She took another deep breath and started toward us, the knife pointed toward the floor. “I guess there’s no point in me washing up first?”
“Infection isn’t really something my kind needs to worry about,” Ralphie grinned. “Though I suppose I’d take that over magical convict tagalongs.”
“We deal with what we’re given, my man,” I said, settling behind him and placing my hands on the fairy’s temples. I hadn’t done a mind meld in at least seven hundred years, and even then it wasn’t my favorite thing to do. I never liked the idea much. Going into another person’s mind meant letting them into my own. As someone who had lived for longer than anyone else in the world, I almost certainly have more baggage than Ralphie. It didn’t seem far to lay it on top of him. Of course, the fact that I was about to feel what it was like to have my chest carved open did a lot to even up the score.
“I don’t have magic,” I said to Ralphie. “You’re going to have to start this.”
“Already on it, C,” he said and, as if on cue, the words opened a floodgate inside of me. I felt the whole of his existence flooding out into my mind. I felt the immense power that coursed through his veins at every moment of the day. I felt the way he tampered it down just to live around other people, and I felt the frustration that came with pouring drinks for those who—even a few hundred years ago—wouldn’t have been permitted to even look at him without first genuflecting.
I felt something else too. There was a loneliness that came with being part of a very small race of creatures that struck just the right sort of chord with me. He hadn’t seen someone like himself in years, maybe decades. His life was a solitary one as well. Maybe not as much as myself, but it was clear that Ralphie knew what being alone felt like.
And that made the connection between us all the stronger.
I swallowed hard, knowing my emotions, setbacks, and history were funneling into him the same way his were doing with me. Looking up at Merry, I nodded. “Get started,” I said.
She looked at me with trepidation but, as quickly as it came, the woman managed to push it back down. Taking a deep breath, she plunged the knife into Ralphie’s chest. He felt the pain sharply and acutely as the blade invaded his body, pushing its way through blood tissue, and even bone. I know this because I felt it too. An agony, so intense that it seemed the entire world tinted red, soared through me. It lit up my body, running through my veins and pulsating through every inch of me. I wanted to fall down, to pull myself away from the pain, but I couldn’t. I was locked in now, a part of this horrible journey until it reached its conclusion.
Everything went dark around me. The world disappeared. Merry disappeared. Every moment between my first, all the way back in that village outside of Eden, to this one melted off into nothing. All that existed in the whole of reality was Ralphie, me, and the pain; this unending pain that united the two of us in this terrible dance.
The pain shifted as I floated out in the nothing. I felt a rummaging in the center of what hurt; a sloppy back and forth which only served to accentuate the sensation and sent me falling to the floor.
“Callum,” I heard. The voice came to me like a whisper sent underwater. Merry was talking to me, trying to pierce the darkness, trying to reach through the pain. “Callum,” she repeated, and her words were louder and closer somehow. “I’ve got the heart. Get up. I’ve got it out.”
That didn’t make any sense though. If she had the heart, then this should be over. Ralphie should have fallen into blissful unconsciousness, and I should have been severed from this horror show. I wasn’t though, and that meant something had gone wrong. Something had gone horribly wrong.
My eyes flew open, and I saw Merry standing above me, the heart in her hand. A loud cackle split through the air, and I saw with a start, that the sisters were right there behind her.
The singular being that had been known for thousands of years as the sisters was a terrifying thing. With the shape of a woman, they were cut vertically down the middle, with each half showcasing entirely different characteristics. Half their hair was straight, blonde and flowing. The other half bushed out in tangled black curls. One half had bright blue eyes while the other stared back at me with intense brown peepers. One half was covered in milky white skin, while the other was wrapped in an unbroken brown counterpart.
They were two people, living together as one, and I just lost control of them.
8
Another fresh jolt of pain ran through me as I looked up. I hadn’t seen the sisters since the day, several hundred years ago, when I locked them away in Ralphie’s heart. I hoped, back then, that it would be the last time anyone would ever see them. They were powerful creatures. I couldn’t deny that. You don’t lock things inside the heart of one of your best friends unless you’ve exhausted all other options, even if your best friend is a kickass fairy dude.
The sisters stared back at me, their eyes glaring into me and burning through my already aching psyche. They looked different than I remembered. That wasn’t an oddity for me. When you live as long as I have, you tend to forget some of the more specific features of things. After all, there’s only so much room in the human mind. I couldn’t be expected to keep all of my memories at the ready. Looking at them now though, it all came rushing back.
The sisters weren’t witches, per say. They were older than that and far more powerful. The Egyptians worshipped them as gods back in the day. Not that anyone would be aware of that. I wiped every mention of them out of existence after I locked them up. I didn’t want some makeshift cult forming in the future and working toward busting them out of here. They were much too dangerous for that.
As I stood, my muscles tensing, I started to think maybe this wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had.
“Don’t turn around,” I said to Merry, keeping my voice low and my tone steady as I reached my hand out for the heart.
“The killer,” the sisters said, their twin voices echoing through the room. The sound was so close and so intense that it didn’t surprise me when Merry totally disregarded my instructions and turned toward the sisters.
Seeing them, she jerked backward, inadvertently pulling the heart away from my grasp.
“Long time,” one of the voices said. “No, see,” the other finished.
Reaching into my back pocket, I pulled out my enchanted knife, flicking the blade out as I held it toward the sisters.
“Get back,” I said, grabbing Merry’s arm and pulling her toward me. This wasn’t right. They weren’t supposed to be here. Cutting Ralphie’s heart out was only supposed to allow us access to see them, not the other way around. Someone had been trifling with the wards around the fae man’s heart, but who in this world or the next would be powerful or brazen enough for something like that?
Merry’s hand grasped the heart tighter and, as it did, I watched the sisters stumble backward just an inch or so. Good. They were still connected. I could use that.
“Is that a blade, murderer?” they asked, regaining their composure and chuckling at the sight of the knife. “Has it been so long that you forget our power? Perhaps we should remind you.”
The sisters clapped mismatched hands together and disappeared.
“They’re gone,” Merry said, and I could feel her body shaking as she pressed herself closer to me.
“They’re not,” I assured her, looking around the room. “The entire War Room is covered in wards, and this room has them in particular. That’s why Ralphie brought us to it. They won’t be able to get out of here. Plus, they’re still connected to their prison. They won’t be able to go too far away from the heart.”
“Which means they’re still here,” Merry surmised, swallowing hard. “They’re still around here somewhere.” She took a deep breath, apparently steadying herself because the next few words out of her mouth sounded much calmer. “What are the sisters exactly, Callum?”
“They used to be mystics,” I said, thinking back, but keeping my eyes planted firmly ahead.
“There were two of them then, but they were very powerful. Each of the sisters learned a different aspect of magic. They figured if they were well rounded it would help them to remain safe and vital. It was a different world back then, and even magic users were rarely safe for too long.”
“The more I learn about magic, the more I believe it’s more trouble than it’s worth,” Merry muttered.
“You and me both,” I answered. “The blonde girl, her name was Cecily. She fell into dark magic. It overtook her, and she became bitter. She got jealous of her sister’s gift, of one power in particular. She wanted to have it for herself. So she did what any normal person would do in the same situation. She cast a spell that fused their bodies together for all eternity. It gave her the power she wanted, but it also drove both of them out of their fucking minds. So, you know, you take the good with the bad, I guess.”
“What was it?” Merry asked, grasping tightly onto my arm as I inched us toward the wall. I didn’t want these bitches sneaking up behind Merry again. I wanted to see them coming if that was at all possible. “What was the power she wanted?”
“To see the future, to peer into the unseen. She basically wanted to be a walking fortune cookie,” I said, hinting at the reason I was here in the first place. “Oh, and she could breathe fire.”
“Goddamn, Cal. You should have led with that,” Merry answered as we finally came to rest against the wall.
“Keep hold of the heart,” I said to Merry. “Whatever you do, don’t drop it. Don’t let it out of your grasp for even an instant. If they get the heart, they can free themselves once and for all. We can’t let that happen. The last thing I need is a repeat of what happened in Morocco. Do you understand?”
“I mean, not about the Morocco thing, but yeah,” she said.
“They weren’t supposed to be able to get out,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I swear, if I’d have known this was even close to a possibility, I never would have tried this. I never would have brought you—”
I winced. Still connected through the mind meld, I could feel the pain Ralphie’s body had inflicted, which meant I was basically going to have to go up against the equivalent of Egyptian gods with a gaping chest wound.
So, you know, just another weekend.
“Stay here,” I said, untangling my arm from Merry’s and pushing off the wall. “I’m going to put an end to this.”
“Be careful,” she said. The apprehension and concern in her voice sort of made me feel like Bruce Willis going to stop an asteroid from hitting earth or something. I had been through a lot in my never ending life. I had pushed my fist through a lot of evil skulls (a lot of good ones too, for that matter). I had even loved a lot of women, but something about hearing Merry’s desire to keep me safe felt different. It felt special somehow. So the least I could do was make her feel better about it.
“Don’t worry,” I said, winking at her as I moved toward the center of the room. “It’s not like they can kill me or anything.”
“Death is far from the worst this world has to offer. You should know that. We’ve been waiting for you, murderer,” they said, again utilizing that creepy ass shared voice of theirs. They were still unseen though, still hiding in some shadow or cloaked with an invisibility spell. “For hundreds and hundreds of years. We knew the day would come when you would be forced to open this prison. We saw this day from far in the past, and we made sure we were ready.”
“Show yourself,” I said, still brandishing my ‘cut through anything’ knife. Hopefully, long banished mystic sisters fell under the umbrella term of ‘everything’. Otherwise, I was going to have to come up with a completely new plan.
“Did you know that, from the heart, one can influence the mind?” they said, their voices moving around like unseen phantoms. “It took years to plant the seeds of the decisions this fairy made tonight. Years of whispering in his ear, day and night, night and day. But it paid off. And now you will know the pain that we have.” Another cackle shot through the air. “The mind meld spell that would interfere with the wards around his heart, the decision to place the War Room in this exact spot, it was all part of a plan to make this night possible, to make our escape a reality. You played right into our hands, murderer, and now you will pay, but not before your prisoner is made to burn.”
“Stop with the theatrics!” I shouted. “We all know you’re bluffing. If you had any power while inside his heart, you’d have freed yourselves ages ago. SO why don’t you stop dicking around, tell me what I want to know and maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll convince Ralphie to open up another ventricular for you guys to live in. Think of it as a summer home.”
“Ah, your questions,” the sister said, echoing along the room, their voices layered atop each other. “What do you wish to know, murderer? Do you wish to speak of the enemy creeping closer to your doorstep? Do you wish to know of the ring that gives him the power to destroy all in his path? Or are your questions less inspired? Let us ask you, murderer, does she know you’re lying to her? Does the woman with you know the truth of her daughter, of the path she’s destined to travel, of the path the world is destined to travel because of h-”
“Squeeze the heart!” I said, shouting back to Merry.
“What are they talking about?” she asked. “What do they know about my daughter?!”
“Squeeze the damn heart, Merry! Do it now!”
Doing as I asked, her action caused the sisters to scream in pain. With a shudder, they appeared before me, clutching their own chest and on their knees.
“This knife is special,” I said, walking toward them with the blade pointed down. “It can cut through anything, even the throat of a pair of troublesome sisters who thought they were unkillable.”
“We can tell you the truth,” the said, their eyes cast downward. “We can tell you everything you wish to know.”
“You will tell me,” I said, settling in front of them. “And then I’m going to stuff you back into that prison and never think of you again. You know that, don’t you? You can see it, can’t you; a future of dark nothingness that’ll only stop the moment this near eternal fairy finally dies. It’s your future, and nothing you say is going to change it.”
They looked up a me, their mismatched lips spreading into an awful smile. “We weren’t talking to you.”
Twisting their hands, the sisters shot a blast of energy in my direction. It slammed into me, knocking me off my feet and sending me flying through the air. I hit the far wall, suspended and pressed against it with magic.
Merry rushed to me, her eyes wide.
“Stop!” the sisters said. “He isn’t on your side, Meredith. He isn’t on your daughter’s side.” She turned to them, her eyes wide and full of tears.
“Merry, don’t listen to them,” I said, struggling against the magic and finding it too strong. “They’re liars, Merry. You can’t trust them.”
“But she can trust you?” they asked, standing up and slowly walking toward us. “The murderer is using you, Meredith. We have seen it. We have bore witness to the terror which exists because of his failure, because of the way he refuses to act. We have watched what his lies turn your daughter into. But we can tell you the truth. We can tell you what will happen so you can avoid it.” They settled in front of us. “All you have to do is free us. All you have to do is give us the heart.”
9
I struggled against the blot of unseen magic which was holding me against this wall. To say this little endeavor had gotten out of hand wouldn’t give justice to the abnormally massive shit storm I now found myself in. I was pinned against a wall in the back room of the largest supernatural hub in the Southeast, staring down a pair of eyes which belonged to one of history’s greatest monsters. The proprietor of said hub (and the only person strong enough to take these bitches out if I couldn’t manage to free myself) was unconscious and minus a heart. Meanwhile, the sisters were about a half a breath away from convincing the mother of the Antichrist to hand them their f
reedom on a silver platter. Oh, and they were going to tell her the truth about Amber, which opened up an entirely separate, but no less sticky, can worms.
If I couldn’t manage to convince Merry not to listen to what these overpowered wretches had to say, then we were all as good as fucked.
“Merry, I need you to listen to me,” I said, swallowing hard and looking from her to the sisters and back again. The pain in my chest was still acute, still pulsating the way it might if my chest had actually been carved open and my heart pulled out. I should have known better than to listen to Ralphie when he suggested that damn mind meld. I should have known something was going on, but I was off my game. The truth about Amber and what that truth might do to Merry was screwing with my head. It was making me less than myself, and I couldn’t afford that, not with what I was currently up against.
“More lies,” the sisters said, stopping in front of Merry with both their hands outstretched.
“They can’t take it from you,” I said, still pulling against the magic and trying to calm the aching in my head and the rest of my body. “As long as you’re holding it, they can’t take ownership. All you have to do is keep it.” I shook my head, the only part on my outside of my wrists, hands, and ankles that was free of the magical binding. “They’re going to tell you a lot of things to convince you to turn on me, to make you believe that I’m the bad guy. You know me better than that, Merry.”
“Does she?” the sisters asked, their hands still open expectantly. They could almost touch the heart; they were so close. They wouldn’t be able to take it though, not unless Merry gave up possession first. “She met you under false pretenses. Her guise was a lie, as was yours. Her interest in you was a mask she wore to get what she wanted.”
“Only at first,” Merry admitted, still looking at the sisters. “I only lied at first, because I had to.”
“It’s okay,” I said, still hurting, still pulling, and still finding myself hopelessly bound to this wall. “I understand why you did it. You wanted to save your daughter, just like you did tonight. Just like I do.”
Curse of Cain (Immortal Mercenary Book 2) Page 5
