Rogue Fae

by C. N. Crawford

  The pain in my wrists was starting to take my breath away. “You have a very selective interpretation of history.”

  “Humans were given the gift of language, of magic,” said Metatron. “And what did they do with it? They squandered it. Do you know that war and violence are the primary drivers of human technology and advancement? You all could have used their gifts for working with each other, but you didn’t. That’s why we need to burn it all and start again.”

  Metatron spoke a few words in Angelic, and a vision rose before my eyes.

  A thin, blond woman lay strapped to a rack, dressed in only a tiny white dress. Two men flanked the rack, one of them with his meaty fists on a wooden wheel at her feet. When he began turning the wheel, her face contorted with pain. She appeared to shriek, then she lost consciousness.

  “Anne Askew,” said Metatron. “Tortured nearly to death, right here in the Tower. And for what? Some differences in theology that none of them were right about in the first place. They turned the handles so hard, that they ripped dear old Anne apart. They dislocated her elbows and knees, pulled all her joints out of their sockets. She screamed so loud they heard her outside the Tower walls. And when they finished, they carried her broken body to Smithfield—the meat market—where they burned her alive.”

  Bile rose in my throat, and I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to run back to the humans to listen to them talk about Darwin again. Still, I needed to keep him stalling, at least long enough until I could think of a plan.

  The vision disappeared with a flick of Metatron’s hand. “I know what’s in your soul, little animal. I can see it smudged on your forehead like a bloodstain. You dream of a simple life in a cottage. Like that fae couple you saw.”

  I swallowed hard. His ability to see into my mind bothered the hell out of me. I didn’t mind him looking at my naked body, but reading my thoughts felt like a complete violation. “Is there a point to all this?” I snapped.

  Aereus grinned. “We just want to break your mind before we break your body.”

  My gut churned. Think of a plan, Ruby, think of a plan.

  “Pathetic, really,” said Metatron. “Your dream of a fae utopia in the woods. You and my son. Do you really think he belongs with a creature like you? Eating soup?”

  I didn’t answer. His intrusion enraged me.

  “He doesn’t even like soup,” Metatron continued.

  “It’s not about the soup!” I shouted. Who doesn’t like soup? It’s so weird.

  “Would you like to see more from your little fae friends?” Metatron asked.

  “No,” I replied. “Not at all, actually.”

  “Too bad.”

  From the darkness, a second vision arose. It was that cottage I’d seen in the woods. An emaciated fae boy was walking toward it, his features gaunt. He knocked on the door, and the woman opened it.

  The woman smiled, her cheeks dimpling. Then, she lunged for the boy. Her teeth were in his neck before he knew what hit him, blood pouring from his throat.

  My heart clenched. Adonis had said he’d smelled blood when we passed that place.

  My lip curled. “I get it. You don’t like anyone who’s not an angel.”

  After everything Metatron had showed me in here, part of me was starting to wonder if he was right. The smartest species on earth were also the most brutally sadistic. Beasts with the minds of angels—a dangerous combination. What if I’d been viewing everything through rose-tinted glasses, romanticizing a life that just didn’t exist? Humans who used science to kill, fae who ate their own.

  Maybe Adonis was right, and we were all slaves to our own natures.

  He is Death; I am a beast, and all of us were born to hurt each other.

  Chapter 19

  “You must understand now.” Metatron steepled his fingertips. “This is why it’s time for a reckoning. If humans had worshipped me like they were supposed to in the first place, if they’d remained humble, none of us would be here. But they desired supremacy over each other, the way gods like me are supposed to reign supreme over the beasts.” Metatron cocked his head. “Strange to me that all those people like dear old Anne allowed themselves to be tortured because of moderately different interpretations of religious texts. You were meant to worship me. You all got it wrong. What would you die for, Ruby? Shall we find out?”

  One thing, and one thing alone: the people I love.

  “Ahh. You’d die for my son. How sweet.”

  He was listening in on my thoughts again, and I wanted to rip his smug, glowing face off.

  He moved closer to me, his eyes curious now. “Maybe torturing you isn’t the worst thing, then. Maybe watching your loved ones die painful deaths would be worse.”

  I swallowed hard. “Would you kill your own son?”

  “I can’t kill him. Only you can do that. But if I hurt you enough, you’ll give in. Beasts like you will always save themselves in the end, even if you make yourselves weak with your attachments. Love weakens you, just like the iron does. Because when you turn on Adonis, it will break you completely.”

  I shuddered. Metatron was a complete monster.

  Faint light glinted off Aereus’s armor, and he took a step forward. “Adonis will come for you, of course. We’ll make you kill him. Then you die. Then the rest of the world. In just three days, my army of immortals will begin rampaging through one city after another. They will cleanse the world of the rest of the humans and demons who hid like rats in the sewers. Busy week, honestly.”

  Panic slammed me in the gut. In three days? We only had three days before everyone and everything died. Still, I tried to think clearly. If I managed to get out of here alive, this was my opportunity to gather some intelligence from them. I needed to know what their exact plan was.

  What was the best way to get people to tell you things when they had all the power? Naked and chained to the ceiling, I couldn’t exactly scare him into giving me information. I had to appeal to his weaknesses. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to have any, except for the fact that he was really hung up on the “worship me” thing.

  “When you attack, people all over the world will tremble before you,” I said, looking straight at Metatron. “Everyone will know your name.”

  He stared at me. Maybe that was a little too much. I needed him talking, not gaping at me.

  Let me try that again. “I beg you to rethink this. As you march from one city to another, the people who remain will know the true meaning of fear and terror. Their last remaining moments on earth will be filled with thoughts of you instead of thoughts of their loved ones. I beseech you to change your mind.”

  The white light intensified around him. “They should think about me. I don’t see what the problem is there.”

  I let my eyes go wider. “Can you picture it, Metatron? Can you picture the destruction, the fear?”

  “We will make humans bleed from their ears,” Aereus cut in, his face reddening. “From their chests and throats.”

  Metatron shot Aereus an irritated look, like a father who wanted his son to stop showing off at the dinner table. “The important thing isn’t that as we kill, humans will know the true meaning of divine perfection through my presence. If they don’t know it through worship, they will know it through my wrath.”

  What. An. Asshole.

  “Of course!” I simpered. “Your divine power is overwhelming. I can feel it changing me already. Inspiring me with divine grace.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking of some kind of ecstatic state. “So amazing to be in the presence of a real god. I can imagine you moving first through the City of London, inspiring sacred terror. In fact, I’m having a vision. A divinely inspired vision. First, you’ll move through Westminster, then you spread through the rest of London, then Kent….”

  “I’m bored of hearing you speak,” said Metatron. “And I have someone else I’d like you to meet.”

  With that, he turned and slipped into the darknes
s of the hallway.

  Shit. That line of interrogation had gotten me nowhere, and I had a feeling he was about to introduce someone even more unpleasant to my afternoon.

  Aereus stared at me, licking his lips. He took a few steps closer. “You think you’re so smart. Bollocks. We’re not even going the way you said. We start in East London, then we move up to Northamptonshire. Spread through the North, then Denmark, and on to the rest of Europe.”

  Okay, so forget about appealing to someone’s ego. Maybe the best strategy was always “get the dumbest person in the room to tell you stuff.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “We leave at dawn, three days from now. That’s all the time you have left until all your human friends die.”

  In all likelihood, Aereus didn’t see me as a threat, anyway. He probably didn’t expect me to make it out of here alive at all.

  My mouth went dry as I waited to see who Metatron was about to bring back. My torturer, I assumed. At this point, I was glad I hadn’t told Adonis where I was. This was all part of a trap to lure him here, so they could try to torture me into killing him.

  Would I break?

  My throat tightened, and raw fear snaked over my skin. I must have let some of that fear slip through the bond, because for the first time, I felt something coming through the bond toward me. Not words, but a feeling. Adonis’s fear, mirroring my own.

  Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, and then Metatron returned through the arched doorway. By his side was a squat man wielding a dull-looking axe.

  Yep, this was about to get a whole lot worse.

  Metatron stepped closer, his face still wearing a bored expression. “If Adonis doesn’t come on his own, we’ll have to entice him a bit. He can feel your emotions, can’t he? Let’s give him something to really feel.”

  Dried blood coated the blade. The man wore a shabby tunic that looked like it belonged to another century.

  Metatron gestured to him. “May I introduce Jack Ketch, the most sadistic executioner in England’s history. I revived him, just for this. I hope you appreciate the effort I went through. I’ll leave you alone to his ministrations. As he cuts into your flesh, think about whether or not humans like him have made good use of their divine knowledge, or if Azazeyl should have left them as wordless beasts rutting in the shrubs.”

  Jack flashed me another crooked grin, giving me the distinct impression that he was a snaggle-toothed simpleton with no idea what the hell Metatron was talking about.

  Aereus rubbed his hands together. “Perhaps I can help.”

  Metatron glared at him. “You enjoy it too much. You’re at risk of falling. Enjoying sadistic acts is what beasts do. Come.”

  Aereus scowled, then followed his father through the doorway.

  Jack gripped his axe, grinning to reveal rotten teeth. “Collar day for you, pretty thing. Oooh, but I’d love to flog you at the cart’s arse.”

  No idea what he meant, but the creepiness came through just fine. If this was who Metatron spent time around, no wonder he hated humans.

  My heart began to race. I tried to slow it, worried I’d draw Adonis here with the fear blazing through our bond. Once Adonis arrived, my torments would probably only get worse.

  I surveyed the room again, now that my eyes had adjusted, and caught a glimpse of the dark leaves crawling around the stone walls. Devil’s Bane. That’s how they planned to subdue Adonis while they tortured me. Adrenaline sparked through my nerves, electrifying me.

  Gods below. If I could only get out of the handcuffs, I could control the plants completely. Maybe I could even kill these fuckers. My gaze flicked upward, where the iron bit into my wrists. How the hell could I get this off me?

  Jack grinned, staring at my thighs. “I’ll start with your pretty shanks….”

  Stupid of Metatron to leave me here alone, but maybe he had a hard time believing a tiny chick wearing a taco-cat sweatshirt could fuck anyone up. Always let your enemy underestimate you.

  I widened my eyes and bit my lip. “Jack, you have such a fearsome reputation. I don’t think I can … I don’t think I can take it….” I let my head loll to the side, as if I’d just fainted.

  Whatever time period he was from, women probably fainted all the time. Maybe this unrealistic performance wasn’t much of a stretch.

  “Ooooh, you dimber wench,” he burbled. “I’d like to get my nimble fingers on your crinkum crankum before I cut you open.”

  What. The. Fuck.

  Through a slit in my eyes, I watched him lay down his axe. When he reached for me, I swung my legs, tightening them around his neck. I squeezed hard, trying to block out the unfortunate proximity of his face to my crinkum crankum.

  I snapped his neck. Humans were such fragile things.

  Jack fell to the ground—dead once more, like he was supposed to be.

  Now, I needed to get out of the damn manacles. I had very thin wrists, and if had something to lubricate them a bit, I could probably slide them out….

  Drip, drip … drip.

  Right. The ceiling slime.

  I swung my body back just a little until I caught a rung with my toes. I scrambled back onto the ladder until my heels were resting on a rung. From there, I stepped my way up the ladder until the chains were slack, and I could reach the ceiling with my manacles. I began rubbing them against the dungeon slime—a sort of mixture of water, moss, and gods-knew-what—until it covered the iron completely. Then, I yanked the chains down to my foot, and used it to put pressure on the links between the manacles. Grimacing, I pressed hard on the chain, and the iron scraped against my wrists. With the help of the slime, I was able to scrape them down to my hands, though it took some skin off with it. Already, I could feel the iron poisoning my blood, and I wanted to puke.

  From somewhere above, Metatron’s voice was booming off the stones. He’s coming back.

  My heart slammed against my ribs as I caught a glimpse of his pearly glow on the stairwell. He’s going to kill me.

  Then—at last—I slid the manacles off, and magic surged through my bones. The gemstones in my forehead began to heat up, and I let my mind merge with the plants around me. Their spirits called to me, and I felt as if they were my children. I beckoned them closer, and the ropes of Devil’s Bane began peeling off the wall, sliding across the floor toward me, until the vines had wrapped themselves around my body like a makeshift dress.

  In the next moment, Metatron was standing before me, with Aereus close behind. Light beamed from my body, creating a sort of shield, exploding from the inside out. The magic of the Old Gods surged in my skull, but his words were confusing me, creating chaos until I could no longer remember what I was supposed to be doing….

  As he spoke, rock and stone rained from the ceiling, slamming against the shield I’d created, threatening to smash through it.

  Fight the angel … magical myster … longitu … apple clipper sternum malc drip….

  I clamped my hands over my ears, trying to drown out the noise so I could fight him. He’s going to kill … he’s … kill … shrill mockingbir … oyster….

  Ravens burst out of the shadows, fluttering around me, and their caws echoed off the stone walls, drowning out the sounds of Angelic. Then, darkness crept in like a miasma. The shadows had a heaviness to them, vast and overwhelming, a disorienting void that sucked up everything around it—even my own light—until I could see only blackness. And with it—sweet, merciful silence.

  Once, darkness terrified me beyond measure. Once, I’d slept with a candle burning by my bed all night. Now, by the soothing tinge of the darkness, I knew Adonis had come.

  With the Angelic language dulled, I could focus on my plant magic again. In the darkness, I sent my vines out, searching for my enemies. Through my connection to the vines, I felt them wrap around Metatron and Aereus, squeezing them tighter. Then, Metatron launched into another of his spells, and I could feel the vines crumbling. My body ached as they fell to pieces—but along with their d
emise, the walls were crumbling around us too, debris raining down on us. Chaos, of course, was hard to control.

  Before Metatron had a chance to utter another spell, I felt Adonis’s arms around me. He curled his body around mine protectively. Then, we were zooming through the air at the speed of a tornado wind.

  Stone shattered around us, and I shielded my head with my arms.

  Adonis had burst through the rock walls to free us, and blood streaked his face as we soared into the London sky.

  Chapter 20

  In the forest outside Hotemet Castle, I walked between the oaks, my bow slung over my back. With each step, a dull pain shot up my legs. The iron from the manacles still poisoned my system.

  I’d spent the past hour out here, practicing my magic. But each time I used a more powerful spell, I felt the Old Gods overwhelming me until I was certain I’d lose my mind.

  Now, a cold wind whispered through the trees, skimming my bare legs and making me shiver. Clouds roiled in the sky, the color of iron, and the sun had begun to set.

  Today, I wasn’t quite as in love with nature. Since my escape from the Tower earlier, the forest didn’t seem to hold the beauty that it once had. Particularly since I’d already happened upon a large blackbird eating a baby blackbird that writhed in the dirt, its body malformed. I was never one for superstitions, but that had to be a bad omen, right? It was the kind of image Aereus would have framed and stuck on his wall.

  And yet the destructiveness of nature seemed like it was all around me now. Crushed acorns littered the ground—little seedlings that had never made it into trees, each one of them a failed life. What if Eden had only been a paradise because humans were too dumb to see the decay around them, just like I’d been?

  Every living thing in this forest would die at some point. In the end, chaos ruled everything, and sometimes the old ate the young.

  So that was the kind of mood I was in.

  As I walked through an alder grove, a familiar soothing magic whispered over my body, tinged with myrrh. All it took was the scent of Adonis to heat my blood, and I’d moved on from death whispers all around us to let’s get naked in a bath again. Even though, technically, he was Death.