by Laura Kirwan
Sid was translating as fast as he could. But V’hren’s sudden cold laughter told Meaghan that V’hren knew what she’d said without the translation. Everyone else was looking at Sid. V’hren and Jamie were looking at Meaghan.
John’s head was still bowed, but Meaghan noticed that the guard had pulled back the spear a bit. Damn it, John, she shouted at him in her mind, snap out of it. I need you.
V’hren confirmed her suspicions by answering her in English. A buzzing, sizzling, harmonic- laden English, but lacking his brother’s thick accent and stilted syntax. “Go ahead and destroy this world. I’m almost done with it. Soon, I’ll see your world burn too and you with it. Powerless. Lonely. Afraid. I know what you feel for them, would-be husband and would-be son, and I’ll destroy them both—slowly—while you watch.” He looked at Jamie in disgust. “I’m almost done with this one. Even weaker than his father.”
“I knew you weren’t V’hren,” Meaghan said. She’d been right all along. Something else was pulling the strings. “I think I know what you are and I’m not afraid of you. Hurt them anymore and I will find a way to end you. Count on it.”
V’hren smirked at her and then surveyed the crowd without speaking.
Meaghan glanced over at John. His head now up, he stared at V’hren through narrowed eyes. Meaghan felt a thread of defiance weave itself into John’s shame. It wasn’t much, but it gave her an opening.
The guard standing behind John stared at V’hren in confusion at the strange sounds coming out of V’hren’s mouth. Taking advantage of V’hren’s inattention and the guard’s befuddlement, Meaghan ran to John. She lifted his face in her hands. This close she could feel how the thing inside V’hren had wrapped itself all around John’s mind.
Magic, Meaghan thought. The bastard was using magic, like John suspected. And it wasn’t only John he was hexing. Now that Meaghan knew what to feel for, she sensed V’hren’s tendrils twisting through the minds of the assembled Fahrayans. V’hren’s magic mind control activated the fear and the fear fed the magic, creating a vicious feedback loop.
His magic didn’t work on Meaghan, but V’hren had kept trying enter her mind until her furious intent to protect Jamie forced him to retreat. Maybe magic wasn’t required to pull V’hren from John’s mind. Maybe strong emotion could do it.
She didn’t need the extra psychic boost to tell her what John needed most—forgiveness and a way forward. He needed to once again want something for himself.
Maybe some evil spells could be broken with a kiss.
Time for someone in Eldrich to win the pool, she thought.
Meaghan tilted up his face and bent over him. She brushed her lips against his cheek, then whispered in his ear, “He can’t have you. You’re mine.” She gave him a gentle kiss. She pulled back and looked at him. No reaction.
Fairy tales used to be a lot darker, she knew. The chaste kiss was the sanitized stand-in for more primal behavior. In the oldest tales, the prince woke Sleeping Beauty with a body part other than his lips. In a few versions, the prince, like a drink-spiking date rapist, didn’t bother to wake her at all.
Meaghan was no princess, John wasn’t particularly charming, and both had lost their innocence a long time ago. Screw the Disney version. She pushed down on his shoulders. His knees bent until his backside rested on his heels. She straddled him and pressed her breasts against his chest. Wrapping her arms and legs around him, she kissed him again. This time she opened her mouth, used her tongue, and took her time. In a moment, he began to kiss her back. She felt V’hren flinch and withdraw. John’s shame and guilt evaporated, replaced by desire.
John was back in the game.
Chapter 49
Meaghan heard V’hren shouting but she kept kissing John until the guard pulled her off him. John wore a big goofy grin. She could feel joy and lust rolling off him in alternating waves.
The spell—V’hren’s spell at least—was broken.
Meaghan smiled back at John. She felt great, her initial euphoric confidence returned. With an imperious glare, she shook off the Fahrayan guard and strutted over to Sid, who was staring at her with his mouth open. “I told you I’d have a plan,” she said. “Translate everybody both ways. I want V’hren’s people to hear everything.”
The assembled Fahrayans looked back and forth between her and V’hren, as confused as John’s guard had been. Meaghan reached her new senses out to the mob, moving beyond the noise in her head made by Jamie, John, and Sid. Fear predominated, but under it she could feel the faint stirring of other emotions. Disbelief, anger, disgust, worry, compassion, hope—all sparked throughout the crowd of Fahrayans. Not much, but enough that with some fanning she might be able to coax a flame.
V’hren spoke to the mob in Fahrayan, as Sid translated for Meaghan. “My people, you see how the false king and false prince flaunt their complicity with the giants. They violate our laws, they violate the treaty I made with them. It was out of love that I spared my brother and his son those many years ago. His son now invades our world, plots against me, lays the groundwork for an invasion by the giants. My brother follows him, the emissary of the giants at his side. You witnessed their brazen display. You heard her threaten to destroy our world.”
When Sid reached the final sentence of his translation he looked over at Meaghan and grimaced.
“Damn it,” she muttered to Sid. “He got me on that one.” She could hear the murmur of the crowd, felt some of them wanting to believe V’hren. But in many others, she felt a subtle vibration of doubt.
Their bullshit meters are starting to register, she thought. V’hren screwed up by speaking English. Let’s see if he’s dumb enough to make the same mistake twice.
Meaghan turned so that she could address V’hren and the crowd at the same time. “There appears to be a mistranslation.” She looked over at Sid and mouthed “Sorry.” He nodded.
“What I intended to say,” she continued, “is that if you release them now and allow us safe passage home, I will not destroy you.” She glared at V’hren. “I was threatening you, V’hren, not them.” She swept her arm toward the crowd. “We have no complaint with your people. Only with you.”
Meaghan had spent a few years as a criminal prosecutor, long enough to know how to sell her case. She moved closer to the crowd. Time to work them like a jury. “Your king’s version of the truth is a lie. A flat-out lie and he knows it.”
She pointed an accusing finger at V’hren. “Your king sent dark wizards to seize the prince, to kidnap him from his home.” This drew a collective gasp from the crowd when Sid translated it. “They hurt the prince’s wife. They threatened his children. They likewise attacked me in my home, but I drove them back in a bloody battle.”
Meaghan paused a beat to let Sid catch up and the words sink in. The last bit wasn’t exactly a lie, she thought. Yes, it was only one wizard and he was a half-starved kid that any self-respecting Fahrayan could have snapped in half, but there was blood from his nose after she hit him with the saucepan. So, close enough.
“The prince has no plan to invade,” she continued. “No plan to return to Fahraya at all. He has a human family—a wife, a daughter, an infant son. He is a respected and important man in our world. The king bases his allegations solely on the prince’s temporary transformation to his Fahrayan form. A transformation forced on him by a witch working for the dark wizards.” Another gasp rose from the crowd. “Directed by the wizards, this witch tore from the prince’s throat the amulet he wears in our world to take our form and size.”
The crowd murmured. She could feel their outrage beginning to rise. They had been afraid for so long that it was a feeble anger but enough to visibly weaken V’hren, at least to Meaghan’s informed eyes. He staggered slightly as he moved away from Jamie to address the crowd.
“She lies,” he shouted in Fahrayan. “She and my brother, the traitor, traveled willingly through the gateway in violation of a treaty that protects you from the giants.”
Meaghan co
ntinued, her voice calm and steady. “A treaty already broken by this man.” She pointed the accusing finger again. “A treaty broken by this man in his attempts to manufacture grounds on which to bring the prince here.” She paced back and forth. “The dark wizards hired by this man . . .” She pointed again. “They entered the prince’s house through deceit and tore him from his bed where he lay with his wife. They beat him. They bound his hands. They tortured him with their dark magic, carved their evil symbols into his flesh, and tried to cut his throat when he resisted. He fought them bravely and fiercely but was finally overcome by their magic. The prince only entered Fahraya because he was forcibly pushed through the gateway.”
She paused again for Sid to catch up. V’hren was seething but said nothing. Meaghan had him. Plain and simple. The crowd was nodding as she spoke. She was winning them over.
“I freely admit that John and I entered the gateway. We had no choice. What father would leave his son to such a fate? What father would not do everything he could to protect his son and save his life?”
The father standing in front of you, she knew many of the Fahrayans were thinking. The one who would torture his own son to death if he could only get his hands on him. She stared back, at her ease, as V’hren glowered at her. You opened the door, moron, she thought, and you let me walk right through it.
The guard standing behind John had lowered his spear again, his attention fixed on Sid as he translated Meaghan’s words. John rose to his feet. The guard lifted the spear, barked a few words, and stepped forward. John whirled and glared at him. The guard lowered the spear, stepped back, and stared at the ground. A second guard held up both hands, palms toward John, and said something to him. John nodded and the second guard approached him and cut his hands free.
Now free from V’hren’s influence and free from his guards, John strode over to Meaghan. Even dressed in clothes sewn out of rags and remnants from somebody’s quilting bag, John looked richer and grander than the skin-clad Fahrayans. Except for the lack of wings, he looked every bit the king he’d once been.
“You are not my brother,” he said to V’hren in English. His extra vocal cords added the strange harmonics Meaghan had heard in V’hren’s voice but without the buzz. Whatever V’hren now was, he wasn’t accustomed to speaking English, despite his proficiency. V’hren knew English better than John but wasn’t as good at speaking it with a Fahrayan voice. “Who are you?”
“Your worst nightmare, you pathetic drunk.”
John barked a grim laugh. “You do not come close to my worst nightmare. My worst nightmare is seeing my Zhara fall silent from the sky and hearing her hit the ground. For a long time I thought there was nothing worse. Until today. Until I see what you do to my son.”
“You wingless freak,” V’hren hissed.
“Wings you cut from my back.” He turned his head and smiled at Meaghan. “Wings I don’t need anymore. Not as a human man.” He returned his attention to V’hren, pinning him with his cool, regal stare. “I wonder now, was that V’hren who did that or you? When did you slither into his mind? Were you in him even then?”
And V’hren fell for it. John dangled the bait and V’hren leaped. Meaghan was impressed.
“I didn’t own him yet, but I was close. Watching. Whispering in his ear. But what he did to you was all him, his choice, out of his free will. His bitterness, his fear, his darkness, his cruelty. All those things he gave to me in one bloody banquet, a meal that let me claim him as my own. But I was the one who let you and your whelp live because it suited me. All that shame and guilt and self-destruction. I was aging you like fine wine. Then you met her.” He glared at Meaghan, then twisted his lips into that mockery of a smile. “If it’s any consolation, your brother has suffered more than you over the years. He still lives deep inside me, feeding me, a parasite I will not let die because his misery amuses me.”
Meaghan registered Sid translating all this into Fahrayan in the background. So, finally, did V’hren. He turned to Sid and screamed, “Stop.” When Sid didn’t stop, V’hren waved his hands, screeching something that didn’t sound like English or Fahrayan. He made a slashing motion, like the one Meaghan had seen Emily make, and Sid dropped to the ground.
Chapter 50
Meaghan screamed. More loud gasps and cries from the crowd. She heard Jamie shouting.
She ran to Sid and dropped to the ground next to him, shaking his body. “Can you hear me?”
No response. She had no idea where to feel for a pulse so she placed her hand on his chest, in the middle of his Hello Kitty T-shirt. She felt his lungs rise and fall and rise again.
Meaghan sagged with relief. At least Sid was still alive. “He’s breathing,” she shouted loud enough for John and Jamie to hear.
John nodded, then glared at V’hren. “You are even more stupid than my brother. You hexed him. Like a wizard. Now they all know you’re not one of us.”
The mood of the crowd was audibly shifting. Meaghan could hear the angry buzzing, like a swarm, their fear giving way to anger. V’hren tried to attack John but stumbled and fell to one knee.
John turned to the crowd and spoke to them in Fahrayan.
Meaghan took advantage of V’hren’s distress to move closer to Jamie. He was conscious, his breath loud and ragged. But he was so exhausted his legs could no longer hold him up. His hands were stark bluish white, the blood cut off by the unsupported weight of his body hanging from his wrists.
Meaghan rifled through the pack for Matthew’s old clasp knife. Russ had added it to the pack “just in case.” She found it, dropped the pack, and ran to Jamie. He was too tall for her to stand at ground level and reach the leather thongs binding him.
She gripped the folded knife between her teeth and with adrenaline-fueled strength, she scrambled up one of the outcrops. She slipped and felt a sharp stab in her knee and the skin scrape off her right palm. She ignored the pain. If she didn’t get those thongs cut, Jamie could lose the use of his hands.
Finally, high enough to reach him, she opened the knife and cut the thong binding his right hand, leaving all his weight on his left wrist. Meaghan slid down the outcrop, her hands slick with blood, and her legs shaking. She knew she wouldn’t have the strength to climb the other one.
Wrapping her arms around him, she tried to hold him up enough to take the strain off his still-bound left hand. “I can’t make that climb again. I’m sorry.”
“You kissed my father,” he rasped. “What the hell was that?”
Struggling to support his weight, she said, “I had to get that thing out of his head. You can yell at me when we get home. Right now, we got bigger problems.”
He stared at her a moment, then said, “Give me the knife.”
Meaghan used her shirt to wipe off the blood from her torn palm and pressed the knife into Jamie’s freed hand. Leaning on Meaghan, panting with the effort, his fingers numb and clumsy, Jamie sawed at the thong until it snapped. He and Meaghan fell to the ground in a heap.
She held him close for a long moment. “I’ve got you,” she whispered in his ear. “I won’t let him hurt you anymore.” She felt his body shudder against her. “I’ve got you.”
Pulling away from him, she cradled his battered face in her hands. “Can you translate for your father? I need to know what he’s saying.”
Jamie nodded. “I’ll try. My Fahrayan’s pretty rusty. He was repeating what Sid translated before . . .” He swallowed hard. “What V’hren just said. And he’s telling them that something evil has infected V’hren. Something that’s been in charge of him for a long time.”
“How are they taking it? Do they believe what John’s saying?”
“They saw V’hren hex Sid.” Jamie’s eyes filled with tears. “Is he okay? It’s my fault he’s here and—”
Meaghan cut him off. “He’s okay for now. He’s here because he’s your friend and wanted to help.” She pulled Jamie closer. “None of this is your fault. None of it. I know you’re tired and hurt and wan
t to go home, but we—me, your dad, and Sid—need you to keep it together for a little while longer. Can you do that?”
Jamie nodded.
V’hren regained his feet and began speaking to the crowd.
Jamie tried to translate as V’hren spoke. “Um . . . the giant she brings evil magic and tries to make you see things that aren’t there. I’m your king. Would you believe the . . . wingless one over me?” Jamie stopped, exhausted with the effort. “They hit me hard a few times on my ear and I think they messed it up. There’s a lot of ringing and it’s hard to hear. I need to get closer.”
Meaghan nodded. “Can you stand?”
“If you help me.” With a grimace and a few pained grunts, Jamie got to his feet. Supported by Meaghan, he hobbled closer, then sank to the ground.
She grabbed her backpack and pulled out her remaining water bottle, uncapped it, and handed it to him.
With shaking hands, he held the bottle to his mouth and drained it. “Better,” he said.
Meaghan surveyed the crowd. Most were transfixed by V’hren and John, but a few were staring at Jamie. She realized she couldn’t feel their emotions anymore. The drugs had worn off. She was alone in her head for the first time in hours. She had to know what V’hren was saying.
She sat down on the ground behind Jamie, supporting him with her body, arms around him like she’d hold a small child on her lap. She could feel the blood from the stumps of his wings soaking through her shirt and bra, but if he couldn’t lean back on her, he’d collapse. “I need you to keep translating.”
He slumped against her, wincing as her shirt rubbed the raw wounds on his back, and nodded. “Um . . . liar, false king, he tries to steal back what he lost by consorting with the giants . . . oh shit, he noticed you cut me down. He’s calling the guards.”
Meaghan felt Jamie tense and curl into her. The shaking became shuddering and she didn’t need a head full of mystic mushrooms to feel his terror. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, feeling that fierce maternal protectiveness sweep through her again. If the guards came, she’d fight for him to her last gasp.