“He will not save her,” the sisters said. “He will find himself at odds with the girl. He will fight her tooth and nail. It is the future, the only one that can be.” The sisters glared at me and smiled before turning their attention back to Merry. “And he will do it whether you are there or not.”
“Merry,” I said, as a thought entered my mind. I still had the blade in my right hand; a blade that could cut through anything. Magic was anything. Let’s see if the son of a bitch could cut through that. Even if it could though, it wouldn’t be immediate. I’d need to make sure Merry didn’t hand the sisters their ‘get out of jail free’ card while I was sawing away. Flipping the blade over in my hand, I pressed it against the magic. Stunningly, I felt the binding give way at the spot where the blade dug in. “If you give them that heart, they can free themselves. They can roam this world. Do you know why I trapped them there in the first place? Do you have any idea what they did to deserve that punishment?”
“Pay no attention to him,” the sisters hissed. “The past is irrelevant. All that matters is what happens going forward. All that happens is keeping your daughter safe.” They leaned forward, bending their shared back. “If you trust him, she will suffer for it.”
“They killed children,” I shot back. “A temple full of them. They lit them on fire and sacrificed them to Ra.” Even after all these years, the bile rose in my throat as I spoke of it. I remembered going into that temple, finding those charred little bodies. Right then, I knew the world couldn’t survive what the sisters had in store for it. I knew I had to do something to stop them.
“That was a different time,” they said. “The world was not as it is now.”
“How would you know what the world is like now? You’ve been gone from it for too long.”
“We watch!” they answered, their hands inching ever closer to the heart which would give them freedom. “We watch through the fairy’s eyes and see what he sees.”
I didn’t give a damn about their creepy voyeuristic tendencies. All I was doing was biding time. My hand was free and, as I moved upward, so was my right arm. I couldn’t go too quickly though. I couldn’t tip my hat and let them know I had found a way around their binding. There was nothing to stop them from reinstating it and stripping me of this sword. So I had to keep them talking until I could get myself out of this.
“That’s bull!” I said. “You’re not powerful enough for that! You’ve never been powerful enough. All your feats were just stories. Everyone knows that.”
Okay. So, if I’ve learned anything in my ‘forever’ on this planet, it’s that crazy things with a lot of power are really invested in letting you know they have a lot of power. They don’t usually take too well to someone questioning their potency, and the sisters were no different.
They lifted their head and screamed to the heavens, which wasn’t nearly as cheesy back in their day as it is now.
“We are the darkness that snuffs out the light! We are the shadow that blinds the sun. We are-”
“Talking too much,” I muttered. It had been enough time though. During their little sky-facing monologue, I had managed to free enough of myself. My legs and arms were unbound. Only my chest kept me up and, with one fell swoop, I undid that portion as well.
I fell, my heels slamming against the floor, and ran up to Merry. Throwing a shoulder into the unsuspecting sisters, I sent them stumbling backward.
“I wasn’t going to give it to them,” Merry said, swallowing hard and offering the heart to me.
“I believe you,” I said. “But hold onto it. I’m going to need both my hands for this. When I tell you, squeeze the hell out of that thing.”
She nodded, and I darted forward, enchanted knife in hand. The sisters looked up at me, breathing heavy and crackling with magic. Their hands jutted forward, and they blasted energy at me. From one hand, came a surge of fire and from the other, a torrent of ice.
“Oh, that’s right. They can shoot fire. Not breath it,” I remembered, leaping into the air and dodging the attack.
That was another good thing about living forever. It gave you a lot of time to learn fighting techniques. I could mix up martial arts with MMA fighting and wrap it all up with a boxer style bow. Not that I was doing any of that as I landed and dove toward them. My entire plan of attack for the moment was basically ‘stab the scary thing’.
I slashed my knife through the air, intending to bring it down right into their chest cavity. Hey. If I was going to have to feel what it was like to have the damn thing opened up, the sisters might as well have to go through it too.
They shimmered out of sight as the knife neared them though, disappearing the way they’d done before.
“Now!” I said, yelling to Merry. She squeezed the heart, and the sisters reappeared, stumbling to their knees.
I gave them an elbow to the side of the head, knocking them backward.
They looked up at me, muttering something and disappearing again.
I gave merry a look. She squeezed, and they fell back to earth, reappearing as they slammed against the floor. They must have been trying to take flight then. They were out of luck.
I wasn’t taking any more chances this time. I fell onto them, driving a knee into their shared chest and placing the knife firmly against their throats. Turning invisible wouldn’t help them this time. They were pinned, and the first flinch would send this blade into their throat.
“You saw how your magic fared against my knife. Do you really wanna test your flesh?” I leaned forward, staring right into their eyes. “Someone is screwing with me, trying to hide something inside one of my books.”
The sisters rolled their eyes. Well, one of them did. “He’s returned then. He’s come back for you.”
“Stop speaking nonsense!” I said, pressing the knife far enough into their skin to make my point. “Who’s behind this? Who’s messing with Amber?!”
“Her time is far off,” the sisters responded. “She’s simply a vessel at this point, an open bridge which he can drive through.”
“Who?” I repeated. “Or so help me-”
“So help you, who? God?” the sisters scoffed. “That doesn’t seem likely, given your relationship with him. The magic surrounding your book can be burned away. A simple flame will reveal the truth, as is so often the case,” they said, and the paler hand reached toward the spot where my mark was, a spot that could also be revealed with a flame.
“It’s the same spell,” I said through clenched teeth. “The same spell that hides my mark is hiding the contents of the book. Who’s doing it?”
“The person who hates you most in the world, of course. The person you let down,” they answered, chuckling.
That didn’t exactly narrow it down. I hadn’t been the greatest dude in the world for a large portion of my life, and trying to narrow down the amount of people who I had hurt was like trying to find the best pizza place in New York City. There were just far too many to choose from.
“A name!” I shouted.
“This place,” the sisters said. “We told you there was a reason we led the fairy to choose this place.” They smiled again. “And now you’ll know why.”
A loud rumbling sounded under the earth, and then the whole world shook. Everything pushed and pulled violently and, as the motion threw me off the sisters and knocked me back against the floor, one thought ran through my mind.
Earthquake.
These bitches knew this exact spot would be the epicenter of this thing. They knew it would throw me off of them. They knew it would free them.
Pieces of the wall and roof fell around me and, before I could move, a sheet of concrete slammed hard against my body, pinning me to the ground.
“Merry,” I said as the world finally calmed down. “Are you okay?”
I felt a hand against mine and, looking to the left, I saw her there.
“I’m fine, Cal. But I lost it. I don’t know where the heart is.”
“We do,” the siste
rs said. Looking up, I saw the sisters over me. Their knowing eyes smiled as they took in what they knew was coming. The heart sat in the paler hand. Their freedom was within their grasp now and, as they pierced one of the ventricles with a finger, a ripple of magic ran through them, and I knew they had done it.
Laughing, they dropped the heart onto the floor next to me. “When you shove that back into the fairy man and wake him up, be sure to thank him for us. None of this would have been possible if not for him.” They shook their head and turned to Merry. “We’ll see you around.” They moved toward the door. Turning back as they reached the threshold, they said, “And don’t disregard what we told you, Merry. Before it’s over, the man you love will kill your daughter.”
10
“You need to sit down,” Andy said as I paced back and forth across his living room with my hands stuffed into my pockets. It had been three and a half hours since the quake at the War Room since I royally screwed up and allowed the sisters loose back out into the world. “And, if you’re not going to to sit, at least let me take you to the hospital.”
“I’m fine,” I barked back, shaking my head and wearing a path into my best friend’s carpet. “Merry got checked out. She’s okay. That’s all that matters,” I continued. Thankfully, she had gotten through the ordeal with little more than a few scrapes, bumps, and bruises. Which was more than I could say for a lot of people that night.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Fairies were supposed to be in tune with nature, with the inner workings of the planet. Left to his own devices, Ralphie would have never allowed the War Room to sit at ground zero of one of the biggest earthquakes this part of the world had ever known. He wasn’t himself though. The sisters told me as much while they bragged about their influence over him. Not that I could say that, of course. Letting the people in the War Room know a pair of near deities in a shared body were loose in the city would create the sort of turmoil I didn’t need right now. Half them would be scared to death, either fleeing or walling themselves off. The other half think themselves the sort of invincible assholes who might go off and get themselves killed trying to make a name for themselves. All of those people would blame Ralphie and I and, where I had this mark to ensure no one in their right mind would do me harm (even the craziest bastards the world has to offer wouldn’t want any piece of the seven fold rage of the Big Guy) Ralphie wasn’t so lucky.
Better his patrons think him foolish than malicious. Better they think him senile than responsible.
He wasn’t responsible. Not really. Like everything that seemed to happen lately, this was my fault.
“Stop being a dick,” Andy said, standing to meet me. His house was a mess, the sort of thing you might expect to see from a middle aged guy living on his own after a couple of decades with a committed (and tidy) partner.
“I’ve been trying to do that since about the advent of electricity. It’s harder than you think,” I muttered.
“You know what I mean,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’re not doing yourself any favors by trying to tough this out. You don’t have any broken bones. That’s obvious enough, but Merry told me a slab of concrete landed on your chest, Uncle C. There’s no telling what kind of damage that could do.”
“Yes there is, Andy,” I answered, finally stopping and looking at him. “I could have internal bleeding. I could have ruptured my spleen, kidney, even my heart. And, just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean my ribs aren’t broken. They probably are, but you know what? None of that’s going to kill me. Nothing’s ever going to kill me, and I’ve got about a dozen more pressing issues. So, if you don’t mind, I really don’t feel like having a doctor give me pain meds and tell me I’m underweight for my height. I just set hell loose in this city, and I still have no idea who’s screwing with Amber or who’s responsible for that girl killing herself in my office.”
“It’ll make you weaker, you stubborn son of a bitch,” Andy responded, shaking his head. “Just ‘cause you don’t die doesn’t mean you don’t get hurt. You wanna go after the sisters, be my guest. But, judging by your reaction, they seem pretty fearsome. I wouldn’t want to go in there all battered and bruised. That’s all.” He marched toward the backroom, mumbling. “But hey, you want to get your ass torn in two, that’s up to you. How my father dealt with you for all those years, I’ll never know.”
“With great difficulty,” I answered. Heading to his kitchen, I pulled a pair of beers from the fridge (the only thing I could always be sure was in stock) and went back out.
When I got there, I found Andy with a book in his hand, the same book that had been spelled in my back room.
“You got it?” I asked, setting one of the beers on the counter for him and popping the top on the other.
“This isn’t my first rodeo, Uncle C. As soon as you called and told me what happened, I went to your office and got a couple of things. I wasn’t sure if those psycho twins would be after any of it.” He sat the book beside the beer and pulled a lighter from his pocket. “Who knows what part they have to play in this.”
“Not much of one, I’d assume,” I said, grabbing the book and lighter as I took a swig of the beer. “They’ve been locked up for the better part of a thousand years and, as far as I know, I was able to purge them recorded history. My guess is they just saw a chance to get free and took it. I didn’t get the vibe they cared too much one way or another about what was going on here. I think that’s why they told me what they did about the spell on this book.”
“Wish they’d have told you more,” Andy lamented, plopping onto the couch.
“Me and you both, but that’s the thing with oracles. They’re coy to the point of being useless.” Flicking the lighter, I sparked a flame and moved the book toward it.
“So tell me,” Andy said, moving toward me with his eye on the book. “What did they say exactly?”
“Not much,” I lied, glaring at him with a set jaw. Andy was a great guy, perhaps one of the best I had ever known in my impossibly long life. That was why I didn’t want to lay anymore of this on him than I already had. I probably shouldn’t have told him anything about Amber in the first place. He was just a guy, a mortal. The world belonged to them in a way it would never for any of us supernatural types. The Big Guy made it for humans to enjoy, to thrive on. The rest of us, we were just along for the ride.
But could Andy really enjoy this world—this life—with me throwing daggers at him every time he so much as stopped to have a beer?
I was off my game. Normally, I’d have never told the person who amounted to not only my best friend but also the only person left in this world I called family, about an evil he couldn’t stop.
It would be akin to warning a gazelle about a lion. What the hell difference would it make? Gazelles were made to be eaten, just as humans were made to die. Letting them know the lion is already hiding in the brush, ready to pounce, is nothing but cruel.
I did tell him though. I laid it on top of him to ease my own mind, and I couldn’t take that back. It didn’t mean I had to burden him with anything else, especially when that ‘anything’ included two of the most powerful clairvoyants in the world basically telling me it was my destiny to kill a kid.
Nope. I was going to keep that to myself for now. Well, to myself and Merry, but that was another story.
“So let me get this straight,” Andy started, settling in front of me. “You, one of the most infuriatingly stubborn assholes who has ever walked on this spinning rock, took a huge gamble by bringing back the sisters, and then you just let them go without saying much of anything? Forgive me for being skeptical, but that doesn’t sound right, Uncle C.”
I blinked at him. He was a good detective, good enough to smell the deceit all over me. His father would have been proud. Hell, I was proud. Didn’t mean I was going to admit to anything though.
“I didn’t let them do anything, Andy. This might surprise you, but just because I’m the oldest person in the world doesn’t mean
I’m the most powerful.”
“Well not I know something isn’t right,” he answered, narrowing his eyes. “You’ve never said a disparaging word about yourself in your entire life.”
“There isn’t much I haven’t done in my life, Andy,” I said, shaking my head. “There was a slab of concrete on my chest, son. Trust me when I say I got my ass kicked.”
The crafty bastard blinked at me a couple of times, and I could see the wheels turning in his head. He didn’t believe me, not really. Still, we had a lot to deal with right now, and I was pretty sure he was going to let this go, at least for the moment.
“Fair enough,” he sighed. “At least you got the intel about the book.”
Bingo.
“Way to look on the bright side, my man,” I answered, motioning for him to come closer. “Now get over here and hold this thing. I think it’s time we figure out was so important that someone went through all the trouble to hide it from me.”
“And then show it to you by using a little girl like a freaking compass,” Andy added, grabbing the book and opening the front flap. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does. I promise, whatever it is, it always makes sense,” I answered, tightening my grip on the lighter. “We just can’t see all of it yet.”
“Let’s remedy that then,” Andy said, pushing the book under the glow of the lighter’s flame. I moved the thing over the title page.
The words morphed. No longer did it say The Velveteen Rabbit. Instead, the page was completely blank.
“Damn it,” I muttered. I was really hoping the answer would be right there. “Flip the pages, Andy. Don’t stop until you find something.”
Andy did as I asked, flipping the pages quickly, one blank page moving after another. As he got toward the end of the book, I began to wonder why someone would go through all of this trouble to shield a blank tome from me. It seemed like a lot of effort for nothing, but I had to remember what I said. This would make sense. I just had to look for the rest of the puzzle pieces.
Curse of Cain (Immortal Mercenary Book 2) Page 6