by Jenn Stark
“But I know who you really are,” I said, putting all the fervor of conviction in my words.
“Do you?” Armaeus seemed to sag, and his eyes, when he lifted them to me, were haggard. He didn’t protest when I crossed the remaining feet between us and looked up into his face. We’d been here, in this place, mere days ago, and the memory of that meeting took hold of me, calling to my galloping heart and my trembling hands.
We stood there for a moment, staring at each other, then Armaeus lifted both hands and cupped either side of my face, leaning down to kiss me softly on the lips. Almost without conscious thought, I stepped more closely to him. His arms moved naturally around me, drawing me tight. His kiss deepened, and I opened my mind to him just that little bit, taking in the years, the centuries of agony, loneliness, doubt. So much doubt.
As if he recognized what I saw, he grimaced. “I can no longer deny who I really was, who I really am. The time is coming for there to be no denials of any of our power.”
“Where are we, exactly?” I asked, because I couldn’t bear for him to continue down the path he was racing, a path that would end in him surging up in a column of golden-black fire, fire that might well turn on me as I wielded tools created at the dawning of the world.
“We…” Armaeus sighed and looked around the space. “I should have destroyed this place of long ago. As I have destroyed so many others. I don’t know why I didn’t. It has become a place of solitude, serenity. A refuge when not even the soaring towers of Prime Luxe could keep me well enough away from the world.”
“Who made them, originally?” I asked, turning in his arms, not yet willing to remove myself from his embrace.
“The oubliettes were created by an ancient sorcerer of Atlantis,” he said. “It’s said the world was littered with them at one time, sinkholes of magic that allowed for the great mages to withdraw from the world and simply be.”
“Why would you want to get rid of those? They seem harmless enough.”
“In a world where only humans wield magic, and that magic is controlled, yes, you’re right. But the world has not always been that way. And just as we know that most of the gods of old were banished to beyond the veil, we know that some were not. Some were consigned to earthly vessels, some to the space between the worlds, not quite life, not quite death. For those creatures, and for the most powerful of Connected, these oubliettes represent a sanctuary that we can ill afford.” He sighed heavily. “And there’s more. A long time ago, I forced a portion of myself into one of these oubliettes, then removed the memory of its location from my mind. That…power of mine remains, however. It is dark, but it is mighty. Yet I no longer can trace its place in this world.”
“And so you search,” I whispered. “Not knowing what you’ll find when you rediscover it?”
“Oh, I know what I will find,” Armaeus said grimly. “But as I said, the time for denial is at an end.”
Power. He needed power. And that could only be for one reason. “You think the veil is going to tear completely, don’t you?”
“It has already torn more than it should. Fire falls to the earth almost daily now, in more places than we can track.”
“And so…what does that mean? That the war on magic isn’t going to be waged between the government or even the Church against the Connected, but between the gods and all mortals?”
Armaeus’s hold on me tightened, and his head dipped. I felt the soft brush of his kiss along my hair, shivered at the riot of emotions it sent off within me. Fear, mostly, as it was so often with Armaeus. But not fear of him any longer, not even remotely. Rather, it was fear for him, and riding hard on the heels of that, the determination that I had to help him, that I had to make him strong, to ensure he could manage the dark power he needed, without losing control. My heart swelled heavily, thudding against my rib cage, while my resolution stretched and grew within me, filling up my whole world.
“I have foreseen many possibilities,” Armaeus continued, his arms still steady around me. I clung to him, each word solidifying my resolve. “The most likely is that the conflict will begin not as a war on magic, but a war of magic. A conflict between the Connecteds and the gods, and between the gods themselves. How much the non-Connected mortal population is brought into that is still unclear to me, but they will feel the reverberations of that war, and those reverberations might well incite them to the secondary war on magic. That would be the worst of all worlds, and that is what I fear we are moving toward.”
I swallowed. Kreios had said much the same thing. And the harbingers… “How can we stop it?” I whispered.
“We…can’t. Not anymore. There are too many forces that want it,” he said. “The Council, the heads of the Houses of Magic, the most powerful Connecteds, even the most powerful non-Connecteds, who don’t even know what they’re asking for. I have held the line too long. It can hold no more.”
“And will you be strong enough?” I asked. “To fight as you must?”
“I was once,” Armaeus said grimly. “Before…”
“Before you broke off a piece of yourself,” I whispered, finally seeing the truth of it. Like Simon and Viktor, Armaeus had also used his magic to alter his very self…unlike them, however, he remembered what he’d done. “Before you split the worst of you away and stuck it somewhere, to become the version of the Magician you are today.”
He didn’t respond, only kissed me softly once again, the merest brush of his lips against my hair. A kiss of regret, perhaps. Of sadness. Of fear of the unknown and what it might mean for both of us.
In that moment, I knew what I had to do. Could see it in my mind’s eye. I’d—somehow—have to help the Magician retrieve the shard of who he’d been all those centuries ago, to become the dark mage he’d been born to be, to fully claim his power. Even if it meant he could become lost to me…I had to help him…somehow.
I’d have to let him become his darkest self.
But not yet, my heart begged.
Not yet.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Sara!” Brody’s voice for once was louder than Nikki’s, and I came back to myself in a rush, convulsing off the bed and into their arms as they tried to haul me halfway across the room.
“I’m all right!” I insisted. “I’m all right.”
“You smell like a blown-out stereo. That doesn’t seem all right to me,” grumbled Nikki, but she stood back to give me enough room to stand. I managed that, wobbling, and scanned the room. No Hayley, no Armaeus.
“What happened?”
“You were on the bed, wrapped up in Christmas tree lights, but before we could get to you, Armaeus did. Then there was nothing but lights and a lot of heat… So much that we couldn’t get any closer. Five, maybe ten seconds later, and you’re back.” She stepped back to look at me, and I noticed she was carrying my leather pack. “More or less intact.”
“Good enough. Where’s Hayley?” I asked as I reshouldered my bag, trying desperately not to show how close I was to tears. It was one thing to resolve to help Armaeus face his darkest truth when I was in the comfort and safety of his arms. It was another thing to be torn out of those arms and thrust back into my own nightmare, with a child in danger that I had already failed once, a child whose body had now been whisked away from me on sizzling electrical currents.
And then there was my even bigger problem, the coming war which everyone kept insisting would arrive on my doorstep whether I wanted it to or not. That war would usher in a new age, all right…
But a new age of what?
“She was here, at one point,” Brody said. “The hotel staff corroborates Armaeus’s account of how she was playing in the casino, was comped a room, and like any curious teen, came up to see it.”
He pointed to the open champagne bottle on the counter. “We’ll run DNA, but it seems reasonable that she drank that and passed out. What happened between then and the time that we arrived, after the Magician, is anyone’s guess. The fact that he didn’t know the
deception was happening, though, doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.”
“Right,” I muttered, my guts twisting as I thought of Kreios’s chaotic visions, Armaeus’s dark anguish, and the banshees’ wailed warnings. “Where’s Simon?”
“Still at the Bellagio,” Brody said. “According to my people, he hasn’t moved from his suite.”
“I’ve never been to his tower. Have you?” I asked Nikki.
She shook her head. “That would be no. Whenever I’ve seen the guy, it’s been in the Magician’s conference room. Or outside. Or on a screen.” She tilted her head, considering. “And I always assumed that he was working from Prime Luxe when we patched into him. It honestly never occurred to me that he might be in his own digs.”
“Agreed.” We were already moving toward the door, exiting to the plush carpeted hallway. It went without saying that Nikki, Brody, and I would be going over to Bellagio together. I didn’t know who else Brody had on scene, but chances were none of them were Connected. Which meant that none of them could get into the Fool’s private domain. But we could, even Brody. The detective hadn’t started out with much of a Connected capability, beyond simple cop intuition, which was nothing to sneeze at. But he’d been along for too many campaigns close to me that some of my crazy had rubbed off on him, though I didn’t think he necessarily knew how much.
We took Brody’s car down the Strip and pulled into the valet station of the Bellagio, the doorman giving us a small wave as Brody flashed his credentials. One of the benefits of the detective working the Strip with such dedication was that everyone knew him. It occurred to me that such familiarity could also be a detriment, but…not today.
Entering the Bellagio’s luxurious lobby, Nikki and I stopped, gazing around, trying to determine the entry point to the Fool’s shadow tower.
Brody kept going a few steps, then stopped as well, looking back at us with confusion. “What?”
“In Prime Luxe, it’s the elevators,” Nikki said. “But I’m getting no love there.”
“Me either.” I shifted my gaze to Brody before he could snap out another irritated question. “You said you guys had him located in a suite?”
“Yeah, top floor.” Brody rubbed his neck. “We’ve been watching him since you gave us the heads-up from Japan. He’s pretty much been holed up there the entire time.”
“Anyone else with him? Or has he been in there by himself?”
“As far as we could tell, the only other people in there with him are his staff, the Mongolians. They’re not big talkers.”
Nikki looked at me, and I shrugged. “I guess we go to the penthouse floor and see what we see.”
We did that, though both Nikki and I stared hard at the elevator bay while we waited for an empty carriage. The upper floors of the Bellagio merited their own special elevator. As we entered, Brody pulled out a key card and swiped it, and the elevator started moving up.
“So what’s the plan here?” he asked. “We just barge in and accuse him of…what, exactly?”
“Kidnapping, for one,” Nikki put in. “Child endangerment sounds pretty good to me too. Hayley’s only seventeen. That’s great that she’s Connected, but she’s still a kid. She deserves the opportunity to experience what little childhood she has left, especially when you consider everything she’s gone through.”
I grimaced. I didn’t know if Hayley Adams had ever had the opportunity to experience a real childhood. She’d been six, maybe seven years old when she’d been taken by Viktor. Seventeen when she was returned. That was only a few months ago, and here she was, caught up in the machinations of the Council again. She’d seemed unperturbed, completely unsurprised by our breakthrough into Shambhala. Had I been that jaded at seventeen? I tried to remember how I had reacted to the RVers who’d scooped me out of that rest stop in Tennessee and taken me under their wing. How might I have turned out if they had not been there? How might I have turned out if the more brutal, angry side of me that was Sariah Pelter had remained intact and not blasted to oblivion?
Not oblivion. And unlike the shards of Viktor and Simon…or Armaeus, for that matter, Sariah could coexist on her own, in this plane. She deserved that chance, I was pretty sure. No matter what she’d done to me in Hell, she deserved that chance.
I was pretty sure.
We reached the penthouse floor of the Bellagio, and entered a quiet, cocooned space that featured thick pile carpeting of an absolutely freakish color.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Nikki protested. “Seriously? Moss-green carpet with bright yellow walls and blue ceilings? Someone did this on purpose?”
“We found it like this,” Brody kept walking toward the two police officers stationed outside the double doors at the far end of the lobby. There were six other sets of doors, and I didn’t know who owned those. One set, the second closest to the cops, seemed…strange to me. It almost pulsed with a live energy that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, almost the same kind of energy I’d felt in the Palazzo. But the cops weren’t flanking that door, but its neighbor, where, apparently, Simon had taken up residence.
“Any movement?” Brody asked, not bothering to explain our presence.
“None at all—at least not from this room,” the officer on the right replied. He was a short, stocky man whose sturdy form could have been mistaken as fat on another man. Not on him, though. He had the demeanor of a fire hydrant about to blow. He nodded to the set of doors directly to the right of Simon’s digs, the ones I’d noticed the moment we’d exited the elevator. “That place, though, is more of a problem.”
“Residents?”
“Also owned by Simon Foulet,” the officer on the left said. I winced, but Nikki full-on snorted.
“Foulet? You can’t be serious,” she said.
“What kind of problem?” Brody pushed, ignoring us. “Noise? Movement?”
“It’s quiet now, but about fifteen minutes ago, it sounded like someone had hit the video casino jackpot in there. There were lights visible beneath the doors, the sound of computerized celebration—you know, that cheering sound? All of that. No signs of distress, but it was still creepy. The applause went on for a long time. We approached, knocked, but no one replied.”
“Any actual voices?”
“No. And no movement from the main suite here, so we thought we’d watch and wait. A few minutes passed, and everything went silent. When we reported in, they said you were already on your way.”
“Computer celebration,” Nikki repeated as Brody scowled at the second suite. “Probably not enough reason to break through the door.”
“Fifteen minutes ago, though,” I said. I was drawn to the door even more strongly now that I was looking at it. It felt…familiar to me. Like I’d seen it before. Which was impossible. There was no way I’d have forgotten the moss-green carpeting and golden walls. “That’s right around the time we realized Hayley was a dummy, a hologram. She could be in there.”
“We don’t know that.”
“There’s definitely something about those doors that’s hinky, though,” Nikki said. “You’re getting that too, aren’t you, dollface?”
She began drifting toward the double doors as well, and I matched her stride for stride, even as Brody protested. “Guys, we are not going in there. We’ve been given no reason to believe that there is any illegal activity going on in those rooms.”
Still, he moved forward with us, leaving the other cops at their station. The three of us hesitated for a moment outside the large double doors. They seemed to almost pulse with energy as we approached.
“That’s not just me seeing that, right?” Nikki asked.
“It’s not just you,” I said. “And this lobby…”
“It’s like that room. You’re right,” she said, catching on. “The room in the game. Where the message board was.” She slanted a hard look to Brody. “We gotta go in there, love buns. Like now.”
“Dammit,” Brody muttered, but he reached for his sidearm, flicking the safety.
One hand was on the weapon. “We knock?”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “We just go.”
I reached forward with both hands and yanked the double doors toward me, expecting the resistance that a locked door should have provided. Instead, the doors flew open at my pull. Before I could scream a warning, some unknown, unseen force jerked the three of us inside—and sent us flying.
Chapter Thirty
Brody, Nikki, and I tumbled forward, sprawling onto…
Grass?
Definitely grass. A wide, rolling plain, beneath a far too blue sky. There were orange mountains in the distance, beyond a bright blue stream that wound through the landscape with a barely audible murmur, and…birdsong. Absolutely birdsong. I scanned the horizon, noting that we were on some sort of hill that overlooked a vast vista, and behind us…
I blinked. An enormous tower rose up behind us, ominous and cold. Above it, the sky glowered, clouds roiling behind it, heavy with menace. I shivered and looked away, unable to keep staring at it.
“Sweet baby Jesus on a tricycle.” Beside me, Nikki turned, apparently completely unaware that her clothing had changed from retro aviator chic to a long flowing gown of rich silks and velvets, jewels dripping from her neck and wrists. “Where the hell are we?”
“What the hell are we?” Brody corrected her.
While Nikki was staring around herself, Brody was shaking out his hands, scrabbling for a gun that was not there. Instead, he pulled a longsword out of the scabbard at his hip, lofting it with an ungainly lurch as he tried it to keep his balance in full armor. An equine snort broke the relative silence, and Brody whirled, toppling over on his backside as he confronted the enormous white horse trotting up to him from behind a stand of trees.
