes off his area of responsibility.
Christmas had come and gone, and by his watch, New Years was less than an hour away. Revelers were all over the streets of Las Vegas, and there was a party in full swing over at Caesars. His vantage point at the Bellagio gave him a great view of the partiers out on the balconies. More than one couple was engaged in a heated necking, but his eyes didn’t linger. He was looking for targets; the targets that had eluded him for the last week.
Lilith Veritas, Xamira Veritas, Dani Underwood, and Cameron Dupree; their pictures were taped to a whiteboard in the center of the room. There should have been time and date stamps under the photos cataloguing the sightings, but they were all blank. No one had seen these four kids since their escape from St. Vincent’s Academy. An escape that had put his girlfriend in the hospital.
He had to pinch off his stream and get a new bottle, which didn’t improve his already shitty mood. He went to place the bottle on the table, bumped the edge, and sloshed some golden liquid all over the faux wood. The room was permeated with the stench of fast food, BO, and stale urine. He’d gotten used to it over his forty-eight-hour shift, but the fresh scent upset the balance. His shifter nose wrinkled, and he cursed as he got a new bottle into position and started to fill. There weren’t many worse things than having to cut off a much-needed piss midstream.
A forty-eight-hours surveillance shift was not standard operating procedure for the UN Response Division, but you worked with what you had. This mission had started out as a high priority; unregistered kids, novel supernatural, cop put in the hospital. When it started on the twenty-second, he had plenty of resources at his disposal. Even though he knew it was coming, he took some serious hits to his manpower over the holidays.
First, he had people with approved leave to spend time with their families. When it was tough to get people to join your organization in the first place, you needed to make them happy. He’d lost a quarter of his surveillance people to holiday leave. They’d be back after the New Year, but in his gut, Vernon knew if they didn’t catch Dupree soon, they wouldn’t nab him at all.
The second drain on his manpower came from the holidays themselves. Ever since the Revelation, and magic coming out into the open, the holidays were always filled with a rush of supernatural events. For a police agency that was already struggling with personnel issues, these were tough times when they had to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Vernon had lost another third of his people to incidents that broke out all over the US.
Vernon wasn’t sure why things always went to shit anytime there was a three-day weekend, he didn’t really practice that type of magic, but the UN’s theurgy gurus had briefed the agents that mass belief in something was enough to give it power. When that massed belief had a focal point, like a holiday, it made things possible you usually wouldn’t believe.
The best example to date was what people called the Turkey Rumble. In the mid-90’s, outside Dallas, a legit fifty-foot turkey manifested and battled a giant spaghetti monster. Vernon wouldn’t have
believed it, but he was from the Lone Star State, and that shit had been all over the news for weeks. No one was hurt, but to this day, people showed up in the hopes of seeing round two. It had become part of the Thanksgiving holiday for many in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
This year didn’t see turkey versus spaghetti monster the sequel, but a bunch of morons out in California tried to summon Santa Claus. Maybe they wanted a white Christmas, or more toys underneath the tree, but whatever the motivation, they were all dead now.
The critics were still out on jolly, old St. Nick. They didn’t know if he was a manifestation of the belief in Christmas, a Fae, or an elf. Elves, while one of the most popular fantasy races in stories, were basically an endangered species. They were immortal, and more talented in elemental magic than any human; they commanded control of all the elements, not just one or two.
Their problem was they were weak. They were tall and skinny, their bones less dense than a human child’s. A guy with a baseball bat could sneak up and kill an elf with ease. There had been more elves before the Revelation, and those that were left after the world’s governments got their shit together, withdrew into enclaves. Some people believed one such enclave was at the North Pole, but surveillance flights had turned up nothing, and ground expeditions had a habit of getting turned around, lost, and coming back empty handed.
In that regard, the college-student summoners did better than most government expeditions; but they didn’t get Santa. A battalion of angry Keebler-elf looking monsters came through the summoning circle and rampaged through the town. These weren’t cheery-eyed toy makers who lived on hot coco and sugar. These little things wore chainmail and carried a set of poisoned knives.
The Vegas operation was the closest to the incident, so Vernon lost all but a handful of people. They were still cleaning up that mess, and so far, only a few dozen were confirmed dead with over two hundred injured; mostly fellow college students, faculty, and staff who were on campus for the holidays. People had started to trickle back into Vegas as things got under control, but Vernon only had about six people, in three different hotels, watching the entrances and exits to Caesars. They had LVPD SWAT on standby if they made visual confirmation and got a search warrant, but so far, they had diddly squat.