Soul Hook (Devany Miller Book 5) (Devany Miller Series)

by Jen Ponce

  “And I thanked you, didn’t I? After I screamed and hid under the covers. You could have knocked and you, if you please, Devany, could put in a call rather than just tugging us here.”

  “Put in a call?”

  She looked surprised I didn’t know. I was surprised she knew. Why was I always the last person to find out the important stuff? “Yes, from what Vasili says, it’s a common courte—”

  “Elizabeta.”

  I looked from one to the other and then focused on Medusa-Head. “You always act annoyed when I drop in on you. Now she’s saying you could have told me how to give you a call and you just … didn’t? Why?”

  He blustered a moment, his cheeks stained darker with his embarrassment. Finally, Elizabeta came to his rescue. “He likes it when you drop in, I think.”

  Vasili vanished before I could ask him anything else. The chicken.

  “He likes it?”

  Elizabeta shrugged. “He doesn’t have many friends … any friends. And you treat him well. Except, maybe, for the dropping-in bit.” She arched an eyebrow at Oren who did not look repentant in the least. “Oren senses the energy surges. Whatever Gaius is doing is using a lot of power.”

  Oren snarled. “He’s killing his remaining Skriven, which means he’s creating a hole as big or bigger than the Rend. He’ll rip his hole and rip another until he finds a version of you he can control. He’ll do the same to Tytan and then he will have what he wants.”

  Shit. To Elizabeta, I said, “How do you do this calling thing?”

  She shrugged helplessly, so I did my yanky-yank caveman routine and brought Kali and a bunch of other Skriven to me. Then I twanged the blue string that connected the baby to Ty and waited.

  His eyebrows rose when he saw the gathering of Skriven and took in where they were.

  “I think we need to let Gaius know I’m pregnant.”

  Elizabeta clapped her hands together. “You are? Oh how wonderful! Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, though I’m not sure it’s the kind of news I wanted to celebrate. After all, it’s what Gaius wanted.”

  “But isn’t that why we’re all here? To make sure he doesn’t get what he wants?” I agreed and she said, “Then he doesn’t get to make this an unhappy occasion. He doesn’t get to cast a pall of fear over this child’s existence before it even has a chance to draw a breath. We should have a celebration.”

  I wondered if she might have been a Wydling in another life. They loved to celebrate. “You’re right, we should. We also need to figure out how to keep Gaius from ripping a hole or grabbing me. If he does either, he wins.”

  Tytan’s eyes kept dropping to my belly as if he expected it to start swelling any second. It made me uncomfortably aware that he and this body had been intimate not too long ago and I had to address my next words to Kali to keep from letting him see my discomfiture. “Kroshtuka says the Elders can hide this place and can keep it hidden if you boost them with your power. Would you be willing to work with them to do that?”

  Kali nodded, her hands on the various weapons she had strapped to her body.

  “And could guys re-gather everyone and bring them here? Even Danni and Zech if they want to come? I’m afraid Gaius will stop at nothing to get what he wants.”

  “He’s powerful.”

  “Yeah, but he’s only one person and we are legion.” Saying that made me feel badass, though Kali probably didn’t get the reference. “Anyway, I’ll introduce you to Lizzie and any of you who would like to help can come with me.” This I addressed to the other Skriven who’d shown up with the warrior.

  They all came, some still surprised I would give them a choice in the matter. I had convinced a few of them to trust me—their distrust understandable considering their last boss—but it gave me an itch I couldn’t scratch, knowing they didn’t believe me when I said I wouldn’t hurt them or coerce them into doing things they didn’t want to do.

  Fisli’s head almost exploded when he realized who Kali and the rest of the creatures were as they filed into the main cavern and lined the walls. He whispered furiously in Lizzie’s ear until she waved him away, bopping him in the nose with her hand in the process. “They are monsters!” The words bounced off the walls of the cave and bounced off the Skriven, too. They weren’t offended; if anything, they were glad he was scared of them. They dealt in fear, or, at least, they used to.

  “They are our guests and they will help us,” Lizzie said, patting Kroshtuka on the arm. He’d filled them in, and it looked like Lizzie was on board with the plan.

  I gave Kroshtuka the rundown on our plan to bait Gaius and said, “If we had a place to lure him to that he couldn’t get out of, a place like Ravana’s prison cell at the bottom of Reach, we could let him know I’m pregnant.”

  “Use yourself as bait? Are you insane?” I hadn’t realized Tytan had followed us over until he spoke behind him.

  “We’d figure out how to do it without risking my life again.”

  “No.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with him, so I just shrugged. “We have to do something soon.”

  “We could use a Gordian Knotwork to hold him long enough for the baozaball to take effect,” Kali said. “It’s a complicated working, but we have so many on our side, it could be done.”

  “A Gordian Knotwork?”

  “He would never fall for it,” Oren said. “He is not an ignorant fool.”

  “But he’s powerful.” All eyes turned to Lizzie. “In my experience, the more powerful the creature, the more arrogant he is. The more arrogant, the more reckless. If you bait the trap with exactly what he wants, and you make it look like an accident …” She clasped her hands in front of her. “He won’t know what hit him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  People kept pouring in. Danni and Zech, Travis, Nex and Cazsada who was over the moon at the prospect of meeting the fleshcrawlers in the Swamp. Neutria was there, though she chose to stay outside the Meat Clan’s boundary lines. We brought everyone back together again and I marveled that so many of them had been willing to help me.

  The only one we didn’t have this time was Arsinua. I refused to have her near Bethany. Elizabeta pulled me aside at one point and asked me if I would be okay with her letting Arsinua go on Midia. “She did a working for me and I promised I would set her free—this was before I knew what she’d done to you and your daughter. I understand if the answer is no, but I needed to ask.”

  I almost said no. I didn’t like the idea of Arsinua running free but honestly, what could she do to me at this point that would top Gaius’s insanity? And though she’d taken Bethany, she hadn’t meant for anything terrible to happen to her. She’d cared about her, she was just a fricking idiot. “As long as you take her somewhere very very far from here, I won’t stop you.”

  “Thank you.” Elizabeta whispered into Vasili’s ear and they both vanished.

  “You’re letting her go?”

  I turned to see my brother glowering at me, though it was his normal surly face and not his angry-at-Devany face. “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s suffered enough. Because I have bigger things to worry about. Because I still remember the person she was when she was in my head and I understand what she did even if I hated her for it for a long time.”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t exactly been a good brother. I’ve thought some shitty things about you.”

  I felt a pang of hurt but I couldn’t exactly feel bad about his thoughts when I was the same flawed human he was. “As a wise person once told me, ‘Thoughts and actions are two very different things.’”

  His lips quirked up. “True story.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you too, dumb ass.” That earned me an attempted noogie, though I used magic to make sure he couldn’t follow through. By damn, there was no way I wasn’t taking advantage of my power when it came to winni
ng scuffles with my brother.

  “You going to tell Tom’s folks?”

  My turn to shrug. “I don’t know what to do. Telling them might make Bob’s heart explode or Alice’s head explode.”

  “Get another clone, or whatever. They don’t need to know. They’re happy. Why fuck it up?”

  Why indeed? “I’ll see what I can do. You’d rather live there than here?”

  He looked around the village—now packed with people and more arriving regularly with the work of my Skriven. “I like Earth. Like being human. I don’t know. You get a clone, I’ll stick around and take care of them. I think it’ll be better if Tom’s folks don’t know. What’s the harm now? They’d have to mourn their son all over again and then mourn their grandkids too.”

  He was right. I’d wanted to make another clone, hadn’t wanted to break open their worlds again, but I couldn’t make the call. “I’ll do it.”

  He nodded and then jerked his chin toward Kali, who’d just shown up with Sharps. “Looks like you’re needed.”

  “Thanks, Trav.”

  “No problem.”

  There was so much power buzzing through the witchballs that my hair regularly rose off my scalp and stood on end as if I were in constant contact with one of those plasma balls they sell at the mall. We had protections within protections within protections and at the center of it all, we had the trap.

  It didn’t look like much, which was our goal. A circle a mere six feet in diameter. A spot in the middle for me to sit and an escape built into it and fed with my blood. I could escape but he couldn’t.

  The baozaball was in my pocket.

  The plan was to let slip that I was pregnant to Anwen, who would deliver the news to her master. I’d protested this part because she wasn’t just giving it up. She would get herself taken, let herself be tortured, and would mention it by accident. I knew she was immortal, that she would survive the torture even if Gaius removed all her protruding parts, but I hated the thought of her taking all that pain for me. We didn’t even know each other.

  The spot in the very center of the Gordian Knotwork was the only spot in the village where you could somewhat sense life. We were cloaked so heavily nothing could find us, and the tiny spark of life was so hidden we hoped he would think it was a mistake on our part and not a trick. He would have to search and search hard to find it.

  When he arrived, it would trigger my escape. When the magic yanked me out, it would leave behind the baozaball. It was the shakiest part of our plan, because we didn’t know how to compel him to touch it and we didn’t know what kind of magic we could do that would get him to touch the ball without it being obvious that something was amiss. The problem was, we wouldn’t be able to hold him indefinitely. Even if collectively we were stronger than he was, it didn’t mean we could maintain the power forever. Eventually he would escape. We had to ensure that he ingested the ball.

  We needed him in agony and distracted.

  “What about just laying it on the ground?” I suggested for what might have been the twentieth time. Everyone else kept nixing the idea because it would be out in the open, which meant I could accidentally bump it and release some of its pain-inducing compounds. Surely with the automatic triggering of the escape I would be fine, but Vasili kept shooting me down.

  “I won’t have something I created be the reason you ask us to kill you for a second time,” he finally said, and I stopped suggesting it.

  “What if we infuse it with Devany’s essence?” This from Lizzie, who had indeed pressed a copy of a book in one of Kali’s hands, though not the same book she’d given to me. Kali was reading now, her head bent over the text, her lips moving slightly as she read.

  “The baozaball?”

  She nodded and Vasili settled into his pondering face. “Perhaps it could be done. I would worry Gaius would sense that it wasn’t her and leave the trap well enough alone.”

  “What if we put it in a bottle of wine?” Bethany asked. She looked tired but she and Liam both had stayed involved with the discussions that had started in late afternoon and were continuing long after dark.

  “Originator’s don’t need to drink,” Kali said, not looking up from her book.

  “Yeah, but like to,” Tytan said. “It has merit. Especially if we sweeten the deal and make the drink a bit more to his liking.”

  What the hell kind of drink would Gaius love? The blood of his enemies? The tears of the windows whose husbands he murdered?

  “Mead.”

  That sounded very hipster of Hipster Grandpa. “So we get mead, drop in the baozaball and voila?” I asked, trying to picture what unending agony would feel like. I hoped he suffered, wanted him to writhe in pain for what he’d done, not just to me but countless others. To Mal, who still hadn’t woken from Gaius’ explosion. Gaius deserved all of it and more.

  “Fisli will get the mead. His brew is quite simply the best in all the Wilds,” Lizzie added, when it looked as though Fisli would complain about being forced to provide the alcohol. “We will prepare the trap and bait it … but not tonight. Tonight we sleep. Tomorrow we prepare Anwen for her sacrifice and dance to give her strength and peace. Then we bait the trap and hope we can catch this beast.”

  I wanted to rush us, wanted to hurry everything along, but Oren had assured us that we had a few days to do this right. Gaius was close, he’d said, but he’d already used up a great many of his Skriven escaping Reach. He would have to hunt down more, prep the sacrifice and mold the ripper.

  We had time. I had to keep reminding myself of that. Not much, but some.

  Anwen was chained so she couldn’t drag herself out of the Meat Clan’s boundaries and go to Gaius. She had requested the chains herself after catching herself being compelled to Gaius’s side. He was calling in all his Skriven and eventually she would have no choice but to go to him. Even if it meant chewing off her arm to free herself, she would go. It had happened to Mal, and how confused and upset he must have been.

  “Then let’s get some sleep because we’re all going to need every advantage we have to get one over on that asshole.”

  I was up at dawn, sitting in the sun on a rock still warm from the day before. Nex had joined me and we watched the sky turn from dark blues, to pinks and oranges in companionable silence. It was good to have everyone around me, all those I cared about, those who had helped me and shaped me as I ran headlong into danger.

  I’d made so many good friends and learned a lot about myself. Of course, I’d also had my soul ripped from me, my daughter stolen from me, had killed when I’d thought I was the kind of person who would never lift a hand to destroy another.

  Shit. There went my mellow mood.

  “Why does this feel like the end?”

  Nex pondered this as he floated beside me, his guts making whispering sounds on the rock as he moved. “When you died, we all found ourselves at odds. You held us together; without you, would we ever consort with one another? Vasili and I are friends and I believe I would stay in contact with him. Jack may become a friend, though he seems to prefer your company.” He nodded and I saw Jack sitting a few yards down the path, his arms looped around his knees as he stared up at us. When he knew I’d seen him, he rose and trotted over.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t wish to intrude.”

  “It’s all right.” I moved over so he could sit and waited for him to speak, but he had closed his eyes. “Danni and Zech met because of me and they’re still together.”

  “Just so.”

  “Jasper died because of me, though. And Ellison, in a way.”

  “A tally of those you harmed and those you helped can be an exercise in pain,” Nex said. “And arrogance,” he added. “You don’t truly know how anyone is affected by you. It’s your guilt or pride projected onto them. You considered the removal of my head to be a terrible thing, if you recall.”

  I curled my lip remembering the first time I’d touched his head after his queen had thrown it to me. “I was pretty d
umb. Still am, honestly. I keep making mistakes. I don’t listen and pay for it later.” I wasn’t a ‘sit around and plan’ kind of person. Still, I knew there were people out there who hated people like me. Maybe everything would have turned out better if I hadn’t told Tom to get out, if I hadn’t challenged Ty over Nex’s head, if I hadn’t stepped out into the alleyway to see what was wrong.

  Didn’t matter now. What was done was done. I had no intention of going back through any Rends to try again. I’d done that once too and things hadn’t turned out any better with foreknowledge. Time travel was a bunch of bullshit.

  “Do you think he’ll win?” Gaius was weighing on my mind, which was part of the reason I was out here instead of curled up next to Krosh in our hut. It wasn’t lost on me how Gaius had snapped my neck the same way I’d snapped Ravana’s. Had he done it on purpose to make some point? Or had it just been the most expedient way to dispatch me?

  Sometimes there were too many questions and not enough answers.

  “He is an Originator like you with the same access to the Source as you and fewer Skriven to help him.”

  “So … we’ll win?”

  Nex did his version of a shrug, where he bobbed his head from side to side a couple times. “I think we have a chance. I want to win because I can be the pegnon who helped defeat Gaius Regulus, which will aid me in my endeavors to rule the fleshcrawlers of the Slip. Those that remain after the explosion, that is.”

  Funny how Neutria had gone on to lead an army of gumball spiders, Nex was now plotting to take over a kingdom, and Ty was an Originator. Everyone was moving up to the big time.

  “We’ll win,” Jack said, though he didn’t sound confident, just worried.

  I patted him then sighed. “I have to pee. Jack, I know you’re feeling a little lost, but please don’t follow me to the bathhouse this time, all right?”

  He nodded and I rose, giving Nex a smile before I left.

  The bathhouse was full. I waved to Mina and went to the bathroom, then joined her in the dressing area where she was braiding a little girl’s hair. “I have something for you,” Mina said. “As soon as I’m done with Lyxa.” Mina’s fingers were nimble as she plaited Lyxa’s hair and when she was finished, she sent her on her way with a kiss on her forehead. “Come with me.” I followed her to her home, smaller and cozier than Krosh’s. “My mother gave this to me and asked me to save it for Kroshtuka’s first child.”