by Scott Tracey
“Illana and Quinn for some of it, and the Prince for the rest. He … likes me. Said he chose me, whatever that means.”
A short bark of a laugh tore through the car and made me flinch. I looked across the aisle cautiously, and saw so much of the old Jenna in that moment that my body relaxed instantly. “You’ve got a demon boyfriend,” she exclaimed, laughing and then just as quickly covering her mouth as she realized where we were headed. It wouldn’t be right to laugh when Justin was in a hospital bed, trying to recover from what had happened.
“It’s not funny,” I said seriously. “He went after Justin because he wants to make sure I help him.”
“With?”
I sighed. “Something that seems like it wouldn’t be a huge deal, which probably means it’s going to be catastrophically bad.”
She got so quiet then that I thought the moment was over, and I’d look up and she’d be facing the window again, lost inside her own head. But she was looking at me, open curiosity painted across her face, and it was stupid, but I felt so exposed that I had to look away.
“If your gut’s telling you it’s the wrong choice, then you know what you have to do.”
“Since when did you become a therapist?” I demanded, but there was no real heat to my question. I thought she might flinch back, or turn away or something, but Jenna smiled like she’d expected nothing less from me, and then lifted her shoulder once in a lackadaisical shrug.
“Part of me did it just to see how they’d react,” she said, and it took me a minute to realize we were talking about something else, and not the fact that Jenna had become a therapist overnight.
I squirmed. “Do we really have to talk about this right now?”
“I just … we’re supposed to be a team. And I guess I never thought about what it must be like for you on the outside.”
“And suddenly you’re enlightened?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not suddenly. Just because I play a raging bitch in real life doesn’t mean … I don’t know.” Jenna huffed out a laugh as we pulled into the hospital parking lot. “I’m glad you were with him,” she said finally. “If it couldn’t be me, I’m glad it was you.”
What was going on with Jenna? Had the Christmas spirit finally infected her, two months after the fact? Or was I still being small-minded and refusing to see that she’d changed in the meantime, that she’d allowed herself to change. To grow up, to become less selfish. Justin’s accident could have done that, or anything that had happened to us since coming to this damn town.
“Moonset beat the Prince because they worked together,” Jenna continued, and it was like she’d laid down the path for me to follow perfectly. I’d bought into it, hook, line,
and sinker, and now I knew where she was going with this. And I was almost powerless to resist. “That’s what we need to do now. Work together and hope that we can stop this one too.”
“Coven class,” I said flatly.
“Class,” she stressed. “Knowledge. Information. Maybe Illana and the others can stop this thing, or maybe it’ll fall to us again. But maybe if we start trying to actually stick together and learn what we’re capable of, we can stop this from ever happening again. That’s part of what you want, isn’t it? For us to be out of danger? For Cole and Bailey to be able to have normal lives someday? Or as close to it as we can get?”
I didn’t say anything, which was the same thing as telling Jenna that she’d won.
Damnit.
nineteen
No one knows quite how strong the Abyssal Princes are. At least as strong as the Fae they once were, but now their songs are dark and destructive. They create armies out of innocents, and hide themselves amidst the rank and file.
The Princes of Hell
The parking lot was a graveyard. When I left in the middle of the night, there were still dozens of cars in the front lot, a line of reserved parking for hospital staff that was filled with cars, and people were still coming and going. There were hints of dawn in the skyline to the east, a dash of color against an otherwise black sky. The stars fading into existential black. It was too quiet.
Something was wrong.
Nick was in the lobby, elbows on his knees and head balanced between his hands when we walked in. “No change,” he said, like it was somehow good news. He was the only one in the lobby, but the room didn’t feel still and quiet. I looked around, unsure why the hair on the back of my neck was standing up.
Jenna seemed to notice it too. “What’s happening? What’s wrong?”
Nick’s eyes were lazy and hooded, focused on me, despite the fact that beneath the show of despondency, his body was taut, fingers digging into his thighs and shoulders squared. He seemed to be waiting for something, but I honestly had no idea what it was.
Until I did.
The elevator doors flared golden, reflecting the Prince’s symbol in the stainless steel surface.
“What?” Jenna said from my side.
“No, no, no,” I whispered, breaking into a run. He was here. Why was he here? He’d already infected Justin, what more could he do? There was a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, and for once it wasn’t something the Prince had put there first.
I reached the symbol at the same time as Jenna, only realizing she was still at my side the moment her fingers mimicked my own and pressed against the golden flare vibrating softly against the door.
The elevator button spun away as the threads of the world unspooled. The ground fell up, the ceiling dropped, and the world dissolved into the strange reality of the Prince.
This time, it was red velvet and opera, the hospital lobby transformed into an acoustic marvel where every sound reverberated off the walls. The walls were covered in thick crimson fabric, gold rope threaded with streaks of green, each looped off into a giant gold tassel that looked thicker than the curtain it was holding back. Where in a normal opera house there would have been chairs, there were only empty gaps. The size and shape of the rows seemed to change from one moment to the next, growing less stable the more I looked at them.
In fact, that was how everything looked at second glance. The curtains warped and waned, scattered by winds that couldn’t be felt or heard. The ceiling was both a thousand feet high and a wondrous stained-glass masterpiece, and at the same time low enough that I could have nearly brushed my fingers against the tips.
My eyes couldn’t focus. Every time my vision shifted, the world around me writhed and deviated. Everything cycled between two versions, two different and yet completely stable worlds inhabiting the same space. Both wondrous in their own way, but they crowded in upon each other, and it was making my head spasm.
“Is this what you see all the time?” Jenna asked, one hand cupped over her eyes to shield them against the light. “How do you stand it? Everything hurts.”
“You can fight it,” Nick said. I turned to him, and he made my eyes burn. He’d risen from his chair, but around him, the world was real. Or not; no, it wasn’t real. This was real, and he was surrounded by drab hospital carpeting, navy-blue hospital chairs, even the sign on the wall behind him pointing to Radiology. He was like a gravity well, drawing reality in all around him in a concentrated pocket. But it hurt to look at him, because the only thing worse than the Prince’s fantasyland was the real world. I had to look away.
“What’s going on, Nick?” Jenna was not playing around anymore. The Arctic winds could learn a thing or two from Jenna when she was in a mood, and right about now her fury was palatable.
“It’s going to be okay,” Nick said, only he’d adopted the “soothing adult” tone that never seemed to work on any of us. We weren’t children to be placated. Especially not now, when the Prince was somewhere in the shadows, probably just holding off so he could make a proper entrance.
“What is going to be okay?” I piggybacked on Jenna’s frustration and
rage with some of my own. Justin was here, and they were putting him in danger by … whatever it was that this was. The Witchers had set something in motion. Of course they had. How could I have been so stupid?
“Time to go, guys,” Quinn said, stepping forward into the half light. The last time I saw him, he’d been wearing jeans and flannel, for Christ’s sake, and now he was like … Goth pro wrestler or maybe ninja infantry. A balaclava covered everything on his face except for eyes, nose, and mouth. Everything else, even his fingers, was swaddled in black military garb. He pulled a blade from a sheath wrapped around his forearm, a matching one on the other arm. The world warped around him, the same way it did to Nick, as though they were both too heavy to carry, and it had given up. Around me the air spun faster and faster, the mirage warping and waning.
The walls bulged and stretched and contracted, and my center of gravity kept shifting. If this was what it felt like to be on LSD, I could see why people went crazy.
“Quinn?” Even Jenna’s brain couldn’t quite match him to the guy who made us pancakes with the paramilitary uniform he wore now.
“You know he’s here,” I said, half in wonder. “You planned this.” After everything that had happened, we were still bait. Did they let Justin get hurt? Had they been waiting for this?
“Now’s not the time,” Quinn said firmly.
I looked to Jenna, who had the same frown lines marring her face. She grabbed for my shoulder, and I steadied her arm with mine.
But before either of us could respond to Quinn, a peal of bells signified the opening of what had previously been the elevator doors. Now they were a pair of giant doors that swept up towards the ceiling that hung impossibly high in the distance, so far from us that the moon was even visible underneath it.
The doors swung open, rolling on wheels that were tiny clockwork creations, gears and springs that rattled as they rolled. Behind them was the Prince, long haired and dressed in an embroidered gold imitation of Quinn’s outfit. There was an empty pommel at his side, but it wasn’t like he needed the weapons. He was one, the deadliest thing in the room by far.
“You invited friends,” the Prince whistled, making a beckoning motion with two of his fingers. He bared his teeth, bright like moonlight and just as bewitching. “Hello, friends.”
“Go,” Quinn commanded again, barely sparing us a glance. A pair of Witchers emerged from the stairwells on either side of the hall, falling into line behind him.
“Stay,” the Prince countered with a wink and a smile.
Even if we wanted to leave—and I was certainly content with letting Quinn and the others handle this—the room still swayed between worlds, each dragging against us in a heavy, metaphysical version of tug of war, one in which we were the rope, destined to split apart under the equal forces at play.
Two more Witchers came in from between a pair of cherubic busts, glossy gold monstrosities that looked rather like the Prince himself. The new duo came to stand behind Nick, who wasn’t dressed in the same battle gear as the others, but he had an athame of his own and looked just as ready for a fight.
Six against one, and I could see the Prince do the calculations as his eyes drifted over each of them in turn, a wealth of information processed in only a single moment. With some, the corner of his mouth twinged as if hearing the funniest kind of joke, while others caused an eyebrow down into sharp edges, the entire shape of the brow changing in that moment.
Quinn was a threat, of course, but surprisingly so was Nick. None of the others, though. Until after another hurdle of time passed, and two more Witchers appeared from somewhere behind each of the men, bringing their numbers to ten.
This wasn’t a raid, this was a full-court press. “Tell us your name,” Quinn said, surprising me. I didn’t picture him as the negotiating type. “This doesn’t have to get ugly.”
“Obviously,” the Prince said, throwing a smirk in Quinn’s direction.
“You didn’t answer the question.” If Quinn was daunted, he didn’t show it. But then, he looked almost alive in a way I’d never seen before. There was a light in his eyes that screamed for reckless abandon—a thrill-seeker gene where I hadn’t expected to find one. Quinn was having fun. Not exactly what I expected.
“You don’t interest me enough,” the Prince said, words weighed down under the prickling thorns of spite, growing and spiraling out of control. His lie curdled in my stomach, and snarls of emotions that were thick with contrast rolled up underneath my skin. I shivered, and tightened my grip on Jenna’s arm. It was easier, with her at my side.
The Witchers didn’t let it affect them, though. Each of them was empty and blank, a canvas that the Prince couldn’t affect, and once he realized that simple fact, his entire demeanor changed. The joking, the jovial outlook, all of that was cast aside like the mask that it was. For the first time, I got a glimpse of the creature underneath the costume.
The Prince cocked his head to one side, the expression going thoughtful and reserved on his face. For once, the emotions at hand were muted, dulled down until I could barely tell what I was feeling, let alone anyone else. “You’re stalling,” he said in wonder. “Oh, tricksy boy. You like to play games.” And now, broad, beaming approval radiated outwards like its own personal sun. “Devious I can deal with.”
The Prince opened his mouth and whistled a few notes, the opening strands to something haunting and slow. It quickly gained in tempo as the whistling continued and was yet joined by a deeper hum. Only the Prince’s mouth moved, and the only sounds were coming from him, but somehow he could split his voice into complementary parts. And those parts were weaving something together that made my skin itch with longing.
“Stop!” Quinn commanded, but the Prince ignored him.
“Quinn!” But Nick’s warning was ignored. Because the Prince’s voice split again, and this time it was a dark sonata that he sang in piercing tones. Each of the notes carried its own heft, one hammer strike after another. All three of the pieces of his song sailed above us, around us.
At first I was relieved, because despite the fact that I looked all around us, there was no sign of danger. No change to the status quo. I’d expected a plague, or an attack of some kind, but the Prince’s song started to fade out and nothing had changed.
“What was that?” Nick demanded, when a moment of silence had passed. “What did you do?”
The Prince used his smile as a shield, hiding all his secrets behind it. Quinn had the kind of patience that could have kept him peaceful for forty years of wandering, but Nick was not cut from the same cloth. Nick wore his deficiencies on his sleeve for all to see. “What’d you do?” he demanded again, as if by repeating the question it would somehow compel the Prince to tell the truth.
The Prince screamed and every window on the hospital floor shattered from the sound.
twenty
We know Moonset believed all power had merit. That Necromancy could save lives, and Maleficia could be weaponized. We believe they learned as many as they could get their hands on.
They even sought out myths of a primordial magic, stronger than any other.
Council Report
Eyes Only
Witchers poured from the building, far more than the half-dozen that had originally appeared. The Prince was right, there were more still waiting in the wings. The one you see has a dozen siblings lurking in the walls. Someone had told me that once, but I was pretty sure they’d been talking about rats at the time.
Jenna and I were caught up in the evacuation, as some of the black-garbed men and women stayed behind to put out fires and check for injuries. The largest part of the force, though, streamed outside after the Prince, who had walked casually through the wall where windows had once been. Fire alarms ran through the building, though there were no fires that I could see.
He seemed heedless of the danger he was in. I doubted he feared the Witchers eve
n a little. The sun peeked out at the center of the sky, a sliver of light that set the building behind us alight with faint oranges and yellows.
At first it seemed like no one had noticed us, but Quinn was on top of one of the black metal benches near the door, eyes scanning the crowd. When he found us, he hopped back down and started moving through the crowd, but the Prince intercepted him first.
“No hospital staff,” Jenna said out of the corner of her mouth, her eyes trained back on the building behind us.
I turned, realizing quickly that she was right. There were Witchers filling the parking lot, but not a single ordinary human. Not a doctor, a nurse, even a patient. They’d evacuated the hospital already. They were waiting for this. “We are so out of our league,” I whispered, half to myself. Quinn knew the Prince was going to show up here. Maybe to finish what he’d started with Justin, maybe for some other reason. But he knew. Enough to empty the hospital during the handful of hours I was gone.
“I believe you have something of mine,” the Prince said, circling around Quinn with a dark smile.
“You’re not taking Malcolm,” Quinn replied tightly, chin up and keeping his reactions to a minimum. He didn’t show any fear, which was good, but he still looked like he was enjoying this too much.
“Malcolm already belongs to me.”
Quinn snarled, and like a well-oiled machine the three dozen Witchers fell into order. Jenna tried to step in front of me, blocking me with her much smaller body until I snorted and reversed our positions. She gave me a pointed look as we jockeyed for position, and instead ended up side by side.
All of the Witchers had broken up into rings of five. Quinn was the only one who stood alone. Nick looked up at a wordless nod from Quinn. Just as the first real burst of sunlight flew over the horizon, he shouted, “Now!”
Shouts of magic punctured reality, as ice and stone and flame were summoned, each attack streaking forward just a second later than the one before. It was genius, really. No one could have dodged all of those attacks. To dodge one was to put yourself directly in harm’s way for the next, and the next, and so on.
