Mentored in Fire

by Breene, K. F.

  I just wondered if I would be fine. Lucifer was tricky. Trickier than anyone I’d ever dealt with. Layers upon layers of secrets and lies simmered just beneath the caring surface he showed me. It was different with Darius. Although vampires were notorious for being manipulative, and he could manipulate people into pretzels, he genuinely cared about me. He’d gone so long without feeling that his emotions discomfited him. Which was what made it so easy to tell the difference when he was feigning emotions to manipulate me. I usually caught on pretty quickly and zeroed in on his motive. I took peace in knowing that.

  But with Lucifer, I could feel his affection. I could see his excitement to have me around. I could even sense his pride in me, wrapped up in the strange push and pull he had with Cahal. He laughed, played jokes, messed with me, but made sure I had everything I wanted. It felt genuine—he felt genuine. He couldn’t be, though. Not with the way he kept this place running. He was a lot more balanced than the elves, but he clearly had a ruthless underbelly. I just hadn’t seen it yet.

  I had a feeling most people didn’t until it was too late.

  I needed to stay vigilant.

  “You did this place up better than even the vampires could,” I said, marveling at the sweep of heavy velvet curtains that should’ve looked really dated and ridiculous but somehow paired nicely with the textured wallpaper and modern sconces lit with his special brand of lighting. “And how do you make those glow?”

  I could just see his cheek lift in a smile as he stepped off the first stair on the grand staircase leading all the way down to the castle doors, and hovered above them at an angle. His glance back said he would like me to follow his lead.

  “Simon says…” I did the same, not as smooth, maybe not as polished, but perfectly capable of the slow hover.

  “Very good. You are much farther along than any heir I have met thus far.”

  “Why do you call them—us—heirs instead of children?” I increased my pace to keep up as he floated down. It felt weird that there was no air. It would have been much cooler if my hair were blowing out behind me.

  “Because it hurts too much to remember lost children.” He settled onto the ground gracefully. I bumped down next to him. He looked me in the eye and put his fist to his heart. “My hope is that you can survive, even with the magic of those suffering fools.”

  “The gods?”

  His eyes narrowed. “They are not divine. They are merely angels. They have a world, like this one. They are immortal, but so am I. And the elves and many other creatures. Their magic is powerful, sure, but not unstoppable. Not for me.”

  “Right. Old grudges, picked scabs, a small bit of jealousy—I got you. Mum’s the word.”

  He jerked back just a little, his face going blank except for a small crease between his brows. Something moved behind his eyes, something feral and wild. Something vicious and violent. I’d hit his weak spot. I prepared for a violent response.

  He erupted in laughter.

  It was my turn to jerk back, this reaction wholly unexpected.

  His guffaws filled the huge room, big and full and delighted. “My gracious.” He wiped his eyes and then laughed again, shaking with it. “Very good.” This time it was pride that filled his gaze. “Very good. Very few people push my buttons, Reagan. Very few. You did it in such a way that it was every bit as infuriating as it was distracting. Tell me…” He put out his elbow, and I took his arm without thinking. Darius had trained me, it seemed. “Where did you learn a trait so valuable? Or, more accurately, how did you hone it? Because that trait cannot be taught.”

  “I’ve done a lot of surviving. It’s a tool unlike any other.”

  “Hmm…” He pushed out a hand, and the grand double doors opened before us. The sun shone down, utterly fake, I was certain, but warm and soft all the same. “You asked about the light…”

  He turned us to the right, along a little path flanked with flowers. Service critters shuffled out of our way, dashing into the underbrush or dive-bombing into what looked like rosebushes, some with twisting black flowers and some with white lilies instead of roses. They clearly thought being in the Great Master’s way was worse than any injuries they might sustain from getting out of the way.

  “It is a very complex illusion, no different than the elves have in the Realm. Their sun isn’t real.”

  “Yes, I realized that when I tore down one of their illusions.”

  “Very good, yes.”

  “But they use fairy lights more often.”

  “That is because they have a lot of fairies who have no choice but to work for nothing. We do not have fairies, and so I must expend the effort to light the dark places. Of course, most of my subjects see in the dark, so I don’t have to light all of them…”

  “Right, of course.”

  “That will be one of the last things you learn, I think. First, let’s start simple.” He put out his hand, palm up, and a little flower curled into existence very slowly, so that I could see each fiber as it stitched together, almost like sewing a design into fabric.

  The resulting daisy was a little off color, dirty cream instead of white, and not totally detailed. It didn’t look natural.

  I mimicked him and copied it anyway. I knew from Cahal not to get ahead of myself. The battles I’d thought I was going to win always hurt the worst to lose.

  The petals of my daisy showed up crisp white, the vibrant center dotted with various shades of yellows and oranges, to show the pollen. His pale green stem was more shamrock on mine, and I tried to color in some slight shadows on the petals that would work with the positioning of the sun. The added detail took a little longer, but he didn’t urge me to move faster, or call me out for doing more than he had. Instead, he waited patiently, slowing his pace as I worked on the shadowing and then picking it up to a leisurely stroll once I was finished.

  “Fantastic.” He beamed, and his flower drifted toward mine. He lowered his palm, and I did mine, letting the two flowers hover beside us as we walked. “You improved upon my design, and you did a remarkable job. You put in touches that would fool the wandering eye. Now…” He held up a finger, and in a moment his design perfectly matched mine, except his shadows were relative to the faux-sun. His leaves were veined and his stem shimmered a little. “You do not need to paint on the environmental effects. If you do, it’ll only be correct when the plant and sun are in that exact position.”

  “Right…” I lowered my brow, concentrating, and he halted his steps.

  “Did you have a comment or question?” he asked.

  “No. Just…learning.”

  His smile was soft and his nod slight. “Here, let’s sit, and I’ll show you how to create that effect.”

  I paid close attention to what he did so I didn’t miss anything, but I needn’t have tried so hard. He slowed down when I faltered, and explained more thoroughly when I had trouble grasping something. He was as patient of a teacher as anyone I’d ever met. Although my training in the past had usually involved some sort of violence, from my mother working with me on up, and I would have thought I’d be bored without it, I was too focused to notice. I was too enraptured with what I could create to want any other sort of training.

  “Great Master!”

  The urgent voice knocked me out of my concentration, midway through building a purple elephant that I planned to surprise Cahal with (he wouldn’t be amused, which would amuse me more). A lady-demon with incredibly long legs—too long; it was weird—and a short torso glided to a stop at the edges of the garden in which we sat. If it had been anywhere else, she would’ve been panting. As it was, her carefully composed face and too-far-apart eyes conveyed perfectly well that she considered it an emergency.

  “You guys need some pictures of what humanoid creatures actually look like,” I murmured.

  “Great Master,” she said with more decorum, clearly because she hadn’t expected me to be sitting with him.

  “Yes, Victoria, what is it?” he asked curtly.
>
  “There is an issue that…needs your attention,” she said, a little too fast. “Greatly.”

  He studied her for a moment, her frame tense and shoulders tight. It didn’t take a genius to know something had gone gravely wrong in his domain.

  “Of course.” His gaze slid my way. “Forgive me. How about dinner tonight—”

  “No, Great Master, I do not think that would be possible,” Victoria cut in.

  “Is it because you will be sewing, since no one sells pants to fit those gams?” I murmured.

  A smile drifted across Lucifer’s lips. Victoria’s eyes cut my way.

  “Now is not the time,” he told me.

  The chastisement was slight, but it felt as though the teacher had slapped my hand with a ruler.

  I furrowed my brow, surprised by the uncomfortable pang in my middle. I wasn’t sure when I’d started to value his good opinion enough to affect me, but I needed to tone that down right quick. I was technically a captive. Stockholm syndrome had to be a thing between teacher and pupil. Or else he was just really good at manipulating emotions in a very short period of time.

  “The issue is…rather…large in scope,” Victoria said, back on track, eyes narrowed. She hadn’t liked that comment very much.

  Lucifer nodded stiffly, and I could tell he was confused and not used to hiding that fact. “Of course,” he said, a little drawn out this time. Standing, he put out a hand to keep me put. “Please, enjoy this lovely garden. Practice. Be at ease. I’ll have the whiskey—our likeness, anyway—sent to your rooms. Tomorrow we will see the garden I fashioned after your mother.”

  My heart gave a mighty leap and my stomach swirled, but I was careful not to show any of that on my face or in my body. Hopefully.

  “Sure, sounds good,” I replied, blasé, settling back. I wanted to see how much I retained of his teaching. Then I needed to go find Cahal so we could figure out a way to get a message to Penny and the others, telling them to turn back. To stay safe. That I would get out of here somehow, without their help, and didn’t want them making this situation worse.

  Because if there was anyone in all the worlds who could create an issue that needed the Great Master’s direct attention, a situation that was “very large in scope,” it was her. And while I didn’t have proof directly, I could read the room.

  She’d be in incredible danger—they all would.

  Seven

  What…

  Lucifer’s mind stuttered to a stop when he flew into the vicinity of the river. The water boiled below him, this area home to some dangerous rapids that would overturn boats twice as big as those carrying his navita. Rough-hewn rock loomed above them, exposed. What should be the beach on the other side was melting away into the rocks and weeds and ugliness of the natural landscape.

  Who… What…

  He couldn’t form a coherent thought. He’d never seen this before. Never, in all his years, had something dissolved his illusions to this magnitude. The elves had tried. The angels had tweaked and manhandled. But nothing had acted like a disease, like acid, and burned it all away.

  What sort of being had this kind of power? This kind of magic? While the vampires who’d infiltrated his kingdom peddled magic, it wasn’t to this magnitude.

  Gathering himself, he flew forward over the river in his demon form, Tatsu flying alongside. Victoria, also in demon form, rode her dragon, a shimmering green spectacle that usually caught the light.

  Not so, now. There was no light. The sun had dissipated with the rest of the illusion. It would take days to fix, as it had been one of the biggest illusions, servicing a vast area.

  Anger boiled within him.

  Was this retaliation for what he’d done to the elves’ castle? Could they be so stupid?

  He could lay waste to their illusions. He could shelter the vampires in the Underworld. They’d come fleeing from the real sun, which would be exposed if the Realm’s network of magic came crashing down…and they’d stay so they could reproduce.

  In fact, he might just do that anyway. War was imminent, and the vampire Vlad was having some trouble wrangling all of his recruits. Lucifer might be the guiding shove they needed. They would join him out of necessity and help him tear down the elves, once and for all.

  He landed on the far bank, in the heart of the destruction. The fog had been completely torn down in this area, not even a trace of it left behind. All the docks were visible, many of the boats physically tied up and bobbing against the ends. Six boats were gone.

  “What happened here?” he boomed, in his humanoid form now, looking around at the gathered mass of creatures. They stood with wide eyes, blinking, stupid.

  “Sire.” A sniveling half-powered demon, no more than one of the creatures living in the Edges, hobbled up with a bowed back, its head low. “A vampire passed this way before…the disturbance.”

  Lucifer huffed humorlessly. Disturbance was putting it mildly.

  “A vampire? Do all this?” Lucifer scoffed. “Preposterous. What of the boats? Six are gone—where did they land?”

  “I have that list here, Great Master.” Victoria, back in humanoid form, her dragon off to the side, unrolled a scroll and held it out to him. “Two boats are completely unaccounted for. The Boatmen can’t be found.”

  Lucifer tapped one of the sect names, where the record indicated that three boats had landed and dropped off living cargo. “Vlad the vampire deals heavily with this sect, does he not? They visit him in the Edges.”

  “Yes, sire.” The sniveling half-powered demon wrung its hands. “Six vampires crossed the river behind the group that created this commotion. There was a clear leader, though we aren’t sure…” Its voice trailed away within Lucifer’s severe gaze. “There was a clear leader. Vlad, certainly.”

  It wasn’t convinced, clearly, but that was no matter. Who else could it be?

  Lucifer lowered the scroll a little, staring down at the cowering demon without seeing him. “He snuck into my kingdom when it was vulnerable?”

  “Yes, sire. So it would seem, sire.”

  “Here are the Boatmen.” Victoria held out her hand to indicate them, walking in single file, led by a wrangler. Their backs were bowed and knees awkwardly bent, not used to time on land. They rarely left their boats. There was magic stopping them from doing just that.

  “And you said two boats are unaccounted for?” Lucifer asked Victoria as the Boatmen drew near.

  “Yes. Their living cargo and the Boatmen with them. Another landed…” Leaning over the scroll, she tapped on the sect name. A warlike sect, low in status. “The boat was found downstream, however. Empty.”

  “The boat was intact?” He handed back the scroll.

  “Yes, Great Master. The Boatman was gone, however. Lost.”

  “Killed, you mean. That sect has no outside affiliations that I know of. They are not inclined to deal with outsiders.” He speared Victoria with a glare. “What have they said?”

  “A lone vampire, Great Master,” she said. “I have someone asking questions. There was chaos, last I heard. The conspector was killed, his dragon released.”

  “A vampire.” Lucifer put his hands on his hips. “A vampire did all this…” He swept his hand out, a trail of fire in its wake. “A vampire took the safeguards off the water, killed a Boatman, and killed a conspector out from under a dragon? A vampire.”

  Victoria lowered her gaze. “Despite the illogic of it, those are the reports we have so far.”

  A blast of frigid air thundered out from him, sending the lesser demons flying, landing where they may. Fire was quick to follow, coating his body.

  “Boatman. Come here.” He pointed in front of him.

  The wrangler ushered one of them forward.

  “Hello, Great Master,” it said. “What can I tell you?”

  They were a species of wraith, altered for his purposes. They had been magically connected, and what one knew, they all knew. It was the safest way to monitor the comings and goings of his k
ingdom. Given that those leaving and entering knew that, they would know there was no point in killing a Boatman.

  A stranger was in their midst.

  “Who tore down the fog?”

  “I am sorry, I do not know.”

  The perpetrator hadn’t done it from a boat, then. The Boatmen were only active when they were needed. It prolonged their shelf-life, as it were. They were gruesome to make; Lucifer hated doing it.

  “Of the last six boats to leave, who was in the one that landed in the Warsol sect?”

  “Walrus piloted that ship. He landed at the Warsol sect with Black Sheep and Sparkly Thongs.”

  Lucifer shook his head, his brow furrowing. “Repeat the names again.”

  “Walrus, Black Sheep, and Sparkly Thongs.”

  “I don’t…” He looked at Victoria.

  “Walrus is the vampire Darius,” she said. “He must know we would have that name. Once you give your name to a Boatman, you can give no other.”

  Lucifer half thought he was losing his mind. “The Boatman allowed him to cross the first time—any time—using Walrus as his name?”

  “Yes, sire. He traveled with Eggman at first. We believe that is the heir.”

  Lucifer let his breath out slower. Her magic—the strength of her mighty magic—would be enough to addle any Boatman. Once the name was accepted, it was set. “Black Sheep and…Sparkly Thong?”

  “Sparkly Thongzzz, yes. Plural. It’s English from the Brink. Black sheep is a furry sort of animal. For the other, sparkly, you know. A thong is a small slip of undergarment you likely have encountered—”

  “I know what it is!” His voice thundered across the way. Anyone who wasn’t expressly needed in the area ran. Everyone else withered where they stood. “Those aren’t names. They are not proper magical identifiers. What are their names? Who are they?”

  “Ah. Well…” Victoria forced herself to straighten, and Lucifer could see the effort behind it. “I am honestly not sure why those names were accepted. The heir was accounted for, of course. So there really is no explanation.”