by Morgan Wylie
Rylen didn’t like people in his territory, especially ones he didn’t like. If the man was looking to find something to use against Rylen, then he’d give him something to see. With a slightly raised smirk, Rylen opened the mental door to a part of his past that most were privy not to see, but he thought it a special occasion to show this man his bit of hell. Rylen’s eyes opened wide changing color to the darkness of his past, letting the man fall into their obsidian depths. The man’s breath hitched, his own eyes widened. His guards stepped forward, but the man put his hand out behind him to stop their advance. He wanted to see what Rylen would show him…
Chained to an infinite wall—as wide as it was tall as far as the eye could see in either direction—of smooth obsidian stone by both his hands and his ankles, the man struggled to free himself. He knew it was a lost cause, but it didn’t stop him from trying. He was clad in nothing but tattered black pants that didn’t even reach his bare feet. His chest was strong and sculpted, glistening with the strain of his desperation. Rylen stopped struggling and tried to catch his breath before the next round of torture began. A high pitched screech rang out into the air from nowhere and yet everywhere. The deafening frequency drove his beast to the forefront. He tried to cover his ears. His hands were chained in such a way, they would never reach. Scrunching each shoulder to his ear, his blocking attempts were futile. Rylen’s eyes glowed an eerie bright greenish-yellow, and short, sharp claws extended out of his fingertips. He looked like a resident of this dimension, but he was far from it, although he deserved to be there. Rylen was awaiting his trial for all his misdeeds done while he was alive on Earth.
As if a switch had been flipped and gasoline poured all around him, flames suddenly erupted from an unseen source devouring the invisible fuel. Flames licking up his legs united with the ones about to engulf his upper body. No amount of strength would stop the fire. His mouth opened in a silent roar, but the visible contortions that dominated Rylen’s face was sign enough of the excruciating pain he experienced. The fires of Hell consumed him. And then the cycle repeated itself over and over again on loop.
Rylen closed his eyes, releasing the man from the glimpse he had given him. That was enough. The rest of the story would have to wait for another time. The man’s face held a chalky pallor. He staggered briefly, but caught and righted himself with his cane. Taking a deep breath, the man almost immediately transitioned back into the cold-hearted leader he was when he stepped out of the helicopter, shaking off remaining signs of distress. Rylen watched with curiosity.
“Sir, what did you see?” Eli asked quietly, intrigued by what had shaken his leader.
His leader ignored him.
“I believe introductions were skipped over,” the man in the crisp suit declared as he stuck out his hand. Rylen—a statue where he stood, his arms remaining at his side—left the leader with his hand suspended in air for an awkward moment. The man retracted his hand as if it hadn’t happened and nodded. “You are obviously Rylen, leader of the Northwest faction of the Web, are you not?”
“As you said, it is obvious,” Rylen replied dryly.
“Well, good, I’m glad you are or else you wouldn’t have appreciated my present. I hope you liked the family reunion I had planned for you.” The man smirked then bowed with a flourish. “I am Arturo Krestle, leader of the Fairfax Human Rights Alliance, as I’m sure you figured out.”
“I have.” Rylen held himself still, watching and waiting, taking in every perfectly pressed crease in the man’s clothes, every barest twitch in the corner of his eyes. Rylen could practically see the particles of dust that drew near, but were quickly repelled by the sterile inhospitable environment Arturo fostered.
Arturo remained stoic and unfettered by Rylen’s lack of apparent care for their situation. “It seems to me that perhaps you don’t know it is dangerous for you to be in my world… my territory—a term you might understand better,” he spoke condescendingly, revealing a slight curl in his lip.
“Thank you, I do understand that better,” Rylen began with civil manners, but then stalked slowly forward. “You see, I was under the impression that perhaps you didn’t understand territory,” another step forward pressing in closer to where the man had moved, “you and your people came into my territory and began to kidnap my people and those under my jurisdiction.” Rylen advanced another step, encroaching further into Arturo’s space. Eli’s hackles rose behind his leader, and he positioned himself at Arturo’s side. Unfazed, Rylen, continued on. “You stole from me. You destroyed and killed what belonged to me,” Rylen’s voice was pointed, but he remained mostly indifferent in his tone which seemed to infuriate the man before him looking for a weakness. “So as I see it, you have this little speech backwards.”
Arturo turned to where his daughter stood next to Rylen’s brother. Simmon’s eyes remained on Arturo, his leader, or boss, or captor, or whatever they were to each other. Rylen knew then he had lost his brother all over again just as quickly as he had found him. It didn’t mean he would stop trying to get his brother over to his side, but it might not be today. There was too much to focus on at the moment and unfortunately, that meant his brother was not the primary issue. He was alive, and that was huge. Although, watching Simmon interact with Arturo now, the look in his eyes suggested that Simmon wished he was long since dead.
“What’s your plan here, old man?” Rylen called out, hoping to stir up some trouble.
“I hardly think that title is fitting since you are perhaps the ‘old man’ here,” Arturo smoothly came back. He looked at Rylen with a cocked brow and an inquisitive look.
“Ah, touché,” Rylen offered. But when Rylen looked into Arturo’s eyes there was a spark of familiarity, a frequency within his mind that resonated with Rylen. He peered as far as he was able to look inside those bright blue eyes, the same eyes his daughter had. What he saw surprised him, though he did not allow himself to react. Endless pools of blue oceans swirled in those depths. They spoke of an agelessness, of a time long gone by, and a hint of madness.
“So here we have a situation,” Rylen began as he no longer felt the need to stand still. He paced slowly, each time drawing himself closer to where Alana stood. “Alana, remember how I was telling you that underneath all that suppressed exterior you possessed dormant magic just waiting to bust through the seams?” Rylen never looked to Alana. He was more interested in Arturo’s reaction, but out of the corner of his eye he could see her head bobbing up and down before she answered.
“Yes, I remember.”
Arturo’s eyes flashed toward his daughter and she recoiled, unaccustomed to seeing that anger directed at her. He recovered, but not quickly enough. “What are you talking about?” he turned his question to Rylen. “Alana doesn’t have magic any more than I do,” Arturo spat.
Rylen cocked an eyebrow back at Arturo, but continued talking to Alana specifically. “Remember how I told you it was usually hereditary unless, you know, you get bit by a vampire or something?”
“Yes, but you said it could go as far back as, well, I don’t know just far back,” Alana huffed out, clearly out of sorts with the entire situation.
“True, I did say that.” Rylen looked at Alana for the briefest of seconds not willing to take his eyes off Arturo more than he had to. “Here’s the kicker…” She looked back him with confusion written all over her face. “So does dear old ‘dad.’”
“Does what?” she asked, not sure where he was leading her.
“Goes far back… actually, I know exactly how far back he goes, because he was there when I was only a child. In fact, he was on the board at the church where they condemned me, a ten year old, to be burned at the stake because I saved a little girl by using my magic.”
Gasps came from Alana and Eli—even Simmon, which surprised Rylen. Then it was silent, the eerie, unsettling kind right before something alters the course they had presently been on. The only one not to be thrown off by the declaration was Arturo himself. He smirked at Ryl
en and even let out a deep belly laugh, but not one that brought contagious laughter; the kind that sent chills running up spines, leaving skin with gooseflesh. He twirled his cane and even took a couple steps toward Rylen, proving that he wasn’t shaken by Rylen’s big reveal.
“Dad? What is he talking about?” Alana asked with a small, child-like voice, needing reassurances that her life as she knew it wasn’t about to upend on her, that everything she had believed, everything that he had taught her wasn’t lies.
“Don’t even pretend not to know, Alana. You’re a smart girl, I think you figured it out a long time ago whether you truly knew what you had uncovered or not. Our brains only allow us to see what fits into our perfect little understanding of what the world is,” Arturo said with vehemence. “They don’t understand magic and all that is around them in their everyday life.” He pointed out with his cane toward Seattle and the rest of the world from the top of the roof they were on.
All the color drained from Alana’s face. After a second of trying to understand what her father was saying, she opened her mouth. “You have magic?”
“Of course I do,” her father said as if it was the dumbest question on earth.
“You have magic and you didn’t tell me?” Alana’s voice was growing louder. “Me? Your daughter? Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you?” Arturo sounded incredulous. “Why would I tell you? If you knew, you would have just run off to find others like you or to learn how to use it. It was hard enough to keep you shackled up at the compound as it was. You didn’t need that kind of knowledge. Plus your mother couldn’t handle it, so you won’t either.”
Alana’s jaw dropped. She looked over to Rylen who was watching the exchange closely, his arms folded across the top of his chest. He was intimidating and enticing as hell, and for the short time she had known him, she knew he cared probably more than her own father did. Her eyes sparkled with the onset of tears. Her father never talked about her mother. It was a subject they weren’t allowed to bring up. And now he just threw it in her face with disgust.
“My mother had magic too?” she asked around the lump forming in her throat, threatening her airway.
“No,” he spat, “she wanted mine so she could know how to train you when you came of age. It was her greed that killed her. I attempted to give her some, but she was too weak to accept it.” Arturo’s eyes were wild and on the edge of insanity. “Magic killed her.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“No,” Alana gasped. “He killed her.” While her words began to rattle with shock, she turned to her captor, Simmon, “My father killed my mother with magic.”
Alana slunk down, her knees thudding against the hard roof floor. The news was shocking, and her body wasn’t able to process all of it so quickly. Rylen moved to stand next to her while still keeping her father in his line of sight, but was cut off by Eli brandishing a freshly polished pistol. He wasn’t pointing at Rylen, but he may as well have been from the glare he was shooting out of his eyes.
“You do not get near her. You are an unnatural creature of darkness. You are an abomination,” Eli spat.
“And you really need a breath mint, Eli,” Rylen said with a grave seriousness. “Look, Eli, I know I’m evil incarnate or whatever you think about me, but she is not all right.” Rylen pointed to Alana down on the ground.
“Of course, she’s all right. And if anyone is going to check on her, it will be me, her betrothed!” Eli shouted.
“Leave it, Eli,” Arturo said with the tone of a topic long exhausted.
“You just found out your boss has been deceiving you, that he has had magic all along… and I’m still the ‘bad guy?’” Rylen jumped back in.
“No matter his truth. The cause we fight for is still the same,” Eli replied lacking the same confidence he had started out with, as if he might be asking himself if what he said was true but sounding like a programmed robot just the same.
“Enough, Eli,” Arturo needed to gain control of the situation once more. “He’s been seducing and using Alana for whatever unjust means he deemed necessary. Just kill him.” Plain and simple. Take a life.
Alana gasped with outrage at her father. “That’s not true!”
Eli looked over at his leader with a slight frown on his face, but then a maniacal smile grew in its place. He turned the gun and pointed it toward Rylen.
“NO!” Alana shouted as she surged to her feet and lunged at Eli’s back, only succeeding in being an irritation to the tall, muscular man. It was enough to cause a stir of chaos that allowed Rylen to kick the gun out of Eli’s hands.
“I said, enough!” Arturo demanded. And then he mumbled under his breath, “Why are young people so high-strung?” Like a judge strikes the gavel, he struck his cane on the roof under his feet as if to prove a point.
Rylen simply looked at him with curious wonder. “What is your magic, Arturo? I don’t remember you giving even the slightest inclination that you had any long ago.”
Arturo sneered at him. “In that time, do you think I would do anything to get myself discovered? You were the one who fouled up, boy, and let them see you had magic. You let me see by saving my daughter.” Arturo gave him a look filled with a mad insightfulness.
Little Ali Krestle. She had the cutest mop of curly blonde hair and the bluest of eyes that could pierce your soul. She was Rylen’s first love. Even back then; him at the ripe age of ten, and she at seven or eight. Rylen shot a look over at Alana and tried to reconcile her with the little girl he saved so long ago, but that was impossible. Plus wouldn’t she remember being alive for centuries? He glared at Arturo, not understanding the madness the man was engaged in. He would come back to that statement.
“You turned me in to the council.” It wasn’t a question. The truth of his own words had suddenly dawned on Rylen.
“It would have come out eventually. One heroic deed begets another, yada yada,” he waved his hand in the air absently. “I’m sure you would have kept trying to secretly help people… until somebody got hurt,” Arturo said with a sneer.
“What do you want, Arturo?” Rylen asked.
“Oh many things, so many things,” he tittered and folded his hands on the top of his cane as he looked off to the night sky. At that moment, he seemed ancient and lost to many ages gone by, exhausted of the life he lived.
“What do you want, Arturo?” Rylen’s voice rose.
“You see this little box I have with me?” Arturo held up the yellow box he had stepped off the helicopter carrying. “Within this box, I have the power to take away your power.” He lifted it in the air as if he could see through its solid exterior.
Rylen’s heart beat accelerated. No, he’s bluffing. He’s got to be lying. I’ve never heard of such a device. But as he stared at that box, a dark energy emanated from it. “You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?” Arturo adjusted his grip on the box, and when he did Rylen saw a shape on it that he knew all too well: a black spider—a black widow to be exact with a red hour glass striking out from the yellow color surrounding it.
He was getting help from an unlikely source which now made perfect sense. Rylen had been feeling like he was missing something for days. Something was strangely familiar about the magically charged poison that he endured and other little things began to add up in his mind. The true leader of the Fairfax group was getting inside help. But from who? Did he have a betrayer in his Lair? Or was it the head woman herself—the Black Widow? His bet was on the latter, but what did she have to gain? She was the one pressing him to take out the alliance. Speaking of which, his deadline was about to expire.
Rylen’s palms started to sweat. His mind colorful with new thoughts and possibilities for what was happening within the Web, but he needed to focus on the moment or he wouldn’t have the chance to straighten it all out. Rylen was done playing. He needed to get Alana and get out of there, but before he knew what he was doing, he was standing right in front of Arturo.
“Ho
w’s it going to work?” Rylen asked doubtfully suspicious.
Arturo held it out to him freely on his open palm. “Examine it. See what you feel from it. It won’t do anything until I trigger it.”
Sensing no lie from the man, Rylen took the yellow box into his hand and reverently looked it over. His fingers traced the raised emblem of the woman he worked for. Strong power was definitely in the box, he could feel it. Intent on destroying it, Rylen pushed his magic into the box. Heat suddenly radiated out of the box.
“Or you could just do that,” Arturo laughed a deep and disturbing bellow.
Rylen, realizing his mistake too late, dropped the box to the ground. He had activated the blasted box. Now shaking on the ground, the box jumped around as if it had life of its own. The lid flew open and out shot a beam of yellowish-black straight into the sky then ballooned down like fireworks on the Fourth of July until it encompassed the entire building.
“Father, what’s happening?” Alana cried out.
“Well, your friend here just ignited the magic of the box to strip him of his own magic, the very thing I’m sure he had planned to use to take us all out and rescue you with as well,” Arturo was giddy with Rylen’s stupid mistake. “I had planned to have to take out all the magic on the roof, I was prepared to make that sacrifice to end his reign,” he said as if it was a righteous feat that would be honored among men. “But since Rylen graciously just infused the box with his signature magic, giving it life, it has stripped only his.” Arturo’s guards joined in with his laughter. Simmon’s eyes ignited with a spark of indignation, but his face remained impassive. Alana’s eyes shifted swiftly back and forth between her father and Rylen.
Rylen was stunned. How could he have made such a mistake?! I have no magic? How is that possible? How am I going to save Alana? Once the shock started to wear off, anger surged to the surface to quickly take its place. Fire burned in his veins. Just to be sure he tested the strength of his inner magic. Rylen could still feel his magic, a humming thread of energy trapped in his veins with no ability to come to the surface. A roar echoed in his mind, letting Rylen know the beast was still there and would fight his way out. From the gasp coming from Eli, he could tell his eyes had changed color, shifting from his usual odd mix to the eyes of his beast: a bright feral greenish-yellow.