by Lex Chase
Clarity was a wonderful thing. Atticus had worshipped his brother. The rebel. The free spirit. The Hatfield son who stood up to their domineering father. The one who got to escape.
But worshipping a false God had crippling repercussions. Atticus grunted like the Jabberwocky herself as he let the pleasure roll through him.
Taylor was selfish. Taylor wanted Atticus’s life. Taylor wanted Idi.
Taylor couldn’t have Idi. And Atticus would take Taylor apart if he dared to try.
Taylor got everything he ever wanted. Everything.
Everything.
Now it was Atticus’s turn to have what he wanted. And he would take it all.
He would become Snow White the Witch Butcher, and on the arm of Idi the Witchking, Enchants, witches, and mundanes didn’t stand a chance.
Taylor would bow to Atticus.
Atticus would not be satisfied until Taylor licked the dirt off his boot.
The price of freedom and the price of treason would be far more than Taylor’s soul could pay.
With his climax so close, Atticus found his restraint and withdrew from the sunflowers. His reason returned. He took a soothing breath and looked out across the endless field of sunflowers, satisfied with his work. The field of sunflowers stood petrified, frozen in spines of icicles, sweeping out into the horizon. Atticus gasped with a burst of joy and looked over his hand. Nothing seemed different about it. But he didn’t stop there.
“You left me,” Atticus growled, visualizing Taylor right in front of him. He flicked an arm downward, and a spire of ice shot from the gravel road, the pebbles frozen in the surface. He pivoted on his heel. “You abandoned me,” he snarled again and flicked his arm again. A taller spire shot from the ground. It creaked and cracked in the summer breeze. Atticus shot out both hands before him, and the Taylor of his mind stood glaring at him. He defied Atticus with his feral pink stare. “You are nothing,” Taylor whispered in his mind and stood defiant.
Atticus bellowed in the fury of a dismissed sibling. He brought his hands above his right shoulder and felt the coldness of a thick handle materialize between his palms. He clutched it and bought the rod forward, hoping to beat Taylor’s head from his shoulders. Instead, an ax head crystalized across the handle as Atticus brought it around.
Taylor’s head fell away with a smooth slice. His body dropped, the stump of his neck frozen over. His head rolled, coated in glassy layers of ice. Taylor stared up at Atticus with his pink eyes that even defied him in death.
Atticus screamed, jerking Taylor’s decapitated head from the road. “I deserve this, I deserve this, I deserve this!” Atticus howled at Taylor’s dead face. He reared back with the head in his hands and threw it down onto the gravel like it was nothing more than a child’s toy.
Taylor’s face shattered, and skull shards scattered through the pebbles. All the while Taylor’s pink eyes glared up at Atticus, facing his death in defiance of Snow White the Witch Butcher.
Atticus brought his heel down on Taylor’s frozen eyes, crushing them like glass. He huffed, and the frost of his breath rose in wisps from his mouth.
Idi’s hand slithered over Atticus’s shoulder. “Good,” Idi purred, stroking Atticus’s cheek.
Atticus nuzzled into the touch. “He took everything from me.”
“Not everything,” Idi said, and Atticus turned to face him. He still wore Charles as his vessel. But Atticus knew the truth. His true magnificence was underneath the glass of Charles’s visage. “He would never take me from you.”
But Idi would be Charles for the time being. He would have to keep his power secret, just as Atticus’s true needs would only live between them. Atticus burned with the anticipation to call Charles by his true name and scream it out as he took him in the shower.
Atticus ensnared Charles by the scruff of his neck. “I want his head. For real.”
It appeared Charles took pleasure in Atticus’s rough touch. “And I will see to it you have it. But….” He glanced at Taylor’s crushed face. “His eyes seem to offend you most.”
Atticus yanked Charles to his level and commanded him in a low tone. “I will eat his eyes.”
Charles blinked, his eyes bleeding with black, like drops of ink into water. He pursed his lips and drew his eyebrows upward, seeming concerned.
Atticus sneered; how could someone as powerful as he show hesitance? He claimed Charles’s mouth, possessing him and taking the magic of his soul within his own. Atticus felt Charles reach into the waistband of his shorts and reward his hate-fueled needs with firm strokes.
Atticus pulled away from Charles’s mouth, his breathing ragged and his body trembling. “Yes…,” he panted breathlessly as Charles held him up while stroking. “Yes….” His muscles clenched as the bolt of Charles’s dark magic shot through him. Atticus barked with the sensation.
“You’re mine, Princess,” Charles said in a low tone.
“Forever…,” Atticus whispered and licked his lips.
“Together, we will erase Taylor from existence,” Charles stated, and Atticus snarled at his words.
“Taylor is mine,” Atticus snapped and gnashed his teeth as he came into Charles’s hand. Once Atticus’s orgasm passed, he shoved Charles away.
Charles stumbled back as Atticus yanked his shorts back to his waist. Atticus caught the bewildered expression in Charles’s eyes.
“You wanted this, right? You would stop at nothing to find me?” Atticus asked. He looked out over the field of frozen flowers and spires of ice. “Well, now you need to be ready for what you have wrought.” Atticus stalked away from Charles and clenched his upraised fist.
The frozen flowers and spires dispersed into a torrent of hail, tearing through the oak trees and ricocheting off the gravel.
The Tranquil Frost would silence the defiant world.
And Atticus would freeze Taylor’s last breath.
CHAPTER 22:
THE TOUGH GUYS TUMBLE
Margate City, New Jersey
June 9
CORENTIN STUMBLED out of the Starbucks bathroom just as drunkenly as he had stumbled in. It had been three days, and they were hitting dangerous levels of delirium. At least Corentin knew he was. The rapid day changes were shocking his system hard. He could withstand a lot before he broke down.
Taylor’s presence had managed to do that quite efficiently in the days of being stuck together. Only Corentin couldn’t perceive the days. It only felt like they had been together for thirty hours. Apparently, thirty hours with a princess will drive any reasonable man insane.
He found Taylor at the beach, sitting in the sand and seeming lost in thought. Ringo sat on his shoulder, occasionally pointing to the waves. Corentin frowned. Taylor always had a way of looking so lonely and closed off to everything.
As heartbreaking as it was, Corentin had to keep it on the tightest of leashes now, not give in to the desire to comfort him. He couldn’t even fantasize about Taylor without envisioning a complete demoralization of the guy. Corentin suspected it had something to do with the spell Charles had enchanted him with. But he wasn’t so sure anymore. His journal chronicled the horrific acts he had done to his previous victims, and he had notes of their screams, how much blood, and how he disposed of them.
But there were never any notes of gloating or seeming to enjoy any of it.
There were entries of his passing days, of how alone he was. How he was just waiting on the next thing. Waiting on the next order. Waiting. Always waiting for a shred of hope that there was something out there. That someday it would all come together.
Corentin stepped off the sidewalk and onto the beach. He watched the waves roll in, then suck back into the ocean and rise again. He and Taylor watched the same horizon, waiting for something to appear that wasn’t coming, together and alone.
He formulated a plan of what to say, how to say it, and how to convince himself that he wasn’t falling apart inside.
He crossed the sand toward Taylor and Ringo, regrett
ing already the sand slipping into his boots. He plopped next to Taylor without any warning.
Taylor, amazingly, didn’t startle and chewed on a piece of bagel. He smiled at Corentin and then sucked cream cheese off his finger.
Corentin immediately turned his attention elsewhere. He couldn’t shake the feeling of being stared at in the back of his head. His paranoia made the hair on his arms stand up, as he was certain it was Phillipa once again.
He twisted to look behind him and swallowed at the sight.
Staring at him with a blank expression was a six-story iron-and-steel elephant. Corentin tried to get a better look and turned around in the sand. The creature was decorated like the majestic elephants found in the sweeping Indian epics. A romantic red-and-gold blanket lay across its back, topped with a red-and-gold canopied howdah. Groups of humans moved about in the howdah, and Corentin figured it was an observation deck. The elephant stared out over the ocean, and Corentin swore it was staring at them. The eyes were windows, but they appeared to have a dead-eyed expression. The elephant stood in a fenced-in area, and mundane tourists lined up to enter the creature.
“Any idea where we are this time?” Corentin asked as he watched the elephant. “Not every day you see that… thing.”
Ringo brightened and pulled out a human-sized pamphlet and unfolded the paper.
Corentin’s jaw dropped. “Where did you keep that?”
“In my pocket,” Ringo said and then licked his thumb to flip another page. Without missing a beat, he pointed to a map of the city. “Says here we’re in Margate City, New Jersey.”
“Jersey, eh?” Corentin said and studied the elephant again. “I assume Margate City is known for… uh… something?” He sighed and turned back to Taylor and Ringo. Together they watched the waves. “That thing is fucking creepy,” Corentin said and reached into the box of bagels. He pulled out an onion one and smiled at the welcome sight of food. “Got any cream cheese?”
Ringo rummaged through a bag that Corentin hadn’t seen the first time and beamed when he pulled out a full-sized tub. “Garlic-and-herb flavor,” he said proudly. “The only one worth having.”
Corentin took the tub, and Taylor handed him a plastic knife. He glanced at the elephant again and frowned. “That thing is seriously freaking me out.”
Taylor perked up, and Corentin met his gaze as Taylor licked cream cheese from his upper lip. Corentin screeched in his head, For fuck’s sake, stop that! But he turned his attention to his bagel instead.
“The elephant?” Taylor turned to look at it. He smiled. “I think it’s charming. I think I caught the theme with Charles’s tricks.”
Corentin frowned and spread the cream cheese on his bagel. “Oh yeah?” he asked, still keeping his attention focused on his snack in case Taylor did something unconsciously sexy again. Corentin licked his bottom lip and tried to banish his nerves.
“Americana,” Taylor said. “Think about it. The Twin Arrows, the Wigwam Motel, here…. At this thing.” He gestured behind him at the elephant.
Ringo wiggled a cup of coffee out of the cardboard tray and offered it to Corentin. “Here, boyo. You need some caffeine in the worst way.”
Corentin accepted the coffee and took a cautious whiff of it. He grunted. “By Mother Storyteller, does no one believe in chicory?” Taylor’s shoulders shook with a silent laugh, and Corentin sipped the coffee anyway. He stuck out his tongue and gasped. “If we end up in New Orleans somehow, I’m taking you for proper coffee the way the Storyteller intended,” Corentin said and forced himself to sip again.
“I’d like that,” Taylor said, and Corentin caught the shy smile.
“Beignets are a part of this deal, right?” Ringo said, seeming to read Corentin’s mind to cover up that it looked like Corentin was asking Taylor on a date.
“Of course, little man,” Corentin said. He fell silent and glanced at the elephant again. He stared hard at it. “I swear to the Storyteller, that thing is watching us.”
Taylor laughed. “You are so paranoid. It’s just an elephant.”
“It’s Lucy the Elephant, according to the sign,” Ringo said. “I think she’s kinda cute.”
“Yeah, cute…,” Corentin said and took a bite of his bagel. He groaned with the pleasure of fat and carbs exploding into his system. “Oh Storyteller, that’s so freaking good.”
“I know, right?” Taylor said around a mouthful of bagel. “No food in three days and all of a sudden it’s Thanksgiving.”
Corentin couldn’t help wolfing down his bagel like a savage. Within three minutes, the bagel vanished down his gullet. He checked the box and counted: ten left. “We need to conserve these,” Corentin said and closed the lid. “And we need to get water.” He hooked a thumb behind him toward the parking lot. “The Starbucks has the cold case with the waters. We could pick up whatever else they have in there.”
Ringo’s jaw dropped. “You want to loot the Starbucks?” he asked incredulously.
Corentin tossed up his hands and shrugged. “No one can see us anyway. Well…. Not now.”
“That is weird,” Taylor said after he swallowed the last bite of his bagel. “We were seen before, and now we’re not. Now we’re really not.”
“But we can still affect the space around us, and we can still touch the humans. And they can feel us touching them,” Ringo said and thumbed his chin.
Corentin nodded. “But will it always be like that?”
Taylor frowned. “Are you telling me we are fading out of existence? Like completely?”
Corentin looked out to the distant horizon and sighed before he answered. “You know that mundane saying that there are things in the world waiting for their wits to grow sharper?”
“And Enchants are those things,” Taylor said as he too watched the rolling waves.
“So…,” Corentin said and took a breath. “What if there are things waiting for us out there that we can’t see?”
Ringo shivered. “Dude!” he squeaked. “Thanks for the creepy thought of the day. I should be keeping score at this point of the shit you say.”
Corentin slapped his hands to the sand and pushed to his feet. Taylor recoiled from the sudden movement. “Okay,” Corentin said and offered his hand to Taylor. “Let’s forget about the doomsday theories and focus on what’s important. Getting back to Atlanta and rescuing a princess.”
Taylor accepted the hand, and Corentin pulled him up. They watched each other for a moment, and Corentin became more aware of how short Taylor was. Somewhere Taylor’s slight frame had registered in his head, but they had spent all of their time in the truck.
Corentin danced back a step and assumed a defensive stance. “All right. If we’re going to save Atticus, you are going to learn how to throw a proper punch.”
Taylor stiffened. “What? Now?” he asked and gestured to the box of bagels in the sand. “But…. Food?”
Corentin tilted his chin toward Ringo. “Get those, will you? I actually want to eat those later.”
Ringo obeyed and swooped in to gather the goods. “Ooooh. It’s going doooown,” Ringo said in a low tone.
Corentin tossed out a hand and gestured toward the parking lot. “You’re small,” he said to Ringo. “Your mission is to raid the Starbucks while we take care of business.”
Ringo hesitated. “You sure?”
Corentin nodded and resumed his defensive stance. Taylor stood, seeming confused about the whole thing. “Yeah,” Corentin said. “And get all of the cake pops you can. I might need to make a sugary peace offering.” He grinned at Taylor. “Sugar for sugar?”
Taylor flushed as bright magenta as his shirt. Corentin laughed. Getting Taylor’s goat was pretty easy.
Corentin clapped his hands together as Ringo fluttered off. “Come on.” He gestured to himself. “Let’s go. Hit me.”
Taylor stepped back and made a dubious face. “Are you serious?”
Corentin clapped his hands again. “Serious. You nearly kicked my ass when we first me
t. I know you can do this.”
Taylor’s jaw dropped. “I did what? No way. I would remember that!”
“Time’s a’wasting!” Corentin said and kicked sand at Taylor, who threw his arms over his face and screeched. “Let’s go. Come on, little princess. Hit me.”
Taylor rubbed the sand from his eyes and nodded. He put up his fists in a miserable imitation of a boxer.
Corentin refrained from rolling his eyes. This was going to take some work.
Taylor let out his attempt at a battle cry, and Corentin held in the need to cackle at how pathetically adorable it sounded. Taylor charged forward, kicking up grains as his feet sank into the sand. Corentin read how Taylor’s body was off-balance from the sand. He needed to learn how to run on top of it and put his feet in the right places. They’d work on that, and Corentin was in his boots, so it was still a bit of a handicap.
Taylor ducked, going in to grapple at Corentin’s middle and tackle him. Corentin sighed; it seemed it was Taylor’s favorite first move. He simply slid to the side and let Taylor tumble into the sand. Taylor rolled to his back, gasping for breath.
Corentin turned, offering Taylor his hand. “Come on, you pretty pink princess,” Corentin purred in a purposely irritating way.
Taylor spit sand and then swatted away Corentin’s hand. He didn’t get up immediately, and Corentin saw his opening. In a flick of the wrist, he pulled the knife he had always kept hidden in his boot. He knew Taylor couldn’t see the move until Corentin sat on Taylor’s chest and pressed the knife to Taylor’s throat.
Taylor’s eyes turned wild, and he went rigid.
Corentin gave him a charming smile. “You gotta be fast, little princess. There are wolves in the woods that will eat you up in one bite.” He gnashed his teeth at Taylor’s nose to demonstrate. He pulled back the blade and then stood. He stepped back from Taylor, permitting him to stand.
Taylor trembled as he stood, clearly shaken. “You didn’t tell me you had a knife,” he growled, rubbing at his throat.
