Harley Merlin 4: Harley Merlin and the First Ritual

by Forrest, Bella

  “We can protect you, Quetzi.”

  He snorted. “You can’t even protect yourselves. That Shapeshifter was running about for weeks before you bothered to notice something was amiss. Sorry that you had to clean up after me, but I had to kill him. I’m not usually a creature of impulse, but he’d disrespected me.”

  “Alton brought him back to life,” I said.

  His eyes glinted. “He didn’t!”

  “He did. And then he died again. Purge beast got him.”

  Quetzi chuckled. “Well, at least I got to enjoy watching the light go out in him once, thanks to my coils. Most delicious. Reminded me of my less benevolent days as a god.”

  “We’re running out of time, Quetzi. You have to come with us.”

  “You know, you’re so focused on protecting me from Katherine, that you’re forgetting about yourself. You’re important in all of this somehow, or so I heard the Shapeshifter say. I have no idea why, as you seem as inferior as any other magical. Maybe you’ve got a bit more oomph in you, but I don’t imagine it’s enough to entice Katherine’s sensibilities. Not yet, anyway. Maybe that’s it—maybe she’s waiting. Who can say? All I know is that you have your part in this, Ms. Merlin. You’re the flavor of the month.”

  “I’m not the one she’s after right now,” I shot back. “We need to get you out of here.”

  “Never again,” he said slowly. At least, it sounded slow. I blinked rapidly, trying to get my eyes to focus, but everything looked blurry and odd. A strange, silvery mist seemed to rise from the serpent’s scales, seeping out from under them and rolling toward me. The smell was musty and metallic, stinging my nostrils as it crept in. It tickled the back of my throat, my tongue fuzzy and numb.

  “What did you do?” I slurred.

  “Like I said, I won’t go back in a box. I have to face her. But this isn’t your time… not yet.”

  Before I knew what was happening, he nudged me back into the tornado with a gentle push. That was all it took—my legs were like jelly, unable to hold me up as I staggered into the swirling vortex. My body shot straight up to the top of the towering cyclone, limp against the rushing current. I couldn’t even fight it; my brain disconnected from the rest of me. With great effort, I twisted my neck to look down into the eye of the storm, noticing the dense fog that had settled down there. A figure stepped through, and my heart stopped.

  Katherine had arrived, right behind Quetzi.

  I wanted to scream, to warn him, but I couldn’t. Dread clutched my jaws tight, my tongue twisted and paralyzed.

  Quetzi didn’t get a chance to react. By the time he sensed her presence and turned around, she lunged forward, wielding a shimmering gold rope in her hands. It left her hands and wrapped around the serpent. It crackled with energy as he thrashed against it. Katherine hurled Quetzi’s long body in a tangled mess over her shoulder and dragged him away. She disappeared through the haze as quickly as she’d come, leaving the eye of the storm empty.

  Quetzi had been protecting me when he’d tossed me up into the vortex, and wasted valuable time in doing so. That doesn’t seem like him. Maybe a snake could change its scales, if it wanted to. Maybe I’d misjudged him.

  Either way, determination took the place of crippling terror and filled me to the brim. I wasn’t going to let Quetzi die by Katherine’s hand. There was just one teeny, tiny problem—how am I supposed to get down from here without breaking every bone in my body?

  Twenty-Nine

  Harley

  I got my answer quickly. The tornado collapsed without warning, the dust spiraling up and disappearing into the atmosphere. A scream burst from my throat as empty air opened up below me, and I crashed toward the ground.

  I fought to forge a cushion of Air, but I was falling too fast, my limbs thrashing as if that could somehow slow me down. Beneath, I caught sight of Wade darting forward, his eyes fixed on me as he held out his arms to break my fall. I’d expected to land all dainty and graceful into his grasp, but it didn’t quite work like that. Instead, I slammed into him with the full force of my weight, the two of us splayed out painfully on the baked earth.

  I lay across his stomach, the wind knocked out of me. Staying still for a moment, I wiggled my hands and feet, checking for any breaks or any shooting pains that might reveal one. Fortunately, everything seemed to be intact, though my ribcage had taken a beating. Underneath me, Wade rasped in sharp breaths, his hand on his chest as it rose and fell. I got the feeling he regretted his act of heroism, but I was grateful for the Wade-shaped cushion that had stopped me barreling headfirst into the ground.

  With a gruff groan, he sat up slowly. “Remind me never to do that again.”

  “Are you okay? Anything broken?” I twisted around in his lap and checked his face for any cuts or bruises, very aware that I was balanced on his thighs. His arms snaked around me for a moment, and my heart pounded like a racehorse on steroids.

  “No, but you’re crushing my… um.” He grimaced. I shimmied off his legs and hauled myself to my feet, glancing back toward where the tornado had just been.

  “Katherine took him,” I murmured, freaking out slightly as the realization caught up to me.

  He frowned. “We didn’t see her.”

  “She came through the tornado and snatched him, before he even had the chance to fight back. If you didn’t see her, she must still be using Isadora to portal her from place to place.”

  The dust was still settling, a reddish haze obscuring the nearby landscape, but there were shadows stalking toward us through the miasma. Vague, and still at a fair distance, but they were on their way, whoever they were.

  Jacob sprinted through the haze behind me. “Harley! Are you okay? What happened?”

  “Katherine took Quetzi! He wouldn’t come with me, and Katherine took him. I think she disappeared using Isadora. They’re gone!”

  Jacob nodded. “Yeah, I can smell that burnt-toast thing. They were definitely here.”

  I gasped at him, my heart racing. “You can? Can you open a portal to wherever they’ve gone?”

  His face paled. “Uh… I can try?”

  “Okay, you get started on that while we deal with these punks.” I nodded to the approaching figures—more of Katherine’s goons, come to distract us. Only, this time, we didn’t have Quetzi to strike them down with a handy bolt of lightning. Fear pulsed through my veins. Right now, we had no idea what we were up against.

  I turned to call for the rest of the Rag Team, peering through the fading dust. My heart lurched as I noticed Astrid on the ground, her hands gripping her knee. Blood trickled out between her fingers. I hadn’t forgotten Marjorie’s vision of her, dead on the ground with nobody there to resurrect her, but this didn’t seem to be the moment. She was alive and kicking, if a little on the broken side. Tatyana also seemed to be dealing with an injury, dabbing a torn strip of fabric to the side of her head, where a rock or something had collided with her temple. She was muttering a healing spell, too, to quicken the repair. Evidently, when the tornado got swept away, it had decided to cause a bit more mayhem before it exited for good.

  Dylan was at Tatyana’s side, pressing the fabric deeper into the wound to keep pressure on it, while Tatyana moved to focus on Astrid, helping her out with her cut. Meanwhile, Garrett was standing off like a spare part, glancing anxiously at Astrid. I wondered why he wasn’t running to her side. After his attitude in the Banquet Hall before we’d left, I’d guessed that he and Astrid had had an argument or something, but this was ridiculous.

  “What are you just standing there for? We’ve got goons inbound!” I snapped, drawing Garrett’s attention. He looked like a little boy who’d forgotten what was right and what was wrong. Now wasn’t the time for personal grudges, whatever they were. They’d break through the haze at any moment, and we had to be ready for anything that faced us.

  “Everybody in position!” I roared.

  Wade stood beside me and lifted his palms, his ten rings glowing. Santana took up her
position on the other side of me, her guitar keychain glowing bright as she geared up her Esprit. Astrid retreated to the Jeep, while Tatyana and Dylan moved beside Santana, Dylan dipping low to the ground and pressing his hands on the parched earth. His graduation ring burned fiercely, the first rumbles of his Earth ability shivering through the dirt. Meanwhile, Tatyana’s silver bracelet, embellished with a perfect sapphire, burst into a fierce blue radiance, and her eyes turned white.

  Raffe bounded up to Santana’s side a few seconds later. His skin was already halfway to scarlet, his eyes shining like rubies, the black smoke beginning to rise from his body. I’d never seen his Esprit, but I didn’t know how it worked if you had a djinn inside you. Maybe the djinn was his Esprit. Garrett shot him a cold look that only I saw, as he moved to stand by Wade, his palms raising up as his watch took on a steady, golden glimmer.

  “Jacob, get back!” I shouted. “Protect Astrid and focus on following the portal trail. Understand?”

  He nodded and darted to the Jeep, as bronzed threads of Chaos began to twirl between his fingers like vines. His eyes were glued to a speck in the distance, his mouth moving silently.

  “I can help! I’ve got bombs!” Astrid yelled, holding up a satchel. She winced in pain.

  “Save them—we might need them later! Stay where you are,” I ordered, knowing how vulnerable she was, even with a satchel full of explosives. With a disappointed look, she stayed where she was.

  My head snapped back, just in time to see six creatures emerge through the haze. Two were hulking golems that looked as though they’d been carved from rock, cracked boulders replacing biceps. They provided the bookends to this nasty squad, with a black bear that stood over eight feet on its hind legs, a lizard-looking beast with tiny wings, a tall dude with a fish head and long fangs protruding from its mandible, and a blue-and-white-feathered cockatrice—wyvern-like with a cockerel’s head—making up the central quartet. These weren’t magicals… these were Purge monsters. They must’ve come from the wild, though. The Bestiary was secured.

  “Everybody ready!” Wade’s voice bellowed across the wasteland.

  “Do we capture them?” Dylan asked.

  “No Mason jars. We kill them,” Tatyana replied bluntly.

  I nodded. “No choice this time.”

  “We kill them before they kill us,” Garrett growled.

  “And get our asses to wherever Katherine has zipped off to,” Santana added.

  Raffe grinned eerily, making me realize that our friend was no longer in control of the ship, so to speak. The djinn was. Since he’d manifested during my face-to-face battle with Katherine, I could tell the difference. Plus, Wade had let slip the nature of Raffe’s inner Hyde after that fight. Raffe knew that I knew, and I knew that he knew—we’d never needed to get into the nitty-gritty of it.

  Raffe tore off toward the golem on the left and pounced onto the monstrous beast’s shoulders. He slammed his fists down into the golem’s shoulder blades, rock splintering off at all angles. The lizard creature tried to leap up to stop him, but Raffe blasted the reptile in the face with a savage kick and kept pummeling the golem in the shoulders. Its clumsy hands tried to reach up to pull Raffe down, but he was far stronger.

  Taking Raffe’s lead, the rest of us charged toward the monsters. Tatyana and Santana were the only ones who stayed back, mustering their spirits and Orishas. Santana gathered Fire to her palms and sent her Orishas to distract the beasts, the darting streaks of each one sinking beneath the skin of the vast bear. It swiped at the wisps with its paws, but there was nothing it could do against Santeria power.

  “Fish or lizard?” Wade shouted to me as we sprinted for the central two beasts. Dylan and Garrett were busy with one of the golems, pummeling it into the ground.

  “Fish,” I replied. Behind me, icicles shot forward and knocked the cockatrice back. Tatyana had drawn water from the tower at the end of the road, pulling it from a hatch, the freezing-cold temperature of her surrounding spirits turning it to ice before it hit its mark.

  He nodded. “Lizard for me, then.” His ten rings glowed as he hurled a fireball at the lizard, and the crackling orb hit it head-on. It hissed and lashed out its tongue, scrabbling at its eyes with its clawed hands. Wade leapt through the air and grasped it by the neck, wrestling it to the ground like a prize linebacker.

  I left them to it, lizard and man rolling around in the dust, while I turned to face the fish man. He held two electrical scythes in his hands, crossing them over his chest. I skidded to a halt a few yards away and sent out the first barrage of fireballs, then ducked down and sent a shiver of a quake under his webbed feet. With this being a fish man, there wasn’t much use in me drawing on Water, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone else with my Air.

  The fish man’s knees buckled, his silvery scales flashing as he crumpled to the ground. He jumped back up to his feet a moment later and threw one of the scythes. It whizzed past my face like a boomerang, then sliced back through the air and into the fish man’s hand.

  An idea came to me, though I didn’t like what the outcome might be. Thinking fast, as the second scythe barreled toward me, I bent back out of its way and sent out a lasso of Telekinesis. It gripped the fish man tight, trapping his arms at his sides as the lasso drew about his middle. I focused all my energy on keeping him fixed to the spot, so that he was unable to move out of the way of the returning scythe. His bulging eyes opened even wider as the scythe flew back toward him with a whub-whub-whub-whub. Keeping him fixed to the spot, I squeezed my eyes shut as the scythe’s sharp edge sliced straight through him. There were some things I couldn’t watch.

  “Delicious!” Raffe shrieked, as he stood triumphantly on top of the motionless golem. A moment later, the scarlet faded from his skin, his eyes turning from red to midnight blue. Back down you go, Mr. Hyde.

  Garrett and Dylan had been similarly successful with their golem, who had gone up in a puff of black smoke. The same with Wade’s lizard creature. Meanwhile, Tatyana had suitably skewered the cockatrice with her icicles of doom, while Santana had done a mean job of taking the bear out of action with Fire. For some reason, that was the one that made me saddest, seeing the bear splayed out on the ground, unmoving. I knew we’d had to, but still…

  Their bodies disintegrated, each particle peeling away and turning into a wispy trail of black smoke. Up and up the smoke spiraled, until there was nothing left on the ground below. A gust blew across the wasteland, carrying the remains of the Purge beasts with it.

  “We need to go after Katherine,” I replied, breathing hard. “Jacob, how’re you getting on with the tracking?”

  “I think I can manage it, if I can combine the ‘scent’ with my Sensate ability, which should boost the signature that Isadora left behind,” he replied.

  “Isadora had that spell on her, right?” Dylan asked.

  “Yeah, which should mean she’s close to Katherine at all times,” I replied.

  “Well, are we going or not?” Garrett grumbled. “We’re wasting time, standing around chatting about it.”

  Tatyana crossed her arms over her chest. “I hate to say it, but Garrett’s right. We need to make a decision, and quickly. We don’t know how long this ‘scent’ may last, and if there will be more to follow on the other side of this initial portal.”

  “Jacob, are you sure you’re good to try this?” I asked, feeling my doubts surface. I couldn’t shake my fear of his powers, after what I’d seen him do in the training room. Plus, he still hadn’t entirely mastered getting portals to go to the right place.

  “I need to,” he replied defiantly. “Quetzi needs our help.”

  He stepped past me and walked toward a seemingly innocuous patch of ground nearby. He paused there and closed his eyes, feeling out for something we couldn’t see. At a certain spot, he stopped and held out his hands. Bronzed tendrils seeped out of his fingertips, the thin strands almost tasting the air. Faint particles glittered, though they weren’t coming from Jacob. They wer
e feeding down from the atmosphere, drawn to the magnetism of Jacob’s abilities and dancing to his call. The Pied Piper of Portals, eh?

  His body went rigid and glowed with bright, bronze light, his veins pulsating with radiance beneath his skin. As he drew on more and more Chaos, a burst of power surged out of him and flowed into the break in time and space that Katherine and Isadora had left behind. It tore it open again with a thundering roar, like a healing wound being ripped afresh.

  “You did it!” I whooped, punching the air.

  He looked at me, straining not to show his exhaustion. I could feel it coming off him. “Then we’d better get going. I don’t know how long I can keep it open.”

  “Everybody, go!” I shouted, feeling worried about Jacob. Doing this had clearly taken a lot out of him, but what other choice did we have?

  We all ran for the portal and jumped through, with Jacob bringing up the rear. I stayed close to him in case he faltered. After all, we’d need him to create another portal to get back. Only as my foot crossed the threshold of the fabric of time and space did I realize that nobody would know where we were. Trepidation shot through me. Considering I had no idea where we were going, it looked like we were flying blind on this one. We’d have to take on Katherine by ourselves, at least for long enough to rescue Quetzi and get the hell out of Dodge.

  Right, then… Potential death, here we come.

  Thirty

  Harley

  We tumbled from the portal into a world of eternal night, with starlight gleaming in a blanket of black velvet overhead. There was no moon here, which struck me as odd, but the glow of the stars seemed to cast enough radiance on the world below. Dark fields stretched into the distance, the glint of a faraway lake reflecting the stars. Torchlight flickered on the horizon, too, although I couldn’t make out any people wandering about. Everything was eerily silent, with not even a hint of a breeze. The trees stayed perfectly still, the grass unmoving, the air strange and stilted in my lungs.