The Rise of the Dark Lord

by Ashley, Kristen

  “Pre-turning-Fae, could you kick a bunch of werewolves’ asses?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered. “But I’d like to think I could hold my own.”

  I grinned at him. “I’m looking forward to ending up shimmery.”

  He grinned back.

  Then I gave him a peck and went to the kitchen.

  By the by, when I got there, BecBec was deep into a gallon of ice cream, and as ice cream was wont to do, she was a lot calmer because of it.

  I broached the shimmer subject and she confirmed it had to do with sex, in a way.

  Shimmer was the gossamer from their wings. It often just got on them if they were flying, and from their motion, it was dripping.

  Or, say, they were flying by another faerie, and the other faerie’s dust hit them.

  But during sex, the wings got involved, and shimmer went overdrive.

  Totally could not wait until Ash got his wings.

  Just sayin’.

  13 June

  Okay, well…

  Shit.

  Completely forgot I had a cookbook deadline and totally have not finished writing said cookbook.

  As am contractually bound (which means legally bound, or I’d lose a shit-ton of money) to produce this cookbook, saving the world had to wait for recipes.

  Lucy and I were going to take over the kitchen and not rest until we hammered it all out.

  Bad news: I could not save the world while making up recipes or perfecting recipes I’d already made up.

  Good news: Ash proved he was human and not superhuman when he refused to be a taste-tester because, “If I spend days eating your food, I’ll grow a paunch and you won’t think I’m perfect anymore.”

  “The perfect boyfriend would risk that for his girlfriend’s cookbook.” (Me.)

  “Then I suppose I’m not perfect.” (Ash)

  “Not getting a paunch is more important than my World Cookery Domination?” (Me)

  “Yes.” (Ash)

  “Okay, you’re no longer the most perfect boyfriend in the history of all boyfriends who ever existed. You’re just the most perfect boyfriend I’ve ever had.” (Me)

  “I can live with that.” (Ash)

  Huh.

  16 June

  If…

  I never…

  Bake…

  Again…

  I…

  Will…

  Be…

  Ecstatic.

  17 June

  I hate baking.

  19 June

  Fell asleep with head on the kitchen counter next to my rendition of a prinzrengententorte.

  Dreamed a monster made of flour and Crisco took over Denver.

  And ate me.

  Then he vomited me out covered in crust, egg washed me with his spit and shoved me in an oven.

  Yes, I had this dream.

  Ack!

  This cookbook needs to be done yesterday!

  21 June

  It’s done!

  It’s off to our publisher!

  We beat the deadline by two whole days!

  Glory, glory hallelujah!

  22 June

  Ash has chartered another plane.

  Why, you ask?

  Because Fane has Endora Eccles.

  And Fane might have a killer protective streak when it came to females with vampire blood and got his life philosophy about the gender divide deal two centuries ago.

  But chicks who hurt females with vampire blood?

  He was totes equal opportunity with that.

  And get this.

  Dad and Gabe were already in Transylvania (okay, Romania, but I prefer calling it Transylvania, because, obvs, that’s way cooler).

  And they were all in for the make-her-pay, get-info-from-her-at-all-costs gig.

  Prunella was beside herself.

  She was not down with Endora going rogue, but she also didn’t want her brutalized by vampires.

  And guess who she expects to do something about it?

  Yeah.

  You got it.

  Me.

  25 June

  Back in Castle Noapte and we’ll just say I’m not enjoying this stay as much as I did the last one.

  I’ll catch you up:

  Cystien is here.

  Scary Faerie is here.

  As evidenced by Maithieliel, and now Scary Faerie, faeries make a very disturbing (and loud) noise when they experience extreme pain.

  In this instance (thankfully), I have not seen it, just heard it, as I’ve not been allowed downstairs.

  Ash has and he came back up not looking happy.

  I’ve demanded an audience with Fane and Cystien.

  I’ve been denied.

  I’ve demanded an audience with Asa, Dimitri, Constantin, Wadim and/or Bill.

  I’ve been denied.

  I demanded to see my father and brother.

  They came up.

  But only to share that I should turn my attention to something else, they were on a mission, and nothing was going to stop that mission.

  I threw a hissy fit.

  They ignored my hissy fit and returned below the earth.

  Now I was in my room with my wand, some makeshift magickal implements and a lot of determination and I was either going to astral project myself down there or open up a window to see what was going on.

  Wish me luck.

  27 June

  All right.

  Well.

  First, we can just say I have still not mastered astral projection.

  We’ll leave out the details of that and the psychological scars I left on some unsuspecting Romanians in a local town.

  I had a lot more success with opening up a magickal portal to look in on the action.

  I will preface this by saying, I’m still not a fan in the slightest of torture.

  So it pains me to share that shit works.

  We now know what Agatha Darling, Endora Eccles and Scary Faerie are up to.

  They’re making Jeremy Bligh into a Dark Lord.

  28 June

  Just got done with powwow that included Ash, Fane, Cystien, Dad, Gabe, Marcus, Ambrose Bennett, Prunella Craddock and Aidan.

  Newsflash: You can make a mortal, non-magical man into a Dark Lord.

  Another Newsflash: Everyone thought their last attempt to do this (making Dad a Dark Lord that night on the Tor) was a joke because actually doing it is just straight-up psycho.

  Yet Another Newsflash: Because of that, this has not been done in centuries.

  The last time it was done was in the year 1347.

  And yes, for you history buffs, I can confirm that was the year the Black Death started and let me just share that not all the deaths caused by that sitch were because of the bubonic plague.

  Like, a whole lot of them.

  You hear what I’m saying to you?

  The dude some baddie witches gave these powers was finally defeated after five years of hunting this guy and attempting to take his ass out.

  Le Société almost went out of existence, so many fell to this Dark Lord, this was how serious this asshole was.

  And Another Newsflash: The journey to this is a seriously icky one.

  So icky, and long, and involved, and expensive, and dangerous, and illegal (and not just in the magical world, for the sake of not letting too much out so anyone will get any ideas, we’ll just say a still-beating human heart and consumption of said heart is part of the process—like I said, ick), even if it’s been attempted in the intervening time since the last Dark Lord was created, it never came to fruition.

  This was also partly due to the fact that it was stopped in mid-process.

  Like we had to do now.

  Last Newsflash: Marcus and Dr. Bennett shared that now they’re thinking it wasn’t so much Josie I was meant to keep safe who was going to save the world.

  Nope.

  Although that was going to happen, Josie was going to do some pretty epic shit, and they reckoned I was going to keep h
er safe so she could do it, this being because I already did.

  But upon some further study of the Mathilda Prophesies, they thought it was me who had to go up against this guy and take him out.

  This is how that news went down:

  “Say what?” (me, shouting)

  “Matty.” (Aidan murmuring)

  Sexy buzzing noise (Ash growling, we’ll just say my man was more unhappy than me that I was up against a frigging Dark Lord.)

  “So the last guy who had these powers took out sixty percent of the world’s population, and this time, I’m supposed to stop him?” (me, totally hysterical, totally not caring, because I was totally freaking out)

  “At this time, at least we can be assured that he hasn’t yet assumed his full powers.” (Fane)

  “Because the hottest fall fashions don’t include Hazmat, even though Hazmat isn’t going to save anyone from this asshole?” (Me)

  “Yes.” (Fane)

  Gah!

  “Uh, did we not get the gist that she was going to go for something like this the last time she tried to make a Dark Lord?” (me, to Prunella and Dad)

  “We thought she was just acting out.” (Prunella)

  “No one took that seriously.” (Dad)

  “Except, apparently, Agatha!” (me, shouting again)

  No response. (Dad and Prunella)

  “Okay, at this juncture, can I just point out you all are wrong about the Prophesies, like a lot.” (Me)

  Total silence. (Everyone else)

  “And at this juncture, I think maybe I should finally be able to read these Prophesies so we can get my take on them.” (Me)

  “Matty, we discussed this.” (Aidan)

  “Yes, and I didn’t agree back then that I should be kept from the Prophesies, and I really do not agree right now.” (Me)

  More total silence. (Everyone)

  “I can assume they don’t say I succeed.” (Me)

  Another sexy buzzing sound. (Ash)

  They didn’t say I succeeded.

  “The result is not prophesied, no.” (Ambrose, confirming my deduction)

  “Ack!” (Me) Then to Ash. “This means we so could be destined to get divorced.”

  “Mathilda, we are not going to get divorced.” (Ash, in a rumbly way that even in the circumstances made my nipples get hard)

  “Are they married?” (Prunella, whispering)

  “I would hope my son didn’t get married without inviting me.” (Marcus, not whispering)

  “You will have the Fae.” (Cystien, ignoring Marcus and Prunella)

  Well, that was something.

  “And you’ll have the vampires.” (Dad)

  “Absolutely.” (Fane)

  Well, that was something too.

  “I think this will unite everybody.” (Prunella) “For you will have my wand, Mathilda.”

  Well, smack me with a stick.

  “Seriously?” (Me to Prunella)

  “My wand and, when they know this is Agatha’s plan, and she’s not just registering her protest at change in the wiccan world, I cannot imagine a single witch who has a shred of courage and decency would not offer her own.” (Prunella)

  It was at that, it hit me.

  “So, one can deduce that I save the world and unite the world by going up against this douchebag.” (Me)

  A lot of nodding. (Everyone else)

  Gluh.

  Great.

  Later:

  Got a call from Sar.

  BecBec’s disappeared.

  Brilliant.

  Just what I needed.

  Another problem.

  3 July

  It will likely not surprise you that even with the literal fate of the world hanging in the balance, the supernatural world could not come to an agreement of where we should all posse up to form a game plan about this Dark Lord business.

  The Federal Witches Agency says the US.

  The British Witches Council claims jurisdiction because Darling and Bligh are both UK citizens and I was preliminarily trained in the UK.

  The rest of them were bellyaching that everything always happens in the States or Europe and what was so wrong with meeting up in Christchurch or Singapore or Cape Town?

  I mean…

  Yeesh.

  I’m this close to saying we’re gonna meet at Denny’s on Colfax and they could either pitch up and be part of the solution or go it on their own when a real-life Voldemort wearing someone else’s skin runs roughshod over the earth.

  I mean, for fuck’s sake.

  People.

  Add on to the pile of rubbish I was coping with when Cystien lost his nut that BecBec apparently took forsaking her Fae-dom seriously and vanished.

  So he (and Dad, Gabe, Aidan and Marcus) cramped Ash and my style on our chartered flight home (from Transylvania, and btw: it’ll never get old, saying I’m going to or coming from Transylvania, and it’ll totally never get old, saying I took a chartered flight).

  Cystien then bestowed on Sar and Trae “wealth beyond your wildest imaginings” for their role in breaking BecBec out of prison.

  Right before he ripped them both new assholes and told them to find her and bring her back “or I will strip you of your Guardianship and every last possession.”

  Multiple personalities much?

  Sar and Trae were now off on a different kind of hunt.

  One good thing about that, it was something I didn’t have to worry about, because they’d just been given wealth beyond their wildest imaginings, only for it to be threatened to be taken away, so I had the idea they would stop at nothing to find her.

  Now I was in a deep dive with Ash and Aidan about this whole Dark Lord business.

  Just to say, in past journal entries, I may not have made it clear about the fact that I wasn’t a big fan of book-learning type of study.

  But we can say even when I was in school, it wasn’t my favorite thing.

  Which totally explained my GPA.

  Ahem.

  Scouring Denver Public Library, pagan bookshops, Mom and Gran’s personal collections, asking the coven in England to send stuff from Mavis’s library, and calling all over the world to have three (or four?) dozen books Fed Ex’ed to us so we could stick our noses in them and get intimately acquainted with all things Dark Lord, including how to make one, and the last one’s reign of terror, and the one’s before that (etc.)…

  Suffice it to say: not a lot of fun.

  Once this was done, I might never read another book again.

  (Before I hex myself with that, I mean study-type books, not romance-novel, mystery, thriller-type books and all the books of Taylor Jenkins Reid. Just making that clear.)

  Ash, as usual, took all this in stride.

  Aidan was such a big hot geek, he was trying to hide it, but even how terrifying our subject matter was, he was having the time of his life.

  4 July

  I…

  Can’t.

  Even.

  Later:

  Okay, have had three hot dogs, half a hamburger, a mound of potato salad (the good kind, homemade with bacon in) and two bowls of Red, White and Blueberry Trifle, so I’m feeling a lot better about the bombshell Aidan and Josie dropped on us about two seconds after Ash fired up the grill.

  And yeah, so they’re English and I could see them hijacking Independence Day.

  But Josie being the woman Aidan is seeing, it’s serious, serious enough for them to come out about it during our 4th of July Cookout?

  Uh.

  No.

  Everyone’s super excited about it.

  I was not.

  Why, you ask?

  Because they also said it was so serious that they were returning home.

  All of them.

  Together.

  Just so you’re super clear about what all of them means, it means Josie, Rory and Cosmo.

  With Aidan.

  At this point, I, of course, noted, “She’s my Spellbound.”

  “I believe we n
ow understand that you’re going to make her safe by making us all safe,” Aidan replied. “And Josie was a target, Matty. But now, it’s come clear, she no longer is one.”

  “But she’s my Spellbound,” I retorted.

  “Matty, you’re hardly ever in Denver,” Aidan reminded me.

  “But she’s my Spellbound,” I repeated.

  Aidan looked to Josie who was tucked in the curve of his arm and appeared kinda shy about being there, which was all kinds of cute, though also she looked like she belonged there, which was all kinds of sweet.

  Gluh.

  Right, truth be told, they were all kinds of cute and sweet together.

  Ack!

  How had I not seen this happening?

  (Don’t answer that, because I was hardly ever in Denver, doing what I’d vowed to do…look after my Spellbound.)

  “Matty—” Josie started.

  “You’re not going,” I told her. “Aidan can move here so we can all be together forever.”

  “I’m a professor at Cambridge.” Aidan reminded me of some more things.

  “There are universities in Denver.”

  Aidan started to look a little sick.

  Okay, he had me there.

  Cambridge was, you know, Cambridge.

  “I miss home,” Josie said.

  Fabulous.

  At this point, Rory shouted, “I don’t miss home! I’m never going back there again. Ever!” and then he raced into the house.

  Josie went after him and Aidan went after Josie.

  “You couldn’t just be happy for them like the rest of us,” Su put in.

  “You lose one of your best friends to most of a continent and an entire ocean,” I returned.

  “With the rate you two are destroying the ozone with your private jets, Ash is probably just going to break down and buy you one soon, so you can go see her whenever you want,” Su shot back.

  At that, I turned right to Ash and said, “Wedding present. Private jet. Make note.”

  He shook his head but did it kinda smiling.