Harley Merlin 16: Finch Merlin and the Blood Tie Read online

  I shrugged. “I don’t like being alone. Figured I could use the company.”

  He froze. “Oh.” His shoulders stiffened, and his head snapped away from me. “I see.”

  “Did I hit some kind of nerve?” I observed him closely.

  “You could say that.” His fingernails raked at the dusty old table where he stood.

  I knew that reaction. The need to feel something, to dull the edge of internal pain. “You lost someone?”

  He raised his head slowly. “Yes and no.”

  “I’ve got decent listening ears,” I said encouragingly. “Sometimes it's better to talk to a stranger—someone who doesn’t know your history.”

  He turned and leaned against the table. “Do you have children, Orion?” He paused. “I’m guessing not, if you’re buying black-market Purge beasts for company.”

  “Never got around to it,” I replied. That wasn’t the whole truth. I’d had opportunities over the years, and there’d been times when I’d wanted a kid. But what kind of father would I have been, to willingly hand over this curse to a child? Magical genetics worked in curious ways, so there was a good chance that my kids wouldn’t have been Sanguines. But even the slimmest possibility was a risk I’d never been willing to take. Even if they’d been born with different abilities, the idea of them being constant fugitives turned my stomach. And if a hunter had caught up with me, they’d have had to watch their dad be killed and drained before their eyes. Trauma like that could last a lifetime. In the end, I’d decided it was better not to inflict my genetics or problems on anyone else.

  “I’ve got a daughter.” Hector pulled a small glass bead out of his pocket. In his palm, a hologram erupted from it. A tiny girl with big gray eyes and curly white hair in bunches stared at me, giggling at something the person recording had said.

  “She’s a cute one. What’s her name?” I couldn’t stop a smile.

  Hector stared at the giggling girl. “Iphigenia, but we just call her Genie.”

  “How come she’s not with you?”

  Hector closed his fingers around the bead, and the hologram went away. “She’s with my sister. The guards came to my workplace, and I had no time to fetch her before I ran.” He closed his eyes, frustration creasing his forehead. “She’ll be safe with my sister until I can go back for her, but I don’t want those ingrates taking her blood for this spell.”

  “Is there a mother in the picture?” I was touching on nosy, but I wanted to know more about him. And since Atlanteans tended not to die before their Death Day, I figured it was safe territory.

  His face crumpled. “She died.”

  “Ah…” So much for my theory.

  “It happened four years ago, when Genie was nearly a year old.” He didn’t open his eyes. “My wife, Selene, was one of Atlantis’s finest Teleporters, trained from youth to become a Purge beast hunter. Of course, it is something of a secret department, but we all know it exists. Anyway, Selene had only been back at work for a month before King Ovid ordered her unit to go on a mission, to try and capture an aspidochelone for the Bestiary.”

  I leaned forward in my chair. “What’s that?”

  “An enormous sea turtle with razor-sharp jaws, known for tricking ships into landing on its back, only to drag them down into the ocean.” Hector finally opened his eyes. He wore the haunted stare of someone deep in grief. “My wife didn’t want to go, but she could not disobey a direct order. She kissed us farewell and went to the gateway—the only stable way anyone, Teleporters included, can get in and out of the city, unless they’re using the risky back doors that folks in the Trench use.”

  I nodded and stayed quiet, knowing what was coming.

  “She never came back.” Hector’s voice hitched on a stifled sob. “One of her colleagues came to our house that evening. She told us that Selene had been caught in the creature’s jaws, trying to free another colleague’s breathing equipment. They’d tried to save her, but there was nothing they could do. The creature was too strong—far too strong—and they abandoned the mission. And her, too. They let the creature swim away with her in its jaws, so we couldn’t even say goodbye to her body. Of course, since the existence of the hunting squadrons is supposedly secret, she received a rushed Death Day with no honors for her courage in the line of secret duty, and only a brief speech from the king to say that she had died in a tragic accident in the Bestiary. And that was it… Atlantis forgot she ever existed, and I had to carry on alone with my daughter, figuring out life without my wife.” He covered his face with his hands. “She and I never needed any love spell. We’d been in love since we were children. We were supposed to have three hundred years together, not a mere twenty!”

  I got up and went to him, putting a comforting hand on his back. “No one should have to go through that sort of tragedy. I’m sorry for your loss, and for your little girl having to grow up without her mother.”

  “Selene adored her.” Hector’s shoulders shook. “I even used to get jealous, after Genie was first born, but now… I love that girl more than my own life. I would do anything to protect her. I would go against my own morals and send her to the surface in the hope that someone kind would take care of her, if the Bestiary really did fail. There is nothing I would not do for her.”

  I patted him on the back, feeling choked up. “Then she’s a lucky kid.” Huntress and I obviously weren’t related by blood, but I echoed his sentiments. I’d have done anything for that dog. She was the child I’d never allowed myself to have, and the companion that I’d never have survived without. But I didn’t say that. This was Hector’s story, and Hector’s grief. And I hated when people tried to trump a sad tale, or any tale for that matter, with their own.

  “I know that she will grow up to be a fine Atlantean someday, but… I worry what kind of world she will grow up in if Queen Kaya takes us to the surface and launches a war.” Hector lowered his hands, revealing reddened eyes. “It might lead to the obliteration of Atlantis and of magicals as a whole. As Genie’s father, it is my duty to protect and defend her however I can, but I don’t know if I can protect her from this. And that scares me more than I can say.”

  I perched beside him on the table. “Kids are hardier than we give them credit for, and if you’re watching her back, I’m sure she’ll be okay. It might not be the world you want for her, but there’ll be some sort of world left for her.” I didn’t want to add to his fear by telling him that I agreed with him. Sometimes a white lie was worth it.

  Before he could reply, a splintering crack exploded through the air like a bomb going off. My head whipped around as a boot crashed through the door in a spray of wooden shards. Beneath that earsplitting blast, I heard the thwack of spears driving into the planks.

  Hector leapt into action. “The hexes won’t keep them for long!”

  “Hexes?” I stared at him.

  “I never leave home, even an old home, without protecting my property.” He grabbed my shoulders. “This might hurt a little, but I’m guessing you’d rather suffer temporary discomfort than let those guards haul you off to prison.”

  Another loud crack bombarded my eardrums. “Do what you’ve got to do.” I paused. “What are you going to do?”

  “A trick my grandfather taught me.” He closed his eyes, and Chaos radiated out of him in fizzing green sparks. The sparks knitted together to form a shield, which zapped around him in a fiercely hot bubble.

  The bubble of energy sucked inward, sticking to the two of us like we’d been vacuum packed. My skin burned wherever it touched, which was everywhere. I gritted my teeth and grabbed Hector’s arms, my fingernails digging in. He did the same. Anything to get through the searing pain. He already had his face scrunched up, his mouth twisting.

  “What… is… this?” I strained to whisper. The spell had my chest in a vise, to add insult to injury.

  “My grandfather… was a prolific… thief. Never… caught. This… spell… is from his… Grimoire. It’s… not one that… the guards w
ill… look for. And they… won’t be able… to sense it.” He bent his head until we were forehead to forehead. Two desperate figures hiding in plain sight. From where I stood, it didn’t look like we were disguised at all. But hopefully the guards wouldn’t be able to see us.

  The door buckled, and a whole squad of guards marched in, spears and swords up. I almost didn’t dare look. This spell sure felt like it was doing something, but the proof would be in the pudding. Ten pairs of eyes scoured the interior of the safehouse. And two of those sets of eyes I recognized—Faustus’s hooded pallbearers.

  If you came looking for me, maybe that means Huntress got to the palace undetected. These assholes would’ve brought her with them, to smoke me out, if they’d caught her.

  Quickly, they spread out to check the rooms. I heard one try to climb the stairs, followed a second later by an almighty crash of crumbling timber and a yelp of pain. Footfalls thudded all around as the guards swept the place. All the while, Hector and I battled the burn of this weird disguise spell. I guessed magic like this came at a price; otherwise, everyone would’ve used it for their underhanded deeds.

  “Is he here, or has he already run off?” a guard I didn’t recognize asked, as the search party reconvened in the main room.

  Another shrugged. “We checked all the rooms, and he is nowhere to be seen.”

  “Any sign of life?” one of Faustus’s minions asked. “Someone else might be using this place to hide.”

  “There is nobody here. And if there was, they are gone now,” the second speaker muttered. “It was probably all the talking you did on our way here. I could have heard you from the palace.”

  Faustus’s man scowled. “I was barely speaking.”

  The first guard put up his hands. “Whatever prompted Hector to run, he has escaped. There is no use arguing over why. All we can do now is report our findings to our queen and give her the names of the dissidents who refused to give their blood. The rest will be up to her.”

  A few agonizing minutes later, the guards left in a grumble of annoyance. Still, Hector didn’t let up on the disguise spell. And for good reason. Their departure could have been a trick to get us to reveal ourselves—the oldest one in the book, in fact. However, as we continued to stand there with the magic melting into us, those dark thoughts came hurtling back. I was too old and too tired for this. In my almost forty years of life, I’d always thought of my Sanguine abilities as a curse that weighed me down. Now I fixed on a different place to lay the blame. Chaos itself.

  The more I was forced to run and hide to keep my freedom, the more tempting a life without Chaos sounded.

  But I’ve still got work to do. Old and tired didn’t mean finished, and not all temptations were worth giving in to. I had a message to deliver to Kaya. And these creaky bones wouldn’t relent until she knew that her father was back from the dead, gunning for her throne.

  Sixteen

  Ryann

  I didn’t know whether it was possible to fall asleep without having control of my body, but I felt my eyes growing heavy and my brain slowing down—specifically, the part that I’d been unceremoniously shoved back into when my Child of Chaos overseer had taken over without warning. It irked me all the more because I’d had plans to suppress her, and they’d failed catastrophically. A strange state of affairs, since Lux’s presence didn’t seem to be waning at all, and she and her darling husband had been going at it for over an hour. It had even turned dark outside; Atlantis had turned off its fake sunlight.

  How much longer can they drone on without getting sick of the sound of their own voices? I kept my snarky thoughts private, guessing that Lux wouldn’t appreciate any sass. Not that I particularly cared what she would appreciate. However, the point still stood—how much longer could they keep at this? Surely the gallery had to close at some point, and they’d have to move their marital crisis elsewhere.

  But nobody had dared to enter this room, after one steward had gotten a verbal lashing from Erebus. He’d likely spread the message to his colleagues that the Child of Chaos was not to be disturbed, which meant we could be here for a while.

  I watched Luke and Melody through Lux’s eyes. They’d sat on the bench, taking the weight off their weary legs. Melody rested her head on Luke’s shoulder, blinking slowly. He had his arm around her waist and jostled her gently whenever she looked like she was falling asleep. It was almost certainly a ruse so that they didn’t appear to be listening in.

  “We’re going in circles here, Lux.” Erebus puffed out his chest. “You can’t blame me entirely for this mess. I made it abundantly clear to you what I desired—a child—and you chose to ignore my attempts to come up with a solution.”

  Lux snorted. “Come up with a solution?! Have you taken leave of your senses? What possible solution could you have offered me that did not involve having an affair with another woman? It’s hurtful enough that you showed no respect for or understanding of my feelings, knowing that I am unable to give you the child you desire! But now you try to turn it on me, as though I am the unreasonable one?” Magic shot out of her and hurtled into the statue of Kaya, smashing it to pieces. Luke ducked, bringing Melody with him and covering her head as the debris rained down. Fragments skittered across the floor, a few of them coming to a halt at Erebus’s feet.

  “Was that really necessary?” he growled.

  Lux shrugged. “I did not care for the way she was staring at me, though I must credit the sculptor—they managed to emulate her smug satisfaction perfectly. Anyway, it is not as though I destroyed an ancient work of art. That one could not have been older than a hundred years, if that. They will simply carve another imitation of her dour face.”

  “Lux! How can we have a civil conversation if you keep hurling insults?” Erebus ran a hand over his head. “I understand that you believe you have been wounded, and I understand that you harbor some ill will toward me, but you were the one who said you wished to talk. You did not say anything about smashing statues to bits.”

  Lux expelled another blast of Chaos, which took down a trio of nymphs dancing around a pool full of twisting sea serpents. When the dust settled, the nymphs were nothing but rubble.

  “You understand that I ‘believe’ I have been wounded?” She lashed out with another torrent that decimated a statue of Ganymede. The Atlanteans definitely wouldn’t like that. “You know what you’ve done to me! You know what you’ve brought me to. I am not fabricating or exaggerating anything! When Chaos paired us, it paired us for eternity. You do not get to pick and choose when you want to be married to me, between flitting off to have a child with an Atlantean queen or having a few affairs here and there. That was not the agreement, so don’t you dare insinuate that I have lost my mind or that I am overreacting!”

  Luke raised a hand, and Lux jumped down his throat. “What do you want?”

  “I was wondering if you could keep the explosions to a minimum?” Luke replied coolly. “You hate Kaya, we get that—we really get that—but who do you think she’ll blame when she finds out that someone wrecked the gallery?”

  Lux glared at Erebus. “I do not care whom she blames. This is the least she deserves for trying to take what is mine.”

  “Are we blaming the woman now?” Melody chimed in. I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea, but she was clearly at the end of her rope with these two idiots. We all were. I imagined even they were sick of their squabbling. It took a lot to rile Melody up, but once she got going, she was a force to be reckoned with. “I’m not her biggest fan right now, but Kaya didn’t even know Erebus was married until after you caught them… well, I think we all know what they were up to. But Erebus is the one who hurt you, and he’s the one you need to fix things with. And violence is not going to resolve the huge issues that the two of you clearly have. So please: stop breaking precious artifacts and focus on trying to stick a Band-Aid on your marriage!”

  I felt Lux bristle as her gaze returned to Erebus. “I have yet to hear a single apology from his
lips.”

  Come on, Erebus—it’s time for you to swallow your pride. I willed him to do it, peering through Lux’s eyes. A whirlwind of emotions passed over his face: anger, sadness, remorse, stubbornness.

  At last, he folded his arms over his chest. “Fine, I admit that I could have done things differently, and I am sorry if you have been unduly affected by my actions. But—”

  “Please, for the sake of all our sanity, don’t say ‘but!’” Melody begged. “If you’re going to apologize, then apologize. Don’t backpedal. I’m not saying you’re being a coward, but backtracking on an apology is fairly cowardly behavior.”

  I wished that Melody could sense my concern as Lux glanced at her. She might have lost her patience with these Children of Chaos, but they were still powerful entities—the kind that didn’t like being referred to as cowardly, even with a disclaimer. These were not folks that you wanted to piss off.

  When Lux looked back at Erebus, I found a surprising sight. He didn’t look ready to deliver cosmic punishment for Melody’s perceived insolence. Instead, he looked… sorry, like a schoolboy who’d been told off and didn’t quite know how to handle it. He fixed his gaze on Lux, which wasn’t a comfortable position for me to be in, since it appeared as though he was boring right into my soul through her. He stayed like that, staring at her for what felt like a lifetime.

  Finally, he shifted uncomfortably and opened his mouth to speak. “I am sorry, Lux. I was so intent on getting what I wanted, I did not stop to think of how it might hurt you. I should have known, after all that business in Ancient Greece, that you would not take it well.” He dropped his gaze. “If my actions have hurt you, that is entirely on me. And… I apologize.”

  “That is all I wanted to hear.” Lux relaxed slightly.

  Erebus frowned, clearly confused. “Does this mean I am forgiven, to some extent?”

  “I have yet to decide,” she said, eliciting a groan from Melody. It didn’t go unnoticed. “Enough, Miss Winchester. You are only here because we allowed you to stay. One more groan, or even a breath that I do not like, and I will remove you from this room.”