“I confess, you were the one to sow the seed.” Faustus kept right on shaking Davin’s hand, a tight smile on his lips.
Davin waved his free hand. “Ah, but you were the gardener who encouraged the idea to grow. It takes a brave man to take the bigger step, especially one that requires killing a former flame. There was an occasion when I wondered if I should do the same thing, but I didn’t have the mettle.”
Why inherit a throne through marriage when you can simply… take it? While Faustus had been dumped from the suitor race, and we’d been trying to convince Kaya not to marry me, he’d been working on another, more self-serving angle. Davin’s last sentence hadn’t been lost on me, either. He meant my mother. I nearly choked on a stifled snort. He had one thing right—he would never have had the guts to attack her.
Faustus made a face of fake modesty. “You helped me realize that I had bowed and scraped for much too long, and when you spoke of the governments of the surface world, it bolstered my resolve to have an ordinary, everyday citizen as the leader of this city. Myself. Not a sniveling, unworthy specimen who was fortunate enough to be born into the role.”
“Quite right.” Davin offered up one of his name-brand smirks. “The trouble is, when I said I know whom to put my money on, I think you misunderstood me. I only put my money on one horse. Ever.”
Faustus’s eyebrows shot up, his eyes staring at Davin in horror. Purple tendrils snaked out of the Necromancer’s hand and slithered into Faustus’s. He tried to snatch his hand back, but Davin held tight. Not that it would have made any difference. Davin’s death magic was already inside Faustus, and there was nothing the unsuspecting power-grabber could do about it.
I told you so… Now felt like the right time for that. Ovid the backstabber had been stabbed in the back by a sneakier backstabber, but they’d forgotten that Davin was the backstabber to end all backstabbers. And he’d gone and twisted the final knife into Faustus.
I waited for the guards to do something. Their motives baffled the living daylights out of me, but they’d fought for Faustus just five minutes ago, so why weren’t they doing anything now? They stood where they were, some of them choosing to look away from the sight on the dais. But I couldn’t. Not even as Faustus unleashed a terrible scream that splintered through the air, as though his insides were melting.
I’d been on the receiving end of Davin’s magic enough times to know that it hurt like the devil himself had jabbed his pitchfork into my guts, but this sounded different. This sounded exactly as it looked—like a man being tortured to death. The purple tendrils snaked up Faustus’s arm, leaving a trail of blackened veins behind, visible where he’d rolled his sleeve up. The skin around them decayed rapidly, sloughing off in grayish green chunks that plopped to the floor with a grim squelch.
“Why aren’t you doing anything?” Luke shouted. “Who the heck are you loyal to?”
Davin laughed while he sent more of his decaying tendrils into Faustus. “That would be me.”
“What?” I blurted out, glancing around at the awkward sentries. With every scream that shattered the air, they flinched a little more. Did they not understand what kind of monster they’d aligned themselves with if they were siding with Davin?
The black veins spiderwebbed out of the collar of Faustus’s silky overcoat and up his neck, taking their poison to his face. With each push from Davin, the death magic slid quicker through Faustus’s system, until he looked like a cracked porcelain doll. I nearly looked away when they reached his eyeballs, turning each to ash until nothing remained but two grisly hollows. But it didn’t stop there. The flesh glided off his features, revealing blackened bone beneath. He was burning without fire, the impression only growing worse as the bone of his forearm broke apart and floated away in flecks of dark dust. A few drifted onto Apollo, who was standing close by in the custody of a guard. He immediately retched, hiding his face in his shoulder to stop himself from throwing up.
“Who can really offer extended life?” Smiling, Davin huffed like the Big Bad Wolf and blew part of Faustus’s skull away. He turned to us triumphantly. “Ovid and Faustus both claimed to, but I am the only one with the capabilities. And I have already shown these gracious men what I can do.”
The guards turned their heads, looking anywhere but at the rest of us.
Melody fought against her captor. “This won’t do anything for the chunk of soul that you’re missing! You can’t fill that hole with power. It’ll just get wider and wider, with every awful thing you do, until you can’t feel anything anymore. You’re a soulless pig!”
Davin laughed, focusing back on Faustus as his clothes sank inward. They had nothing keeping their shape anymore. “Soulless? Would a soulless, unfeeling man resurrect the old and dying relatives of all these fine sentries? Would a soulless pig promise to do the same for them, when their time comes, and ask for only a tiny bit of assistance in return?”
“That’s exactly what a soulless pig would do,” Nash fired back. “Manipulate vulnerability for personal gain.” Huntress barked in agreement.
“Then we’ll have to agree to disagree on the semantics.” Nothing was left of the usurper, aside from his clothes. They crumpled to the ground in a heap, streaked with ash and glistening globules of whatever hadn’t been toasted by the death magic. Of all the things I’d watched Davin do, this had to be up there in the top three worst. I didn’t even like Faustus, but his screams would haunt me for a long time to come.
Suddenly, Davin turned and darted for Kaya. Kneeling at her side, he scooped her up into his arms and closed his eyes. More purple Chaos streamed out of him and sank into Kaya’s lifeless form.
“You sick piece of crap!” He was trying to get rid of the evidence, doing the same thing to Kaya’s body that he’d done to Faustus’s living one. He’d probably go for Ovid next.
“That’s the trouble with you, Finch,” Davin muttered, eyes still closed. “Always jumping to the wrong conclusions.”
Realization dawned as the purple tendrils worked their magic. They flowed through Kaya’s body, illuminating her inner workings. Her organs glowed beneath her dress, and her veins lit up like the Fourth of July. I focused on her unmoving heart, only to jolt against my captor when it gave a tentative beat. Another followed, and another, until it had a steady rhythm going. Her lungs came next, morphing from useless chunks of tissue to two moving bellows—expanding and contracting as her breath returned. If I squinted hard enough, I could almost see the blood starting to flow through her veins again, as though Davin had flipped a life switch and brought her back.
Slowly, Kaya opened her eyes, blinking in confusion as she looked up at the man looming over her. “D-Davin?”
“Welcome back, my darling.” He opened his eyes and slipped a hand into his pocket. Before I could even register what he was doing, he pulled out a glass vial and wrenched the stopper out with his teeth. Pinching Kaya’s cheeks with his free hand, he poured the liquid between her teeth. He proceeded to clamp his hand over her mouth and nose, giving her the choice to swallow the liquid or choke on it.
No… No… Holy crap, NO! Déjà vu hit me like a ton of bricks. Ovid had done the same thing to me on my wedding day. My worst fears came true as a garbled gulp signaled that she’d swallowed the potion. I noted he didn’t take any. Why would he? This way, he got a lovestruck slave without turning into one himself.
“Tell me he didn’t just do what I think he did,” Nash groaned.
I nodded, dumbstruck. “I think he just did exactly what you think he did.”
“He put the love spell on her!” Melody yelped with eyes wide.
“No.” Apollo shook his head, his face falling. “No, you cannot do that to her! I will not allow it!”
Davin took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and daubed some of the blood from Kaya’s face. The wound in her neck was gone. She stared at him strangely, no doubt trying to piece together what had happened. There was no way the effects could’ve taken hold yet… not unless h
e’d souped up the recipe to make it even more potent.
“You don’t really have much of a say, Apollo.” Davin continued to dab away the blood, smiling down at the woman he’d just drugged. “Don’t listen to them, my dear. They’re just jealous that they will never have a love like ours.” He lifted his gaze and hit me with his best Davinesque grin, one of utter triumph.
“You played everyone… without even leaving your prison cell.” I let my blown mind leak through my mouth. “How?”
Davin pushed a strand of bloodied hair from Kaya’s face. “It’s actually very simple.” He smiled secretively. “I just outsmarted everyone.”
“Did you, my love?” Kaya lifted a weak hand to Davin’s cheek. “Forgive me… I do not recall what has happened. I must have fainted for a moment.”
“I saved you, darling, from those who would have caused you great harm.” Davin covered her hand with his. “But you need not fear anything ever again, because I’m here…” He eyeballed me again, his lips curving into the smuggest smirk of his career. “And I’m here to stay.”
Thirty-One
Finch
You learned a trick or two from my mother, didn’t you?
They’d need a bulldozer to come and scrape my jaw off the floor. Davin had upped his game, and that was putting it mildly. If they gave out awards for villainy, he’d be Meryl Streep.
“Don’t worry, my sweet, I’ll make sure no one tries to hurt you again.” Davin gestured to his bevy of obedient zombies. “Please see to it that these miscreants are Cuffed. The magicless one, too—she’s acting coy now, but she’s far more powerful than she would have you believe.”
The guard behind me slapped a Cuff around my throat before I could muster a hint of argument. The rest of the hired hands followed suit, closing Cuffs around everyone’s necks until nobody was left. Davin hadn’t mentioned that Nash was also technically magicless, which meant he had no clue that I was the one wielding some serious Sanguine powers now. At least we had something against him. Although, to my disappointment, my supercharged rush of Chaos had faded—probably at some point during all the plot twists and backstabbing that had gone on.
One unlucky sentry tried to put a Cuff on Huntress, but the pooch had evidently had enough of folks manhandling her. With a gnash of sharp jaws, she almost took his hand off. He wrenched it back sharply, and Huntress bounded away, skirting around the rest of Davin’s men to get to the ringleader himself.
“Huntress, don’t!” Nash boomed, but she wasn’t listening.
The fearless husky leapt through the air, fangs flashing. She collided with Davin, knocking him to the ground with her full weight.
Her jaws snapped at him, tearing a gash across the side of his chin. I understood Nash’s fear, but I couldn’t help silently egging her on. She had more guts and agility than the rest of us put together. Davin tried to wrestle with her, tugging at her fur and trying to get a grip around her throat, but Huntress wriggled and ducked like a big, fluffy eel. With every lunge back in, she managed to rip another chunk out of him. His sleek suit would need a trip to the dry cleaners, though it’d probably be better off in the garbage.
“Get her off me!” Davin raged, unable to control the beast.
Huntress dove in again, clamping her jaws around his throat and tossing her head wildly. Chaos on a bike, if she managed to split him open, then it’d leave these guards with no one to follow! He’d get back up again, sure, but not anytime soon. Perhaps, if he appeared to be permanently dead, these sentries would fold like origami and go back to obeying their old king for the sake of their necks. Not ideal, but Ovid would certainly be more open to freeing us than Davin would.
A blast of Chaos flung Huntress away from Davin, her pained yelp prompting Nash to battle against his guard. She skidded against the side of the throne and lay there, panting heavily in a daze. It hurt all the more given where the blast had come from—not from Davin, not from any of the useless guards, but from Kaya.
Thank Chaos she’s still weak, was all I could think. If she’d unleashed her full might on Huntress, to protect the man she clearly now thought she loved, we might’ve been dealing with a much sadder scenario. One that Nash would never have recovered from.
“My love?” Kaya crawled to Davin. “Goodness! You are bleeding!”
My love? What? That was quick! Too quick. The love spell had taken a while to hit me, but this had worked rapidly. Another trick of Davin’s—it had to be. There was no other explanation.
Davin put his arms around her and glared at Nash. “It will heal, darling. It is nothing I can’t endure.” He turned his attention to her. “Thank you for acting so swiftly, my precious.”
My precious? Oh yeah, he had some Gollum parallels, all right. A slinking, crafty creature who trailed us wherever we went, with an obsession for shiny, powerful things and a willingness to betray anyone to get what he wanted. The only difference was that I had no sympathy for Davin. “We should get you to a physician,” she insisted, dabbing her sleeve against the wound on his chin. “This may become infected if left untreated.”
He gazed down into her eyes. “There is no need for that, I promise. I will heal soon enough, and there is no infection on this earth that could kill me.” He wasn’t looking at us, but I knew the statement was for our benefit. A reminder that we couldn’t ever be truly rid of him. “You are the only one I’m worried about. You’ve been through so much.”
“Have I?” She stopped dabbing at his wound. “I cannot recall.”
“Here, my dear, allow me to remind you.” He cradled her to his chest and stared around the throne room, addressing Kaya but making sure everyone could hear. “You and I desire the loyalty of the Atlantean people, and we want to raise Atlantis. It was your suggestion, sweetheart. Do you remember? The legend of the Luminary?”
Kaya nodded uncertainly. “A hero would come from the surface world and help us return Atlantis to its former glory.” Her head turned up sharply, an excited look on her face. “You! Yes, of course. You are the hero who was promised. My hero. The hero that will change everything.”
Davin grinned like a wolf on the prow, about to take down a frightened deer. “Exactly, my darling. I am the hero who was promised. And I will be the hero that this world, and the surface world, deserves. A shining light in the darkness.”
“Don’t make me laugh!” I couldn’t stop the words from spewing out. Davin wouldn’t know heroics if they poked him in the eyes, and he definitely wasn’t anyone’s shining light. An intensely irritating and clever thorn in our sides, sure, but not a benevolent glow that gave folks the warm and fuzzies.
“I mean it. No doubt you believe that I intend to carry on the work of Eris, but I don’t. I don’t care to start wars or prove our superiority to those without magic. Those are the ideas of lesser minds. I wish only to be a savior so that the world will worship us without us ever having to leave our thrones. I will give the people all they need to understand that Necromancy is the greatest gift the universe has ever given. Even the magicals will not be able to deny it. And I will show everyone that I am the hero of this story, not the villain.”
Kaya chuckled. “Yes… you are a hero, and you are my savior.”
The love spell had worked way too swiftly, definitely a result of some changes the Necromancer had made to the potion. Any semblance of the Kaya I’d known had gone. Davin had everyone exactly where he wanted them… right under his thumb.
* * *
The slimeball swiftly tucked old Ovid away, somewhere no one would find out that their former ruler had received a dose of resurrection. I had to wonder why he was keeping Ovid alive at all, but who knew what went on in Davin’s head. He’d have his reasons, even if I couldn’t figure them out. As for the rest of us—stripped of our magic and helpless to stop anything—we were forced to watch his plan unfurl.
Only Kaya knew the raising spell, so she had to instruct everyone on what needed to be done. But it was all for the Necromancer’s benefit. His mini
ons set to work on the preparations, following the orders of their real leader through the conduit of his wife. Soon, they heaved in an enormous golden dish and set it up in the center of the room. Etchings of sea creatures and land animals adorned the sides, alongside Atlantean structures and palaces that seemed a lot more terrestrial, with the ever-present figure of Ganymede carved at every quarter of the proverbial hour, all the way around the dish. Kaya and Davin observed the goings-on between longing stares and the occasional passionate kiss.
Meanwhile, we were arranged like collectibles up on the dais, lined up behind the throne with a few guards to ourselves. Lucky us. The guards watched us carefully as crates of blood vials started to pile in. It was painstaking stuff, with the sentries having to tip every vial into the waiting dish, to the point where I figured we could be here for a while.
“Any bright ideas?” I side-eyed Ryann, who stood on my right. Lux still had control, but with the Cuff around her neck, there wasn’t a lot she could do. Which didn’t make much of a difference, to be fair.
“Stop talking!” The guard behind me gave me a sharp jab in the spine with the pointy end of his spear.
Lux glanced back, and I didn’t like the terror in her eyes. A subtle shake of her head confirmed what I already knew. We’d reached the end of the road. We’d tried to stop this raising spell from taking place, but it hadn’t been enough. My extra juice had gone, Lux had a Cuff on her neck, and everyone else looked… defeated. Even Huntress seemed to be done, lying at Nash’s feet with a Cuff buried in her fur.
After all Davin’s interventions, and all the times we’d managed to push the scumbag back, his perseverance had paid off. He held the entire nation in the palm of his hand. Soon, he’d have the whole world. What he’d do with that world had yet to be seen, or heard, or explained. Davin’s vagueness at peak abstraction.
Harley Merlin 16: Finch Merlin and the Blood Tie Page 27