The Rise of the Dark Lord

by Ashley, Kristen

  “Swo…?” she started, still confused.

  Then she got it.

  And a contemplative light hit her face.

  “If you mean, did they take each other while taking me, no,” she answered. “But this is an intriguing suggestion.”

  I didn’t exactly suggest it.

  But you know…

  Whatever floats your boat.

  “Do you want more of one, the other, or both?”

  “Oh, I shall have both. But all female Fae know, to control their males, they must control their cocks. I must put in the work, or they will wander, and I’ll not have that.”

  It was me who grinned at that before giving another high five.

  Then I said, “I knew you were kickass, even when you were wee. Cool to know you’re not kickass. Your totes kickass.”

  She grinned.

  Just so you know, I asked BecBec to be on our team.

  She agreed.

  More intel on BecBec, she still isn’t feeling Cystien.

  I shared he might bestow on her riches beyond her wildest imaginings.

  Her answer:

  “Trust is the thing of most value in all the universe. And he can give me much, but he can no longer give me that.”

  And you know what?

  I couldn’t argue.

  In the midst of this, it was Ash’s birthday, and I did not have the excuse of writhing in pain for days that I didn’t give him as good a present as he gave me for my birthday (and Valentines, and Yule).

  I’d had plenty of time to plan. I just hadn’t come up with anything.

  So it was lame when he opened a bevy of boxes that contained jeans, shirts, jackets, trousers, belts and sweaters.

  In my defense, still becoming Fae, he’d grown at least two inches and he’d put on twenty pounds (all muscle, huzzah!), so he needed new clothes.

  It was still lame.

  And I told him so morosely when he was done opening presents and was sitting on our bed in the Carriage House, surrounded in boxes and wrapping paper and (awesome, it had to be said) clothes.

  “Did you have fun shopping for me?” he asked.

  “Am I Mathilda Guinevere Honeycutt?” I asked back.

  “Sweetheart, you had fun and did it thinking of me. That isn’t lame. That’s the best present I could get.” He reached and cupped my jaw. “And Matty, nothing I own fits me anymore. So you’re taking care of me. And that isn’t lame either.”

  Yeesh.

  Totally sweet.

  Totally perfect.

  Totally gooey.

  All Ash.

  Gah!

  As an aside: I asked Ash what he meant by outranking the FWA agents.

  He said all field agents of Le Société as well as those from every witches’ agency or council (etc.) ultimately answered to a Commander in Chief.

  Normally this person was hands off as this was a position that oversaw a variety of groups in every country in the world, and as such, situationally and culturally, they tended to need to do their own thing on a day-to-day, week-to-week, century-to-century basis.

  But on the rare occasion they needed to answer to a higher authority, or a central command needed to make decisions, there always was one.

  And yes, you guessed it in two parts.

  Part 1: It was that rare occasion when that person could pull rank.

  Part 2: Ash was that person.

  The part you don’t know was that Ash’s transgression in not sharing this with me wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

  The Commander in Chief had been some Belgian dude, until the Dark Lord shizzle was known. And since this Belgian dude was one-hundred-and-ninety-four years old, he was asked to step down because everyone thought they needed some fresh blood at the top.

  And Ash was the obvious candidate.

  So first, it should have been reported to the Belgian dude nine months ago that Area 666 was breached.

  It was not.

  Second, it should have been reported to Ash.

  It was not.

  And last, it should have been reported to The Mathilda.

  It was not.

  Agent Perry was in troooooooouuuuble.

  (Hee hee.)

  Of course, understanding this knowledge necessitated me throwing a drama that my man did not tell me he was the Top Dog.

  Which necessitated Ash pulling out three humongo binders and querying, “Would you like to pour over the organizational structure of International Wiccan Operational Defense Oversight?”

  One look at the binders told me I did not.

  So I huffed, walked away and made myself a latte.

  We started getting reports of sightings of Darling and Bligh from just about everywhere.

  So many of them, I had to create a secondary (and tertiary) team which included Mom’s coven, Su’s coven, and my coven (or Mavis’ coven) from back in the UK.

  I mean, the elite squad didn’t buzz around hither and yon following up empty leads.

  You feel me?

  Things took a turn when one particular lead was followed, and it seemed promising, so Ash called the team together to prepare to move out.

  And obviously, I showed up.

  To give you a timeline, this was twelve days post-Carnage at Red Rock.

  “What are you doing here, sweetheart?” Ash asked me gently.

  “I’m here to get briefed on the mission,” I answered.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why?” I asked back.

  Ash’s expression started turning funny before he queried, “You don’t think you’re going, do you?”

  “Uh-oh,” Su muttered.

  “You don’t think I’m not going, do you?” I retorted, ignoring my sister.

  “Not this again,” Viv muttered.

  “You were struck by a kill spell,” he reminded me, ignoring my other sister.

  “Which I survived,” I reminded him.

  “You can have a relapse,” he stated.

  “I’m not going to have a relapse,” I declared.

  “You’re also sitting out this mission,” he announced.

  “Uh-oh,” Su repeated.

  “Are you mad?” I asked.

  “You’re still recovering,” he noted.

  “I’m fit as a fiddle,” I lied.

  He knew I was lying, and this was why his eyes narrowed.

  But because he was awesome even when he was being irritating, he didn’t out me in front of everyone else.

  Okay, so I got tired super easily.

  And I was pretty stiff.

  I also often got nauseated for no reason.

  In fact, so often, I took a pregnancy test because I was worried it wasn’t residual spell issues and it was something else (no worries, I’m not preggers).

  I was taking Mom’s potions, meditating (always outside, so I could soak up sun and nature) and not practicing any magic so my own natural defenses could fight Agatha’s crap.

  But I was far from one hundred percent.

  And Ash knew it and not because when we did it, I no longer took the top.

  PS: That was then.

  I’m over it now.

  No lie.

  “Mathilda,” he warned.

  “Sebastian,” I warned back.

  “You do know we don’t have time for this shit,” Mack said.

  He was right.

  And Ash was right.

  Drat it!

  “How about I go, but this time I’m like the Julia Stiles character in the Bourne movies, though not that one where she got dead,” I suggested.

  Ash considered this for a full ten seconds (I counted) before he relented.

  When he did, I said, “Okay, now I need some kickass computer and comms gear.”

  “Do you know how to use a computer?” Ash asked.

  “Do you think I do all my shopping in a mall?” I answered with my own question.

  Ash blew out a sigh.

  Clearly, online shopping did not indicate
to him I was mission-worthy, comms-tech savvy.

  Whatever.

  I went with them to Pakistan.

  Mostly, I stayed in the motel and listened to them talk on their comms units.

  In the end, we found Bligh and Darling had been there.

  But by the time we got there, they were gone.

  Enter this (frustrating (understatement)) period where leads were gained, leads were followed, leads petered out, and essentially all we got out of it was a case of unilateral, unrelenting jetlag.

  Witches, sorcerers, sorceresses, and wizards all over the world were doing everything they could to dream up tracking spells to locate the whereabouts of our baddies, but they were seriously cloaked.

  It was all a huge pain in the ass.

  It was around the time we were o-v-e-r, over it that we got a new member of the team.

  Former Agent Anita Ramirez.

  She approached me first, which I thought was cool.

  FYI: She’d resigned in lieu of being relieved of her duties.

  FYI Part 2: She was pissed.

  FYI Part 3: Even after Ash lost his shit about the Area 666 business, nothing happened to Perry. And it sucked, but I had to admit that was fair, seeing as the decision to keep all that a secret came from above her paygrade. She was just following orders.

  FYI Part 4: That made Anita more pissed. (Me too.)

  Cue me calling Ash to share this new development, Ash showing and then Ash and me having another fight.

  “I don’t need a former agent with a grudge on the team,” he said.

  “She has skills, knowledge and contacts,” I said.

  Yadda, yadda, yadda, it was Ramirez who ended the fight we were having in our bedroom by calling through the wall, “Those relics have tracking spells on them!”

  Ash didn’t hesitate even a beat before he prowled out of the bedroom and into the living room with me following him.

  “Repeat,” he ordered in her direction.

  “Everything held in Area 666 has tracking spells on it. They’re unbreakable. Whoever has those relics knows it, and they’re cloaking them just as they’re cloaking themselves,” Ramirez told us. “That said, Bligh and Darling don’t have tracking spells on their persons. So if there’s a cloak that’s more easily breakable, it’ll be on one of those relics.”

  “Can I assume in your former employer’s lack of competence displayed thus far that you’ve been trying to break those cloaks since you learned those relics went missing and failed?” Ash asked.

  Again, harsh.

  I didn’t share that.

  Ramirez said, “They did. But they didn’t have the Chosen One.”

  Great.

  Spellwork.

  Gluh.

  Okay, it seemed I was an Action Girl as well as a Glamour Girl as well as the Chosen One.

  I didn’t want to be holed up with bowls and knives and incense and candles and the essence of gnoot, blah, blah, blah attempting to break cloaking spells when I could be Julia Stiles, or better yet, Jason Frigging Bourne.

  One word: boring.

  But Ash looked at me…

  Ramirez looked at me…

  And I knew I was headed up to my Turret Room to bury myself in gnoot.

  Around about the time I was losing the will to live, I got a lock on the Pegasus feather.

  Which brings us up to now.

  Ash (or Le Société, tomaytoes, tomahtoes) bought us a plane (though my request to have it painted in our kickass elite team logo (after we got a logo, mental note: ask Mack to design us a logo) was denied).

  And we were now on it, heading toward the Pegasus feather.

  Toward Darling and Bligh.

  And hopefully toward an end to all this rubbish.

  Because, seriously.

  I had a wedding to plan.

  6 September

  We have the Pegasus feather.

  And we had our shot at getting Darling.

  But we didn’t take it (bear with me, you’ll understand why).

  But we have the Pegasus feather.

  So…

  Win.

  Ish.

  This is how it went down.

  They were in Paris.

  I was mad they were in Paris when I had to go to Paris and track them down instead of going to Paris to hit Rue Saint-Honoré, eat cheese, drink wine, and kiss Ash under the Eiffel Tower at night.

  They knew we were coming.

  We didn’t know they knew we were coming, but tracking can go both ways, and although I had us cloaked, they had some chops, so we were acting under the impression that they knew we were coming.

  (That said, I’d been concentrating the cloaking on Ramirez and BecBec because they might not know those gals were on the team and that’d be a good surprise if we needed it.)

  They were staying at the Ritz (or, at least, the feather was at the Ritz), because, you know, if you had resources at your command (magically or otherwise), and you were in Paris, there is nowhere else you’d stay.

  (News: We did not stay at the Ritz because a) Darling and Bligh were there (bluh) and b) Ash had a flat in Paris, so we stayed at his flat, which was not Indiana Jones awesome, it was Parisian awesome, which obvs meant it was spectacular (yay!), but I digress.)

  Once we found out they were staying at the Ritz, we had another powwow because I was not at one with the fact they blew a hole in the seating at Red Rock Amphitheater. But they didn’t harm the place otherwise, and what they did could be fixed.

  I put my foot down about making certain there was no damage done to the Ritz.

  This, of course, made Su remark, “You’re so boujee.”

  “Yeah. And?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes but said no more.

  They had the Hemingway suite, good for them because…awesome.

  Good for us because you could get in from the courtyard.

  We were all set to go in covert-like when a letter was hand-delivered to Ash’s flat.

  It was from Darling.

  So yeah.

  There you go.

  They knew we were there.

  She invited me to drinks at the Hemingway Bar (yeah, the one in the Ritz).

  Even before I read the rest, I was all in to do this (because, yeah, the Ritz).

  But the rest of the letter said this would be done in détente, no hocus pocus, the witch kind or otherwise.

  I did not believe this for a second, so even though we discussed it (okay, the team sat around and put up with Ash and I fighting about it), we decided I’d be covered and go in.

  Coverage, per Ash, btw, was him getting in touch with some of his Parisian brethren from Le Société, as well as their wives/partners (witches) to cover me, make sure Bligh wasn’t up to any mischief, and scan the Ritz from top to bottom, end to end for any tomfoolery before I even stepped foot in the joint.

  Obviously, this necessitated me taking an emergency trip to Rue Saint-Honoré (yippee!) because no way on the Goddess’s green earth I was going to the Ritz not tricked out to the nines (I went in Dior, but don’t worry, I didn’t snub Coco (this was the Ritz), I had some Chanel earrings in, and, erm, a new Chanel bag and maybe a bangle (ahem)).

  She was sitting in the back.

  The place was a crush.

  She was wearing tweed (tweed! At the Ritz! Even if I didn’t know she was a bad guy, I’d know she was a bad guy at that).

  There was a beautiful rose sitting on the table and it looked like she was drinking a G&T.

  I walked up to the table and said, “You didn’t have to bring me a flower.”

  She said, “I didn’t. They’re French. They give every woman a flower.”

  She said this like she’d say, “I didn’t. They’re French. They run over pedestrians for sport.”

  I looked around the awesome bar and saw this was true (about the flower)

  Every woman had a stunning, full rose attached to her drink.

  Seriously.

  The Ritz was the shit!
>
  I sat across from her, which sucked, because it meant I had my back to the rest of the bar.

  The waiter was right there.

  “Je voudrais un martini avec vodka et une olive,” I ordered.

  (I don’t speak French, I looked it up so I could seem posh while ordering at the Ritz.)

  “Hemingway martini?” he asked.

  I thought that was safe since French for martini was the same as what happened to me on my date with Aidan what seemed like a million years ago. That is, giving you a glass of sweet vermouth over ice.

  Been there, done that and…yuck.

  And Hemingway had better taste than that (surely).

  “Zee frozanne oleev jooz is zee ice cube,” the waiter told me.

  What!?

  “That…is…brilliant,” I told him.

  He smiled, eyes twinkling (French people are so not unfriendly, FYI, that’s hogwash, you just have to act like you don’t own their country when you’re in their country and they’re totally cool).

  He bowed short and took off.

  I turned to Darling.

  “I see you haven’t changed,” she said.

  “Why would I do that?” I asked.

  Her mouth got all puckery.

  “Okay, you know everyone thinks you’re barmy,” I shared.

  “They’ll learn,” she replied.

  “They’ll learn what? That you’re even more barmy than they already think you are?” I asked.

  “This isn’t the way to negotiate, Mathilda,” she stated snootily.

  “Okay, first, you electrocuted me. Second, you tried to strip me of my magic. Third, your sidekicks nearly killed my fiancé. Fourth, they did kill Althea. Next, you blew a hole in Red Rock Amphitheater. Then, you hit me with a kill spell. And last, you’re trying to create a Dark Lord. I’d really like to know what there is to negotiate. Stop trying to make the Dark Lord. And boom, negotiations over.”

  “This is your fault,” she declared.

  Oh my Goddess!

  I was so sick of everyone thinking everything was my fault.

  “It is not. All I wanted to do was help people and you went crackers on me.”