by E. A. Copen
The queen turned on him.
“Preposterous.” Kellas rolled his eyes. “My queen, the virus ravaging his body has clearly addled your knight’s brain.”
“Laz?” Odette shifted behind me.
“Relax, Odette. Highness, I have proof. The Dryad, Athdar is willing to testify on behalf of his oak trees who were witnesses.”
“Hearsay! How is anyone but Athdar to know the truth of his own words?” Kellas gestured to Odette. “Besides, even a blind man could see the tree brute is in love with Odette. He’s a recluse and a simpleton who wishes to gain recognition. He will say anything to get it.”
Titania opened her mouth, but someone interrupted with a sneeze.
Kellas turned, revealing Declan behind him. “What do you want?”
“I—” Sneeze. “—Begging your pardon—” Sneeze. “But Athdar—” Another sneeze.
Dammit, kid. There’s not even anything in here to be allergic…I stopped in the middle of the thought. Yeah, the infirmary was free of pollen and dust, but there was one thing standing right next to him that could be responsible for the sudden barrage of sniffles. It would explain why he sneezed in the presence of Odette’s box, and when he showed up to deliver Athdar’s message at breakfast. Declan’s sneezes were also the irrefutable proof that Kellas was our assassin.
I grabbed my staff and readied it with both hands, leveling my gaze at Kellas while Declan descended into a desperate sneezing fit. “Declan is allergic to cats.”
Kellas rolled his eyes. “Be gone, idiot. No one summoned you.”
“Stay, Declan,” I urged. “Want to know something funny? Declan helped me track down and identify the tea Odette drank. Sneezed the entire time.”
Kellas went rigid.
I had him. “Funny how he only sneezes when he’s around cat fur, and that box of poison tea had him sneezing his brains out.”
The Cat Sìth turned his head very slowly, eying me with murder in his eyes. “Clever,” he said before brandishing claws. He hissed and turned on Declan, swiping his dagger-like claws over Declan’s perfect face.
Declan shouted and staggered back, clearing the way for Kellas to bound down the hallway.
I knocked Titania out of the way and went after him, but I didn’t have the cat-like quickness or the claws that would let me climb on the wall whenever something blocked the way. Kellas burst through the infirmary doors just out of reach.
I stumbled into the sunlight of late afternoon and searched the area. A waving black and white tail disappeared over the edge of the castle walls. He was gone. I had failed.
Chapter Twenty
Guards surrounded me in the garden and forced me away from the wall. If they hadn’t shown up, I’d have clawed my way up and over it. I still might. Climbing over their stupid helmets seemed like a good idea. Walking closer to their spears, however, didn’t.
Two guards parted and Titania appeared between them, her fists clenched and eyes wild. “I should have your head for laying your hands on me. Were you anyone but my knight, I would.”
“I think we’ve got bigger problems, Highness.”
Her eyes blazed, flashing emerald green. Thunder rumbled, and the air grew heavy with the promise of a storm. Gray clouds crashed together. Several guards exchanged glances.
“I agree.” Titania drew her hands over her dress. “Betrayed by my consort, my daughter on the birthing bed, my knight gravely injured with a poor imitation in his place. No offense.”
I ignored the jab. No use arguing with the truth. William was probably twice the Summer Knight I’d ever be. If I’d been better at my job, Odette wouldn’t be dying. I closed my eyes as pain lanced at my chest. There had to be a way to save her. I just had to think harder, work harder, try harder.
No. I gripped the staff in my hand so tight the wood groaned. This isn’t completely on me. I did the best I could. That’s all I can do. I can’t change what’s happened, only how I respond to it.
I relaxed my grip on the staff. Somehow, it didn’t make me feel any better. “Have you been briefed on the situation as it stands with Odette?”
“I have been told she’s in labor, conscious, responding and progressing well.”
I shook my head. “They’re telling you what you want to hear, majesty. Odette isn’t going to recover, not unless there’s some power or spell that none of us know. The ironwort is killing her.”
Titania shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous. This is Faerie. We don’t die here.”
“Tell that to Nyx.” I planted the staff and took a step forward, prompting the guards to close in on me more. “She died just fine when exposed to ironwort, the same plant Kellas gave her to make tea out of. It’s harmless to the skin, but ingested, it’s deadly.”
Her eyes widened, and she waved the guards off. They retreated half a dozen steps, widening the circle around us considerably. “What’s your plan to save her?”
“Save her?” My mouth hung open in disbelief. She really didn’t get it. Was she so arrogant she thought she could cheat death?
I was, answered a voice in my head. I cheated by coming here. By all rights, this virus should’ve destroyed me, body and soul. Instead of facing the truth, I ran to a place where I thought death couldn’t touch me.
I glanced back toward the infirmary. Maybe it can. Maybe everyone is right, and Death has come to Faerie. I wouldn’t have access to my powers there even if I had them, but what would happen if I had enough of a boost and somehow got my powers back at the same time? In theory, if I timed everything right, I could do it. All it would cost me would be everything.
“I can save her,” I said and faced Titania. “But it comes with a cost.”
Titania’s eyes sparkled, wet. She swallowed and tried to maintain her stone exterior, but I had seen it crack. “Odette is my daughter. Whatever the cost, I will pay it.”
“I’m not finished. The spell has a cost, but I’m also demanding payment.”
“Payment?” Her face twisted with rage. “You are the Summer Knight, bound to serve. There will be no payment.”
“After I do this, I won’t be the Summer Knight.”
Titania’s gaze scrutinized me. She was trying to guess at my plan. If she knew my plan, her face didn’t betray any opinion on it. “Name your price, and I will judge if it is worthy.”
“The child. He goes to Earth. You place him with a nice, middle-class family. I’ll give you a few names. And then you leave him the hell alone for the rest of his life. Summer never comes for him. The rest of Faerie never finds out where he is. This is my price.”
She recoiled. “Never. That’s my grandchild, the future of my court.”
“He is my son.” I let my anger show in my voice. “And he’ll never be safe here. He’ll be hunted. You think Kellas is the last one who will try to hurt him?” I shook my head. “No. He goes to Earth, far from the reach of you and your people so he can’t be used in your scheming games. That’s the price. Refuse, and Odette dies. I take him anyway. I don’t care if it destroys me or who I have to cut deals with. I’ll come for you, and I will destroy Summer down to the last.”
“You can’t!” she sputtered.
“Watch me, bitch.”
A loud cry echoed through the garden, sharper and more urgent than Odette’s previous moans of pain. Worry flooded Titania’s face.
“We’re running out of time.” I thrust my hand at her. “Do we have a deal?”
Titania sneered and crushed her hand around mine. Her grip was still nothing next to Odette’s. “We have a deal.”
“There’s just a few things I need.”
***
It was midday in New Orleans when Athdar and I stepped out of the portal. I immediately collapsed. Thankfully, this portal between Summer and New Orleans had dropped us off just outside Metairie Cemetery.
Metairie wasn’t quite as old and steeped in history as the other cemeteries I’d been to in New Orleans, but it did have a story. It used to be a race
track where the rich and famous came to bet on horses. The guy who founded the Louisiana state lottery—which was pretty much a criminal enterprise all on its own at the beginning—wanted into the exclusive club and got denied. What the city’s elite didn’t know was that he was a wizard. He cursed the place, saying he’d bury them in their precious establishment. The racetrack went bankrupt shortly after they denied him membership. Now, instead of being a funhouse for the filthy rich, the rich were buried there. Guess the wizard got the last laugh.
Metairie was also a sculptor’s wet dream. There were more marble structures in that particular city of the dead than anywhere else in the city. From marble pyramid to the Moriarty tomb which required a temporary railway to be put in so it could be built, the whole place was ridiculously elaborate. Metairie was a disgusting display of the wealth of those who would rather build monuments to themselves than help those they left behind.
I was not a fan. But that was the only portal in Summer that opened close to a cemetery, so we took it.
Athdar scooped me up from where I’d collapsed outside the Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral home and lumbered off toward the tombs which lay beyond a full parking lot. Thankfully, it was a blazing hot day, and everyone who was sane stayed inside midday in the Southern heat. There were plenty of cars in the parking lot, but no people.
No physical wall separated the funeral home property from the cemetery itself, but I felt the change when we passed through the metaphysical barrier onto consecrated ground. Unlike when I’d opened myself up in the St. Louis cemetery earlier, the ghosts in Metairie weren’t near as interested in me. The air of snobbish irritation remained after death, it seemed. A single ghost perked up and took notice, floating close behind Athdar, but it seemed he was more curious than anything.
Athdar lowered me next to a marble tomb two rows down and three tombs in. “You are not well.”
“Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Treebeard.” I tried to will myself to get up, but my body didn’t work. Worse, my face itched like crazy. I scratched my scruffy, uneven beard. Clumps of coarse hair fell off in my hand. Oh, that was definitely not good.
Athdar narrowed his eyes and looked around. “You build these monuments for your dead?”
“Some do. Me, when I go, let everyone know to cremate my remains, okay? I don’t want some asshole necromancer to come by and resurrect me.” I swiped a hand through the air weakly. “When I’m done, I’m done.”
His face remained grave. “Are you certain this is the only way?”
I nodded.
A white sedan turned into the funeral home parking lot and slowed as it pulled up against the cemetery. The driver’s side door opened and Nate got out, adjusting his glasses. He wore jeans and a t-shirt with a popular comic book wizard on it who dressed way cooler than me. After glancing around and spotting me, he reached into his car, grabbed a small bag and strode over.
He must not have noticed Athdar from afar because when he came close, he stopped and stared. “Wow. Is he…?”
“Dryad,” I said and grunted, pulling myself up. “Did you bring everything I asked for?”
Nate pried his eyes from Athdar to give me a concerned look. “I did, but…Well, I did take oaths, Laz, and this is coming frighteningly close to breaking some of those, as well as the fifth commandment. I am still a medical professional.”
“Relax. You’re not killing anyone. If this works, you’ll have helped me save lots of people.”
“By killing you.”
“Temporarily.” I held out my hand.
He sighed, set the bag down and searched through it, coming up with a brown bottle and a packaged syringe. “Have you ever had these before?”
“As a rule, I generally try to avoid anything that dulls my senses for an extended period of time.”
Nate sat down and pulled some more items from his bag, placing them all on a mat he unrolled. Blood pressure cuff. Tiny penlight. Towels, bandages. He’d come with a whole kit. He slapped on a pair of blue rubber gloves. “Roll up your sleeve, please. This needs to go in a vein.”
While he cleaned off the bend of my arm, I worked to get my heart rate under control. I’d broken out into a cold sweat. Second thoughts had begun their march through my brain. What if this didn’t work and I didn’t come back? Worse, what if I did? I still didn’t have a cure. Now that I was back on Earth, I was on borrowed time. I had maybe three hours before the transformation started. What I was about to do would suck away that time, but I didn’t know of any other way. I needed my powers back. To do that, I needed to talk to my personal reaper: Anubis, the Egyptian god of death.
Nate opened the needle package and drew a dose up into the syringe. “After the initial injection, there won’t be any discomfort. It should be pleasant, soothing even. When you come back, that will be unpleasant.”
“That’s the understatement of the century,” I grumbled, though I suspected he meant it in a totally different way. Nate was worried about my body. I figured my body was on its last legs anyway.
Athdar squatted, then fell to the ground. “Explain this to me.”
Nate looked at me, questioning.
“He doesn’t understand death,” I said. “They don’t have it where he’s from.”
“I understand the concept of a body that ceases to function,” Athdar says. “But if it is no longer functional, how will you bring him back into a non-functional body?”
“There’s a reason we’re doing this instead of having me sit down and slice up my wrists or eat a shotgun,” I said. “I need my body to still be whole. If I come back with holes in me, they don’t heal unless there’s someone here to heal me.”
I’d left Beth with Odette. She’d wanted to come, but I insisted. Someone had to be there. It was hard enough for me to break my promise and leave. If lives hadn’t been at stake, I wouldn’t have.
“Well, you won’t have any holes,” Nate said. “But you won’t be yourself either. You’ll feel like you bashed your head, got run over by a bus, and had every ounce of energy sucked right out of you. Disorientation, confusion, panic…all common side effects. Never mind that you may totally crash or possibly develop a dependence. Lots could go wrong.”
Athdar tilted his head to the side and looked at Nate. “You have reservations?”
“Of course I do! Lazarus is my friend. I don’t want to sit here and watch him die.”
“And yet you’re going through with it. Why?”
Nate sighed, his shoulders slumping. “Because I trust him. If he says this is the only way to help him, it’s what I do.” He lifted the needle. “Ready?”
I nodded and turned away.
Nate slid the needle into my arm.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dying was easy.
True to Nate’s word, it didn’t hurt. Having a fatal dose of painkillers in my body actually felt amazing. It wasn’t anything like the crazy feel-good high of devouring souls from the night before, but the feeling was familiar. For a minute, I understood why people sold everything they had to achieve that feeling. I’d have done the same. That realization should have terrified me, but I wasn’t capable of being terrified at that moment.
Weight lifted off my shoulders. I wasn’t worried about being a crappy dad, about being the Pale Horseman, or curing myself. There wasn’t anything to worry about. The rush hit behind the wall of relief, and I felt like I could get up and dance. The pain that had been settling in my joints and muscles vanished, leaving behind an excitement that’s difficult to explain. Just bliss without any real sense of time.
It didn’t last long. The rush died off easy and left me tired. It was like sinking into a hot tub after a long, hard day of work and just letting the water come over my head. I was drowning, and I didn’t even care.
That’s the part no one talks about. Drugs are bad. Just say no. I’m too cool for dope. They teach kids all those cute little slogans and lines. When people are faced with a shit life they just want to get away from for five minu
tes, no jingle is going to convince them escape is a bad idea. Escape felt good, much better than a two-hour commute, a thankless menial job, and a nagging wife. I understood it on a logical level before. Now, I understood it on a physical level. Until you’ve been completely without pain, you never really realize how much you’re in all the time. Living hurts.
Kids, don’t try this at home.
I slipped over an edge and into darkness only to wake up in the valley. The rope bridge stretched out across the canyon, bridging the gap between light and life and death and shadow. As usual, I stood at the edge of the bridge, peering into the abyss.
“An opioid overdose? Really?” Anubis appeared beside me, muscular arms crossed over his chest. He was dark-skinned and built very much like the god he was.
The first time I’d seen him, he’d worn a golden jackal on his head and carried his flail. Last time, he’d been in nothing more than a plain white tunic. Today, he’d dressed more like someone I saw out for the nightlife in New Orleans. Black jeans, white shirt with gold trim, a glittering, gold belt, black eyeliner. He could’ve walked right into any of the goth clubs and been right at home. I supposed that was only natural, him being a god of death and all.
I shrugged. “I’m not big on pain.”
He sighed and tucked his hands into his jeans so that his thumbs still stuck out. “You can lie to yourself, to your friends, and to your lovers, but you can’t lie to me. I see your heart. I know what makes you tick. An overdose is extreme, even for you.”
“I’ve got a pal standing by with Narcan. I don’t intend to stay.”
“No, of course, you don’t. You’ve come to challenge me.”
I turned to face him, and he mirrored my movements. “That is how I get my powers back, isn’t it? Unless you just want to give them to me.”
Anubis shook his head. “I cannot.”
“Rules?”
He nodded. “Rules.”
“Is there some other way a victor can be decided?”
Anubis sighed and shook his head, making a face normally reserved for frustrated mothers and grandmothers. “I suppose it would be cliché to remind you that you’re a foolish mortal and that I am the god of death.”
