Indebted

by Amy A. Bartol

  “I will remember dat for next time, Casimir,” Brennus says slowly.

  Casimir, sounding bored, states, “You know what I want. Release her from the contract or you both die.”

  The fellas in the room begin hissing menacingly at Casimir, but he ignores them. Brennus holds up his hand, indicating that he doesn’t want them to try to attack.

  “Dere are worse tings den a true death, Casimir,” Brennus replies, hiding the pain in his eyes.

  “Yes, there are and I know them all,” Casimir agrees, before kissing the top of my head gently and smoothing my hair. “Give her to me and I will not have to show any of them to you.”

  “’Tis really na me decision ta make,” Brennus replies, watching my face.

  “Excuse me?” Casimir asks, sounding surprised instead of bored.

  “’Tis her decision,” Brennus replies, staring into my eyes and seeing my confusion.

  “You will let her decide your fate?” he asks Brennus, like he doesn’t completely understand what is being said. “You are willing to die for her?”

  “I am, but I am already dead…’twill jus be da end of me,” Brennus replies, never taking his eyes off of me. “If she decides she is na going wi’ ye, den she is na going wi’ ye, no matter whah ye do.”

  My lower lip trembles as tears escape my eyes. I begin to understand what Brennus is saying to Casimir. If I decide that dying here is the better option to being Casimir’s slave, then Brennus won’t break the contract, forcing Casimir to kill us both. He will effectively be dying with me—for me, so I won’t have to be a slave.

  “You are powerful,” Casimir breathes in my ear, before he speaks louder. “You do realize, Brennus, that whereas she will undoubtedly be back in one form or another, you will not.”

  “I know dat better dan ye do,” he replies, unaffected by the information. “’Twill na matter. I know ye intend ta end me before ye leave. Ye canna leave me here since ye know dat I will never stop hunting ye. I’ll use all of me influence ta find ye and break ye ta pieces. Ye canna have dat, can ye?” he asks rhetorically.

  “You paint me in such a sinister form,” Casimir replies, sounding bored again. “All I want is the half-breed. You do not have to make this an epic battle. She was never yours. She has always been ours.”

  “She’s moin,” Brennus retorts angrily.

  “I could just take her…torture her and subsequently you at my leisure anyway…” Casimir says. He produces a knife and holds it to my throat, pulling it down slowly so that it cuts a thin, shallow line in my skin. I clamp my lips together, trying not to make a sound. “But, then I won’t be able to hear her cry and that will take all of the fun out of it. With the contract still in play, she won’t respond at all.”

  When his hand passes in front of my face, I notice burn marks on them that are healing. He must not have enjoyed the fire I threw at him earlier through the portal. My body stills as I realize what that means.

  My magic works on him, I surmise, feeling my pulse kick up.

  “Declan, if he tries ta leave wi’ yer queen before we resolve dis issue, ye make sure I’m ended. We canna have him torturing her,” he says, looking at me.

  Declan, looking grim, chokes, “I will,” knowing he will be killing both of us if that happens. Gazing at me, Declan says, “Lass, I figured it out. ’Tis both, lass…’tis both.”

  It takes me a second to realize what he’s saying to me. He once said he didn’t know if it was courage or naiveté that made me do all the brave and foolish things that I do. I guess he decided that it’s both.

  Casimir hands me over to the angel next to him and puts his knife back in its sheath. “So, I will need to convince Genevieve that it is in everyone’s best interest that she leaves with me quietly?” Casimir asks, looking up at the ceiling calmly, like he is contemplating nothing more than the architecture of the room. “That shouldn’t prove to be too difficult a task, knowing her soft heart.”

  In a heartbeat, Casimir draws out his gun and points it at Finn. Pulling the trigger several times, he sends bullets into Finn’s chest. Finn steps back, grimacing, but he doesn’t fall down, which attests to the fact that he is really freaking strong and already mostly dead. Brennus manages to remain standing, too, looking even whiter than he did before.

  “The next round goes in his head, half-breed,” Casimir says to me insultingly, while sliding another magazine into his gun. I close my eyes against the sight of Finn’s blood trickling from him.

  “I want you to break the contract, Brennus,” I whisper.

  When I open my eyes, I see pain contort Brennus’ face as his eyes shift from his brother to me. Brennus knows what I’m doing. I’m agreeing to be Casimir’s slave so he will spare Finn.

  “Your feelings for these creatures is appalling, Genevieve,” Casimir says with a grim look, like he finds me unsavory. “I should kill them all to teach you another lesson about being loyal to the wrong ascendency, but the stench in here just makes me want to leave as soon as possible. Brennus, she has made her decision, now unshackle her.”

  “Is dat yer decision?” Brennus asks me for clarification.

  My eyes cloud with tears of fear, knowing what this will mean for me. It will be brutal. Casimir wants revenge and he has eternity to see that it’s done to his satisfaction. I swallow hard, nodding my head to Brennus.

  “Den I will release ye. I love ye, mo chroí, forever,” Brennus says, like I’m the only one in the room as his hands form fists.

  With tears on my cheeks, I whisper back, “Goodbye, Brennus.”

  Casimir growls. “From now on, you will speak only to me,” he says, pulling me back into his grasp and shaking me roughly.

  Brennus and all of the other fellas in the room begin hissing menacingly. I think Brennus would attack Casimir if Finn had not grasped his arm to hold him back. Finn scowls at Brennus, “She has a chance ta survive dis, Brenn. Give her dat chance.”

  Pain, like I’ve never seen from him before, crosses Brennus’ face as he stills. He wipes his hand over his mouth and settles down a little. Then, staring into my eyes again, he begins pulling the energy in the room to him and whispering words I don’t understand. I am not really listening to what he’s saying, because I’m concentrating on stealing the energy from Brennus as he gathers it to him. My hope is that Casimir won’t know what I’m doing—that if he can feel the energy in the room, he attributes it to Brennus.

  Brennus shoots me a funny look as he feels me taking his energy. With the air crackling around us, something within me shifts and eases, like a heavy weight is leaving my body and I know that I’m no longer bound to Brennus or the Gancanagh.

  I continue to take the energy, feeling it burning me inside. “Do you like poetry, Casimir?” I ask in a panting breath, holding as much energy as I can.

  “Excuse me?” Casimir asks in elegant disdain.

  “I’m creating something just for you…here, it goes like this: ‘I wish I were like the sea To pull you down, Drown you within me. Breathe wet fire, Feel your fear, Kill you slowly, Shed no tear. I’ll call the ocean from its path, To sweep you wildly within its wrath.” My voice strains before I release all the energy I have collected at once. I feel it ripple in a tremoring shock through the castle.

  “What did you just do?” Casimir growls, holding on to my arm with brutal force.

  A rumble beneath the floor saves me from having to answer him, while salt water roars up the stairs behind us, spewing like a water cannon. It knocks me away from Casimir as the room floods with a tidal wave of white water from the sea. In the next moment, I slip beneath the eddy. As I hold my breath, I tumble in the wildly, churning current. I bump into chairs and tables as they spin beneath the water in a chaotic mess of medieval armor, fellas, angels, and other debris.

  When I brush up against the rosette, stained glass window, I press flat against it. Pounding my fist on its colorful glass, my lungs burn from lack of oxygen as I feel the panes shatter beneath my hands. I spil
l out the window of the Knight’s Bar, like a tealeaf being poured from a teapot, and I land hard on the ground below me. Water continues to stream from the window while I struggle to crawl away from it.

  All around me, another battle is taking place. Angels, fellas, and creatures I have never seen before, are hacking at each other, locked in combat. It’s total chaos as mortar shells shake the ground, spewing dirt and body parts into the air. A pair of dress shoes stop in front of me. Glancing upward, I lose my breath, seeing a human-like figure dressed in the suit he was probably buried in standing over me. Milky-white eyes, formed by a film of cataracts, stare down at me. “Inikwi,” I shiver, gazing around to see that several of them are surrounding me.

  The Inikwi speak to each other in deep, gargled voices, like their throats are filled with water.

  A groan is wrenched from me and I shudder as a creepy, half-dead thing reaches down and pulls me up off the ground by the front of my shirt.

  Creases form in the black mold on the corners of its mouth as its gray tongue snakes out of it to lick my cheek. My stomach clenches along with my jaw as I cringe away from it, trying to turn my face. As I dangle in his grasp, I hear Casimir’s distinct voice behind me speaking the gargling language of the Inikwi.

  “I should let them play with you, half-breed. Maybe I will later,” Casimir says, watching me squirm to get away from the utterly wrong thing that is holding me.

  “You didn’t enjoy the swim?” I ask Casimir. He looks a little more disdainful than normal. But, wet and dripping, he still manages to appear even more beautiful than usual—like a young surfer coming out of the water in his wetsuit.

  Before I see Casimir’s fist move, he punches me in the stomach, causing most of the air to expel from my body. Gasping for breath, I feel myself being handed to Casimir’s waiting arms. “What? Nothing more to say?” Casimir asks, snuggling me close to his body. A handful of angels from Casimir’s entourage fall from the rosette window, looking equally as annoyed as he does. Casimir barks orders to them, “Find the leader of the Gancanagh. I want him. Exterminate the rest, except for maybe the brother—I will torture him in front of Brennus…that could be interesting.”

  I shiver, hearing his plans for Brennus and Finn. The angels nod to Casimir before nervously gazing up at the rosette window of the kirk, probably wondering how they are going to accomplish that task with so few of them remaining.

  Casimir doesn’t wait to see if they will comply, but turns with me in his arms and moves supernaturally fast towards the building that houses all of the vehicles. I rest my head on his shoulder, feeling painfully intimidated. When we enter the garage, Casimir chooses the car that looks the most like a race-car with doors that open up instead of out. The keys are in it. I guess the Gancanagh never really believe anyone will be dumb enough to try to steal from them. Opening the driver side door, Casimir reaches in and places me in the passenger seat. Then he gets into the car and starts the engine. He turns to me and takes the gun out of the holster on my side, tossing it out his window. Reaching over, he buckles my seatbelt for me.

  With strong, manicured fingers, Casimir grasps my chin and turns my face to his. “If you try anything, I will take my knife and impale you to the seat. Do you understand?” he asks me. I nod my head, feeling my blood draining from my face.

  He eases the car out of the garage before he presses the accelerator to the floor, rocketing along the winding drive that leads away from the house. “Where are we going?” I ask in a weak voice, hoping to come up with an exit strategy if I know the plan.

  “Just to the end of the drive. I have soldiers in position waiting for us. We have a portal to Sheol,” he says. Bile rises in my throat while he rubs his thigh where I had shot him earlier, scowling like it hurts him.

  I have to fight now, or I’m worse than dead, I think as my hand inches downward to my boot where Brennus’ knife is hidden.

  As I watch Casimir’s profile, a movement catches my eye beyond the driver’s side window. It looks like a charcoal-gray missile is coming towards the car and my hand moves to the handle of the door to brace myself just before it flies straight into us.

  On impact, the vehicle begins flipping over and over on its side as the momentum of being broadsided propels us in a different direction. As the car comes to rest on its side, I lie against my door that is on the ground. Feeling dizzy and sick, I groan in pain, gazing at the grass covering my window.

  The car moves then as something leaps up onto its quarter panel. A sharp groan of metal sounds as Casimir’s door is torn off of its hinges and thrown away in a blink of an eye. The car crashes downward as it is righted and comes to rest on all four tires. The car is still rocking as a hand reaches in and pulls Casimir by the throat from the driver’s seat.

  Charcoal-gray wings unfold by the side of the car to the raspy sound of my shallowly taken breath. There are other, more-distant noises, but they don’t make much sense to me—like screaming—the screams of someone in agony.

  I look dazedly out the shattered front windshield and blink when an arm falls with a thump on the hood of the car. It’s bloody and gory, with sinew and cartilage hanging from it. Something else falls then—an ear?

  My vision swims, making me see double. Running my hand over the frame of the door, the smooth handle brushes against my fingertips and I pull on it weakly. It won’t open. Blood from my head drips onto my arm; I reach up to touch it, but I am distracted by a cracking sound. Outside the car, one of Casimir’s wings is being brutally shredded from his body.

  I pale even more and I feel like I’m going to be violently ill soon. As my hand goes to my mouth, I see a hulking ogre-like creature ambling towards the car on my side. Just behind the Kevev are three Inikwi, moving fast and overtaking it to get to me first.

  They run like animals…dogs, I think as I see them use all four limbs while their strides stretch out the length of their bodies, but they look human. A whimper of fear escapes me while my trembling hands go to my seatbelt to undo it. A warm, blood-spattered hand covers mine, stopping me from freeing myself.

  “It’s okay, love. We’re leaving now,” Reed says in a gentle tone, staring into my eyes with his perfect green ones.

  He sits in the driver’s seat and starts the mangled vehicle. The car purrs like it had in the garage. Reed leans forward and pushes the shattered windshield out of the way. He then uses his hands to push the drooping roof of the car back up. Wheeling the car around, the arm and ear slide off the hood to the ground as we head back in the direction of the estate. In confusion, I rest my head limply against the seat. My brain cannot make sense of what is happening.

  How is he here? Why is he taking me back to Brennus’ house? I wonder as the scenery whips past the car at an insane speed.

  “Hold on, love,” Reed says to reassure me as something thumps on the roof of the car.

  Reed pulls out an automatic weapon, aiming it one-handed above our heads. He sprays bullets and punctures the roof while he maneuvers right past the circular drive in front of the estate and onto the manicured grass. Another thump comes from the trunk. An angel is holding on to our car, trying to stop us Fred Flintstone-style—with his feet dragging on the ground.

  In the next second, light brown wings shroud the angel holding our car as Zephyr dives at him, impaling the Fallen angel on his broadsword. The back of the car bounces back onto the ground, causing us to fishtail before Reed gets the car back under control.

  “Thanks, Zee,” Reed says under his breath, looking in the rearview mirror.

  Salty wind courses through the open windshield while the performance tires chew up the lawn. My vision doubles again as the rapidly approaching edge of the cliff sends red flags to my brain.

  Moving my head to look at Reed again, I say just above a whisper, “Cliff, Reed.”

  Reed’s eyes widen and he looks stunned as he says, “Evie?”

  I raise my hand and point at the cliff that we are hurtling towards as I croak, “Stop, Reed!”
My brain is swirling. Why doesn’t he see the sea ahead? I wonder dizzily, as reality is distorting. Maybe this isn’t real…

  Reed places his hand on my cheek. “He broke the contract?” Reed asks, not caring about driving us to what seems like the edge of the world. “You are free?”

  I nod slowly, not taking my eyes from the brilliant stars in the big sky ahead of us. “He let me go, so Casimir wouldn’t kill me,” I say shakily as my hand reaches out to take his.

  Reed watches me entwine my fingers in his. His eyes soften as he speaks to me in Angel with a euphoric expression on his lips. It makes me forget what was making me panic as I give all control of my destiny over to him in an instant.

  The rotten flesh of an Inikwi leaves a smear on my window when he lands on the car and clings to the roof. Several more thumps hit the car as more of his pack joins him. “Don’t worry, Evie, I have a plan,” Reed says, while reaching into his body armor and pulling out something shiny from it.

  “I trust you,” I whisper.

  Reed opens the compact in his hand the moment the car begins its decent towards the sea below. The interior of the vehicle becomes a swirling, chaotic mess, as everything distorts and twists as if being stretched and pulled in a taffy machine. With no air to breathe, the feeling of being pulled like metal to a powerful magnet consumes me.

  I land on the ground on my hands and knees. The moment I am able to take a breath, I can’t because I am vomiting everything I have ever eaten onto the ground in front of me. A growl sounds from Reed as he stands with his back to me, facing the four Inikwi that came through the portal with us. They speak to each other with garbled voices.

  “Love, can you move?” Reed asks, not looking at me. I push myself up to my feet, but I have to lean against a wall so I won’t crash back down. My bullet wounds are healing, allowing me to stand, but my legs still ache.

  “Yes,” I respond, looking around in a daze and realizing that we are in some kind of underground tunnel. The metal scraping sound of a train pulling into a station registers in my mind as subway cars pulse by me, blowing my hair back from my face with stale air.