“Does it work on yourself?”
Nathan ran his fingers over his palms and then slotted his hands together and closed his eyes. After a while, his eyes opened and his skin paled. I didn’t need to ask to know that he’d seen the things he’d done as a darkling, and he was sickened by them.
“I’m sorry Nathan. That shouldn’t have happened to you.”
“Not your fault,” he mumbled and looked at me.
I looked at him.
We stared.
“Yeah. It kinda is.” I inhaled deeply. Here goes. “I’m the queen. I’m sending you home.”
“To the States?” he said hopefully.
“Nope. Purgatory, then your real home. I’m sorry. Game Over, buddy.” I didn’t wait for a rebuttal. I didn’t wait for questions. I placed both my palms on his chest and pushed with my power. His soul ripped from his flesh into the atmosphere beyond, a ghostly shadow of his body. His essence dissipated and drifted away, pulled by a magnetic force to the nearest purgatory, which was probably underneath the rubble of the Opera House in Sydney. But I wouldn’t worry about that. Marc could handle bringing the souls back to the Empire. My priority was first and foremost to eradicate the darklings.
“Right.”
Nathan’s body was an empty shell, slumped on the floor beneath me. I should probably get rid of it considering it was evidence. The last thing I needed was for humans to discover a demi-god’s body and dissect it. I wanted to make things simpler here on earth, not more complicated. My hands filled to the brink with energy and I let it flow into the body. Fire erupted. I jumped back just in time to save my tendrils from catching. I wiped my hands down my leafy dress and glanced down the empty street.
Then I kept walking.
Chapter 29
It took most of the afternoon, but by the time I reached the opposite end of the main street, I’d purged seven Players of their dark taint and burned their bodies to ash. My limbs felt heavy, and my feet dragged. It may be late in the day here, but back in Budapest it was the early hours of the morning. Past my bedtime, that’s for sure.
Kitty had thought there were about ten darklings hanging around—that she’d seen—so I was still missing a few. I couldn’t quit yet. I cast a glance back the way I’d come. Nothing but deserted street and a series of body-shaped scorched marks.
The closer I walked to the park at the end of the street, the more I felt the swell of auras like a beacon. I followed the sensation until the park came into view and watched from a distant pathway to try and understand the dynamic. The park was shaped in a triangle with tall Karri and Gum trees sheltering the grassed clearing. Any town resident not safely sequestered at home was gathered at the center of the park, huddling around each other for support. A woman with long dark hair broke away from the group. She stumbled, legs caught in her long skirt as she asked the nearest darkling something.
His response was to snarl and snap with Pirahna-like teeth. A ball of fire manifested in his palm and he held it menacingly at the woman.
A Police Officer jerked the woman back to the safety of the group and the darkling extinguished his flames. I gasped when I saw the officer’s face. It was Warren, or Wozza as Jed had called him. He’d been there when Tommy had died. Next to him, I recognized the shire’s mayor—his face grim and restrained as he darted a glance to the right. I followed the mayor’s line of sight to where news vans lined a side street, acting as a backdrop for dozens of camera crews and reporters. They weren’t corralled like the rest of the townspeople, which meant Urser wanted them free to record the event. He wanted the world to see. Whatever happened next could have serious international repercussions.
I moved off the sidewalk and into the park where nature rejoiced at my return. With the most confidence I could muster, I walked straight up to the darkling who had threatened the lady. He was slim, short and young. Upon seeing me, he bared his pointy teeth.
“We’ve been looking for you,” he growled.
“What a coincidence. I’ve been looking for you, too.” I slammed the heel of my powered palms into his chest and let loose. An almighty thunderous crack resounded as more energy than I intended ripped into him. Smoke curled from my touch and he crumpled to the ground, stunned.
Screams erupted from the closest in the crowd and the precarious control shattered. People ran in all directions. The ground shook with the stampede to escape.
“Don’t run. I’m here to help,” I shouted, but no one heard me. I caught the word witch a few too many times on the wind and it tore a desperation from me I didn’t know I felt. “Stop! Seriously. I’m here to help. I’m not a witch like he said.”
It was chaos. The mayor ducked and hid and the crowd dispersed as though there had been an assassination attempt. The few police officers who had been in the group had their guns out, but didn’t know what to do. Point them at me, at the feral and hissing darklings, or back at me. I caught a cameraman with one manic eye on me while the another had his camera pointed at a journalist speaking into her microphone. The woman waved her hand in my direction and then the camera panned to me. I froze—a deer in the spotlight. This was not going according to plan. Who was I kidding? There was no plan!
The two remaining darklings hurled toward me from their opposite ends of the park. One was a woman, one a man. A groan at my feet showed the one I’d felled awakening. Shit.
“Keep him there,” I said, directing my intention into the earth. Vines slithered out of the grass to wrap around the darkling. “Actually, that’s effective. Secure the other two.”
Vines rocketed from the ground to secure their legs. The black-eyed woman halted in her tracks, quickly swallowed by roots to her neck. But the male kept coming. He was fast and strong. His teeth were gnashing razors. Every time a vine wrapped around one of his limbs, he ripped it off with seeming ease. Tendons bulged out of the sides of his neck and veins writhed along his forearms. My God, he was massive.
He made it a few yards from me, and kept coming, arms flailing, hands clawing at the tireless vines reaching to restrain him.
I took a step back. “Okay, the vines aren’t working. Time for plan B.”
The earth lent me her energy and I accepted. I pushed air toward the darkling and hardened it. He became a solid statue, frozen in movement, a hand suspended on its way to rip a vine from his shoulder. His face locked into a forever grimace of the worst contortion. Yeah, I got this.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to pull faces in case the wind changed?” I said as I stepped closer for inspection. His eyes followed me. Creepy.
A quick glance at the crowd had most of them evacuated to a safe distance. Some had disappeared all together. The brave few that were left loitered behind the camera crew. All watched me like frightened little bunnies. Warren stepped out, scratching his graying head.
“Roo?” he asked, hesitantly.
“Hey Wozza.” I gave a small, stupid wave. Didn’t know what else to say.
He smiled. “I knew what he said wasn’t true. I knew you’d come to help.”
I smiled back as relief coursed through me. I pointed with my thumb over my shoulder. “I’m just going to get rid of these things, okay? Then you can go back to your lives.”
He nodded.
It was good to know some of them weren’t so quick to believe Urser’s lies. Still, they kept their distance and the camera crew kept recording. One news presenter spoke quietly into her microphone, probably narrating the event.
With nowhere to hide, I turned back to the first two darklings still tied to the ground under a mountain of vines. I purged them, and then set them free to a chorus of gasps and cries from the bystanders. That left me with the monster frozen in air. I walked up to him and stood in front, weighing my options because the instant I released him from the airlock, he’d come flying at me. In the end, I asked the earth to sink him to his shoulders, leaving just his neck and face exposed.
“That’s more like it,” I said and dispersed the so
lid air around his face. “Now, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.” He snapped at my approaching hands. “Okay, the easy way.”
I pressed my palms to his head and unloaded voltage until his eyes rolled and he convulsed to a stop. Then I purged him as well. Blackness oozed out of his orifices to drip to the floor where it soaked into the ground. I felt a shudder in response, and blades of grass wilted and died—evidence of Urser’s sinister taint.
“I'm sorry,” I said to the earth. “I can see why you hate this so much.”
The ex-darkling groaned as fog cleared from his eyes.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Dorian,” he replied.
“Your House?”
“Draco. American Ludus.”
“Well, Dorian, it’s your lucky day. I’ve saved your soul from eternal damnation and am sending you home. Well, to Purgatory. Technically the Gamekeeper will send you home.”
“What? It’s over?”
“Yes.” I glanced over my shoulder to our captive audience. I didn’t want anyone hearing what I had to say next so used my body to block their view of Dorian then lowered my voice. “Do you remember anything about your time in the dark?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’ve been contaminated with Urser’s taint and it allowed him to control you. It turned you into a mindless, rabid killing beast.”
“Oh. For reals?”
“Yeah, for reals. Didn’t seem like you did anything here to hurt anyone but I can’t account for your time with Urser. So I take it you remember nothing?”
He shook his head and looked thoughtful. Then his skin paled. “I remember some.”
“You do?”
He nodded and squeezed his eyes shut. “Bits and pieces. The things I did.” And then the big man suddenly turned into a sobbing mess.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” I touched the top of his head gently. “If there is there anything you can tell me about Urser’s plans, it will help us stop him from doing this to more people.”
“The last thing I remember was being herded like cattle into the Libertine Ballroom. It was odd because the ball wasn’t due to start for another half day and none of us were prepared. We didn’t even get to dress in our masquerade costumes. We thought it might be a final surprise trial, but then… that’s all I remembered.”
“Who herded you there?” I asked with a growing sense of dread.
“Every Watcher in the place, that’s why we believed them. We trusted them.”
My eyes closed with the ramification of what I’d just heard, but I couldn’t let it show on my face. The entire American Ludus was compromised. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes to meet his.
“Thank you, that information is helpful.”
“Also, while I was”—he gulped—“the other thing, I remembered there was someone Urser had feeding him information. Someone close to you.”
“Oh, that was probably Petra when she was inside me. But she’s been gone for months now.”
“No, it was recently. Only days ago. It’s how we knew you would come to rescue this town first. They wanted your actions caught on camera.”
The air solidified in my lungs. My heartbeat kicked it up a notch. “Is there someone here controlling you?”
“No. They set us up then left.”
I could breathe again. “They set you up, all right. They had to know ten of you weren’t a match for me.”
Dorian shrugged. “I’m sorry, I don’t know much else.”
“Any last words?”
“Tell my budgie I love him.”
“Like, as in a bird?”
He nodded solemnly.
“Okay then.” I had no idea where his budgie was, or even if it was alive because the American Ludus had been demolished to the ground. No use dashing his hopes now. “If it’s worth anything, I’m going to do my best to fix this mess, but I’m afraid it’s game over for you.” I placed hands on his shoulders and closed my eyes then pushed his essence out. It separated from his body with ease and drifted away. The ground rumbled then swallowed his body until there was nothing left but dirt.
A flash went off as a photographer took a snap, reminding me they were there. I considered disappearing, but was done running. Time to clear things up.
“Uh, okay,” I said, walking up to the media. “Hi. So, if you want a statement from me, I guess I can make one.”
They stared for a moment. I think one cameraman peed his pants and that made me feel terrible. They were afraid of me. I swallowed and inhaled deeply and looked for a friendly face. Warren was still there, and seeing him gave me the guts to keep going.
“Look. Is your camera on?” I asked the brunette woman with her microphone hanging idly in her hands. She nodded. “Okay, great. So here’s the thing. I’m going to lay it all out there. Gods are real, that is true. We came here thousands of years ago and created humans in our image. We wanted to create beings with the best parts of us, and none of the worst and seeing as power corrupts, we left that part out. But, here’s the thing, Urser got a few things wrong. I wasn’t the one who created witches. He was, and now he’s telling lies to make the good guys seem like bad guys. But I’m here to clean up his mess and send every god who does not belong here home. My goal is to leave you all to live your lives without any divine intervention.”
The female journalist seemed to regain her composure. She shoved the microphone into my face. “What makes your truth more believable than his truth?”
“You mean apart from me saving you all from the darklings? Those creatures were turned evil—infected from the same taint that created witches. Urser can infect anyone, not just gods. That means you too.”
“Richard Brutherford, Chanel Nine News.” Another man shoved a microphone at my face. “It sounds like gods and witches have been running rampant on this planet for centuries. What have they been doing all this time? I mean, why emerge now?”
“Well, I don’t. I…” The question completely threw me off. I had no answer. “I guess they were playing a game.”
“They think human life is a game?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. It wasn’t supposed to hurt humans.”
The brunette shouldered Richard Brutherford out of the way, holding her mic near my face again. “And you said you created us, but then you must have created witches because they’re a derivative of a human soul, right? If you had the power to stop them, why did you leave their evil unchecked for so long?”
“I didn’t.” I blinked. “I didn’t know, I don’t remember anything of that original life.”
“You don’t remember your life? How are we supposed to trust your words if you can’t actually remember?”
“Just who exactly are you?” another fired. “You don’t look very god-like to me. I mean, what are you wearing?”
My heart kicked in my chest and I had the urge to fan my face.
“Well, I’m Roo. I used to live at the Urser Estate.”
“I thought you said Urser was the man responsible for the monstrosities.”
“He is—”
“But you’re an Urser too.”
“—No, I’m… yes I am but—” I stepped backward.
“And you expect us to believe that you’re different from him?”
“I—” I had to get out of there.
Chapter 30
I materialized in my bedroom of the castle. The cold hit me like an ice wall and I ran to my closet for a warm jacket. Once safely ensconced in its folds, I surveyed my room. Dawn streamed through the stained glass windows, painting the furnishings in a rainbow of colors. And there on my enormous bed, surrounded in pillows and blankets, snoring peacefully was Marc. He hadn’t budged in hours.
With my head still spinning from the media and the battle, I was extremely tired. I considered whether I should seek out Cash but quickly dismissed the urge. Why should I report to him when he lied to me? Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t
going to run away and never tell him what I had done in Margaret River. After all, that was my main beef with him. No secrets. We had to be open and honest with each other if we had a hope of defeating Urser and discovering who was the mole in our midst. Like that last darkling said—someone was feeding Urser information. I knew I had to tell the Tribunal, but didn’t have the courage yet. The very thought of ensuing panic was almost too much. They’d insist on another stupid meeting, it would take hours of debate, and I was tired. A quick nap first, and then I’d have the energy to face them. I stumbled to the bed and poked Marc in the hollow of his cheek. His head was the only part of his body visible. My soft and luscious duvet covered the rest.
“Hey.” Poke.
He growled, scratched his nose and rolled over. He pulled his blanket away from me and resumed snoring softly.
Poke. Poke. “Marc. Wake up and go to your own bed.”
“I don’t want any. Go away.”
I growled. Poke.
“Whaat?” he mumbled. “I’m not working today. Calling in sick.”
“Are you sick, or just hungover?”
He rolled back to face me and opened a dubious eye. “What are you doing in my room, love?”
“You’re in my room. You passed out on my bed, remember? I want it back.”
He glanced down at the bed. “Oh. Well, there’s plenty of room for two.”
I pulled the covers from his body. “Out.”
“Spoil sport.” He vanished, leaving the real three-piece suit he’d worn the previous night in his place.
I grumbled and grimaced but tugged the clothing out and left them on the ground. After shedding my coat, I unwound a few vine tendrils, but eventually gave up and slipped into the still warm and soft as clouds bedding. Within minutes, I was asleep.
A loud bang woke me and I jackknifed into a sitting position, blanket clutched at my chest. The winter daylight had almost vanished from the windows and the room was cast in a cool, shadowed haze that led me to believe it snowed outside. A black man-shaped shadow stood in the doorway, holding it open.
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