by Jen Ponce
“You can’t use any magic here?”
He shook his head and I shot him with a blast of my magic, knocking him hard into the back wall, hard enough to split the stone. Dust fell on him, a few small pieces of rock. He didn’t get up right away, just sat there and laughed. “Oh, yes. You’re just what this dull place needed.”
“Devany!”
I looked up to see Ty and Kali staring down at me. “Get me out of here!”
Ty shifted but Kali caught his arm. “You can’t let him out.”
“She can kill him if she needs to. We can’t leave her in there. With him.” He moved and again Kali stopped him.
“He cannot be let out and you know why.”
Ty shoved her, putting strength into it, sending her flying. As soon as she was airborne, he applied magic to the barrier separating us. I glanced at Gaius, who was gazing at me with the grin of a serial killer.
I wanted out. I wanted out of there so badly … but that smile. “Ty? Ty! Stop. Stop doing that. We can’t let him out. Ty!”
The magic cut. Ty glared down at me in frustration for a second before Kali’s magic crashed into him.
“I think he’s worried about you. Why don’t you go ahead and let him save you? I’m sure everything will be okay. What harm could I do in the face of your,” he waved his hand at me, “strength.”
“Shut your pie-hole.” I heard Ty and Kali fighting. There were thumps and blows, but I couldn’t see anything.
“They won’t figure out how to get you out of here without letting me out. And if you let me out, well.”
“I’ll kill you.”
“Hook a soul into me, snap my neck?” Something on my face made him light up with a big, shit-eating grin. “Do you think it was coincidence that you fell down here? Do you think that I hadn’t planned for someone to open my man’s door so that he could carry that someone down here to me? Ah, Devany Miller, I’m afraid you’ve managed to hasten my release from this hole I’ve been trapped in. Granted, I wish there had been a better way in the millions of possibilities, but beggars and all that.”
Was he saying he knew I’d open the door? Me, personally and not just a random unlucky person? “You read probabilities. So, why the hell didn’t you figure out Ravana was going to lock you in here?”
“Oh my dear. Who says I didn’t know?”
I gave him my best, ‘You got to be fucking kidding me,’ look. “You want me to believe you wanted to be locked up for thousands of years?”
He didn’t answer, just held up his hands and began silently counting down.
“What are you doing?”
He raised his eyebrows and folded his fingers down one by one. When he dropped the last, Ty fell through the barrier and landed at my feet.
Hipster Grandpa smiled at me. “Hello, Tytan.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Why are you in here? Did Kali—?” I stuck out my hand and helped him up.
“Yes,” he said sourly. “She said she would convene with the other Skriven and then get back to us.”
Well shit. Who knew if they would even try to get us out. Why have a boss on the loose when you could cage them up in an inescapable cell? Of course, if they couldn’t access their magic with me down here, they might be more motivated to get us the hell out of here.
“Gaius.”
“Tytan, my boy. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.” Hipster Grandpa held his hands out as if he expected Tytan to hug him. My bet was that Tytan would kick him in the ’nads.
Ty surprised me by turning his back on him. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Damn it, though. If I’d thought to hook …” I gasped when he touched my shoulder. I’d forgot about the gnawing I’d gone through. “Ow. Okay, maybe I’m not quite all right.”
“Come on.” He led me to the opposite wall, away from Gaius and sat me down on the floor by the wall. He tugged at my ruined shirt, gently peeling it away from my wounds while I gritted my teeth. Lucky for me, I took a dunk in the oily water—it wasn’t as dried and stuck on as it could have been, I guessed. When I was topless, because why wouldn’t I end up topless around Ty, he fed magic into my wounds.
And it hurt.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I tapped on his arm. He didn’t stop, just kept working at the bites, at the torn flesh. “Stop.”
“No. I don’t know what that thing was or what kind of shit was in its mouth. I have to get it clean, so you won’t get infected.” He caught my eye and, in my head, said, ‘Keep an eye on him.’
I nodded, wincing as I felt another tug on my collarbone, as his magic burrowed into me and pieced things back together. Thank goodness for magic. For him. If Kali hadn’t thrown him down here, I doubted very much that Hipster Grandpa would have done anything to help me. He was still sitting there, staring, of course. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of hiding my boob. Let him look, the old goat. To Ty, I thought, ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Wait for Kali to get us out.’
“I know what you two are doing. So precious, you both are.”
“Suck it, Hipster Grandpa,” I said, then winced when Ty hit a sore spot.
“Hipster Grandpa?”
“Asshole Grandpa seemed too obvious.” I hissed again. “Are you close to being done yet?”
“Almost.” He had a furrow between his brows as he worked, his full lips pursed. ‘What about the hole in the middle? Can we get through there?’
‘Don’t you think he would have escaped if it was that easy?’ I glanced back over at Gaius. Weird that he hadn’t moved. Why? I know I hadn’t hurt him badly enough to incapacitate him.
“Ravana’s pretty children. So good of you to drop by for a visit.”
‘He’s fucking creepy, Ty.’ I winced again. “Surely you’re about done now.”
Gaius rose, taking his time, looking for all the world like a human man getting off the floor, not like the all-powerful creature he was.
“He doesn’t have access to his magic,” I said, letting out my breath in a long, slow hiss. “Ow.”
Tytan shifted to look at Hipster Grandpa. “The magic keeping him here must be attuned to him somehow.”
“Then why is it keeping us in?”
“Because, children,” Gaius said and raised his arms up. When he did the room sparkled with magic. Across every surface of the stone were carved runes in beautiful, jagged patterns. “I may not have had access to my magic, but I had access to the Slip and the Source through the water.” He gestured elegantly to the oily black liquid in the center of the room. “I used it to imbue the walls with power. Power to keep you two in.”
Fear crawled on tiny, evil feet across my skin. I’d heard what he’d said about probabilities, but I hadn’t believed it. Not really. Not until now.
He stared at his work with the expression of a proud father. “I, of course, wish I could have muted your power. You have a powerful right hook, young lady.” He shook his finger at me as if I were a naughty preschooler. “But if I’d muted your magic, you two couldn’t make your magical little key.”
What the hell? “Magical little key?”
He patted his stomach and I wanted to get up and deck him. I would have if Ty hadn’t been holding me in place.
“Not now, Devany. I’m almost done.”
“Fucker. He’s an asshole. A douche. I’m pretty sure I want to kill him.” I’d known that Ravana created me to be Ty’s Bride of Frankenstein, but it still didn’t sit well with me. It was worse knowing this creeper had been sitting down here for thousands of years planning on how to trap us here and force us to get it on. “Never, dink. Never.”
He stretched, his denim shirt riding up to expose his washboard abs. “These runes aren’t just for keeping you two here, you know. They’re for making you grow fond of each other. For making you want each other.” He laid a palm on one of the runes. “Oh, yes. It’s so subtle, so simple. Inevitable. You two create my key and I unlock the door.” He twisted his other wrist as if he were using a ke
y. “It took some doing, some planning, a lot of scratching and scraping, but it’s the perfect trap for you both. And you played right into it, didn’t you, dear Tytan?”
I frowned. “Kali threw him down here.”
“Devany. Don’t talk to him, he’s a maniac. He’ll manipulate you and feed on your confusion. Just ignore—”
“He didn’t get thrown down here, Devany. He came to save you.”
I told myself not to be annoyed or flattered that Ty played right into Hipster Grandpa’s hands. After all, it took two to tango, right? I was here too, even if I hadn’t jumped in myself. If the monster that had carried me over the edge hadn’t done it, there were probably other traps the damned wily Originator had laid over the centuries that would have gotten me here.
I had to hope that between the two of us, Ty and I could figure a way out. A way out that didn’t involve sexing it up and creating a sacrifice for the creepy Originator trapped with us.
A thought dawned on me and I said, ‘Reach? Can you hear me?’
‘I can,’ said the tower, its voice fainter than before.
‘Can you get me out of here?’
‘I’m sorry. The cell you are in is not a part of me. It was created by the fleshcrawlers and Ravana stole it from them. They guard the underwater entrance only to keep Originators from invading their kingdom.’
Oh goody. I was probably lucky I hadn’t gotten ripped apart when I’d plunged into the water. ‘Can you tell my other Skriven I’m down here? Maybe send someone to Baow to see if it has any idea how to get me out of here?’ I wasn’t sure Baow would even want me to escape. Especially not after his Whomping Willow act. Gaius had been down here for centuries, after all, without anyone storming the Reach to get him out. Of course, I wanted to think I was better liked than him, but who knew?
‘I will send out a message to your Skriven.’
“Thanks.” At Ty’s look, I said, ‘Reach is sending out the distress signal.’
“Whatever it is you’re planning, it won’t work,” Hipster Grandpa said, the condescension in his voice grating on my nerves. “You’re stuck in here until you deliver what I want.” His grin made me want to kick him. “Get it? Deliver?”
“Let’s throw him in with the fleshcrawlers,” I said to Ty.
“Do you really think bad puns are an executable offense?”
“Yes.” I winced as Ty fed more power into me, my skin super-sensitive to the lightest touch. “Are you done now?”
“Yeah.”
He hadn’t even sneaked a peek at my boobs—I was impressed, though maybe I should have been worried. And wasn’t that messed up? “Thank you. It kind of feels better.” I winced as I tried pulling the pieces of my shirt back together.
“Here.” He had his shirt off and extended to me, eyes still averted.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
He shook his head. “Put it on.”
‘Ty. Ty, look at me.’
When he still ignored me, I cursed and slipped on the shirt. “Better?”
He met my gaze then and I saw something in his eyes that made my heart hurt. I didn’t know what it was, exactly. Pain, but not quite. Yearning, but not quite. Anger, but not quite. ‘I won’t allow that bastard to do this to us. If you come to me, ever, it won’t be because of some damned Originator’s spells.’
I huffed out a breath. Sucked air in. Realized that there was a weight, a pull that I hadn’t noticed before, a pull towards him. It wasn’t entirely manufactured, but the hint of something not quite true danced around the edges of the energy.
And Ty was feeling it a lot harder than I was.
‘We’re going to get out of here long before this yahoo gets his way. You hear me? We won’t let him win.’ I wanted to keep talking, but I wasn’t sure anything I had to say right now would reassure him. “What’s up with this whole, ‘Lock them in a room and make them fall in love,’ thing, huh, Hipster Grandpa?”
He was studying me like a bug on a pin. Or maybe a flayed frog on a science-room table that he was about to dissect. “I don’t care if you fall in love or not.”
“Right. This is about any baby we conceive. What if I told you I got my tubes tied? Hmm?” He looked puzzled, so I said, “Snipped the ole fallopian tubes. I can’t have babies.” It wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t need to know it. I’d thought about it after Bethy was born, but when I held her in my arms, I couldn’t sign the paperwork.
“It won’t matter. You two were made for each other. Literally, in case you still think I’m a romantic. It won’t matter. You’ll get pregnant. That’s also what you were made for, no matter what parts you’ve had tied or snipped or removed.” He gave a little twist to the end of his white mustache, just like a villain in a melodrama would and I almost laughed out loud.
“Let’s say your nefarious plan works. What then? You think I’d let you anywhere near any child I had?”
“It’s not about the child, not really. It’s about slipping through the hook that’s opened when the child gets its soul.”
I frowned. “Where does that lead?”
“To the Source itself.”
Much of my time facing Ravana was traumatic, so I had a hard time remembering parts of it … but hadn’t she said something about eating the baby? Or had that been Ty? “Why can’t you go there now?”
He laughed, a snide sound that annoyed me. “Haven’t you taught her anything, Tytan? Anything at all? We can’t hook into the Source—it repels us. But if we could walk through a wide-open door—” He whistled. “Such power. All around. Any creature who gained access would become a god.”
There it was. Ravana had wanted Ty and me to have a child so she could use it to be a god … but Ty had said any child we had would be a god. “I’m confused.”
“Our child would have direct access to the Source.”
“So do we.”
“We pull from it and give to it. Our kid would own it. He or she could deny access to any Originator, could change the Slip or destroy it completely.”
“Why does this yahoo want us to procreate, then? So he can be a god first? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” I stared hard at Gaius. “You’re stupid.”
He just raised his well-groomed eyebrows. “Thank you for killing Ravana and taking her out of the running. Thank you for falling so neatly into my trap so I have first crack at the soul hook.”
“Not a chance in hell. Not. A. Chance.”
“I have all the time in the world, Devany. After a year, ten years, a century or two, do you really think you will still be able to say no?”
“I can’t be down here a century,” I whispered to Ty, trying not to hyperventilate as we sat as far from HG as we could get. Gaius had made no move toward us, had merely strolled to the far wall where he stood, staring out a small window. “I can’t.” A horrifying thought occurred to me. “Is my time belt broken? Oh god, is it?”
“No. There was no need to break a time belt for Gaius. Devany, calm down and look at it with your power.”
Why the hell had I thought it was a good idea to come to the Slip? Why hadn’t I learned from all the other times I’d come? Death and destruction and danger was all I ever found here. I dropped into my Magic Eye to look for the belt and when I found it, a surge of relief hit me so strong I sagged against Ty for a moment. “Thank all that’s unholy. It’s there.”
“Told you.”
His voice rumbled through his chest and against my arm, reminding me how close I was to him. I straightened. “Okay. Let’s think this thing through. We can’t focus on what we’ve lost, not if we want to get out of here. We have to focus on what we still have.”
“Your magic.”
“Right. Why do you think I still have that?”
Ty shrugged. “Because Gaius was expecting someone like me, and he got you instead. Chythraul, witch, fleshcrawler, Wydling. You’re a genetic stew, one he couldn’t possibly prepare for.”
“Why not? He knew I’d release th
e prisoners. He knew you’d hop down here to save me. Why couldn’t he have known about that, too? Known about it and prepared for it?” A thought struck me. “Maybe he did. He said we’d need magic to create a baby. Maybe he blocked me just enough to keep me here, but not enough to keep conception from occurring.”
“Or,” Ty said, his voice pitched low despite the bubble I’d put around us both to keep Gaius out of our conversation, “he wants us both to believe he’s planned all this when in reality, it was a series of unfortunate accidents.”
“But—”
“What does he have to gain from us thinking he’s an evil genius, always one step ahead of us?”
I pondered that for a moment. “We start thinking we can’t win against him and eventually give in.”
“Perhaps. And what does he have to gain from this series of accidents?”
Realization dawned on me. “The same thing, but without two people who are terrified he will always be one step ahead.”
Ty glanced over at Gaius, his mouth stretched into a tight line. “He is smart. He’s wily. But he’s not anymore genius than Ravana was. They were long-lived and persistent. They made a lot of mistakes because those mistakes never cost them anything. There were no consequences to their experimentation, and they could have access to all the test subjects they needed for however long they needed them. Devany,” he said, looking back at me, “why else would it have taken them so long to make you? If he really was a genius that could read possibilities in the aether, why hadn’t he figured out how to create a baby sooner? Or one of us that was less of a pain in the ass.”
“Hey,” I said, “that’s just rude.” There was no heat in the words. I liked the idea of being a pain in the ass to Gaius. I hoped I could foil all the bastard’s plans, maybe even kill him, and help Ty find a little bit of peace. “So, he wants us to believe he’s an evil genius, so we give up and do what he wants?”
“Yes. Either that or he believes he is a genius. Either way, he wants us scared. Let’s not give that to him.”
“Easy for you to say,” I muttered. What I really wanted to do was run away screaming, but that would kind of give HG the idea that I was scared of him … and I was, but I didn’t want him to know it. I wanted to know what he’d done to Ty, but I also didn’t want to know, either. I wasn’t sure what was worse—my imagination or the truth—so I decided to stick with my imagination for now. “What if we toss him to the fleshcrawlers? Even if he’s immortal, he can be hurt, dismembered, even.”
