by A. E. Lowan
Alerich laughed at Thomas, his best friend and best man, sweet adrenaline coursing through his body. “I didn’t know that was even an option.”
Elspeth let out an elegant snort. “Is Thomas telling you to not kill yourself, again?”
He glanced at his twin as she unwound her fingers from the passenger door’s grab bar. “I think he’s envisioning a zombie version of myself shuffling down the aisle.”
“I can still hear you, you know. And yes, something like that.”
Alerich chuckled, thinking of himself gray and green, flesh decaying, his black leather jacket the only thing keeping him intact… All right, that was disgusting. But anything to keep his mind off the wedding.
Off Celia Carralond.
He felt the smile slide from his face. Celia was everything a wizard could want in a wife. She was both politically and magically powerful, being the only child of the Archwizard of the Wizards’ Council. She was brilliant. She was beautiful. But beauty wasn’t everything. “‘Sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds,’” he murmured.
Celia was also a raging, unrepentant bitch.
“Alerich, man, what was that, now? We could barely hear you.”
Fitz, raising his voice to be heard through Thomas’s earpiece from the passenger seat of the other car, still sounded vaguely intoxicated. Of course, that was Fitz pretty much at any given time. He avoided hangovers by staying piss drunk.
Elspeth leaned towards Alerich and his mic. “He’s quoting Shakespeare again, Fitz.”
Alerich shot her a silent warning frown and she moved back, flinching around the eyes.
“Ah yes, the Bard.” Fitz sounded like he was pulling out his flask, his magical focus object and scotch transportation device all-in-one. They could hear the small, squeaky noise of the top being unscrewed. “To dear Will. May he always endeavor to inspire us.” The sarcasm in his voice carried loud and clear.
“‘O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!’” Thomas intoned, his voice filled with amusement.
“‘In vino veritas,’” Fitz retorted.
“Will never wrote that, Fitz,” Alerich said with a grin and changed lanes.
“Oh really? The only thing the Romans ever wrote he never cribbed, then.”
Elspeth burst into harsh laughter.
Thomas and Alerich groaned. “No, no. No more about Shakespeare and Plautus from you.”
“You’re ruining a perfectly good car chase.”
“Have you two heathens ever read Plautus? Your Will was a bloody plagiarist. Now Kit Marlowe, there was an original writer for you!” He cleared his throat. “‘Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, and burnt the topmost towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. Her lips-’”
Cries of derision rang out from both cars. “No, no, not that. Anything but that.” Alerich drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time to his racing thoughts.
“Do me better, then.”
Alerich passed a sedan in a blur and rose to the drunken challenge. “‘I’m armed with more than complete steel—The justice of my quarrel.’”
Elspeth cast her gaze at the overhead signs, navigating as they blew past. “‘I am Envy. I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.’” Her voice was half-soft, half-defiant.
Alerich glanced at his twin. Unlike the three of them she had not had the opportunity to go away to school. The reasons did not bear dwelling upon. Instead he said, “‘Honour is purchas’d by the deeds we do.’”
“How about some advice for the ladies?” Elspeth turned to face the mic again, a crafty look in her midnight blue eyes. “‘You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute, and now and then stab, when occasion serves.’”
Alerich grinned, approving as Fitz made sputtering noises. “‘Fornication: but that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead.’”
Thomas’s voice sounded eloquent in Alerich’s earpiece. “‘Till swollen with cunning, of a self-conceit, his waxen wings did mount above his reach, and melting, Heavens conspir’d his overthrow.”
Fitz sighed. “‘Accursed be he that first invented war.’”
Alerich and Thomas cheered their victory.
Elspeth rolled her eyes and smirked. “Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.”
The three men laughed and Fitz made a mock scoffing noise. “Keep your modern jokes out of my quote battle, wench. Next it’ll be ‘semper ubi sub ubi.’”
Thomas chuckled. “Our lives are not like other people’s lives…”
There was a moment of silence broken only by road noise and then Fitz said, “I hear John Heathrow is getting married, too.”
Alerich’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and he floored it.
“For fuck’s sake, Fitz!” Elspeth snapped as she reached for the grab bar. “Seriously?”
“Well, I’m just saying that since I’m not invited to Alerich’s wedding that maybe I’ll go to old John’s instead. Or maybe someone else’s. Seems to be a veritable plague of them going around this season.”
Alerich’s mouth pulled into a small smile. Maybe he could get himself uninvited from his own wedding and go with Fitz somewhere else.
“Our exit is coming up… quite soon in fact. Perhaps the breaks?” Elspeth held the grab bar with one hand and her phone with its GPS application in the other.
Alerich finally allowed himself to slow down and took the lazy spiral of the off ramp as he looked out over the horizon. Somewhere out there in the darkness was the coast and the Pacific Ocean. He’d seen it in L.A. but never this far north. Would it be cold? Would he see whales?
Would he care?
He glanced at the highway sign and picked up speed again, trusting in the misdirection wards to save them from human notice.
Forty-nine miles to Seahaven.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A. E. Lowan is the pseudonym of three authors who collectively create the dark urban fantasy series, The Books of Binding. Born in Texas, Jessica Smith is a physical therapy student who brings a passion for science to tame the physics of Seahaven. Hailing from Missouri, Jennifer Vinck is a former bookseller who brings a love of theatre and linguistics to breathe life into the characters. A Navy brat, raised in Washington, California, and Missouri, Kristin Vinck is a recovering medievalist who brings an obsession with history and folklore to paint a detailed cultural canvas for The Books of Binding.
