The Payment

by Michelle E Lowe

  “Thank you, Thooranu.”

  She left that place, and on that very night, she summoned an Aswang and told him about Thooranu and the contract.

  When he needed to resign his name on the contract, Clovis de la Fuentein was horrified to discover it had gone missing! He lost his demon and spent the rest of his days in constant dread of being revisited by him. Eventually, the terror of what could happen drove him to put a pistol into his mouth.

  Shortly after that nasty business was over, Freya found Ron Wakefield, a warlock whom she had already known about long before he ever met her. When the time came, Freya approached him at his modest home on St. Mary’s Island off the Isles of Scilly. Being the astute warlock that Ron was, he automatically realized what a powerful enchantress Freya was and agreed to help her. She knew he would.

  Élie Fey had become seriously ill by this time, sickened by her own abilities. Desperate, the entire family traveled to the Netherlands to bring her to her son, François Joubert. Freya had beaten them all to the self-made aristocrat and once there, played on his fear of the supernatural, convincing François that his mother was dangerous. She advised against giving his mother any assistance unless she had surrendered her abilities to him. To that end, Élie stored them inside a puzzle box. Once Élie gave the puzzle box to her son, Freya placed a curse over it, forbidding Élie from retrieving her abilities or even knowing the box’s location. If she did, she’d lose her powers forever. Freya believed it was a good way to hold Élie off until her illness did her in.

  Sometime later, Freya came into Tarquin Norwich’s life. By peering into future events, she had known for a long time that Tarquin would play a significant role in her plan. At one of Norwich’s social gatherings, Freya introduced herself. Norwich was instantly charmed and intrigued by her. At the time, she lived in Southampton in a small flat where Norwich could easily locate her when the time was right. After his wife, Lilly Norwich, fled with their three children, Tarquin Norwich turned to Freya for help. After her assistance in locating the woman and her brother, who had tried getting them to Germany, it had sealed the trust Freya needed from Norwich.

  With that task complete, Freya’s next stage in her plan had begun. She went to London during the music and crafts festival.

  “It seems this is the one who actually stole from me,” Freya said, pointing to young Joaquin, who was being held by an officer.

  Joaquin and his younger brother, Pierce, had just returned to the area where their Gypsy troupe had been run out of Abney Park. Separating the boys from the pack was vital to Freya’s plan.

  Standing beside her was an overweight, uniformed man with a thick mustache. “Working as a team, eh?” the officer said to the two boys. “That’s what these Gypsy tossers do.”

  “We didn’t steal anything,” Pierce denied.

  Joaquin stared intently at Freya. She wasn’t surprised he would recognize her. Seeing him again complicated her emotions. Separating him from his family filled her with guilt.

  “Where are our parents?” Pierce demanded.

  “Those nasty Gypsies that were here?” the overweight officer said. “We ran them out of the city, we did. We received complaints of thievery and hustling taking place over here.”

  “That’s a lie,” Pierce seethed.

  My, Freya thought. He’s a mouthy little cuss.

  “What was that, you little bastard?” the officer growled, shoving his face near the boy’s.

  “Officer,” Freya interrupted before the spell she cast over him and the other constables got out of hand.

  The angry officer rose to his full height, blinking until his red eyes returned to normal.

  “Yes, ma’am?” he yielded submissively.

  “Since they’re just children, I do not wish to press charges.”

  “Are you sure, ma’am? Some time locked away in Newgate Prison just might do these guttersnipes some good.”

  “I am sure, constable. However, I don’t believe they ought to be allowed to go free and return to that family of thieves and beggars they were spawned from. Isn’t there a place they can be taken?”

  The husky officer rubbed his chin. “I believe there is. The Foundling Hospital Orphanage. They’ll take these troublemaking brats. Put them to work in factories, they will.”

  “You can’t!” Joaquin shouted. “We haven’t done anything.”

  “That will do just fine, officer,” Freya concurred. “A little discipline will serve them well, I think. Good day.”

  Days later, the brothers escaped the orphanage and went in search of their family. Through Freya’s interference, they never did find them, not until many years later, when it no longer mattered.

  With that task at an end, Freya acted out the next step of her plan. She called upon the Trickster of Many Names.

  “I need the book that keeps the spell that tells of how to imprison the Fates,” she told him. “The one Thooranu stole.”

  “Ah, yes. I’ve heard of the legend. It was kept in the Royal Library of Alexandria before it burned down.”

  “Will you retrieve it? I need it and the death masks.”

  Njáll snorted. “Traveling through time is no easy task. But how could I ever say no to you?”

  * * *

  The flames burned through stone, fueled by endless mounds of scrolls and books. Outside, the citizens of Alexandria watched helplessly and cried as centuries’ worth of knowledge was devoured by fire before their very eyes.

  Someone shouted while pointing to a man walking straight up the side of the building. No one expected him to go inside, but he did, vanishing into the fire that clawed at anything else that came near it. None of them saw the man again.

  The Trickster collected two scrolls, leaving the book they were copied from to burn, and then retrieved the masks from where Thooranu hid them. With that task out of the way, Njáll revisited Egypt, where a certain toymaker was wandering the marketplace. Njáll posed as a vendor and through a simple dice game, convinced the curious Indigo Peachtree to buy the scrolls and masks from him.

  Indigo returned to England. Soon after, he was visited by two orphaned brothers seeking shelter from the harsh winter. Sometime after, Indigo ordered young Pierce to hide the masks after he’d translated the ancient text and learned of its dangers. In the spring, the boys left the Toymaker, taking Indigo’s journal with the copied spell verses written inside.

  More years swept by and then the next stage had begun. Using the blood Freya had taken from Joaquin as a child, she summoned him to her. After she tricked him into drinking Thooranu’s blood, Freya took Joaquin into her bed and together, they conceived a child. With that delightful task done, she sent him on his way to put into motion her next plan: separating the brothers.

  On a cold November’s night, after a failed home invasion, Joaquin slit Pierce’s throat. With Joaquin no longer with him, Pierce set off alone and traveled to Germany, where he eventually met the lovely Frederica Katz. Afterward, it was all a matter of waiting to execute the plan to damage Pierce’s life thread. Everything went like clockwork—until a hitch forced Freya to hide Pierce away. A mare who gave humans nightmares had found out about Freya’s plan and threatened to expose her. In order to kill the mare, she first needed to murder the one protecting her.

  Freya killed the sorceress, Huld, and watched her bleed to death in her field of pretty flowers. Once that nasty bit of business was done, Freya went after the mare.

  After everything was settled and her plan was back on track, Freya prepared for what would come next. She visited Coira MacCrum, the newest master of poor Thooranu. She again paid money for his blood so she could give it to Tarquin to use on the Toymaker, Indigo Peachtree, when needed.

  “Looks like today isn’t my day, after all, mate,” Pierce said to Tarquin Norwich inside the northern tower of Norwich Castle.

  “You believe so, do you?” Norwich disagreed before pulling the trigger.

  Two bullets ripped into Pierce’s chest, and one tore
into his stomach.

  Using Tarquin Norwich and Indigo Peachtree like chess pieces, Freya got them to pull the Fates from their realm just long enough for Pierce to be killed. As Freya had suspected, the Fates brought the bastard back from the dead, but it didn’t matter. She had succeeded nonetheless. His thread was broken and therefore, forever damaged.

  Soon afterward, Freya came to learn in a very unpleasant manner that Élie Fey was still alive! The old witch had suddenly arrived at her home in Lepe and demanded to know what had happened to her grandson, Joaquin. What made things even worse was that she had regained her powers, thanks to Pierce, who had found her. Things began going downhill the moment Élie uttered, “Yakeil.” A spell used to force Freya to tell only the truth.

  Once Élie had her in her clutches, she said, “I suppose you did not suspect I could do this, did you?”

  “No,” she answered forcefully.

  “What have you done to Joaquin?”

  “He gave me his blood before I left the Gypsies,” she began, unable to stop herself. “I used it cast a magnetism spell so he would come to me when I was ready for him.”

  “Why?”

  “To have him drink demon blood.”

  “What demon blood?”

  “The blood I’d bartered for soon after I left the troupe.”

  “How can he be cured?”

  “The only way is to find the demon that the blood belongs to and have the creature extract the blood from him.”

  “How do I find this demon?”

  “One way is through its own blood. It’s pure blood.”

  “Do you have any left?”

  Freya gave up its location unwillingly.

  “There. Inside the larger one.”

  She watched with pure indignation as Élie stepped over to the matryoshka dolls and pulled out the midnight blue jar where the blood was stored.

  “Demon blood can be used in different ways,” Élie said, walking out of the kitchen. “Why did you use it on Joaquin?”

  Freya did her best to keep from overexplaining. “To control him.”

  “You gave him too much for that spell,” Élie said.

  No, she hadn’t.

  “He needed that amount to make him part demon.”

  “To make him part demon? You fool! Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  Freya had to tell Élie something to throw her off from the vital question. She could already feel Élie’s hold on her weakening. She only needed a few moments more.

  “Yes, and now that he’s part demon, he is no longer trapped within the bounds of the Fates. He can outlive his thread or die before he meets its severed end.”

  To Freya’s relief, Élie asked, “Why did you need to control him?”

  “I wanted him to kill his brother.”

  “Pierce?” she gasped. “But you can’t kill him unless his thread is at its end. Why do you want Pierce dead?”

  Sweat dripped down her skin. Élie was getting too close. “Only one of the Four can live. The last to live is the one who gains everything.”

  Thankfully, her daughter, Vela, interrupted them before Freya was forced to say anything more, and after Freya freed herself from the wretched spell, Élie left.

  All in all, it mattered little. Everything Freya had planned, she had carried out regardless of the challenges she had faced. She even brought Pierce back home to England.

  Now, it was time to set the final act into motion, and at last, kill Pierce Landcross!

  Chapter One

  The Creature

  Filip Faix was a stranger in a strange land.

  Space journeys were odd—and sometimes dangerous—even for a god like him. There were pockets hidden within the vastness waiting to pull unsuspecting travelers into vortexes, turn them around, and send them back to where they came from. Even worse, they could suck someone into an Endless Vertigo, forcing them to re-experience the same events over and over again.

  Then there was the cold. Space cold that made everything hurt. Not that Filip Faix needed to breathe, but he did miss taking in the sweet oxygen that space couldn’t provide. Traveling so far into space also made him feel ill, but he soldiered on, keeping himself occupied by focusing on the majesty of the sights surrounding him.

  For many who were grounded to their planets, space was nothing but a hollow, lifeless void. People once believed Earth was the center of the universe. Time eventually revealed the truth for those willing to accept it. Space, despite its name, was anything but empty. It constantly moved with herds of shooting stars, exploding supernovas, black holes consuming anything in their path, circulating asteroid fields, and even the occasional flying machine.

  Then there was the endless amount of stardust clumping together and slowly forming potential moons, worlds, and stars. Life always began and eventually ended in the dark regions of space, scattering living energies around to start anew somewhere else. Filip Faix would one day cease to exist and become someone or something new.

  He only hoped it wasn’t another tree.

  Outer space, as people called it where he was from, was an interconnecting highway, linking every living being to another. Thus, life and death would never end so long as the universes survived.

  Truly, space was a graveyard as well as a birthplace.

  Filip Faix’s destination was drawing near. He hadn’t been to this planet before. It had taken him some time to find it.

  This place, which once was home to trillions of organisms, was now rebuilding itself after an asteroid hit it a few millennia ago. There was destruction as well as reconstruction. It stood as a testament to how change is inevitable. The planet was rather fortunate. A single world could go through many cycles depending on its lifespan and where it was located in its galaxy. The toxic comet that hit it had killed its inhabitants, but not the planet itself. What didn’t die in the initial impact, the deadly fumes of the aftermath had finished off. Even with the species’ technologies, every air-breathing individual had succumbed to the impact, either by fumes or by starvation, assuming they had somehow escaped into the underground.

  It had taken years after the impact, but plants, small rodents, and reptiles were once again coming to life, springing from the waters where most organisms evolved. The whole globe had become the wild, purely organic place it had started out as. The gas of the comet had subsided, allowing new life to adapt to what remained of its toxicity.

  The jungle humidity made him hotter than Filip Faix ever remembered being before. The dense, clawing foliage and skin-eating insects made his journey slow going. Finally, he came to the edge of a pit, wider than St. Peter’s dome in the Vatican. The pool inside the pit—it reeked as bad as a billion rotting corpses—was barely visible. The waterline started deep down within the quarry. When he dove in, he discovered the space between the edge of the pit and the water was greater than any building back home. He splashed into it and swam downwards for many leagues, which proved a bit of a challenge, for the liquid was as thick as jelly.

  He cut through the clear slime and managed to reach the mouth of a tunnel. He was certain this was the one. There were dozens of tunnels that pocketed the cavern wall, but the clue on the list suggested a burrow shaped like an oval, and none of the other passageways was that shape.

  He swam into it, letting the darkness swallow him whole. It mattered little to him since his eyesight adapted quickly to the dark. After clawing through the gooey liquid, an opening broke above him. Filip Faix raised his head out of the water and to his surprise, found he had swum into an open chamber. It was completely airless, but a dry area nonetheless. The Trickster climbed out, wiping the goo from his eyes. He scouted out the grotto. It appeared similar to every other cave he’d ever been in—rocky, with twisted formations hanging from the ceiling or rising up from the ground.

  The only difference was the thousands of skeletons. Hardly a space on the floor was free of the bones and belongings that the departed once treasured enough to bring down to the cave
s with them while they escaped the comet gas. Filip Faix stepped through the endless piles of remains, kicking skulls and other things about. These lifeforms stood taller than Earth people by a few feet, their bones were wider and denser, and they were shaped differently than the humans. The sound of the clanking bones echoed eerily in the hollow cavity. Gooey liquid dripped off speleothems, which ranged about three-quarters of a mile high. Regardless of all these strange and foreign wonders surrounding him, he had only come for one item.

  Most of the skulls were still encased in the gas masks that were meant to protect them. Filip Faix snorted as he thought about the next civilized populace finding the remains of these past planet dwellers and believing them to be some primitive colony or alien lifeforms—or, perhaps, even ancient gods. Filip Faix had witnessed it happen before.

  The gas mask helmets were mostly generic models, mass-produced during some war that may have taken place at some point. What he needed to find was a helmet belonging to a high-ranking officer. After moving deeper into the cave tunnel, he found just what he was searching for. At his feet was the skeleton of an unknown soldier, perhaps a general or lieutenant, wearing the gas mask engraved with an army insignia. The symbol was written on the list the Erinye had created.

  A so-called admirer of Filip Faix’s—a small forest imp who had challenged him to a treasure hunt—had recently visited him. Filip Faix had accepted, mainly because of the prize that awaited the winner. The Sudarshana Chakra! The golden disk was a powerful weapon crafted by Vishnu himself. Filip Faix had tried stealing the weapon ages ago, but the Hindu god had caught him. As punishment for his crime, Vishnu turned the Trickster into a tree. After his tree form died, Vishnu offered to return Filip Faix to his normal self on the condition that he never again try to obtain the Chakra. Filip Faix agreed—and he had kept his word until the imp appeared with it. The Trickster didn’t consider this challenge as breaking his promise. After all, it wasn’t he who’d stolen the Chakra, right?