by A. J. Aalto
I tried to break the tension, but again, my mouth only wanted to go, “Fnrf.” I wrestled with my tongue, balled my gloved fists, and insisted, “Fnrf!”
Remy cut her eyes at me, then demandingly to Asmodeus. “This is my champion?”
“And now you know the true heartbreak of House Dreppenstedt,” Asmodeus acknowledged with a sad smile. “In the end, she summons the most power in Wilhelm’s bloodline, and she’s but a bit of fluff with a foul tongue, a sour disposition, and a reluctant temperament.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but again, the only thing my mouth was capable of was a loud and bleating, “Fnargleflurf!” At least my lips parted to make vowel sounds that time, but the effort caused stars to swirl in my vision. I had never wanted to flip someone the bird so hard in my entire life.
Remy rolled her eyes so profoundly it rocked her head back, and she snapped her fingers in my face, once, hard. It felt like getting belted with a hockey stick to the forehead but succeeded in loosening my tongue. Unfortunately, my words betrayed me, and now I found I couldn’t imagine what I could possibly say. I knew her history, but only the stripped-down bullet points; quiz me on the dates and times and shallow details, and I could nail it. I was always a good student on paper. But we weren't on paper here. I didn’t know the lichlady’s heart. I didn’t know a mother’s pain. I didn’t know the horror of a forced turn. I had never been exiled to the cold by the same creatures who made me inhuman in the first place.
I knew what little Declan had shared when the phantasm of Malas Nazaire challenged him with the truth of his birth, saw the dhampir’s lonesome agony and his yearning, but even this was an outsider’s understanding. I hadn’t walked in her shoes, not one step, or even beside her. How could I begin to understand? And if I couldn’t understand, how could I speak to her with any true sympathy? How could I inspire her to rise to the great challenge like I needed her to? And who was I to make that decision for her? My nomination suddenly seemed utterly ignorant and unthinking.
Her gaze slid sideways at me and I remembered in an ashamed rush: all nine talents. Including telepathy. Duh, Marnie.
“Okay, I’ll address the elephant in the room, since no one else is going to,” I said, relieved to have my faculties back. “The king is on the last train to Bonkersville and there are, according to an orc mystic, a mess of angry trolls about to spill out of a portal that I’m guessing you folks already know about. I’m taking a wild stab at this being related to the fog and Stormbringers and such. If there’s no king on the unhallowed throne, no united front, no major Talent to stop them, those trolls are going to waltz right past Svikheimslending and ravage mankind. We need a strong leader on the throne, and most of these guys only have one or two Talents. Some of them don’t even want the throne, so I figured, uh…” I shifted in my Keds uncomfortably. It sounded like a long shot, now that I heard it out loud. “How about you give it a try?”
Remy mulled it over, ignoring everyone in the throne room except for me. “I want release.”
“Hey, sister, don’t we all,” I agreed.
“I want your warmth.” She slithered closer, wrapped in her misty aura. Her silver-shot green eyes were those of a predator scenting prey. “I want to slide under your skin and wrap myself in the heat of your soul.”
“Oh hey, you can do that?” I showed her my I’m-impressed face, and then gave a short, nervous laugh. “Oh right. All nine Talents. Must be a function of the Soul Leach stuff. Sounds mega-creepy for the original owner of the body.”
She ignored that. “I want to walk with your legs.”
“They’re stubby,” I warned her. “I fall down a lot.”
“I want to dance with your hips,” she barely breathed, her sensuality almost palpable.
“I can’t dance for shit. Ask your son. He’s seen it. It’s frightening.”
“I want to fuck with your cunt.”
Whoah, girl. I blinked rapidly and tried to imagine this. “Would I be… in my head for this?” My eyebrows crunched in deep thought. “In my body? Where do I go for this fuckery?”
“I want to live,” she said with heat, and the Blue Sense roared to life to transmit her ache, her yearning. “And I will do it through you, my champion, however and whenever I so choose, in exchange for taking the throne.”
Uhhhhh… “So, wait, you’ll accept becoming queen if you can do an undead version of Freaky Friday with me? You get to be a queen and borrow my body? Wow. That’s straight-up the worst deal I’ve ever been offered.”
“Perhaps I walk away from this throne right now,” she suggested.
I thought about the alternative: Harry and me, if I survived the Olmdalur and Sayomi, Harry and me busting troll ass with only our empathy and token-object reading, which would be a total fail, and even if we did survive it, we’d then be stuck ruling at Skulesdottir forever. “Can we talk about this body-slipping business after you stop the trolls?”
“No. Take it or leave it,” she said with sudden lightness, switching gears again as though it were nothing to her. “The trolls can overrun mankind and I’ll be perfectly fine in my dark corner. I’ve never had the care of the outside world. Abandoned by a planet full of walking meals and savages, I will be missing nothing.”
She didn’t fool me. With my empathy on overdrive, I Felt her need quivering in my own guts; so close to getting human companionship, surrounded by warm bodies and thumping hearts, she could barely keep her fangs retracted. The darkest corner, wherever it was, was a horrible, dark, lonely, icy tomb where she could not feed, not even as a phantasm. There were never human beings close enough to her prison for her to psychically feed upon. The rumor was that she’d gone lich, because how could she not have? But here she was, being all sane. Okay, sane-ish.
I chewed the inside of my mouth in thought, and tried a different track. “You’re very cold,” I said with sympathy. “And very hungry.”
She flinched but did not look back at me. She cast a mocking smile at the handsome demon king behind the throne. If she’d been me, she might have rolled her eyes or snort-laughed.
“It must be dreadful to be so cold all the time with no hope of relief.” I nodded. “I’m amazed you’re sane. I can’t imagine what that’s like.”
“Would you like to find out?” she warned, her eyes flashing.
“We can make a deal,” I said, and Declan choked at me. “I think the ‘however and whenever’ bit has to go… but you knew that. You threw out the big cards so I’d barter a bit. So let’s see what we’ve got here. You can save the world. You can scare off the troll scouts and protect human life on Earth from an influx of man-eating monsters. You’re not claiming the throne for their benefit; the Falskaar Vouras have not earned a single flying fuck from you, have they, your Grace?”
“They have not,” she said. Her voice held a warm tinge of humor in it.
“You’re in it for you. You want what was taken. You want a home. You want a family. You want your son returned to you. As queen, you could keep whatever company you like, and I assure you, your son is really eager to know you. And you want warmth. Human warmth.” I nodded again, feeling the weight of what I’d stumbled into. “And I will give it to you. I agree to your demand. But it will be a conditional surrender, never done without my permission, and always in person. I don’t want you slamming into me out of the blue while I’m trying to drive up and down the Rocky Mountain roads in the middle of December in an ice storm or some shit. I need to be in control of my own faculties. We can arrange… visitations.” I took a deep breath. “You’re from the south of France, yes? Perhaps you’d like to visit me there. I can take you to the beach in my skin and have a nice warm sunbathing and swimming vacation?”
“Lavender,” she said, her voice barely over a breath. “I want to walk through the lavender fields when the morning sun has warmed the flowers.”
The hope in her voice made me suddenly sad and incredibly tired. I’d been effectively blocking the empathic vibes from the cr
eatures around me, all the needs and wants and cravings and desperation, and the fury of the Falskaar Vouras. Unlike them, she had not asked for this immortal state and all the problems that went with it. She had been taken. She had been forced into the dark and the cold, and worse, she’d had all her comforts stolen away. Her needs overrode all those in the throne room then, and bound my sympathies to her in a way I could not have expected. “I’ll walk through the lavender fields for you,” I agreed.
“And we’ll dance in the sun,” she said.
“We’ll totally shake my booty together,” I said with a smirk. “I’ll bust a move. I’ll take dance lessons so you feel like we look good. But,” I pointed sternly at her, “only on our agreed meetings and with my permission.”
“Which you might revoke or ignore,” she said warily.
“And then you’d send revs to rip my throat out,” I said plainly, giving her the I’m-not-that-stupid look. “A deal is a deal. Shake on it?”
She did not. Instead, she turned her head toward the Unhallowed Throne, the featureless blue-green cyprine worn smooth by time; it had only ever held one body. The First Turned. The king. Remy’s phantasm drifted, at last tentative as she swam closer to it. When she hovered in front of it, my scalp prickled; she was an emotional typhoon inside a crystal figurine, powerful and fragile at once, a tiny finch alighting on a branch that belonged to a much bigger bird as she settled her fine frame into the throne. The Blue Sense rushed in to share with me her blossoming hope; never had she imagined she’d be freed, let alone placed into power.
Finally, she looked at her son, her eyes round and glossy with emotion. They studied one another without words, face to face; I couldn’t imagine what Declan was thinking, but I Felt his joy. He would find this Darkest Corner, and he would free his mother, and he would help me put her on the Unhallowed Throne. I had his total, unwavering support, and so did Remy. She knew it. Her telepathy would show her his true thoughts, and I had no doubt he was showing her how hard he’d searched for any trace of her, how he’d recorded every historical detail he could tease out.
Asmodeus snapped His fingers, and she stuttered out of sight.
“Ah, ah, ah, kids. Nobody's won our little game of Musical Chair just yet.”
The seat of the throne was dry and empty as though she’d never been there.
Chapter 20
“Change of plans,” Asmodeus announced, morphing back into his three-headed demon drag. “Since there is obviously hesitation in the other houses with backing the leading nominations, and we cannot have House Dreppenstedt battle itself for the throne, Remy Dreppenstedt will be eligible if her advocates complete three quests. All other houses will be permitted to join forces to stand in your way, if that is their desire.”
All of them? The approving murmur in the cavernous room was not encouraging; how many would come against me? Us, I reminded myself.
“Do-over!” I let out a nervous, horrified laugh that came out in a series of horf-horfs. “I want a do-over!”
Asmodeus continued as though He hadn’t heard me. “If the other houses can prove you unworthy, Toots, we will remove Remy from the running. Aristoxenus, read to the court room Dr. Baranuik’s quests.”
“Quests?” I objected, “I'm no knight-errant.”
“Oh, but that’s exactly what you are.” Asmodeus giggled with pure, wicked glee. “And if you'd taken my offer to be my Champion when I'd offered it to you, you'd have had a couple years to practice.”
I flashed back on the demon king’s appearance at my cabin, dressed as a door-to-door bible salesman, offering me the Overlord’s ring to place on Anne Bennett-Dixon, a female revenant-zombie hybrid, so that He could claim her. It hadn’t been the worst surprise I’d had that month, but it certainly wasn’t my favorite memory.
“You will be sent on three missions. Present your prizes to your lady fair, free her from her prison, and Falsefeather will be secure in her nomination.”Aristoxenus held forth a little scroll that he unrolled with melodramatic slowness. “Marnie-Jean Baranuik, DaySitter of Lord Guy Harrick of House Dreppenstedt, you will collect three rescue-artifacts.”
I didn’t dare look at Declan or Batten, though I could feel Kill-Notch’s eyes boring a furious hole in the back of my head. Rescue-artifacts? I didn’t know what that meant, but decided to don my I’m a badass thunderbitch face, hoping some of the restless houses already plotting my downfall might back off. Solid plan, right?
“Fine,” I said with determination, attempting to roll up my sleeves; since they were centuries old and overflowing with layers of lace, this was not easy, and I gave up with a confident flap. “Whatcha got for me?”
The lesser demon said, “The first rescue-artifact on your list will be an Irish fairy’s pot o’ gold.”
I patted my court dress as though I might have one hidden in a pocket. When I didn’t find the imaginary treasure, I motioned to Declan with my thumb. “He’s probably got one. No problem. Next!”
Asmodeus chuckled and faded back into the nether space behind the throne. I made bring it motions with my gloved fingers at the little demon on the bench.
“The second rescue-artifact is the Golden Sap of Huxtahotep.”
“Huxtahotep is my homeboy,” I scoffed, wondering who the hell Huxtahotep was. “Huxter and me, we go way back.”
“Huxtahotep is an Egyptian mummy,” the demon informed me.
“I meant way-way back. I thought these were challenges. You better up your game or dust that goddamn throne off, little flame-spit. My girl Remy and I are totally gonna rock the Casbah.”
Aristoxenus grinned threateningly, like he knew something I didn’t. “The third and final rescue-artifact is a discarded nail from a Nepalese yeti.”
“Now that one is a pisser,” I admitted as the Stonecaller’s eyes flashed red. “There’s only been one yeti sighting in Nepal in the last three years. No matter.” I preformed the Picard Maneuver, tugging determinedly on the waistline of my court dress. “Can I get all this in writing so we’re all clear on the exact nature of these quests?”
Aristoxenus hopped down from his little bench and toddled toward me, his hooves clicking on the marble. He handed over a square envelope, that familiar stationery from the desk of Asmodeus, Demon King of Hell. My name was on the envelope in gold script. Of course it was.
“You sure whipped that up fast,” I muttered at the demons, snatching it from him. Up close, the letter smelled of brimstone.
Asmodeus leaned back into our reality to drop me a wink on His human face that was mirrored by both the ram head and the bull head, though the animals’ eyes fluttered in a seemingly involuntary fashion, without the smug intent of His own. I glanced around at the other DaySitters; they each had an envelope, though I’d not seen either demon move to deliver them.
“And when I find this junk, where will I find her?” I asked. “Where is the Darkest Corner?”
Asmodeus shrugged as well as any creature with three heads could.
“That’s part of the challenge?” I guessed. “Fine. Harry and I will do this. Because Harry and I can do anything. You guys are all trickass motherfuckers, but the joke’s on you. We’re un-fucking-stoppable together.”
Asmodeus shook His human head back and forth slowly, waiting for the implication settle in. When my jaw dropped, His eyes brightened, and He confirmed, “No help for you.”
My breath whistled out. “But I need help.”
He barked a harsh laugh. “No shit, Toots.”
I jabbed a finger at Declan. “What about this idiot? It was practically his idea!”
Declan let out a squeak of objection, but that was all.
Asmodeus nodded. “You may take The Abomination with you, for all the good it will do you.”
“Hey!” Declan said with a sniff. “I don’t know how I got stuck with that nickname. The Priors never meant me.”
“What about my Second?” I hooked a thumb over my shoulder at Kill-Notch. “I mean, he’s pretty useless too
, but I might like to see him naked a few more times before I get murdered on my journey.”
Asmodeus flapped an affirmative bear claw at Batten as though he saw no value in arguing that.
I had many more thoughts on the matter, but only a few coalesced into something I could voice. “What happens if I don’t complete these challenges, or if I can’t find Remy Dreppenstedt in the Darkest Corner?”
Asmodeus rocked forward over Aristoxenus’ shoulder. “You mean, what happens if you fail?”
The word seemed to echo loud and ugly, like a fart in a library. “Fail is such a final word.” I grimaced. “Bumble. Stumble. Those suit me better.”
Aristoxenus laughed then, a classic little hissing sound that reeked of snakes and the underworld.
Asmodeus seemed to consider the houses with a sweep of His human eyes, and it may have been my imagination, but I thought the banners wilted under His gaze. He lifted His voice, though I was sure not a single word of Asmodeus’ proclamations was ever missed in this room. “If the knight-errant does not succeed in her quest to bring the Duchess to ascend the throne, either Aston Sarokhanian or Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt will assume control at Skulesdottir in her stead.”Asmodeus grinned, flashing those broken, nightmarish teeth. “You and Sayomi Mochizuki will face one another in the Olmdalur; if you do not win, Aston Sarokhanian will assume control of Skulesdottir and the Unhallowed Throne, and your soul will be theirs to claim. If you do survive the Olmdalur, Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt will remain at Skulesdottir to rule as king, and you will remain with him to serve.”
“Balls,” I said with a sigh.
“Now, kneel before the throne, both of you,” the Overlord said, and snatched the Stonecaller’s mace.
Declan had moved close enough to me that I could feel his irritation vibrating outside the psi wave of all the other annoyed glares from every direction. I could almost taste Sayomi’s hatred boiling over from my left side. I considered the wisdom of ignoring the demands of a demon king before gathering up my layered skirts and carefully bending a knee to the cold marble floor, my berry print Keds squeaking as I adjusted. Declan glanced at my knee-high, froggy print, green-and-white striped socks, and his glower half-melted into a reluctant, sour smile.