by Lex Chase
Margate City had fallen to the Witchking.
He returned his attention to Corentin and offered his arm.
Corentin again waved him off and then pointed to his left jeans pocket. “Keys. You’re going to have to drive.”
“M-me?” Taylor said and failed at not sounding flustered by the prospect. They hustled along, and Taylor kept an eye out for more panicked humans in their vicinity.
Corentin winced through the pain. “You think I can drive like this?” he asked. “If they can see us now, maybe we can get to a hospital.”
Taylor snorted as they crossed into the parking lot. “You honestly think Charles is going to let us get to a hospital?”
“Momma always called me the king of wishful thinking,” Corentin said and stopped at the passenger side of the truck. “Maybe there’s a pharmacy not too far before the road changes. We can loot the medications.”
Ringo perked up from the driver’s side door of the truck. “What?” He gaped at the two of them. “That really isn’t—” Ringo went silent as Corentin pivoted on his heel, his chest mere inches from Taylor’s.
Taylor took a sharp breath from the heat rising from them both. His hidden desire drifted over him in a light tease. It was Corentin’s words though that punched him in the face. He narrowed his eyes and glared up at Corentin. “You want us to loot a pharmacy?” Taylor asked in an acidic tone.
“We need to survive. That’s what this is now,” Corentin said.
“Guys…,” Ringo muttered.
“Looting for food is one thing,” Taylor said with a frown. “Looting for drugs is another.”
“I can help,” Ringo said, peeking over the roof of the truck at the two of them.
Corentin gritted his teeth and ran his hand through his hair. “We really shouldn’t argue right now. And we need the drugs, or I’m going to be useless.”
Taylor stamped his foot and clenched his fists. “But it’s wrong! That’s where I draw the line.”
“By Titania’s tatas, guys, shut up!” Ringo hollered.
Taylor startled, and both he and Corentin glared at him.
Ringo’s irritated expression settled into one of kindness. “I can help. I can heal him.”
Taylor and Corentin glanced between each other and back to Ringo. Taylor narrowed his eyes. “You never told me you had healing powers.”
“You never asked,” Ringo said firmly. “Get in and let’s go. I’ll have to prepare myself to pull it off.”
Taylor and Corentin turned to each other again.
Corentin tilted his head and shrugged one shoulder. “Keys,” Corentin said, and pointed at his pocket.
Taylor didn’t think twice about the warmth tickling him from the closeness of Corentin’s body. He yanked the keys from Corentin’s pocket and hurried around to the driver’s side. They slipped inside, and then Taylor jammed the keys into the ignition. He hesitated a moment as he took note of the dash setup. He then reached down for the lever to shift the seat forward as far as it would go.
“I didn’t realize you were such a pygmy,” Corentin said with a laugh.
Taylor didn’t laugh and threw the truck into reverse. He hit the gas and spun out of the parking space.
Corentin braced himself on the door with his right hand and yelped an embarrassing note. “What the fuck, man?”
Taylor scanned the ruined landscape of Margate City. “I’ve had to put up with your driving, right? Now you get to see how an Atlantan drives,” he said with a stoic expression and then hit the gas again.
Corentin barked something that sounded like a curse as the truck bolted into traffic. Taylor guided the truck, skidding, around a multicar pileup and then jerked the wheel in the other direction to avoid a mob of catatonic citizens. But something caught his attention at the Starbucks as a blond man, a smaller dark-haired man, and a curvy woman with wheat-colored hair stood casually sipping their drinks.
They weren’t scared.
Taylor’s attention settled on the lilac eyes of the dark-haired man. The eyes of a princess. And Taylor knew which one.
“Atticus,” Taylor gasped.
Corentin seemed to catch the sight. “And that’s Charles and Phillipa….”
Atticus raised his fingers, pointed like a gun, and pantomimed pulling the trigger at the truck.
Frazzled nerves burned through Taylor.
Corentin slapped at the dash, getting his attention. “Drive, Taylor. Drive!”
CHAPTER 24:
ALLIANCE AND ALLIANCES
Margate City, New Jersey
June 10
PHILLIPA LED Charles and Atticus to the rooftop of the Margate City Public Library. Charles seemed to watch the devastation with awe and wonder. Atticus merely smiled and leaned in lovingly to Charles. Phillipa hung back, and her heart raced with the anxiety. She crossed her arms as, below them, two cars collided head-on. The sharp crash of glass scattering over the street and the thump of bodies made her skittish. In the distance, everyone screamed. So much screaming. Constant screaming. She fought to tune it out to just a droning sound, but she couldn’t ignore the stench of death.
Charles drew Atticus close. He sighed. “I honestly thought Lucy the beast would take care of them once and for all,” he said to Atticus. Phillipa narrowed her eyes as the two men smiled warmly to each other. “It was my gift of vengeance for all the wrongs Taylor has done to you, my dear one.” Charles cupped Atticus’s cheek.
Atticus nuzzled into Charles’s hand and kissed at his fingers. “Of many gifts to come,” Atticus said with a smirk.
“You will have Taylor’s head.” Charles kissed the top of Atticus’s head. “It will be my honor to witness the moment you rip his eyes from their sockets.”
Phillipa had had enough. “Taylor’s head? He’s just a Curseless princess. What would that prove?”
“Prove?” Atticus said, as stubborn as a prissy cat.
Phillipa didn’t think much of him. He might be Snow White, but he was no match for her Beast. She nodded and took her stand. “I didn’t stutter. What would killing Taylor prove?”
Atticus stepped toward Phillipa, his lilac eyes churning with a hatred Phillipa had never known such a princess could have. “He took everything from me,” Atticus said, and Phillipa noted the slow, rolling rage. “Now I will take everything from him. He will be grateful for his death. So he would not suffer the agony of knowing he was a failure as a brother, as a princess, and as a Hatfield.”
Phillipa loomed over Atticus. “So, you’re showing mercy by killing him? He’s meaningless! You might as well kill a fly. You’d get the same unsatisfying feeling.”
“Are you making a case for Atticus to spare Taylor?” Charles tilted his head.
“We’ve gone too far. This is wrong,” she said in a low growl. Phillipa clenched her fist and held back her snarl. “Exposing the mundanes to magic like this?” She tossed up a hand. “We know how this goes. The mundane government will swoop in and contain this place. Maybe the president will call it another act of terror.”
Charles laughed under his breath. “Well, what do you think it was?” he asked as he turned to Phillipa. “They should know us by now. They should know we’ve been here all along.”
Phillipa shook her head. “We should have kept it quiet. You had planned to conquer the Enchants and the witches. Not them.” Phillipa stepped to the edge of the roof and drew her arms in a wide arc over the city. “Do you hear that? Screams. Psychotic breaks. Torment. Anguish. The sudden sharp knowledge that their world will never be the same and no one can help them.”
“And no one can help them,” Atticus said with a smirk, and Phillipa frowned.
“But Taylor? It’s an act of jealousy,” Phillipa said, growing more and more offended by the idea.
Charles laughed. “And you and your ancestors know quite a bit about jealousy.”
Phillipa glared and chose not to voice her opinions or even dignify Charles’s with a response. Her heart ached as the city fell apa
rt.
Taking Atticus’s hand, Charles scowled at Phillipa. “I have Snow back with me again,” he said. “I will unmake the world if I must to keep him with me.” He pulled Atticus to his body. “And I will make this hell into a heaven for him and me.” He kissed the top of Atticus’s head. “He’s mine. I’m not letting him go again.”
Atticus sighed and seemed content in Charles’s arms. Phillipa knew the truth, though. And it was now she needed to make her stand at the cost of her ironclad pride. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a huntsman to hunt,” Phillipa said and pulled the Ziploc bag containing the magical cake from her pocket. She watched Charles as he smirked when she opened the bag.
“I need insurance that you won’t fail me yet again,” he said.
Phillipa arched her brow. “I won’t,” she said, but her simple statement didn’t seem convincing enough.
Charles snapped his fingers, and the Ziploc bag disbursed into spiders in her palms. Phillipa kept her terror inside as she flailed and flung the spiders off her hands and arms. She took a breath and looked down at her palm. Only one crumb of the cake remained. She searched Charles’s face for answers.
“Insurance,” Charles said firmly. “Succeed and I’ll bring you back from the road. Fail….” Charles shrugged, and his words implied enough.
“I won’t fail,” Phillipa said. The monster within her soul bared its fangs, and Phillipa felt the rising sense of frenzy. She glanced at Atticus one last time, and he smiled, content with Charles’s horrific gift of devotion. She considered the crumb and then Atticus. He was so different now. But she knew within the blood of her ancestors he was the princess he was meant to be.
The grand betrayer.
Phillipa pinched off a tinier crumb of the remnant of cake. She swallowed her pride and the miniscule crumb.
She had to find Corentin Devereaux.
Carhenge, Alliance, Nebraska
June 10
WITH TAYLOR’S assistance, Corentin eased into the bed of the truck. He scooted back against the tool chest to sit up. The sun was blaring, and Corentin squinted toward Taylor’s hovering silhouette.
“Come on, off with the jacket….” Taylor gently coaxed the garment off Corentin’s frame.
Corentin hissed with pain as together they pulled his injured arm through the sleeve.
Taylor frowned as he straddled Corentin’s lap and then felt his forehead. “You’re feverish.”
Corentin tried to make himself comfortable against the tool chest but failed. “Well, it is a million degrees out here. How’s your hand?”
“I don’t think I broke my fingers,” Taylor said, carefully flexing them. “I think I just hyperextended them is all. They’re tender but okay.” Taylor’s mouth drew into an obnoxiously adorable frown as he cupped Corentin’s cheeks. At least Taylor’s cute pout took his mind momentarily off the pain. He went limp in Taylor’s hands, allowing him to turn his head this way and that. “Ringo?” Taylor called out. “Can you bring me a water from the Starbucks stash?”
“Got it,” Ringo said, his voice trailing out the cracked back window. Ringo fluttered over the roof of the truck carrying the bottle of water between his hands. “Bomb’s away,” he said and let the bottle drop into Taylor’s hands.
Taylor uncapped the water and took a long gulp. He glanced at Ringo. “How are we doing on the healing prep?”
“I… uh… just have to get a few things together…,” Ringo said, but Corentin noticed he didn’t sound so certain. Ringo looked out over the empty Midwestern plains and then smirked.
Corentin nodded at Ringo and clued in to their new set of scenery. “Of course we’d end up at something like this.”
Taylor took another sip of water before offering the bottle to Corentin. He accepted it with his good hand, and together they took in the sprawling land before them.
A circle of dilapidated classic cars stood with their trunks buried in the ground to support the cars balanced horizontally across the jutting hoods. Weather-beaten, bearing shattered windows and spray-painted all the same matte gray, they stood in an empty field only neighbored by a few sparse trees and a meager gift shop. Around them, flat farmland spread out ever onward into the horizon.
Corentin smirked at the rustic sign of the tourist trap. “Carhenge, huh?” he said, then slurped the water from the bottle. He made a grunt of embarrassment with how rude it sounded.
Taylor smiled; he seemed to get the apology. “If these cars come to life and chase us or something, I’m tripping you.” His attitude changed to dread in an instant. “We should probably shut up about it. Now.” He gave Corentin a wide-eyed glare and tilted his chin at the circle of cars.
Corentin watched as Taylor made his quirky, nervous gesture.
Suddenly, the idea of a herd of Chevys coming to life and running them down seemed all too realistic after what they had gone through.
Corentin sipped the water and then shifted against the tool chest. He hissed through clenched teeth at the pain. He felt the blood rush to his face. “Ringo needs to get his act together… I’m going to pass out eventually.”
Taylor snapped his fingers in front of Corentin’s nose. “Hey, hey, hey,” Taylor said in a firm tone. “Stay with me. No passing out. I thought you were some badass killing machine. All you’ve managed to do on this whole adventure is get perpetually fucked up.”
Corentin laughed and snatched Taylor’s hand from his face. “I was protecting you, y’know.” He cracked a grin.
Taylor jerked his hand away, and Corentin could see the anxiousness in Taylor’s expression. Taylor called out to Ringo again, “Are you ready yet or what?”
Corentin picked up the anxiety in his tone, but instead of saying something, he sipped the water again.
“Just… uh… need to get out and pick some… um… herbs and stuff,” Ringo said as he fluttered away.
Corentin narrowed his eyes. Ringo was hiding something, but he wasn’t sure what.
“Well, hurry it up,” Taylor said as Ringo fluttered off out of their line of sight.
Silence hung between them as the cicadas chittered in the open fields. Taylor shifted and took a seat next to Corentin, mindful of his broken shoulder. “I know what I saw…,” Taylor said and picked at a fleck of peeling paint.
Corentin nodded. “Charles with Atticus and Phillipa….”
Taylor tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “And Atticus had that look in his eyes. The look like he actually hated me.”
Corentin looked out over the desolate landscape. “It wasn’t hate,” Corentin said. Taylor looked at him and appeared curious. At least he had left the stage of being hysterical about anything involving his brother. Corentin offered what he was thinking. “He saw you as an obstacle. It only means one thing.” Taylor swallowed but said nothing. Corentin pressed his lips together and braced for Taylor’s imminent meltdown. He said the one thing he knew Taylor didn’t want to hear. “Charles has Atticus now. It’s over.”
The silence returned. Taylor stayed still, appearing frozen in his thoughts. Corentin considered reaching out to touch him as a gesture of reassurance but decided against it.
“This is bullshit,” Taylor snapped. “Tell me why…. Why would we go through all of this, just to have no way of getting out of it?” He dug his hands into his hair and cupped his skull. “There has to be a way. We can do something. There is something. We just haven’t thought of it yet.”
Dread rolled in Corentin’s gut. “And it’s too late to think of it,” he said and took a sip of the water.
Taylor pointed a finger, and Corentin blinked with the determined gesture. “It’s not over until I say it is. We will figure something out,” Taylor ordered him.
“Y’know…,” Corentin said and scratched his chin. “If we somehow break the spell Charles has on Atticus, we can rescue him from Charles’s influence. But that poses two large problems.” Corentin took his time in considering what to say. He took a long drink of the water and then examined how mu
ch was left. He offered the remainder to Taylor. “Here,” he said and held out the bottle. “You need this.”
Taylor took the bottle but held it between his hands, as if he didn’t know what to do with it.
Corentin tried to get into some semblance of comfort again. Pain shot from his toes to the crown of his head. He gasped as his vision went hazy at the edges. “We can kill Charles. But we can’t kill Idi.” He watched Taylor and gauged for understanding. Taylor seemed to grasp it a little but not completely comprehend. “Idi is a spirit. A force. Charles is currently just a vessel. Charles was probably just a guy once upon a time. Maybe he really was a prince. But Idi is like a disease. The guy you and Atticus called Charles isn’t that guy anymore. He probably hasn’t been for years…. Decades even.”
Taylor thumbed his chin. “So, we destroy the vessel—” He nodded once. “—Charles. And Idi will just seek out another vessel. And so on and so forth. Because he can only be contained. And I’m pretty sure we don’t have anything powerful enough to actually hold him captive.”
“You’re right,” Corentin said as he picked at his shirt hem. “Idi is eternal. Since it was written by Mother Storyteller’s hand, Idi will always seek Snow White. They love each other. They’re destined to be since any of us were created. Their story is the ultimate in love stories.”
Taylor waved a hand at Corentin. “Let’s gloss over that. It’s still taking a bit of an adjustment,” he said. “What’s the second problem?”
Corentin pointed an upraised finger. “Say we contain Idi,” he said and then half shrugged with his nonbroken shoulder. “By some insane, improbable miracle, we pull it off. But the problem remains with Atticus.” Corentin watched Taylor stare at him with his mouth in a pensive line. Corentin took a breath. It seemed this conversation was creeping into Taylor’s threshold of upsetting things about his brother. “He’ll rise to his full power,” Corentin said and tapped the water bottle in Taylor’s grasp. “Drink.”
