War of thrones, p.18
War of Thrones, page 18
part #5 of Half-Blood Huntress Chronicles Series
“And your law states that two royals are enough to demand a seat at the table.”
I kissed him again, hard. “Damn you’re almost as smart as you are good-looking, you know that?”
“Almost?”
I slid my hands down over his ass and gave him a two-handed squeeze through the silken pants. “It’s close, to be sure.” I sighed and glanced at my wrist. “I’ve wasted time because the glow isn’t too bright, but I’ve got to find Portia, and we should tell the pack the, er, good news/bad news?”
I shimmied out of the blood-spattered dress and changed into the leggings and tank top Gray had thrown on the end of the bed next to underwear and a sports bra. “Shit. I left my favorite bra and my best gun in the Dark Lands.” I started to laugh, then sniffled and brushed unexpected wetness from my cheeks.
Gray stuck his head in the door and flashed me a grin. “You know, Niall’s probably already found them and is holding them hostage so he can demand a visit.” He took my hands and kissed the knuckles all the way across them. “It’s going to be okay. Our people never leave us, Mo, and we both knew how bad this could have been.”
“Tryst can’t hurt anyone anymore, so there is that.”
He gave me a long look. “But you’ll miss him.”
“Gray, there was no one in any realm like him. He was as beautiful as he was manipulative, and I can’t believe his intentions were evil.”
“No, but he didn’t trust anyone but himself, and it led to his demise.”
“Speaking of trust,” I turned to the cabinet Gray had built for me to store my ever-growing collection of weapons and took out my back up athame. “We’d better get to Portia before she makes a deal with a devil to get out of trouble.”
The lobby was silent when we arrived, a circle of pack members surrounding something curled up on the floor. Shit. Not Aunt Portia. It couldn’t have been her.
Gray approached them, but I stayed behind like a coward, too spent to deal with another betrayal, too raw to know I’d act on the pack’s best interest if her punishment was left to me.
“Morgan. You need to see this.” Jean’s voice was quiet, almost apologetic.
Damnit. What would Caorach say if she was still in my head? I thought to myself. She’d tell me to face it, and if necessary, kill it…and move on stronger.
I took a breath and marched over to the crowding shifters and the underground Fae kids, pushing my way through to the center when they wouldn’t move for me. “Back away. You all know better than to try to shield me from the truth.”
The pack gave me enough space that I had no choice but to look down… On auburn hair that tangled around a face I knew would be sweetly heart-shaped, with large, expressive eyes fringed in sooty eyelashes I’d always envied, and a small, rosebud mouth that I couldn’t remember ever smiling at me.
“Cousin Annabelle, I guess I should be surprised to see you.”
She scoffed and glared up at me through the nest of tangles. “Why would you be surprised that I oppose you?”
“I’m not,” I scoffed. “I just gave you credit for having the brains to stay away.” She began to throw a curse and I silenced her with a gesture, muting her. I checked the bindings on her wrists and pulled her face back by her hair, forcing her to meet my eyes up close. “Don’t bother, ‘Cuz. I may have hoped you’d be smarter than you are, I planned for your lack of common sense.”
The wards around the apartment were exclusively for magical beings, and almost entirely made to ward against malevolent witchcraft. If the cops hadn’t been such assholes to us, I might’ve even offered to do the precinct, since no one else had thought to.
She snarled and lunged at me, butting her head against my shins like an animal.
“Where did you find her, and did you pat her down?” Several of the men shuffled and glanced around them, but no one stepped forward. “Fuck, guys. Always pat down witches.”
I ran my hands down her sides, taking the pouches of herbs that I found and pocketing them. I started to step back when I caught a glint in her eye. She quickly looked down, then away, and I flipped her over and grabbed her blouse, pulling it open to reveal a wire.
“Oh, my God.” Bonnie breathed. “She let you catch her.”
Rachelle and Naomi rushed her and grabbed the wire before I could, Naomi wrenching my cousin to her feet and toward the recreational room. “We’ve got to get her down to the arena before they get to her,” she hissed.
But the damage was done. Whoever was waiting outside our perimeter knew they’d been caught. Black uniformed men with guns surrounded us for the second time in a week, armored vehicles screeching to a halt all around the building.
“No one harmed her, right?” Grayson asked, to a chorus of no’s and shaking heads.
“It doesn’t matter. Anything I’ve said to her, will be twisted to suit their purpose.” My phone buzzed. Aunt Portia was finally answering.
“Morgan, you’ve got to get out of there. My mark is glowing like a goddamned star.”
“We’ve got Annabelle, Portia, but she came wearing a wire and now we’re surrounded by militant police with fucking bazookas. Come get your daughter. If I survive this, I might kill her.”
I hung up and turned to Gray with a shrug. “Aunt Portia wants us to get out of here. She says I’m in danger.” I glanced down at the tattoo we shared, softly glowing on my wrist. “Apparently I’m in more danger than Annabelle. Perhaps I can change that before they get through my wards.” I grabbed her by the throat and slammed her against the wall.
“Morgan, don’t.”
“Gray, you’ve seen what happens when I forgive too many times. We lose. We lose friends and family and our home, all because I wasn’t cruel enough. I show mercy, we all pay the price. I’m done.”
“She’s your family. You don’t have to do this. One of us can deal with the witch.” Naomi touched my arm. “It would be our pleasure to serve you in this.”
I shrugged her off and slammed Annabelle again. “I won’t ask someone else to do what I’m not willing to.” My fingers tightened over her trachea, pinching it until the veins to each side bulged and her face turned red, then purple.
“Morgan, please don’t kill her.” Portia’s voice called to me over a distance. “I’m nearly there, please don’t kill her.” I glanced toward the pool. It was glowing softly with portal magic.
“If you live, it will be because Portia has made amends, not because you deserve it. If you make it, of course. I have no intention of loosening my grip, you evil bitch. You made my life a hell for no reason and chased me to do the same after I escaped. What the fuck do you want from me?”
Outside, a man with a bull horn warned us to come out quietly, in human form, with our hands up.
“Goddamn it, Mo. What’s the plan?”
The cavern. We’d been practicing, Pippi and Geallta and I, to stretch the arena and create our own version of Fairy, but I wasn’t strong enough, even with Caorach. “Get everyone down to the arena. I don’t know if I can move us, but at least I can make it impossible to find us.”
I dropped Annabelle in a heap on the floor and undid her bindings. “You’re dead, Morgan. I’m going to tell them you tortured me and show them my bruises and…” I re-muted her and glanced at the others.
“She doesn’t deserve peace, and she’ll never stop trying to hurt me…It used to just be petty vandalism, fucking up my car or graffiti at my work.” I shrugged. “I can’t overlook this.”
Portia ran into the room from the back of the building where she’d helped me create one of our bug-out doorways. “Give her to us and she will be punished, Morgan. Don’t give her the satisfaction of proving her right.”
“This is your fault, you know that, right? You made her hate so hard it consumed her.”
Portia sighed. "I did. But this isn't about learning to hate. It's envy, pure and simple. She always thought she deserved more power, more prestige, and here you are, succeeding against all the odds, and becoming more than anyone could have foretold…except maybe your mother."
“You’ll let her go again.”
She shook her head and held out a length of burial cloth. “No, it has been decided that she and her…coven, are to be stopped at all cost.”
The burial cloth could only mean one thing. Annabelle was to be consecrated.
“You have the strength to bind your only daughter’s power and leave her helpless?” I shook my head. “I was often surprised that you never tried it with me, but Annabelle?”
She didn’t answer me, just held out the creamy linen for her daughter’s hands. “You are charged with Maleficarum, Annabelle. Your powers will be bound and you will be turned over to the police to confess your crimes.”
I unmuted Annabelle as shifters and Fae filed past us, headed toward the safety of the cavern below. “Answer to the charges and get the hell out of my house, Cousin.”
“I’ll never confess to the police. But I will tell them about the inhumane treatment of anyone who tries to oppose the so-called princess who preys on us.”
“Bitch.” I punched her in the face and pulled her upright by her hair. “Then you die. I won’t let you do this.”
Portia grabbed my arm. “Please, let me do this. She will confess.”
“They’ll know if you compelled her. They will assume it’s a false confession.” Pippi appeared with Akane in her arms, face flushed with concern. “At least, they will if they test positive for witchcraft.”
I motioned my brownie friend over and she scurried to my side, watching Annabelle out of the corner of her large round eyes. “I tidied up the apartment and made sure all the plants were watered, but they wanted to come too.”
“They’ll be taken care of, Pippi, I promise. Can you do something for me?”
Her face brightened as a smile bloomed slow and sweet. “Of course.”
“Take her guile for me. Make her as honest as yourself. Clean her mind and make her path clear to her.”
Portia stared in askance, but I shushed her when she opened her mouth to speak. “Pippi is a brownie. Cleaning is what they do. She’ll take the lies and clutter and leave only the crystal clearness of truth. It’s a simply glamor for many lesser Fae, but a gift that has been lost to the High Fae through years of manipulating the truth for their own purposes.”
Pippi concentrated on Annabelle, setting Akane down and placing her hands on either side of Annabelle’s face. She muttered in a language more ancient than any I’d studied yet, until my cousin’s face went slack and the hatred and anger drained from it.
“Okay, it is done,” my little brown friend murmured. “So much unhappiness, but under it, such a normal life.”
“That’s where the unhappiness sprang from, Pippi. She wanted so desperately to be something extraordinary, but never wanted to work to make it so. Imagine, being so jealous of a child who knew only beatings and neglect. What a waste.”
Portia took Annabelle in hand, wrapping the consecrated linen around her wrists, her throat, and her torso until it looked like some kind of, softcore kink. As the man with the bullhorn gave another warning for us to step outside to avoid further violence.
“Take her and go, and Aunt, don’t make me regret this. I’m past the end of my patience and I won’t let even the thought of her endanger my baby.”
Annabelle managed to look surprised and stared at my stomach. “Oh, already well along. I should’ve noticed. That’s not like me, is it, Mom?”
Portia smiled through tears and shook her head. “No, Annabelle, you must have been distracted. I’m glad you can see clearly, now.”
“I can,” she whispered. “I know what I must do.” My heart ached for my aunt as I watched them go, the last of the Fae kids hanging around, waiting for any kind of direction.
I motioned them down to join the others and watched out the window as the men in their black body armor crept closer to the doors, emboldened by the lack of response…and thorns, I assumed.
Behind me, Grayson called from the corridor that led down to the cavern, urging me to hurry. Ahead, the police pushed in, guns at the ready, as though my home was a war zone, and we were the enemy.
Annabelle had won, Tryst had won, the hungry Fae nobles had won, and we continued to lose.
Thirty
I undid the wards that protected the building and pulled their power back into me, drinking it down until I felt almost complete again. But my heart was half-empty from all we’d lost and stood to lose. There was no voice in my head to help me ebb the anger and no sword in hand to strengthen my resolve and when needed, my power.
“Gray, is everyone below?”
Hands gripped my shoulders. "Everyone but us, Darlin'. Let's go before the gas canisters hit the floor."
“Don’t you see, Gray? They don’t have gas. Just bullets. Large caliber and probably silver. Go down, I’ll be right there.”
He kissed my head and backed away until I almost couldn’t feel the heat of his body. “I’ll wait and go with you.”
“Of course.” I pasted a wan smile to my face and breathed. “I can’t do this anymore, working so hard to prove to everyone I’m good enough, kind enough, worthy enough to be given the same right to live as everyone else. I could raise the earth, open a hole right under them and swallow the entire police force.”
“That doesn’t protect your pack Mo. Just come hide them until the danger passes.”
I pressed my hand to the window and thought of my father. “You wanted to see Fairy grow again, right? well, I’m stretching it today, Dad. More than I think you ever imagined your mutt daughter could.” I sent the message on the sunbeam that shone through the window and lit on the floor. Whether he paid attention to his sunshine spies anymore I had no clue, but at least I could tell him I warned him.
Akane sat patiently by Gray’s feet as the two of them waited for me. I picked her up and together we walked down the corridor, me gathering my reserves and trying to piece together scraps of my mother’s spells to make me strong enough for the task that lay ahead, Gray guiding me by the elbow so my distraction didn’t cause me to crash into a wall.
Below us, the arguing rose to a clamor. Wolves and Fae were on opposite sides, each blaming the other for the police, pack members shouting that we should fight, not hide.
When Gray entered, the arguing dimmed, then fell silent by the time he reached the wooden throne. As the pack waited for him to speak, I redid the glamor on the opening to the cavern, building it from the inside out as I had before.
Above, the walls shook as the police began their assault, the crash of breaking glass and the shouts of men floating down to us. Above, the roots and stalactites hanging from the ceiling swayed and I held my breath, waiting for the first boots to hit the floor.
“Morgan. We can’t let them in. There’s got to be something you can do.” Rachelle tugged on my sleeve. “We can’t just sit here and let them destroy everything. Materialistic or not, they will torch everything.”
I looked to Grayson for approval and he nodded. “Do what you’ve got to do, so long as it doesn’t directly attack the police. I guess that’s all we can do.”
I surveyed the room, from the angry shifters to the uncertain Fae. “I am the one who brought these men to our doorstep,” I began, my heart aching from the truth of it. “It was my cousin whose hatred wouldn’t let her leave us alone. Knowing this, will you still follow me? Can you trust me, when I brought such evil to our home, even unknowingly?”
“We follow, Alpha,” Bonnie shouted without hesitation. After a pause, the call grew, until every pack member was shouting with her. “We follow Alpha. We follow our queen.”
Pippi took my hand. “We can stretch Fairy, Morgan, I know we can.”
Tears burned my eyes. “I couldn’t do it, even with Gee. Now that she’s gone, how will we find the power?”
She concentrated and our hands began to glow. “We will find it, because that is what we must do.”
I called power from the cavern itself, remnants of my own magic that were left from the lives I’d saved, the green things I’d nurtured and called to our aid. I released Pippi’s hand and formed an orb of pure magic in my hands, focusing all my own power on it, even as I felt the first stirring of life inside me.
My concentration wavered, but I visualized breaking a tiny portion of that orb off and placing it the still-forming hands of my unborn daughter, a protection against whatever would come, and the flutters stopped.
Above us, pounding feet and gun retorts got louder, closer, and my orb began to fade.
“I can’t do it,” I whispered. “I need you both, Pip.”
She touched my arm and my nose was filled with the smell of fresh baking, my ears with the sounds of a happy, crackling fire and the laughter of children. It was Pippi’s dream I sensed, a home and hearth and family of her own. I pushed her magic into the orb and it grew brighter than before, too big to hold in my hands.
Another hand touched me, and I could see the underground, but not dirty and ugly as I knew it. Instead, glowing fungi covered the walls in patterns that were cultivated for beauty, the floors, clean, the decrepit shacks turned into tiny cottages. I glanced down at Blythe, one of the first kids to come to me. Her tiny pixie wings unfurled as she concentrated, her eyes screwed up, tiny mouth set in determination.
Her magic was much stronger than I’d ever imagined, flooding me with renewed strength, and I added that to the baby star we’d created in front of us.
One by one, the kids joined us, until the glow encompassed everyone in the room and pushed against the stone walls. From there, it took on a life of its own, drawing magic from the blood sacrifices painted on the walls, pulsing and pushing against the physical boundaries of the huge room.
The magic grew and enveloped us like a great, warm ocean, each pulse of power, heavy and buoyant at the same time, filling us, pressing against us, until it felt like we could drown.
