Uninvited (Etudes in C# Book 3)

by Jamie Wyman

  “I’m fine,” I said, my voice modulated oddly through my bones and ringing head. But was I? I couldn’t really tell. I felt numb all over, and my senses were all fluffy and fucked up. I looked myself over. No blood. No pain. I started coughing, though. Here, on the floor, I was face-first in the noxious vapor that had been slipping between the cracks of the door.

  I turned my head, bracing myself with my arms as I retched. Through watery eyes I saw sunlight pouring into the dark little foyer. Llyr dragged me up to my feet and steadied me, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the door. The shotgun blast had hit the wood boards in such a way as to take out a chunk the size of a Magic 8 Ball. Dislodged from its frame, the door swung in an idle breeze. Sinuous, amorphous shadows writhed through the hole.

  As the ringing in my ears slowly abated, a low buzzing took its place. It took a second or two for me to register that noise as a voice, another second to understand words.

  Llyr grabbed me by the shoulders. “Cat, listen to me. I can only be of so much help to you. Take the boys and run away from here. Run home. Then find the Sileni. It’s very important that you remember this name. Do you understand?”

  “Wait, what are you—”

  “The Sileni,” he repeated. “Tell Marius. He’ll understand.”

  Releasing my shoulders, Llyr faced the door and kicked it down with wordless roar of fury.

  Belial stood a few yards away beneath the arbor, the grass at his feet black and steaming. My knees went weak at the sight of him. To call him imposing would be like calling Everest tall. Belial was more than seven feet if he was an inch. Meaty bulk hung on that large frame, concealed somewhat by the jeans and the T-shirt covering his massive chest. Veiny muscles bulged in arms that were the sick, bloodless white of a fish belly.

  A long, narrow rectangle formed the structure of his face. His forehead was broad, his brow flat and low. The dome of his bald head was smooth as a marble gravestone. Licking his colorless lips with a dark tongue, he stared at me down his nose with ember-red eyes.

  “Hello, mageling,” he purred. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  His fists flexed at his sides, and I saw black fingernails that hooked like an eagle’s talons.

  Legs wobbling coltishly, I took an instinctive step back and bumped into Marius. With one hand, he grabbed onto the belt loop at my back.

  “Steady,” he whispered softly.

  “Satyr,” Belial belched, “let this be our bargain. In a display of your fealty, bring the woman to me.”

  Marius’s grip on me tightened, but I panicked. He was taking a little too long to think this through. Breathing like a trapped rabbit, I squirmed against his grasp and looked over my shoulder.

  “Don’t,” I snarled through my teeth.

  The satyr’s features were placid, his green eyes cool as he asked, “I give her to you and I’m protected, you say?”

  “No one will dare collect on their bounties when you are in the employ of a prince of Hell. You will be well kept with all that which will satisfy your many appetites.”

  Marius’s moustache twitched in a weak, derisive smile. “Has no one told you, Belial?”

  “Told me what, satyr?”

  Marius gave a lighthearted shrug. “I’m insatiable.”

  He lifted me off my feet and whirled me around, shoving me into the waiting arms of his father. Llyr caught me and pushed me behind him.

  “Run!” he roared.

  Marius drew steel once more. I saw Belial’s hand cut a broad arc through the air and a flaming whip appeared in his hand, curling and coiling as if alive. The prince’s flesh rippled and shifted. Dark circles formed beneath his eyes, and coiling horns bursting out of his skull.

  “Run, girl!” Llyr repeated.

  But run where? Where could I go that Belial wouldn’t follow? And how could I just leave Marius? Every quaking cell in my body screamed to fly, to vanish. I couldn’t move. Rooted to the spot, I could only watch as Belial transformed. Flesh gave way to scales and spines the color of granite. Mundane clothing turned into armor slick and black like the chitin of a beetle. A tattered cape the shade of dried blood tossed in the air behind him.

  “So be it, satyr. All of you step aside and you need not feel my wrath.”

  “You will not sully my home,” Llyr commanded. “Nor will you endanger those I call family.”

  Llyr’s eyes fixed on me, and my heart swelled. Family? No, running wasn’t an option. I had to stay and fight with them.

  Belial dipped his chin and snarled. “I will take that which is mine—vengeance, blood, and destruction.” He cracked his whip, setting the arbor ablaze.

  Llyr raised his hands, and the earth began to shake. Tree roots ripped from the earth and lashed around Belial’s ankles. When Marius punched at the air a second later, vines shot up from the grass, stretching around the prince’s torso.

  Belial’s whip twisted into an enormous circle around his body. With a burst of heat, the arbor fell in a flaming heap, blocking the path out of there with its rising wall of fire.

  Something in my mind snapped, a door slamming on all the horror and screaming in my head. Thinking clearly now, I stretched out a hand, fingers splayed, and sent out a bolt of white power. The lightning struck the prince’s chest but couldn’t penetrate his armor. Smoke rose from him, partially obscuring his wide, sharklike sneer.

  “Fight me, mage,” he rumbled. “I’ve bent and broken those like you since the dawn of time. Conjurers, sorcerers, and wizards have fallen to me by the legion. What makes you think you will fare better than they did?”

  I swallowed my pride. I had no witty comeback, no confident retort.

  “You have stolen from me,” he continued. “You are an accomplice to the murder of my vassal Moloch. Now, little mortal, you will pay with your pain.”

  He lashed out with that wicked whip. As the flame drew near, I ducked and rolled, coming up an arm’s length away from Belial’s bulk. Forging a blade of light, I lunged, swiping at the armor just beneath the behemoth’s whip arm. As quickly as I closed in on him, I backed off, narrowly missing a swat of his obsidian claws.

  Blurs of green, brown, and black flew past me. I heard my name being shouted, warnings and commands to stay back. Marius, his eyes ablaze with verdant fire, took up the flank with Belial. The saber slashed at the prince’s thick gray hide. My heart fell, though, as even that enchanted sword didn’t score so much as a paper cut. Marius retreated, bringing the blade up to parry a blow from Belial’s spiked bracer. I used the opening to take another poke at him with my power. The beast’s carapace sizzled and boiled at the contact.

  The whip blurred. With a searing pain, my heels rocked. Despite what I’m sure was graceful flailing, I landed on my ass hard enough to make me yelp. Damn Belial had swept my legs right out from under me. My Chucks were singed, the soles smoking and sticky.

  I glared at the prince of Hell.

  Digging my fingers into the soil, I called to the power lines that flowed through the area. Internet. Telephone. Cable. Electricity. Anything I could find. Out here in the country, the well was shallow, but it had a source, a greater pool of energy. My senses searched at the speeds of light and thought until I reached a burning core. Like poking a straw into a juice box, I connected with that blazing well and drew it into myself in practiced sips.

  With an amused, arrogant smirk, Belial lashed out at Llyr and Marius as the two tried to take him on from either side. He squatted down, compressing his girth into a tight ball. His armor glowed red a second before a concussive blast of heat came out of him in a cacophonous roar.

  Llyr and Marius went flying with the shockwave, one falling to the grass just a blink before the other. Smoke rose from both of them. I even caught sight of a tiny flame in Marius’s hair.

  As if I needed another reason.

  My gut was now a cauldron. I directed the flow of power into the pit of my stomach and poured in my anger, rage, and fear. I moved into a crouch, bringing both arms ar
ound in a low arc, and let the white lightning flow out of me in a scimitar of fury aimed at the prince’s shiny boots.

  Belial skipped backward, dodging my attack, but his head whipped up. I’d surprised him.

  I met his red eyes with a challenge. “Don’t fuck with my Chucks, asshole,” I growled. Taking another draught of power from the Glastonbury grid, I shot up off the ground with a snap of ozone and kicked out at Belial’s ugly, arrogant face. My foot connected, that’s for damn sure. Pain traveled up my toes, rattled through each of the tiny bones in my ankle and up to my knee. When I hit the ground, I tucked into a roll. My foot went numb.

  Note to self: Never kick a prince of Hell in the skull.

  I needed more power. I drank from the well in ever-increasing gulps. Using a few techniques Karma had taught me, I was able to set my bones to healing with the borrowed energy. If I hoped to put a dent in Belial let alone fight him off, though, I still needed more.

  Belial rounded on me, hatred heaving from his breaths, glowing in his bloody eyes.

  I threw my hands up in front of me, and a dome of light encased me, pulsing and humming with white and gold. Belial swung a black-clad fist and struck my shield. Lightning crackled along the dome, but it otherwise stayed intact.

  I bared my teeth, relishing this small victory. Sparing glances to either side of the lawn, I saw Llyr just beginning to stir. He brought himself up to hands and knees, Malcolm at his side. Marius lay motionless on the grass, crumpled in a heap of borrowed clothing. (Flynn was going to kill him for those scorch marks.)

  “Get up,” I whispered.

  Belial struck the shield again. The concussion drilled through my connection with the dome and jangled my teeth.

  “Come on, Marius,” I shouted. “Get up!”

  Belial’s smile was a terrible promise. “Is that how to hurt you, mageling?”

  He turned on his heel and stalked over to Marius, where he picked up the satyr by the scruff of the neck. Dangling from the prince’s large fist, Marius looked like a bedraggled kitten.

  That was enough for me. I reached into that pool of energy, that burning well of power, and let it flow over me, consume me. I drank and drank, filling myself until my veins hummed with static crackles and buzzed with a thousand channels of activity.

  I felt it all. I felt the power grid of Glastonbury. Every landline, every radio tuned into a soccer match or rock station. Every Internet connection and MP3 player. Every video game and lightbulb. If I reached out a tiny sliver of my awareness I could touch satellites.

  My hair fanned out in a copper nimbus. Like an aura of fire, a halo of pure gold glowed over my skin. Buoyed by the magnetic field of a few billion electrons, I felt myself levitate off the ground.

  “Put him down!” I yelled. Within the shield, my voice took on a queer mechanical modulation. The sound reminded me of Flynn—the real Flynn, when stripped of his mortality.

  Belial eyed me. Gone was the placid mask. First, astonishment washed over his face—a brief ripple—before being replaced by a grimace of rage. “This light? Why did he bestow it upon you?”

  I lowered my arms, maintaining the spherical shield with mental focus. With a breath of will, I glided across the grass. Stopping to hover just out of Belial’s reach, I repeated myself. “Put. Him. Down.”

  Marius jolted into consciousness. He brought his hands up to Belial’s wrist and began to kick and squirm in the prince’s grip. Then his gaze flashed to me. His eyes widened, and his jaw fell slack.

  “Catherine?”

  Belial tossed Marius to the ground. My first instinct was to zoom in front of him, to protect him from the next attack. And as go my whims, so goes my body. I flew to Marius, putting myself between him and Belial.

  The prince gritted his teeth. “Tell me! Why has your master given you this gift?”

  “Leave,” I said, savoring this power.

  “I take orders from none, mortal.”

  Belial lunged forward and whipped the back of his fist through the air. This time he cut through my shield as if it were made of tissue. His fist connected with my cheek.

  The power bled from me, snuffed out like a candle. I went limp and began to fall. Less than a heartbeat later, I came to a jarring halt as one of Belial’s massive hands closed around my throat.

  “Puny creature,” he spat. “Irksome. Frustrating.” He lifted a hand to tenderly stroke my face. “You could have thrived with my aid, mage. But—” he snarled, claws digging into my scalp and tightening around my hair “—you have chosen to yoke yourself with the wrong fallen son.”

  Feeling him tearing out strands of my hair, I screamed in pain. Jerking, struggling in his fierce grip, my limbs felt wobbly and pitifully weak. The air around me shivered with a soot-stained aura.

  “Look at them,” Belial purred.

  He allowed me to tilt my head just enough to see Marius, Llyr, and Mal in a scrum. Time had stopped. Marius was suspended in mid-stride. Llyr’s mouth gaped as he held an incoherent syllable.

  “Sad little goats. I could end you in any number of ways before they blink. Do you understand that, mage?”

  Time churned sluggishly into being again. I watched as one millimeter of movement seemed to take hours. As Llyr and Marius made their ways forward, Mal stood his ground. His hand moved a fraction of an inch toward something at his belt. I saw the butt of a pistol there.

  “What shall it be, Catherine Sharp?” Belial asked as he forced my attention to his face. “I could fling you through sky, sea, and existence. Let you float in the Void until your being implodes upon itself from the crushing weight of Naught. Perhaps I should throw you to the ground. Pulverize each of your bones. Or treasure the feeling of your life ending between my fingers as I crush your windpipe.” The prince licked at the air with his black forked tongue. He shivered with delight. “When your body is broken, the feast will begin. I will take you with me to the Pit and devour your fear and soul over the course of thousands of years.”

  His grip loosened, and I looked at the trio of satyrs. Time still meant nothing outside this little sphere.

  Belial’s laughter was a guttural sound that churned my stomach. “No, none of that, I think. There is a better way to watch you die. I will bask in the exquisite pain of these, your final moments.”

  That tongue poked out of his mouth and licked up my cheek in a long, slimy stroke. Sickened, terrified, I gagged and quivered.

  “I will see you quite soon, mage. Hold on to this fear, bring it with you when you pass through the veil and enter my kingdom. This terror shall be the last you know.”

  Still gripping me by the throat, Belial took a large step backward. I turned away from him. Marius’s face was one of stony determination as he focused on the ether where I had been just a moment before. Malcolm’s hand clasped the pistol now.

  Belial released me, and in a puff of acrid, yellow brimstone, the prince disappeared.

  Time rushed back to full speed. What had it been like for them? One moment they’d seen me hanging above the earth in Belial’s grip, the next I stood alone.

  The satyrs had been too close to alter course. Marius and Llyr blurred past me, but Malcolm I saw quite clearly. He had already raised the pistol. Had already pulled the trigger before his ice-blue eyes went wide and white as the full moon.

  The shot was strangely quiet.

  “Catherine!” Marius yelled.

  I glanced down to see a red stain blossoming on my T-shirt. Shouldn’t it hurt? Shouldn’t I feel…something? Or was this the plan?

  Confused, I looked up to Mal. Horror filled his face, and he started running toward me. Belial reappeared behind him, smirking. Shadows swarmed around the prince before carrying him away from this world.

  Dizzy, I stumbled backward and fell into a pair of warm, strong arms.

  “Catherine? Catherine!” Marius cradled me just above the ground. Hair mussed, face drawn with terror and anger, eyes obscured by tears. And still…lovely.

  I reached up
to touch his face but didn’t feel his skin beneath my fingertips.

  “I’m cold,” I said.

  Shitty last words, if you ask me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “World of Two”

  The afterlife was a warm embrace. Nestled in a blissful darkness, I drifted in a bleary haze. That unfettered rest reminded me of every Sunday morning of my life rolled into one lazy stretch. No obligations, no need to rush or roll over. Not even the temptation to open my eyes and disturb the perfect balance of comfort, peace, and luscious sloth.

  This must be Heaven, a faraway part of me remarked. Hell would be hotter, right? Not nearly so pleasant as this.

  I shoved the thoughts away, reminding myself that I didn’t believe in either Heaven or Hell, and burrowed deeper into the euphoria.

  Tranquility smelled of mossy trees and cool water. I drew in a long breath, taking in that natural-spring sweetness and earthy musk. I imagined that I was lying beneath a tree on spongy grass, the boughs above me swishing and whispering in the softest of breezes.

  Like the trees surrounding Llyr’s cottage…

  No. I didn’t want to think about that, either. I wouldn’t. That was over. Life was over. Perhaps I was a caterpillar, and this serene darkness was my cocoon. Or I could be something out of a fairy tale. I could sleep on the soft earth while the moss grew over me, vines and flowers sprouting through my hair and letting the sunshine clothe me. Only when I was ready would I rise, a woman made of flowers and meadowsweet, and take my place in legend.

  With a languid purr, I stretched. My hand came to rest on a patch of gossamer, and I let my fingers twirl and trace, enjoying its downy texture. A breeze buffeted against my bare skin, brushed my hair away from my cheek, as the sunlight caressed me, pulled me into itself and shared its warmth. I lay there, enveloped in the velvety glow of bliss.

  A century or a second later, I recognized a pattern in the rise and fall of the earth beneath my hand, my head. It coincided with the rhythm of the air passing through the trees above me. The world around me breathed in a slow, easy cadence. In and drowsily out. I bobbed on its surface like a boat over ocean waves.