But as I take a sharp bend around the next hill, I catch sight of a figure ahead, and slide to a sudden stop. Adrenaline pumping furiously down my veins, I take in the hairy creature blocking my way. It’s not the archer, but it was definitely waiting for me, and I’ve fallen right into its trap.
For a long second, we both stare at each other. The beast is massive, the size of a well-fed triceratops. A large hump rises over its blade-thin head where a sharp horn can be seen poking from between two, disturbingly human eyes.
With a blood-curdling bellow, the creature charges, pounding hooves eating the ground with the dizzying speed of an oncoming train. Too fast for me to make a run for it.
I bend my knees, eyes never leaving the monster. Then, when I can feel the beast’s stinky breath warm on my face, I kick the ground hard and propel myself into the air, using my powers to push myself higher. I tuck my legs in, curling into a tight ball, feel the tip of the creature’s horn graze my arm as I flip over the demon.
And then it all goes wrong.
The world distorts around me, as if yanked sideways by an invisible hand. My stomach heaves, bright sparks blooming in my vision. Then my body hits the beast’s back, bouncing off its thick hide to land hard on the stones. Blood fills my mouth as I bite on my tongue, and I gasp wetly, stunned.
Somewhere behind me, I hear the monster turn around, feel the ground shake under the beast’s hooves as it charges again. A part of my brain knows I need to move, but my body won’t listen.
“Down boy!”
The sudden shout echoes around the hills like a gunshot. There’s a deafening thud as something falls heavily to the ground, then the world goes still. I let out a shuddering breath, regaining the use of my lungs at last. But each gulp of air brings with it ripples of pain, and the overpowering need to throw up.
I barely have the time to roll onto my stomach before I start heaving. Bile as black as my hands spews forth, wave after nauseating wave, until I’m left empty and shaking.
“The purging’s never fun, is it? But the bad’s got to come out one way or another.” The voice sounds like it belongs to a boy.
I flinch as a cool hand settles on my back.
“Don’t worry,” the demon boy continues. “The Aether here is impure, makes it hard for newcomers to adjust. Most demons learn not to rely on it directly, but you should be better soon enough.”
With a final shudder, I wipe my mouth on my sleeve, and lift my head, blinking blearily at the wiry boy. He can’t possibly be more than fourteen, with black hair that falls over a pair of sea-green eyes. My gaze slides over to the beast’s carcass lying in a pool of its own blood a few feet away, and my skin prickles uneasily. There’s no way someone as young as him could have taken out a beast like that in the span of a couple of seconds. Not unless he’s very, very powerful.
The boy catches my look and nods. “Good thinking,” he says, snapping his fingers together.
I jump as blue flames burst over the demon’s body, quickly consuming its remains.
“I don’t like robbing anyone down here of their chances to atone,” the boy says, as if any of this is supposed to make sense to me, “but at this point, it would be too dangerous to have it come back only to hunt us down out of revenge.”
Revenge. That last word jolts my brain to catch up with what’s happened, despite the headache pressing dully at my temples.
“Th-the archer?” I ask feebly.
“Gone too, I’m afraid,” the boy says, looking genuinely sad at the news. “In any case, there’s no time to tarry. Even with the bodies gone, we’re too close to the city. More demons are bound to come by.”
“City?” I whisper, headache growing into a sharp pounding.
The boy nods and holds out his calloused hand to help me up, a gesture that seems strangely familiar, and has me instinctively reach out. But as my fingers graze his, I realize what I’m about to do and jerk my hand back.
“Wait, who are you?” I ask.
I expect him to say he’s someone from my fevered imagination, another demon who wants to torture me, an envoy from Carman. But, instead, the boy drops into a crouch, his sea-green eyes too knowing for one so young. “You’ve been searching for me all this time yet you don’t even know who I am?”
“I-I have?”
Carefully, the boy leans in and reaches into my pocket. And when he pulls back, a red flower petal is held pressed between his thin fingers. His lips quirk. “You wouldn’t have found this if it weren’t the case,” he says, “and Lady Kaede wouldn’t have led you to me.”
“You two work together?” I ask dumbly.
Only then do I notice he is wearing Lake High’s uniform as well. And on the lapel of his threadbare jacket, the faded embroidery of a Celtic cross over shield and sword can still be seen.
“You’re a KORT knight,” I say, finally letting him pull me up to me feet. “Or were…” The other shoe drops. “Are you the one who wrote on those boulders?”
“Gale, at your service,” the boy says, with a slight bow. “And now that introductions are out of the way, let’s go.”
He pulls on my hand, getting me to move.
“Wait, my friends…,” I start.
“Kaede will take care of them,” Gale replies without stopping.
Every muscle aching, I stumble after him, finding it difficult to concentrate on anything but putting one foot in front of the other. Still, my mind keeps spinning back to the boy’s name. Gale. Why does it sound so familiar? And then it hits me. You’re Lance’s brother, aren’t you?”
The boy’s face breaks into a dazzling smile as he looks over his shoulder at me. “You know him, then? I had hoped… Is he doing well?”
The memory of Lance kneeling at Mordred’s mercy flashes before my eyes. I clear my throat uncomfortably. “He, uh, was still alive last I saw,” I hazard.
The gleam in Gale’s eyes dims. “Things must be quite a mess up there, too,” he says somberly. “And they’re about to get much worse.”
My heart stutters. “Worse? How? What have you found out?”
“It’s best if I show you,” Gale says.
He steers me up a steep cliffside. The air here is hazy, the thick smell of smoke tickling the back of my throat. I’m about to tell him I need a break, when Gale motions us down.
“Careful, now,” he whispers, dropping onto his stomach to crawl the rest of the way up.
With a resigned sigh, I follow suit, struggling to keep my head clear long enough to ask him what this is all about. But when I finally reach his side, my question turns into a shocked gasp.
The demon city’s walls rise in the distance, a long, uninterrupted line of black. And darkening the wide valley between us, are battalions’ worth of soldiers—men, women, and even children, all standing shoulder to shoulder in concentric circles around the largest bonfire I’ve ever seen.
“Is that a cauldron?” I ask, unable to tear my stinging eyes away from the cottage-sized pot sitting on the fire, bright flames licking its blackened underside. Dark fumes belch out of its depths, the source of the column of smoke Keva and I had spotted from our cave.
“Unfortunately,” Gale replies.
“I don’t get it. Are they all waiting to get fed, or something?”
“Or something.”
Gale points with his chin, and my eyes bug out as pale arms reach over the cauldron’s lip, people slowly pulling themselves out of its steaming insides before toppling awkwardly over onto a raised platform. A dozen of them, all pale and strangely impassive despite having been obviously boiled alive.
My heart lurches. I know what those are.
“Draugar,” Gale whispers beside me.
A whole army of them.
“How can there be so many?” I ask, trying not to think about what thousands of draugar could do if unleashed upon the human world. I still vividly remember the two dead children who attacked Inspector Bossart and me back at Caamaloth, and how close we came to not making it ou
t alive.
“That’s the Pair Dadeni,” Gale explains slowly, “the cauldron of rebirth. It revives the dead and turns them into—”
“Walking corpses,” I say, “I know.”
“More like fighting corpses,” Gale says. He shakes his head. “That cauldron was supposed to have been destroyed ages ago. Another point our Order’s Archives got wrong.”
“So this is what Carman opened Hell for?” I say, rubbing at the tightness in my chest. “Of course, if they’d kept to the hole Mordred made to sneak them out, most of them would have ended up cut to pieces before even setting foot in Avalon.”
I feel Gale’s ancient eyes settle upon me thoughtfully, probably wondering how I know about the draugar’s previous escape route, when he suddenly returns his attention to the valley below. I scan the motionless ranks, wondering what’s going on, when I spot a red-dressed woman making her way toward the gargantuan cauldron.
Gale’s shoulder brushes mine as he flattens himself to the ground.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“Asheel.”
“Who?” I ask, tracking the female demon’s movements as she struts through the ranks of corpse soldiers, her wavy, light-brown hair bouncing around her ample curves with every step.
“Someone you don’t ever want to cross paths with if you can avoid it,” Gale says.
The woman stops at last before the new recruits, looking at them like a benevolent fairy godmother. Her teeth glint in a wolf-sharp smile as she sidles up to the last of them, a large, bearded man with bulging muscles. The draugar remains impassive while the she-demon runs her hands over his pectorals, rubbing herself onto his sturdy body like a cat in heat.
I tear my gaze away from the disturbing sight. “Is this what you wrote about in your last journal entry when you said they’d increased their activity?” I ask.
Gale nods grimly. “But I’m afraid it’s not the main reason for Carman’s presence here.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know. I can’t get close enough to her to find out.”
I lick my parched lips, a new crazy idea germinating in my already ailing mind. “Are you saying we need to infiltrate her ranks to find out what other surprise she has in store?”
“That would be ideal, but—”
“Something worse than this demonic army?”
“In a nutshell. But we would be too conspicuous, and turning a demon against her, when she has the ability to promise them freedom, is nigh on impossible.”
I flex my fingers thoughtfully, trying to ignore the panic mounting inside me as the solution to the problem solidifies. This is what I’m here for, the way for me to redeem myself.
I release a shaky breath. “I can do it,” I say. “In case you weren’t aware of this already, it’s because of Carman that I’m stuck in Hell. She’s the one who pushed me down through the Gates.”
“Yet she didn’t kill you,” Gale adds, easily guessing where I’m going with this. “And you’d willingly offer yourself as her prisoner?”
I swallow audibly. “I’m already her prisoner. Might as well make it look official.”
“She’ll wonder why you’ve decided to show up all of a sudden,” Gale says.
“There’s nothing else to do around here.”
“Have you considered that she’s left you alive because she might need you for something?”
Of course, I’ve asked myself that. I’ve asked it a million times over since she first pushed me down here. “That’ll only make my job easier,” I force myself to say.
“Carman isn’t stupid,” Gale says. But I can tell he’s wavering. “There must be a catch somewhere.”
“Yeah, but you’ll be—”
A sharp shout makes us both look back down, and my blood runs cold. I watch with growing anger as an old woman dressed in too-tight leather clothes struts towards the edge of the draugar army, dragging a bound Keva across the valley floor.
“Don’t move,” Gale says urgently, putting a restraining hand on my arm before I can bolt to Keva’s rescue. “We’ll find a way to free her, but not now. Not while we’re at such a disadvantage.”
“She was supposed to be safely away,” I hiss at Gale, watching the hag’s colossal horned dog circle them both, jaws snapping excitedly. “You said she was safe. So why does Gwyllion have my friend prisoner? And where is the banshee?”
Far below, Gwyllion stops at last. “Why don’t you take a look at the vermin I’ve found crawling over the territory you’re supposed to guard, Asheel!” the old hag calls out.
The she-demon slowly rises in the air to see what Gwyllion’s up to, all interest in the bulky draugar lost. Keva lets out another sharp cry as Gwyllion releases her, ripping the whip’s bladed lashes out from around her legs.
Fear unfurls in my belly, my tainted power bubbling up sickeningly in response, urging me to fight. But Gale’s fingers tighten around my arm.
“Stay down,” he whispers harshly, “or you’ll be dead before you take three steps.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
We both jump at the deep voice behind us.
Ever so slowly, we turn around to face a tall, statuesque man sneering down at us. Then a heavy kick to the ribs sends me rolling across the ground.
Chapter 7
Before I can manage a breath, a heavy foot lands on my spine, hard enough to dislodge my vertebrae.
“I believeth she has gotten your point now, Gad,” a voice with a terrible lisp says, barely making it through the ringing in my ears.
I force my eyes open, blink the congealing blood away. I immediately catch sight of Gale. The knight is sitting with his hands behind his back, his baby face a mask of cuts and bruises. I wince in guilt at what they’ve done to him. The boy who managed to evade all these demons for years has gotten caught like a rat, all for reaching out to me.
Another name to add to the long list of people I’ve sent to their doom.
“Seems a little daft, if you ask me,” a cruel voice replies, sending shivers down my spine.
With a grunt, I struggle to sit up so I can glare at our two captors.
One of them reminds me a little of Lugh, tall and strong, with perfectly-proportioned features and the haughty look of a Greek god. But where Lugh’s hair is brown, this one’s a blond so pale it looks white, making his blue gaze only icier. The demon standing next to him, on the other hand, is so massively muscled that he makes Gareth look like a cute puppy.
“What do you want?” I croak out.
The pretty one laughs. “What do we want?” he repeats. “That is a very good question, don’t you think, Az?” The demon starts pacing, as if I’ve asked him a deep, existential question. “Well, I suppose we could start with the fact that I’d like to get out of this stinking hole. But considering that’s not presently possible, I’d settle with killing our time by slowly dismembering the both of you, and cloaking myself with your skin. How’s that for a start?”
I repress a shudder, garnering a sadistic grin from the beautiful demon.
“Let us cutteth to the chase,” the one called Az says, still sounding like a bad actor in a Shakespearean play. “What are you doing here?”
“Admiring the view,” I retort.
A fist as hard as a rock punches me, nearly ripping my head off my neck, and tearing a startled gasp from my cut lips. I blink hard to dispel the stars scattered across my vision as the shock of the blow slowly recedes, leaving behind an intense throbbing that makes it hard for me to think.
“You need to show respect to your betters,” the beautiful demon says. His perfect lips split into another cruel smile. “Although, frankly, it doesn’t matter what you would have answered. We’re going to expunge[2] the both of you anyway.”
“It dost appear that these gents art the companions of the lass the lady Gwyllion captured,” the beefy demon says, looking down at the plains below.
“More fodder for the Pair Dadeni,” Gad says, cracking his knuckles.
My power stirs in outrage, and before I can channel it out properly, the ground splinters around me, deep cracks spreading outward like thunderbolts. I barely have the time to see Az’s surprised look before Gad backhands me.
“Cut the crap, or you’ll stop breathing earlier than planned.”
“I don’t think Carman will be happy if you dispatch me without her say-so,” I say, cheek burning.
Both of them pretend not to care a word of what I said, but I know I’ve got them. It’s in the bare twinge of a jaw muscle, the stillness of the eyes. And just like that, I’ve sealed my fate to the will of the very Fey who wishes to destroy all that I care for.
“Thee doth know each other then,” Az finally booms out. “Handeth it ov’r, Gadreel.”
The beautiful demon gives me another malevolent scowl before reaching into a pocket and flipping a polished stone in his partner’s direction.
“Now, prithee, tell us,” Az says, addressing me as he pockets his winnings, “why do you think Carman will want you?”
“Why don’t you ask her that yourself?” I retort.
I flinch automatically, expecting Gad to smack me again. But instead, I feel his cold fingers slither around my neck, forcing me to look up into his eyes.
“One more impertinent word from you, and I’ll make your cute friend there pay,” he breathes.
“I’m down here because of her,” I answer back, leaving out the juicy bits about us being sworn enemies and all. “In fact, she’s probably expecting me.”
The last one is conjecture, but they don’t know that, and I’m hoping it’ll incentivize them to leave us alone quicker.
“She is, is she?” Gadreel squeezes my throat, until I’m scrabbling at his hands for air.
“Just take us over to Carman,” I rasp, feeling myself turn purple, “like a good…lackey.”
This time the blow does land, a solid crack against my cheek that makes me go blind for a second, flooding my mouth with blood.
“It seemeth the lass spake the truth,” Az grumbles, sounding displeased.
Curse of the Fey: A Modern Arthurian Legend (Morgana Trilogy Book 3) Page 4
