by Dante King
“Well,” I said, finishing up my cake, “I have to say that all this is mighty good of you, but now let me ask you a question; why are you willing to help me? Just because you had a crush on my dad?”
Mallory shook her glorious head. “That is one consideration, certainly,” she said. “I was an avid follower of your father’s plan and his works—and of your mother’s too, though I fear she saw me as a challenger more often than she thought of me as an ally.”
“You could probably forgive that,” I said, “what with Avalonian women being the decisive tigers that they are.”
That elicited a grin from the Holy Mage. “Quite so,” she said.
“All right, if you’re giving me permission to take this second-in-command of yours out then I guess we should get on with it,” I said. “But.”
“But?”
“I want to make sure she’s actually deserving of death.” I glanced at Mortimer, who seemed to have drifted into something like a daydream. I slammed my hand on the table, and he suddenly came to with a start.
“Mort,” I said, “this Hecca, is she on your bounty list?”
Mortimer frowned. He tilted his head, and his eyes glazed over, as though he were mentally running through pages upon pages stored away in hundreds of files kept in dozens of rooms.
“Ah, yes, she is. A rather cheap bounty, I must admit. And. . . “ He frowned. “The issuer is none other than Priestess Mallory Entwistle.”
Mallory shrugged. “It was never fulfilled for the same reason that mine never was. The tower’s trials make it impossible for anyone to killing her as well as they do me.”
“Alright,” I said as I glanced over at this Hecca woman. “It’s time to get this grizzly thing done. Wait a second. . .” I stopped. “I’m killing Hecca because of jealousy? That doesn’t sound right.”
“Not jealousy,” Mortimer corrected me. “She has a rather long list of evil deeds. Many worthy of the death penalty. In fact, it’s rather surprising that her bounty is so low.”
“I wanted the job done quickly,” Mallory said. “And yes, Hecca has always been difficult. I hear she has an Infernal ancestor somewhere down the line. It would explain her proclivities.”
I sighed. “Okay, then. One cold blood kill, coming right up.” Even as I thought things through, I worried that I couldn’t do it. Vakash and Ratfink had been clearly evil, clearly deserving of death. Not to mention that they’d both tried to kill me and my friends.
Unfortunately, this Hecca didn’t meet either of those standards for warranting death by my hands.
“Wait,” Entwistle said, laying a hand on my arm. “There is something else. In return for my help, and for not having you and your friends flayed and boned for the amusement of my courtiers, I would like to come back to the Mazirian Academy with you.”
“What? Why?” I asked.
I had not seen this coming. Not at all. I wondered how Odette would react to this change of her plans. She might be glad that we wouldn’t have to kill an old buddy of hers, but would she be pleased that we had to take her back home?
“I have something, some information, that Reginald Chaosbane will be eager to hear,” Mallory said. “Something that might help his cause, if I divine rightly what he intends to do in the long-run.”
I pretended to consider this for a moment, although there really wasn’t too much to think about. Then, setting my fork down on my dented golden plate, I held out my hand.
“We have an accord,” I said.
Priestess Entwistle clasped my hand. Her grip was soft and strong. It was what it might have felt like to shake hands and seal a pact with a leopard or some equally dangerous creature.
“Now,” the angelic Holy Mage said to me, “allow me to show you why Hecca was my second-in-command. She will have been watching us chat with great interest. We shall see just how tightly wound her continual treachery has made her.”
The chief Priestess got suddenly to her feet, her ornate carved chair screeching backward. Talk stopped, and the music died. She pointed a finger at a red-headed angel with startling green eyes and a sly, intelligent mouth.
“Hecca!” she shouted in a commanding voice.
Hecca’s chair didn’t just screech as she kicked it backward, it fell over. In one swift and sure move, she grabbed Alura, who was sitting in a daze next to her. Hecca wrapped her arms around Alura’s neck and hauled the princess to her feet. Hecca held a gleaming silver knife to the Gemstone Princess’ eye; the only spot on her whole body where such a weapon might have been effective.
“Hecca, what are you doing?” Mallory said, her tone softening just a smidgen.
“Don’t toy with me, Priestess!” Hecca yelled. “I know what you and the Earthling have been whispering about.”
A look of perfectly believable confusion clouded Priestess Entwistle’s face. “You do?”
“Yes! And I tell you this, I’ll not have you trade my life away to save your own! You’ve done just as much as I! Worse things even!”
I could see what Mallory Entwistle had done here. She hadn’t wanted me to just mow down this woman during a feast. The Priestess had known that my resolve would falter at killing a woman in cold blood. Somehow, she’d allowed this Hecca to overhear our conversation, thereby forcing Hecca to do the only thing she could: take a hostage.
And, unfortunately for her, she’d done the one thing that ensured I would kill her. She’d put her hands on one of my girlfriends.
I quickly thumbed mentally through my spellbook and came up with a plan.
Alura was still under the enchantment that Entwistle had laid on her and was as placid as a doll in Hecca’s grip. She had a glazed look on her face, and was staring with adoring eyes at the chief Priestess.
“You will let me out of here,” Hecca said to Mallory, “or this Elemental woman, this princess, will die in your hall. What do you think the ramifications of a member of a royal house being killed as your guest will look like, hm?”
“Not good, certainly,” Entwistle admitted.
I got up and took a step away from the table. As I did so, I whispered to Priestess Entwistle.
“When I cast my spell, push me.”
Mallory nodded almost imperceptibly.
Hecca pressed the blade of the knife against Alura’s cheek.
“Stop moving, Earthling!” she ordered me.
I did as I was told.
Then, I swept my arm forward, my staff materializing in my right hand, and let loose with a Blazing Bolt.
“No!” Mallory cried and shoved me with one hand, sending me off balance, just as the fist-sized ball of crackling red energy left the tip of my staff. It flew past Hecca’s left shoulder, missing her.
“A wise choice, Priestess,” the traitorous angel said in a shaking voice. “Let me leave here and—”
I had gained a lot more skill and control since I had first learned the Blazing Bolt spell. As a result of that, I was now able to control the path of that sizzling ball of hybridized Fire and Storm magic with my mind, guiding it where I would.
I had intentionally fired the spell wide when Mallory had struck me, but then, as I stumbled, I had guided the spell back around in a sweeping arc and aimed it right at the back of Hecca’s head.
The Blazing Bolt had to hit, otherwise it might have struck Alura, but my aim was as true as I could have wished.
The angel’s pretty red head burst like a balloon. Brainmatter sprayed over the unfortunate feasters directly behind her, blood showering out in a semicircle.
Hecca swayed, teetered, then crashed over sideways, coming to rest on the table.
Without so much as waiting a beat, Priestess Entwistle raised her hands. “Friends and followers, the feast is now over! If you will excuse me, I wish to be away from this traitor.”
She strode away then, signing for me to follow. I did as I was bid, signaling for the others to do the same.
We left the hall, which had erupted into chatter as soon as Entwistle had left.
“Where are we going?” I asked the Priestess as she swept us along, through a series of white corridors.
“To my suite of offices,” she said. “I have personal portal stones in one of my rooms.”
“Justin!” Alura said, striding next to me and shaking her head as if to clear cobwebs from the inside of her skull. “What happened? Where are we going?”
“That’s what I would like to know,” Odette said sharply. “‘Ow is it that we find you aiding us now. And alive too!”
“I’ll explain it all when we get back to Nevermoor,” I answered for Mallory. “But first, let’s get the fuck back there, yeah?”
“It's been some time since I've stayed at Mazirian. How are the nuns at Pulchra Vanitati? I started their order, you know,” Mallory said, closing the doors behind us and locking them.
The Priestess’ office was large but sparsely furnished. It looked like she spent little time there.
“Wait one moment,” Madame Xel exclaimed. “Mallory is coming back to Nevermoor with us? Where will we house her?”
Odette and Madame Xel exchanged glances. It was obvious that neither of them were relishing the thought of keeping a fugitive in their attic. And while they might have once been friends, Mallory had a whole lot of making up to do before either the dragonkin or the succubus would accept her back into the fold.
Mallory led us into a smaller antechamber off her office. The portal stones were built into the walls.
I sighed and smiled. “Ladies, never fear, she can stay with me. My frat house seems to have become a halfway house for wanted perps, hasn’t it? Having three criminal escapees under one roof has a nice neat ring to it.”
I looked down at the diamond skull bracelet that encircled my wrist.
The third and final diamond skull had filled with an orange-red smoke.
“Third time’s the charm,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The journey back to Nevermoor was as easy as a hop, skip, and a jump. We tumbled through the void in the weirdly controlled way unique to portal stones and landed back in the stone circle outside the village. On its hill, not too far away, the Mazirian Academy sprawled like a courtesan on a green couch.
It was a little after lunch and the sky was overcast. Fat, sullen clouds sulked overhead, threatening rain. Seeing as our group had yet another wanted fugitive in its midst, the gloom suited us just fine.
“See no evil, hear no evil, Petram!” I said as we walked past the nodding portal porter’s hut.
“Eh?” Petram grunted, cracking one sleepy eye behind his gold-framed spectacles and gazing blearily around.
“I said, you never saw us,” I said.
“‘Course not, invisible stranger, sir,” Petram mumbled through his beard, his head drooping and his chin coming to rest back on his chest. “Secret’s safe with me.”
“You know the old Avalonian saying, do you not?” Priestess Entwistle asked me, conjuring a plain grayish-silver robe and wrapping herself in it. I thought this a very good idea, seeing as that shoestring lingerie outfit of hers was bound to attract eyes.
“What’s that?” I asked as we hurried out of the gate at the end of the white gravel path.
“It runs: The creature that can hold a secret might be considered wise, but it is not nearly half so wise as the creature that has no secrets to hold at all,” the Priestess said, making a hood materialize around her head to obscure her features.
We started moving quickly—not running or hurrying in a way that might be deemed suspicious—along the outskirts of the village.
“Yeah, that’s pretty insightful,” I said, keeping my eyes peeled and making sure that we weren’t being tailed or watched too closely by anyone. “But, I figure that if more than two people know about something then it isn’t a secret.”
The weather was working to our advantage. Thunder grumbled toward the western horizon, along the line of mountains that marched on the very edge of sight. The ominous, oppressive feeling that accompanied an approaching storm had driven many of the inhabitants of Nevermoor inside. People in the village usually looked forward to a good thunderstorm. They brought rain for the crops and a chance for those who usually toiled outside to knock back a few brewskis inside the village’s taverns and alehouses.
As we moved swiftly along, our heads down, I started to turn my mind toward the impending conversation with my father. I mean, there was a host of shit that I would have liked to talk to him about, of course, but I wasn’t sure whether we’d have the time to get too deep into our brief family history.
Who knows how long this spirit energy will allow us to talk for, how long it will be able to keep open the barrier that has sealed his soul inside the staff for so long.
I grinned to myself as we passed the thatched cottages with the pig pens outside; the very place where the fraternity boys and I had borrowed the pigs that we had used in our execution of the greatest prank of all time. Part of me reckoned we had raised the bar too high with our first effort—it was going to be hard to top that, but I was sure we’d come up with something.
As my mind dwelled on that ridiculous evening, my thoughts were inexorably pulled toward the War Mage Games and, from there, they focused on the fact that the Qualifiers for the Mage Games were less than twenty fours hours away.
The boys better have been training hard, I thought to myself as I led our little fellowship down the lane that bordered the graveyard in which the fledgling fraternity—Damien, Rick, Nigel, and myself—had fought Bradley Flamewalker and a bunch of animated skeletons.
“Shit, that feels like a lifetime ago now,” I said to myself, gazing out at the overgrown burial ground.
It was insane, now that I came to think about it, how much I had gone through, seen, and done since that first night at my fraternity house. I’d changed a lot. I’d become a lot more accepting of things that I would have thought completely insane before. I’d grown more confident, more self-assured. I had, perhaps, become a little more ruthless when I had to be. Conversely though, with a greater magical prowess, I had also grown more willing to give people another chance. I had more faith in my ability to take on anyone, trusting to my skill and muck, to see me through.
It was a liberating feeling; knowing that, in a world of formidable motherfuckers, I was evolving into a formidable motherfucker in my own right.
And I intend on becoming a lot more capable and accomplished yet, I thought.
Mortimer, who had been acting as rearguard while we walked, cleared his throat in a meaningful way. We had reached the letterbox at the start of the path that led up to my house.
“What’s up, Mort?” I asked.
“I am going to leave you here and go up to the Academy,” the pale man said. He stroked contemplatively at one of his white-blonde mutton chops. “I feel like I should relay what has happened here to my cousin, Reggie.”
I blinked. I had never heard Reginald Chaosbane, swashbuckling Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy, and all-round party animal numero uno, referred to as Reggie before. If there was anyone who might have called him that nickname, I’d have thought it’d be his other cousin, Igor, rather than Mortimer. The name sounded simply absurd coming out of the polite and quite serious face of the Chaos Mage assassin and professional bounty hunter.
“I think that would be a smart move, Mortimer,” Odette said.
“Be careful when you head up there though,” Madame Xel added. “I’m not sure whether or not the Arcane Council still has representatives watching your cousin, but it will definitely raise some red flags if you’re seen visiting him. What you do might be legal, but I doubt the Council will take much comfort in someone as deadly dangerous as you paying a social call to a man whom they’re just waiting to catch.”
Mort lowered his head in acknowledgement. Then he raised his hood and loped away into the growing murk of the gathering storm.
We made our way up the steep path that led to my parents’ old hous
e, which Chaosbane had transported from wherever it used to stand to Nevermoor. We wended our way down the overgrown garden path and emerged out of the tangled hedges and bushes to find Ar-undead Lightson, the zombie, waiting for us. He was straining at the chain fixed to the collar around his neck. He stared intently with his wide, vacant eyes at us we approached.
People will tell you that you can’t reason with or train a zombie. They are the same people who tell you that you can’t have a nip of something strong and amber-colored in your morning coffee if you need an extra pick-me-up beyond caffeine. Basically, they are people who do not know what the hell they’re talking about.
We hadn’t formally ‘trained’ Ar-undead. The other fraternity boys and I had just carried on treating him the way we would have had he been alive. We were civil to him, we gave him shit, and it seemed to work. What was more, he seemed to sense the intentions of those who came to call on us. He would let our friends in without so much as a growl. Anyone who wished us ill—Ike, Dhor, and Qildro from Frat Douche, for instance—would be greeted by a slavering, hissing, groaning zombie.
We kept a bag of jerky and a six pack of these terrible beetroot beers that Rick had picked up in a fit of mad consumerism on the porch. I threw Ar-undead a few pieces of dried meat and rolled him one of the beers. We didn’t need to feed him—the guy was dead—but you do these things out of habit I found, and he seemed to like them.
Ar-undead sucked the dried meat down like spaghetti, picked up the bottle of vile beetroot beer, and bit into the glass vessel. The bright pink carbonated beverage exploded over his face, and he crunched happily on the glass.
I ushered Madame Xel, Odette, Alura, and Priestess Entwistle into the entrance hall and closed the door behind us.
As soon as she was inside, Priestess Entwistle vanished her arcane cloak and was revealed in all her gleaming, tall, porcelain-skinned glory. She shook her hair out, which set her large and very perky breasts to jiggling. Then she smiled.