"They want to meet the Alice," the King says, lifting his cell phone and reminding me that they do in fact have phones here. That they never use because their network is ‘compromised’. I guess when you’re talking to the enemy anyway, it doesn’t matter if they’ve tapped the phone lines. I notice Tee and Dee exchange a worried look.
"They want to rape and kill the Alice," Dee growls out, surprising me. He's generally a jovial person. To see him so angry is disconcerting. I really don't like it—especially when he reaches out and puts his fingers on my hip, just above the Queenmaker, like he’s reminding me it’s still there. Nobody here seems concerned about giving me a gun in the presence of a king I already hate. I can't decide if it just means the Castle Heart security is poor, or if the King is such a badass that me having a weapon in my hands doesn't matter much.
My bet’s on the latter.
"Tell them no and send them on their way. Better yet, carve their flesh like a holiday ham and mail their corpses back to the Walrus and the Carpenter," the Duke says, curling the corner of his lip up in a snarl, curved horns catching the light above us. I'm sure as soon as I have a moment to myself, I'll start thinking about our wild rut in the woods in graphic detail, probably masturbating to it, too. For now, I sort of need to compartmentalize it.
Did I just hear rape and kill?
"If I could, I most certainly would," the King says, tilting his head to one side. The gold crown he wears catches the light as he narrows his eyes on me. "But they're Recitations, obviously. We could obliterate them, but what good would that do? We may as well get as much information from them as we can."
"What's a Recitation?" I ask, scrubbing my hands down my face. I don't even want to speak with the King, particularly after watching him kill the card servant earlier, but I also need to know who—or what—is trying to kill me. I mean, rule one of survival: know your enemies.
"A Recitation is a copy of a person's image, with no person waiting behind it." Lar pulls—no joke—a glass pipe from the pocket of his white slacks, and lights up. Clearly, he's not smoking tobacco. Is it too much to hope that there's a little pot in there? Rab flicks his cigarette butt on the floor, and a card servant promptly cleans it up. The two men each take a drag on the pipe before Rab finishes Lar’s thought.
"It's a mirage,” he says, smoothing his hand down one of his ears and smiling at me in a way that I can only describe as half horror movie/half romantic comedy. Looking at his ears makes me think of the March Hare and the Mad Hatter. They disappeared at the mention of the Gryphon and the Mocking Turtle, and I haven’t seen them since. Coincidence, much?
"A mirage that can spy and report back to the Walrus and the Carpenter." A shiver chases down my spine when Tee says those two names. They should be ridiculous—I mean the Mocking Turtle for fuck's sake—but there's something eerily ominous about them, and I can't help but think of the prophecy. Just what do these guys have to do with all the bullshit befalling Underland? When Tee murmurs another stanza under his breath, I get this horrific sense of déjà vu, like I’ve been here, done this all before.
“The eldest angel sneered at them,
And many a word he said:
The stubborn monarch closed his eyes,
And said she won’t be dead—
They had to let the Alice think
Else his Queen would soon bleed red.”
The King lets him finish and then turns to me with his ebon eyes as Dee whistles under his breath.
“You have to admit, Highness, that’s hardly coincidental. Lar?” Dee glances over at the Caterpillar, but all he does is tug on one of his earrings and shrug his shoulders in a noncommittal sort of way before taking his pipe back from Rab.
“I deliver prophecy—I don’t interpret it.” Lar folds his wings together behind his back at the same moment Dee drops his feathered appendages to the floor, and Tee curls his protectively around his shoulders. I notice the King of Hearts keeps his gaze entirely focused on me.
“Well?” he asks, and there’s this challenge in his voice that just gets me. He thinks I’m going to say no. He must, the way he’s quietly smirking at me. But then, he doesn’t know Allison Pleasance Liddell, does he? I never back down from a challenge.
“I want to see them,” I say, feeling the muscles in my lower belly tighten. The King tosses some red hair off his forehead … arrogantly. How one can toss hair arrogantly is beyond me, but he manages to pull it off without looking like a total twat. “Where are they?”
“Come,” the asshole says, turning in a billow of his heavy white and red coat. Without waiting to see if I’ll follow, he moves with long strides across the checkered marble floor, Rab and a female guard flanking either side of him, and soldiers trailing in two lines behind. With both North’s and Chesh’s arms tucked in mine, I move to stand behind him and notice that the large, gilded gold doors have opened up to reveal … two wooden doors that are painted red.
When the King waves his hand, these, too, are opened. And behind door number two? More fucking doors. As the servants continue to open them, I notice that the entrance is getting smaller and smaller. On the ceiling above, there are remnants of all the previous doors in layers, like a fucking cake.
“I don’t suppose that disappearing act of yours is contagious?” I ask the cat as he rubs his cheek against my shoulder. He seems almost above all this hierarchal bullshit. Which, of course, makes complete sense if you know anything at all about cats.
“Perhaps it’s sexually transmitted?” he purrs, flashing me a bit of canine. “Maybe we should test the theory?”
“Don’t be crude,” North drawls, but he’s hardly paying attention to my exchange with his pussycat. No, his gaze is focused on a small set of metal doors no bigger than my front doors back home. They’re silver and inlaid with a massive anatomical heart. It splits in half in a crooked, jagged shape, like a broken heart in a child’s drawing, revealing a long, dark stone walkway … that leads to nowhere.
It protrudes past a cliff’s edge, over a vast valley shadowed by the clouds overhead. For miles, all I can see are trees and mushrooms and the blue snakes of raging rivers. There’s no discernible way for a person to get up here, other than the pair of red doors on a floating island at the end of the path.
Another portal then?
“I’ll be here if you need me,” the White Knight says, moving to stand beside Rab and the King. She taps her chest with a gloved fist, like she’s trying to remind me that I’ve got her breastplate on. I suppose it helps boost my courage a little, although it is heavy as hell.
“And I won’t be,” Lar says, flapping his wings softly. They glow a gentle blue-gold as he gifts me with the briefest of smiles and tugs on one of his earrings again. “Can’t risk stumbling into any visions or prophecies with that lot around. Good luck, Sunshine.” With another flap of his wings and a puff of glitter and dust … the Caterpillar is gone and there’s a butterfly drifting lazily through the air in his place.
Um. The hell did I just witness?!
I blink a few times and then turn to North, but he’s focused on that walkway and whatever’s at the end of it. One glance and I can already tell what’s caught his attention: there are two men waiting just in front of the red doors. My nostrils flare and this … this feeling shoots through me, like a shooting star made of acid, burning its way into the depths of my soul. The Vorpal Blade on my thigh tingles, and the Queenmaker just begs me to wrap my fingers around the grip and fire.
They might look like men, but the creatures I’m staring at are fucking monsters.
Without meaning to, I step outside and then pause on the stone walkway, sliding my arms out of Chesh’s and North’s grips. The Duke immediately curls his tail around my ankle, but I’m too focused to care. The only time in my life I’ve ever felt this way about another person was when I was damn close to being raped. Those boys that attacked me, that subsequently killed my brother, they had the same aura as these men. Now, I’m not sure if I believe
in such basic concepts as good and evil, but there are checks and balances in every facet of nature. On one end of the spectrum, there are cuddly kittens and puppies licking faces and batting balls of yarn … on the other end, are these guys.
Pure pond scum.
“What fun!” says the man on the right, the one with a massive pair of eagle wings protruding from his back. They should be pretty, like Tee’s or Dee’s, but instead, they’re scraggly and scarred, casting strange shadows over the man’s beak-like nose and too-full lips. He’s ‘handsome’ enough, I suppose, following the unwritten rules of this world that every dude needs to be attractive, but there’s a slimy quality to him that puts me immediately on edge.
“What is the fun?” I grind out as the King steps aside, his entourage parting like the Red Sea. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks right at me with eyes as dark as a starless night. His lashes are so goddamn long though, sweeping up and framing his expression of disdain with just the right amount of pretty.
“Why, he is,” says the winged guy who I’m guessing must be the Gryphon. He nods his pointed chin in the direction of the King of Hearts. “It’s all his fancy that: he never executes nobody worth executing, you know. Come on, have a stroll down here so we can have a look at you.”
“Everybody says ‘come on’ here,” I growl as I plant my feet firmly on the walkway and mimic the King’s pose, crossing my arms under my breasts and lifting my chin in defiance. No way in hell I’m taking a single step closer to these men. “I never was so ordered about before in all my fucking life.” Scowling, I spit and try not to look too closely at the other man. If the Gryphon scares the piss outta me, the Mocking Turtle is what makes up his personal nightmares. “Never. And I’m not about to start obeying orders now.”
The Gryphon smirks, running his hand over his slicked-back brunette hair. It reminds me of John Travolta in Grease, just … way less attractive. Disturbing, really. It’s hard to explain, but it’s the very mundane blandness of this man that’s scaring me. He’s so unremarkable as to be remarkable, like a sterile white waiting room in a hospital with squeaky clean floors and the scent of iodine. Only, beneath it all, you can still smell the blood.
“Don’t let them pull you in,” Tee whispers from behind me, his calm, inner strength seeping into me when he puts a firm hand on one of my shoulders. “Don’t let them get to you; that’s what they’re here to do.”
“I can see why the guy on the right is called the Gryphon, but where did the name Mocking Turtle come from?” I whisper as Dee rests his chin on my right shoulder. The twins’ clean mountain air scent wraps around me like a shield, calming my frantic heartbeat just a tad.
“Legend goes that he can bring any person to tears with a single word, and send them to the grave with a short story. He quite literally mocks his enemies to death.” I’d laugh at Dee’s words if I wasn’t already starting to wonder if they were true. Turtle-Dick hasn’t said a word yet, and I’ve already got the chills. Click, click, click go his fingernails as he clacks the pointed black tips together.
“And the Turtle part?” I breathe, just before I finally catch sight of his face and see the hooked shape of his upper lip. He smacks his jaws at me with a disturbing amount of force, and I notice that he hasn’t got any damn teeth.
“Legend goes,” Dee starts again, standing back up and putting his palm on my lower back for comfort, “that he bites like a snapping turtle.”
“Oh? Is that all? Fantastic,” I grind out as the two men start forward in disturbingly perfect unison, pausing only when Rab moves to cut them off. But they’re close enough that I can smell them. There’s the sharp, bitter scent of fresh soap with the underlying choke of rot, like roadkill left in the hot, hot sun. It makes me gag, which of course only makes them both smile.
When the Gryphon smiles, doves cry. When the Mocking Turtle smiles … angels die.
He looks at me with large eyes, as dark as the King’s but without a hint of soul in them. There’s just nothing there, like an endless void that leads to nowhere. Just staring into them makes me sick to my stomach, like I’m falling down that Rabbit-Hole all over again, only I’ll never find a place to land. I step forward and put one of my hands on Rab’s tattooed muscular forearm, remembering the feel of him catching me when I fell. Maybe, metaphorically, he’s doing the same thing now? When he glances down at me and I see that ironclad calm, I know I’m in good hands. I guess I might forgive him for shooting Brandon. Maybe.
“This here young lady,” says the Gryphon, glancing over at his bald-headed companion, “she wants to know your bloody history, I believe.”
“I’ll tell it to her,” the Mocking Turtle replies in a deep, hollow tone, “so long as she doesn’t speak a word till I’ve finished.” He licks his gross lips with a thick, slimy tongue. “Frederick.”
“Fuck you,” I growl out, putting my hand on the Queenmaker. I saw what it did to the jubjub bird. I bet it could blow these men to bacon bits. How dare he bring up my brother’s name. Even bigger question: how did he know it in the first place?!
“They’re not really here,” North says, squeezing my ankle even tighter with his muscular tail. I thought I hated the feel of it on me before, but now I think I’m starting to like it. That’s what a surge of sex hormones will do to a person, I guess. “They’re Recitations, just ghosts of their true selves.”
“Well, I’d still like to blow them to queendom come,” I say, whipping the pistol off my belt and using a flick of my right arm to open the chamber. With my left hand, I open one of the leather pouches on my belt and remove a fuse, metal ball, and a couple of fresh matches. One of these I strike, just so I can see it burn, smell the scent of sulfur. The other, I tuck behind my ear before I load the weapon and snap it closed. "I don't care about your bullshit; I just want to know what you're after."
"Hold your tongue," snarls the Gryphon, before I can finish telling him to fuck off. "Clearly you've missed a few classes at finishing school. When a person talks, it’s only polite to listen. Can’t you see he has a story to tell?"
"Now where was I?” the Mocking Turtle asks, glancing over at his companion. “Was I discussing Tweedledum and Tweedledee’s dead family?” Both Dee and Tee stiffen up behind me, but they don’t say anything. Good on them. I could practically spit I’m so fucking mad.
“No, I don’t believe so,” the Gryphon continues, rubbing at his chin thoughtfully. “Were you talking about that time the former King of Hearts tried to kill his own son? Or that other time the former King of Hearts cut up the White Rabbit’s pet mouse and fed it to him?” My eyes dart over to the men in question, but neither of them reacts. Rab, actually, looks quite happy smoking a fresh cigarette.
The Mocking Turtle snaps his fingers as I grit my teeth in anger. There are so many revelations running through my mind right now, but I have to pick them apart later. Now is not the time.
“Oh, that’s right,” the Mocking Turtle says, turning to glance up at the very last bit of sun showing above the navy mountains. Very soon, it’ll be full dark. At least there are two moons here, right? More silver moonbeams to cut through the horror of this meeting. “I was discussing her dead brother Frederick and how he had to die because the Alice is a whore.”
“You son of a bitch,” I snarl, snatching the match from behind my ear. I’d have lit it, too, if Rab hadn’t curled his gloved fingers around my own. “Say that again and we’ll see how well the Vorpal Blade can perform a castration.”
“No, she’s certainly never been to finishing school, a crude cunt like her,” the Mocking Turtle says, adjusting his tie. Yes, he’s wearing a suit. Both of these crazy men are. Unlike the Gryphon, I don’t suppose the Mocking Turtle would be considered handsome by anyone. He’s tall and muscular, but almost too muscular, like some kind of pre-human caveman species. That, and he has the most grotesque mouth I’ve ever seen with those hooked lips, toothless gums, and thick grimy tongue. “I'd like to put her into a class at the school of Reelin
g and Writhing, and then run her through the different branches of arithmetic: Addiction, Dissection, Mutilation, and Derision."
I remember this play on words in the original Lewis Carroll book, the Mock Turtle’s strange twist on addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Only … you know, it wasn’t so macabre. And compared to this turtle, that one wasn’t so scary after all. Their lyrical nonsense doesn’t frighten me though, no way, no how.
"Stop with the riddles and the bullshit. What do you want, and why do you give two shits about me?" My men—err, the hot Underland dudes I’ve been hanging out with—wait quietly behind me, providing a wall of support at my back.
"You are a simpleton, aren't you?" the Gryphon mocks, lifting his wings high up on his back. I wonder what species he is, as he's the only person I've seen with feathered wings other than Tee and Dee. But they were very clear: they're the only angels left alive in Underland. So what is this guy?
"If you insult the Alice again," North snarls, his accent clipped and sharp. Black, scaled wings explode from his shoulders, and his tail tightens around my ankle, squeezing to the point of pain. "Well, nobody insults a jabberwock's mate and lives to tell the tale."
"Shut your mouth,” the Gryphon says, and I have to hold North back by grabbing his tail tight in my fist. “The last thing we need is the opinion of another useless, cursed male. We’re here to speak to that slut of an Alice.” The Duke crouches low and punches his fist into the stone walkway, leaving a crack and a mini crater in his wake. I’d try to comfort him, but I'm too busy watching the way the Gryphon and the Mocking Turtle watch me, like they're soaking me up, like they have sponges for eyes. My stomach twists in my gut, and bile rises in my throat.
Maybe Tee was right and this wasn’t such a good idea?
Allison and the Torrid Tea Party: A Dark Reverse Harem Romance (Harem of Hearts Book 2) Page 8
