by Lex Chase
“I’m sorry, Tay,” Atticus said with a smile. “I was only kidding when I said I was going to kill you and Honeysuckle. It’s too bad I have to follow through now.” He pulled back, bracing to take a swing. “Now smile. You’re lunchmeat!”
The ice blade sailed, and Taylor hit the floor with a crackling thump.
He coughed and clutched his head. No gaping wound. He was alive? How?
“You need to run, Taylor,” Idi said.
Taylor looked up and found Idi crouched over him, the axe embedded in his right arm. Idi gritted his teeth from the creeping frostbite.
“Run, Taylor!” Idi commanded him.
Taylor didn’t understand. He scrambled back on his rear in wide-eyed terror.
Atticus yanked the axe out of Idi’s arm and reeled back for another blow. Idi spun around, then scooped up Taylor.
“What are you doing?” Taylor squirmed against his grasp.
Idi slammed Taylor to the plate glass window overlooking the mundane mobs of New Orleans below. Idi coughed against the cold, and frost gathered around his lips. He rested a hand on Taylor’s chest. “Do you trust me?”
“Like fuck I do!” Taylor cursed him.
“You will.” Idi slammed a burst of green crackling energy into Taylor’s chest. The window shattered. “I said, run!”
Taylor fell into the icy open air.
Chapter 27: Erasing Mistakes
May 10
The Destruction of Ideas
THE PUNGENT stench of singed hair and melted nylon mingled with the pleasantries of fresh-baked sugar cookies.
Corentin choked for air and jerked upright, clutching his pounding head. The pain shot across his face from his own touch, and his fingers came away slicked with blood.
Idea lay in ruins around him. Temple columns had toppled and crushed rows of cars. In the back rows, vehicles leaked gasoline and then sparked into blistering explosions.
Corentin shielded his eyes from the multicolored flashes, from fire, to ice, to greenery, to lightning. Lacey’s vest had been composed of several different potions, all interacting with one another and creating the perfect method for obliteration.
Lacey’s scorched hand sat across his lap, her rings and bracelets all aglow in the firelight. Her wraparound fern tattoo was partly visible. But the rest of Lacey had gone missing.
Corentin staggered to his feet, but then doubled over as he hacked up a gob of blackened blood. His dark magic had saved his life, but keeping him upright for one more day would shave another day off his lifespan.
His ears rang with a single shrill note as he stumbled through the vertigo.
Idea crumbled around him. A temple column fell as easy as a flower stalk and crushed a row of cars under its ancient weight.
A dull boom shook the floor and threw Corentin to the left. Instinct took over, and he caught himself on a chunk of bejeweled rubble.
A hand slapped on his shoulder, startling him.
Aliss ducked back, anticipating Corentin would strike. Her lips moved and sounds echoed in his mind. She pointed and still tried to communicate.
What? He assumed he asked. What? Corentin shook his head.
Aliss screamed in his ear. The drowned-out warble became clear. “We need to go! Idea is collapsing!”
I know! Corentin tried to say. “I know!” he managed to verbalize and hear his own voice. “We need to find Gabrielle!”
Aliss gripped his shoulder, refusing to release him. “I said we have to go, Devereaux.”
Corentin jerked away. “Not without my sister.”
Idea rumbled like a night terror about to break.
Corentin climbed through the debris, over the ancient stones formed from the Storytellers’ imaginations and now dismissed like acceptable casualties. He shoved his way through ivy-coated columns, under frozen timbers, and over hunks of bubbles encased in ruined cars. “Gabrielle!” he called. “Gabrielle!”
Fear gripped him and sank in with burning teeth.
Corentin had lost Taylor; he wasn’t going to lose his only family. She knew so much, and he had infinite questions neither would live long enough to answer. She was his key to finding himself, and with her, he could regain his confidence with Taylor. He’d finally understand what it was like to do anything.
“Gabrielle!” he hollered as he navigated a bubbling splatter of lava.
Briar vines crept over the walls and mingled with the flaming stones. Support beams slithered and reared up like angry cobras, snapping their fearsome jaws and splinter fangs.
Aliss followed. “Dammit, Devereaux. Leave her. She’s gone!”
Corentin growled back. His mind was beyond making words, his eyes wild and burning bright with desperation.
Aliss hesitated and seemed to understand his point.
“…Revo ereh….”
Corentin perked at the sound of Gabrielle’s ragged call.
“Revo ereh!”
“Gabrielle!” Corentin found her pinned by her arm between Aliss’s red Hummer and a Chevy Silverado. He leaped over the mangled cars, and his fingers slipped on the metals transformed into water and stuck to the other metals turned to ice.
He was getting fucking tired of ice.
Gabrielle tugged at her arm and pointed. “Mra! Ym mra!” she cried, so scared she couldn’t form English.
“It’s okay.” Corentin hid his uncertainty behind a smile.
Aliss pulled him aside. “Let me.”
With a roll of the wrist, Aliss summoned her great cleaver into existence. She braced herself between the Hummer and the truck and wedged the cleaver close to Gabrielle. Aliss furrowed her blonde brows and pulled back, prying the cars apart.
Gabrielle pulled, but her arm wouldn’t move. “Pleh!” she cried out. “Pleh!”
“I’m trying!” Aliss growled low and guttural as her face reddened with the pull.
Corentin grabbed the hilt of Aliss’s cleaver and assisted in the effort. The Hummer and the truck squealed in a creaking bend of metal on metal.
Gabrielle wiggled, trying to work herself loose. She jerked free with a scream and collapsed against Corentin.
He held her tight and kept his expression even at the deep gash down to her shoulder joint. Both of them could withstand much on their dark magic, but Corentin took note of Aliss’s pointed glance at Gabrielle’s wound. Instead of giving the obvious answer—she’d probably lose her arm—Corentin smiled brightly to Gabrielle. “You’re going to be okay,” he said and locked gazes with her, making sure she could understand. “Yako? Yako?”
She nodded and shivered against him.
“She’s going into shock,” he said to Aliss, and Gabrielle looked between them and tried to parse the words.
Explosions thundered behind them, the force flinging the trio against the crumpled Hummer and truck.
Gabrielle shrieked from the pain, and Corentin held her tighter.
Idea rippled like a terrible wave on an ancient shore. Brick by brick, the temple of cars collapsed in a slow shower of rubble.
Aliss grabbed Corentin by the wrist and led him along with Gabrielle in tow. “The Valley!” she yelled over the roar of destruction. “We’ll be safe there!”
But Aliss’s hope was cruelly dashed when their only chance of safety burned to the ground. Pixies dropped from the sky in charred husks, and the flowers screamed for the salve of water.
Where were the Storytellers? Why weren’t they writing repairs?
Corentin didn’t need to say anything. Aliss could read it on his heart.
She ripped her page of Through the Looking Glass from her pocket and concentrated on the words. Weaving tendrils of red swirled from the paper. “I don’t know where we’ll end up,” she warned them.
Corentin didn’t point out the uncertainty under her authoritative tone. He wouldn’t mention his foolish hope to be with Taylor. He closed his eyes, and the three of them fell into Aliss’s light.
CORENTIN COLLIDED with the frozen steps. His elbow popped
out of joint, sending a buckshot of pain from the crown of his head to his toes. His knee cracked on the edge of a step, and his entire body tensed from the agony. Corentin’s world went hazy as his dark magic took control against his will. His elbow steadied itself just enough to exert movement, and his knee throbbed as the fissures of the larger fractures fused together under the skin.
He found Aliss nearby, crumpled to the sidewalk in a lifeless heap. Her cleaver slowly dissolved in lazy red sparks, dying in the night.
“Aliss?” Corentin asked as he fought to get his footing. He slipped on the icy sidewalk and crashed to his hip next to her. A sharp gasp tore from Corentin’s throat at the same time as Aliss hacked up her first breath.
She rolled to her stomach and spit up traces of vomit. Aliss rubbed her temples, her blonde hair a disaster of dirt, blood, and ice. “Where did we end up?” she mumbled, then broke into gagging heaves again.
Corentin found the broken wooden sign jutting out of the bushes. “New Orleans Public Library. Cita Dennis Hubble branch,” he read, then straightened. “We’re in Algiers. The city proper is across the river.” He politely turned away as Aliss retched again.
Sharp, gasping chirps of birds rustled through the bushes. Corentin listened for the direction of the sound, narrowing his eyes in concentration.
Gabrielle’s bloody, ashen hand twitched through the icy underbrush.
Corentin slapped a hand over his mouth. “No. No, no. Nononono…,” he cried and scrambled to her on his hands and knees. “Gabrielle….”
Cracking through the frozen shrubs was like cracking concrete with only bare hands. Corentin put his weight into it, snapping away branches that shattered like glass on the sidewalk.
There she lay. Gabrielle’s wide-eyed terrified gaze said it all. Her breath whistled as she forced in shallow gasps for air. The frozen branch jutted cruelly from her chest. Her black Cronespawn blood ran in inky rivulets over the ice, freezing on contact.
“Corentin…,” she said, her voice cracking.
He latched on to her hand. The ash and soot of her skin mingled with her blood and turned it into sludge.
“Hold on,” he told her in Curse Word. “Hold on. You’ll be burning soon. You’ll be fine. You’re going to be fine. Okay?”
Tears streamed from her ash-speckled face as her voice whistled. “Corentin….” She flailed to cup his cheek, and her fingers smeared his skin with dirty streaks. “Corentin….”
Her desperation took him apart from the inside out.
Corentin’s vision tunneled, going from green to black to green. His curse loomed only moments away, and for once he welcomed the timing.
He nodded to her. “Burn,” he said. “You need to burn.”
She coughed a violent spatter of black blood.
Corentin clung to her hand, the mud of ash and blood squished between his fingers. “Burn,” he urged her. “Hold on until you burn.” He smiled. “You need to tell me everything. Tell me you’re my sister. You’re going to tell me, yeah? In five minutes. You can make it.”
She gagged, and blood bubbled from her mouth. Her grip softened on his hand.
Corentin’s vision grew dim. He focused through it, digging deep to concentrate on her. If he could hold on for five minutes, she could too. “We’ll do it together, okay?” he asked.
She coughed another spatter down her chest.
“Together,” he said, restraining his panic. “Together.” He sniffed but maintained his smile. “Hold on. You’re going to hold on.”
Gabrielle didn’t answer.
Corentin shook his head against the thick fog seeping into his brain. “Gabrielle,” he said as he blinked through the darkness. He couldn’t hear her over the howling wind of the beckoning rabbit hole. “Burn. Please, Gabrielle. Please.”
Gabrielle lay still, her dark eyes gazing upward with thoughts she’d never be able to share.
Corentin fell back to the sidewalk and his soul into the rabbit hole.
Chapter 28: Beauty Blooms
May 10
Canal St, New Orleans
THIS IS how it ends.
The words ran through Taylor’s mind as the pavement sped toward him.
This is how it ends.
He closed his eyes, anticipating seeing Corentin’s face on the other side. Who would they be when the Storytellers wrote them back into the world centuries from now? Would they remember each other? Would they spend their very last breath on Earth finally recognizing each other?
Burning thorns stabbed into Taylor’s heart and pulled it into a violent pulse. His spine locked as briars slithered up his spine, curled over his chest, and wrapped around his arms and legs. The thorns dug deep into his skin, and primroses bloomed, fed from his blood. The petals scattered from his form, leaving behind the black-and-gold spiny armor befitting the dragoon princess within.
Zee’s terrible roar ripped from Taylor’s throat. The world trembled.
Taylor’s prison of slumber shattered with the dawn of clarity.
Beauty awakened.
Taylor gasped with the salvation of waking breath. He slammed into the pavement, and the asphalt rippled into a deafening shockwave. Pink primroses bloomed in its wake, filled the streets, shot up the buildings, and wove through the feet of the rioting mundanes. Sparks of Taylor’s inner magic gently drizzled onto Canal Street. The mundanes became still, then yawned as they swayed on their feet. A great hush came over them as all the mundanes dropped to their knees, then settled into the flowers, falling into pleasant dreams and healing sleep.
At last the Blooming Lullaby came forth from Taylor’s will to save what Corentin couldn’t. Taylor owed it to Corentin in his memory; he would protect his home. And in time, Taylor would forgive himself for being unable to protect his heart.
Around him, the gunfire faded into soft memories of troubling dreams. The screams of the insane now silenced from haunting nightmares into sweet dreams of sun and warmth long denied New Orleans.
Corentin’s philosophy was a simplistic concept about choices. Not to think about what came next. Focus on the present, make one choice, and then move to the next. Even impossible choices had solutions. But solutions bore more choices. Corentin was convinced that the cycle would have a conclusion, but it never did.
Taylor had chosen Corentin. And now he chose awareness of what had to be done.
The fog of indecision had vanished, and the distractions of the superficial had been obliterated. Taylor understood it in the twisted briars of his soul.
Enchant and mundane alike all lived and died by their choices.
In the distance, mundanes cried out tortured howls. More pop-pops and crackles of gunfire. Rumbles of fires and destruction as New Orleans sank into the deepest night terrors.
They needed sleep.
It was time to heal.
Taylor’s lance materialized in his waiting hand, and he clutched the bejeweled primrose over his chest plate. “Ready, Zee?” he whispered, his voice calm and on the edge of sleep.
Zee burned into every inch of his flesh.
Taylor’s lashes fluttered with the surge of heat. He had his answer. He took off toward the sound of tragedy.
Like his great ancestor, Princess Zellandine the Dragon Slayer, Taylor moved as though he drifted through a lucid dream. His body was at ease but his mind remained aware. His logic pinpointed on the middle of scenarios instead of the context at the beginning or end.
He took to the rooftops, skipping from ledge, to eaves, to chimney. Around him, the lettering of signage blurred into abstract squiggles, the images on billboard advertisements faded into blank surfaces.
He walked through dreams, dancing the line of the real and the improbable, but where nothing was impossible.
Below him on the streets, mundanes turned on one another, trying to drive out the demons in their minds. The guardsmen had been overwhelmed, and they too had fallen into the madness. Those who had guns fired at anything that moved. Those who didn’t used br
icks, broken timbers, their fists, even their teeth.
Taylor sighed with a drowsy breath, breathing out and breathing in. As he overlooked from a rooftop like a contemplative god, he tapped the butt of his lance to the brick ledge. A pulse of pink magic flowed down like a waterfall and spilled through the crowds. Primroses took root, and their sweet scent lulled the hysterical into peaceful slumber.
Amid Taylor’s handiwork, the streets crackled as the shock of ice enveloped his soft primroses. He narrowed his eyes. This was not the dream he created.
The cool breeze against his cheek warned him, and Taylor snapped back as Atticus narrowly missed his chance to behead him with his axe.
“You don’t get to do this,” Atticus pouted.
Taylor flipped back, distancing himself from Atticus. He raised his lance in challenge. “You should have never done any of this,” he whispered in a sleepy, meditative tone. “You took Corentin from me.” He tilted his head with a lazy smile. “Eye for an eye, wouldn’t you say?”
Atticus panted a frosty breath as heavy silver plates of armor crystalized over his body. He flipped his great axe in one hand and paced a slow circle around Taylor. “I’m going to enjoy making you suffer,” Atticus said with a sadistic grin.
Taylor tilted back his head, watching Atticus over the tip of his nose. He smirked. “That’s adorable.”
Atticus charged forward, his heavy boots leaving ice crystals with each footfall. He held his axe low, and Taylor predicted an upward strike. Taylor didn’t move and let Atticus believe he had the advantage. Atticus came close, and Taylor raised his palm out to him.
“Zee,” Taylor whispered.
Zee came to her master’s call, her spirit erupting from Taylor’s body and shoving Atticus back across the roof.
Atticus teetered, then slipped over the side. Taylor dashed to the edge, guilt gripping him as he wondered whether Atticus had fallen to his death. But skepticism was in the forefront of his mind that it couldn’t have been that easy.