by Joe Ducie
Anticipating the worst I stayed low, which saved my life as bolts of blue fire punched through the wall in a spray of plaster and wood, striking with all the ferocity of a lightning storm. Shrieks rose in untamed fury from within the room and drowned even the fire alarm.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee were going for the kill. They were slower than I thought they’d be, but I decided that was good and not to question what little good fortune came my way. The energy coursed through the wall, setting alight the hallway and blowing to bits various pieces of furniture, flower vases, and hanging paintings.
I stumbled forward, tripped over a handful of corpses, and fell flat on my face.
The Knights guarding my room had been slaughtered, which explained their lack of reaction to my distress call and the explosions. The bodies were warm, the throats slit only minutes ago. Whoever had done it hadn’t hung around. Was I dealing with an enemy or a misguided ally? Who had unlocked my room?
I was less than a day back in town and already three dead.
I scuttled across the carpeted floor on my elbows and knees. A steady rain from the sprinklers chilled my bare skin as bolt after bolt of sizzling energy threatened to run me through. Miraculously, I avoided death-by-lightning and rose shakily to my feet, having cleared the edge of the storm.
What’s the plan, Dec? Options were somewhat limited. Run. Run quickly.
Other palace guests were emerging from their rooms. Blurry eyes heavy with sleep opened up wide as I ran past, naked. No sign of Aaron. I was about halfway to the elevators when behind me my room exploded in a deadly barrage of flying shrapnel. Tweedledum and Tweedledee emerged from within the dust and the flames, wailing for my head.
Fighting the fatigue, I reached the elevator and slammed my fist into the call button, hoping and praying the car wasn’t a hundred floors above me. The thin chain of the star cuffs bounced back and forth, perilously close to my manhood. I held up my arms to avoid any debilitating mishaps.
I ducked as the demons raised their swords, and blue fire curled around the dark blades before erupting in half a dozen streaks of vicious, crackling power. The palace guests caught in the hall either cried out or stood stock-still, probably in shock. The lances of hot fire that rent the air had them diving back into their rooms for cover and ignoring the fire alarms.
The elevator doors behind me binged open as the wild torrents of electric-flame screamed down the hall. I jumped through the doors and slammed my fist against the button with the two inward-facing arrows. The doors started to close but just a fraction too slow.
Shit! Two wild bolts slipped between the narrow gap in the doors, exploded against the back of the lift, and blasted a hole through to the darkness of the shaft beyond. I threw myself at the carpeted floor. If I’d still been standing, they would’ve pierced me through the neck and heart.
The button for the ground floor was already aglow as the lift jerked into downward motion. I remembered to breathe as the heavy sound of things exploding above, on my floor, became muffled and ominous.
I stood, took another deep breath, and noticed that I wasn’t alone in the lift. I exhaled slowly, staring at a woman who wore a form-hugging red dress and a white porcelain mask. Her dress revealed a remarkable amount of cleavage but covered the rest of her body from head to toe, save her tanned arms. Even her hair was wrapped in a silky satiny hood. She stared at me from behind the mask, then at the smoldering holes in the back of the lift, and then back at me and down at my…
“Um… it’s cold out,” I said. I was dripping wet, shivering, and bleeding from half a dozen small cuts that I could see. Sounds of wrenching metal echoed up above in the elevator shaft. Uh-oh.
“Well, is this awkward, or what?” I asked and strategically held the star cuffs in front of myself. Was that Born to Run playing over the speakers in the elevator? The song was a little drowned out by the fire alarm. Something important was nagging at my thoughts, something out of place.
“My name’s Declan and I’m to be executed later on today,” I said. No, that wasn’t it…
The lady in red was saved from responding to me, the unclothed lunatic, as the entire elevator lurched to the right, slamming us both against the wall. The sound of the heavy whip-crack of taut cable unraveling snapped in the shaft above us.
“Ah hell…” The cable must have broken because the box plummeted down the tunnel. The fall was short and ended quite abruptly, and the woman next to me screamed loud enough to wake the dead. We’d fallen about fifteen feet,
I thought, and bounced off the walls to hit the base of the shaft hard enough to jar my shoulders into numbness.
Fucking demons.
For a wonder, the elevator doors binged open on the ground floor. I extracted myself from around the lady in red and crawled out of the lift as half a ton of steel cable crashed down upon it, crushing it. Fortunately, the woman had scampered out after me, shaken and somewhat out of sorts—another innocent bystander scarred for life.
“Still alive down here!” I shouted back up the shaft. I was furious. A thick column of flame, hot as the blazing sun, burst through the roof of the lift and ignited the tunnel with all the fires of hell.
“Time to go,” I said, stifling another yawn—the cuffs were still working their infernal curse upon me, trying to force me to sleep. Adrenalin alone kept me mobile now. I turned away from the burning elevator and beheld the grand palace vestibule, a lavish space of cool marble columns, hung with tapestries and the purple standard of the Dragon Throne.
A small dagger took me just beneath my arm. I felt the cool metal ricochet off my lower ribcage, digging a deep furrow in my side.
I gasped in surprise, in confusion, in sheer pain. The lady in red!
My blood, hot and sticky, flowed down the elegant knife in her perfectly manicured hand and across her fingernails. A steady trickle ran over her soft skin down to her elbow. I stood motionless and caught, bent to the side on reflex alone, trying to edge the knife out of my flesh.
“Ow...”
“Hush, hush, sweet Declan,” said the murderous woman, her blue eyes truly compassionate behind that white mask. She no longer looked like an innocent bystander, and I was a fool to have been taken in so easily. “It’s okay.”
“I… thought you were cool.”
She leaned in close. I caught the light scent of an unfamiliar fragrance. Lavender, I thought, or perhaps not. She lifted her mask, just enough to reveal her mouth. Her lips, naturally full and red, pressed against mine in a warm kiss that only served to dig the dagger half an inch deeper. I moaned, yet cold surprise hit me harder than the pain.
Breaking the kiss, the lady in red slipped the knife out of me. My legs buckled, failed of all strength, and I fell back onto the smooth velvet carpet. I lifted my head and glanced at my side. Everything was far too crimson.
I don’t die here. The thought was not as comforting as I’d hoped.
I sucked in a harsh breath and forced a fresh spurt of blood from the wound, which almost made me chuckle. I grinned at the masked mystery woman who had just stabbed me and kissed me in the same breath.
“Do you think we’ll be in love forever?” I asked.
Those luscious red lips, all I had of her, smiled. “Oh my, charming to the last. She never told me how much fun you would be.”
“Who…?”
“Now that would be telling, handsome.”
Joined by her demonic escort, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the lady in red blew me another kiss. Of course they were all working together.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee had driven me into her arms, I realized. Escaping them had been too easy. If they’d really been trying to kill me I wouldn’t have made it out of my room upstairs. The lady in red drew a slim paperback from inside the folds of her dress. The demons at her side grasped her arms, and together they shimmered and disappeared—off to worlds unknown, unseen, unfound.
She had the talent, then, a Will and the skill to use it. So red lips, a rather impres
sive chest, and command of the one true power—should be enough information for me to track her down, if I lived.
I tried to sit up. Bad idea.
Either the forced fatigue or the blood loss, or a bitter, lethal cocktail of both, was hampering my vision. I stopped fighting and closed my eyes.
All thoughts faded to black.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Strawberry Fields Forever
I awoke in a shaft of sunlight to someone removing my star cuffs. The hum of my Will poured over the dam in my mind. The feeling was invigorating, like being doused with ice water, but it amplified tenfold the burning in my side. Groaning, I tried to roll over, but a firm hand held me in place.
“Of all the places. In all of the realms. Across all of the worlds…” Marcus tossed the cuffs aside, glaring at them as if they were hissing snakes. “You had to come back here.”
I was groggy, but my memory was sharp. A memory of lying naked and slowly bleeding to death in the grand vestibule of the Fae Palace, as a woman with luscious red lips looked on. Since then, at least someone had lent me their trousers.
“I hope you’re not here to break me out or anything equally as stupid.”
Marcus stepped away, and I could see more of the room beyond him which looked exactly like the one that Tweedledum and Tweedledee had incinerated the night before. A familiar man from my past stood opposite Marc, and two men stood in the doorway—Knights Infernal.
“Faraday let me in to see you,” said the man near Marc. “He knows you can’t run—not this time.”
“Aye, he’s got that right. Hello, Fenton Creed.”
“Hale.” Stooping next to me, Fenton peeled away the bandages at my side. “Keep still while I check your stitches. You’re not to die just yet—not before your summons at noon.”
“Can’t you just heal me?”
Fenton smirked. “I could.” He was tall, rake-thin, and rather unintimidating at first glance. Also at second and third glance. But he possessed the strongest known Will in Forget. His frame belied the fact that he could incinerate legions with his mind. If it came down to a direct battle of Will with him, I would be wiped from existence, smashed like a fly.
Marcus grunted. “I tried to do it, Declan, but I’m not to use my Will while in the palace.”
For a man as strong in the power as Fenton, it was the work of a quick thought to seal a wound as trivial as the gash in my side. He wanted me kept tender.
“Noon, is it?” I asked. “You keeping me company until then?”
Fenton grinned and cracked his knuckles. “Seems like old times. Trouble in your road. I almost want you to run, just so I can smack you down.”
I laughed, which felt better than grimacing. “Before this is through, you’ll probably get your chance.” I ran my tongue over my lips to get a taste of the lady in red. “The woman that stabbed me? She wore a red dress and a white mask—you always knew the comings and goings in this palace, Fenton, back in the day. I don’t imagine that’s changed. Who is she?”
A glimmer of uncertainty shimmered across his face. “I don’t know.” He was lying, I was sure of it. “We’re investigating. An attack on the palace… should not have been possible.” He cleared his throat. “But what do you expect, Hale? That your return would be met with wild jubilation? Word has spread throughout the city that you’re here. Crowds have gathered in Elusive Square, and are clamoring for your head.”
Marcus had brought some breakfast—bacon, eggs, and English muffins. After two failed attempts and a deep breath I finally sat up, then stood and limped over to the circular table near the window which overlooked the great city. Marcus helped me slip into a simple black polo shirt. I felt out of sorts without my waistcoat.
“No shoes?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t have much in the way of currency, and I thought you’d appreciate something to eat more than something for your feet.”
“Good call. Sophie?” I asked. Fenton and the two Knights joined us at the table as the smell of crispy meat wafted across the room.
“Fine. The kid, Ethan, convinced Clare to help him find Sophie. She was never in any danger—didn’t even know there’d been some trouble at the shop. The Voidling was after you, and only you.”
I nodded. “Good. Are they here?”
“Not Ethan and Sophie. Clare came back with her wounded unit. I told the other two to board up your shopfront and work on a few new wards.”
“That’s… optimistic.”
Fenton chuckled. “So it’s true? You opened a bookshop?”
“I thought it appropriately defiant.” And what has defiance got you so far? “But tell me, Fenton. News has been thin on the ground in the real world. Tell me about Ascension City today. What’s changed?”
“What’s there to say? We are still rebuilding after you ended the war. We’ve held peace with the Renegades, for the most part. Both sides have factions, basically small scatterings of rebels who still don’t see the fighting as over.”
“How has Faraday kept peace with those bastards? King Renegade and his Immortal Queen would never accept anything less than—”
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong.” Fenton paused, then shrugged. “Well, you’ll know soon enough anyway.”
“What?”
“Faraday offered King Renegade an alliance. He took it. We’re working with them now, Hale, to stop the spread of your Degradation and to undo the damage to the Story Thread. We’re working together, both kingdoms as one, to find a way back into Atlantis.”
Marcus scoffed. “That’s not funny, Creed.”
“I’m not joking.”
“An… alliance?” I tasted the word on my tongue and found it bitter. “After all they’ve done, and that son of a bitch welcomes the Renegade dynasty back into Ascension City as if the last century of war never happened? Peace I can understand… but working together?”
“That’s the gist of it, yes.”
I could scarcely fathom such a decision. If I was reading the situation right, then my choices in Atlantis had not only ended the war, but forced the Knights and the Renegades, those that mattered, to turn from their own conflict and… Broken quill, the world was twice damned before lunch. “I’m going to eat the rest of the bacon.”
Fenton agreed. “No sense being executed on an empty stomach.”
*~*~*~*
“What of this merchant you were found with?” Fenton asked, as he escorted me to the washrooms. Marcus offered me his arm, which I gratefully accepted. My two guards kept pace just in our wake.
“Aaron? He’s harmless. His only crime is having the misfortune to know me.”
Marcus grumbled his agreement. “He’s a good man. I spoke with him yesterday evening. Got a merchant’s license to harvest in the Uncharted Realms after the war, and a nice little villa on the shores of Lake Delgado. He cooks and sells alchemical spices. His wife and son burned along with half of Ascension City after Declan unleashed the Degradation. Also works part-time as a custodian in the Forgetful Library. He’s a good man, with no real love for this one.” Marcus pointed at me.
Fenton seemed to take Marc at his word. “I’ll see that he’s released.”
“Does my grandfather still work at the Library?” I asked. I’d not seen the old man in years. Aloysius Hale, my father’s father. A tall, bespectacled gentleman unfortunate enough to share both a first and last name with two of Forget’s most dangerous criminals.
“He was imprisoned for treason against the Dragon Throne,” Fenton said.
“Ah, I thought something like that might have… no matter. He lives?”
“To my knowledge, yes. In relative comfort given his years of service as Chief Librarian. He wrote an interesting story after your banishment that proclaimed you as king, which was a harmless act in and of itself, until he littered the city with copies of the story. He also wrote that you prevented a Voidling invasion, through a reality storm, in the Thrice-Kindly works.”
“He wrote all th
at? Well, it’s mostly true, I guess.”
“Stories upon stories,” Marcus remarked, stroking his chin. “I don’t like being back, but we’ve been away too long, Declan.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“You should have stayed gone,” Fenton said. “What happens next is your own doing.”
“Oh, you never know. Maybe I’ll be welcomed home with open arms.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We Three Kings
“I demand his head!” Morpheus Renegade growled. “My kingdom and realms will revolt if we allow Declan Hale, the Shadowless Arbiter himself, to go unpunished. His head, Faraday, or our alliance ends today.”
“I will ask you to remember whose territory you currently reside in, King Renegade. It is my law here.”
I had been brought before the entire court of the Knights Infernal and the ruling class of Ascension City. My arrival was big news, it seemed, and overnight envoys had been sent to the realms held by the Renegades—across the far-flung reaches of Forget. The lords of those lands had come themselves to ensure Faraday dealt with me.
I was happy to be wanted after being ignored for so long.
The ornate white chamber on the topmost floor of the Fae Palace, as vast as an ancient Roman pantheon, was cast in light from high arched windows amidst pristine pillars of marbled stone. Fancy as shit.
The Dragon Throne was made of black iron and set upon a crystal dais. Legend held that the throne was forged from the bones of an ancient dragon and sucked in the daylight like a possessed shadow. A part of me, and not a small part, heard the seat whispering my name.
I wasn’t handcuffed, which was a small mercy, but Fenton waited nearby. At least a dozen more Knights stood guard behind him, not to mention the Knights forming a perimeter around the edge of the throne room and in the aisles between the rows of benches. If I so much as sneezed without permission…
Jon Faraday, his hands clasped behind his back, stood on the dais alongside Morpheus Renegade. Faraday was a young man—barely thirty—of average height, but solid. He wore a coat that hid cords of strong muscle. Morpheus was older, pushing sixty. His face was lined with wrinkles, craggy canyons, under a buzz cut of peppery-grey hair.