Harley Merlin 4: Harley Merlin and the First Ritual Read online

  Tears pricked my eyes, prompting me to turn away for a moment. “I wish we could save her,” I murmured. “There’s so much I still want to know. Nothing important; just the simple stuff, you know? Those kinds of stories, about the years we had together. I don’t remember any of it.”

  Isadora’s letter had given me a whole torrent of information, which I was still struggling to process. So much so that I’d been trying to shove it back into the darkest recesses of my mind, with very little success. That thing was like a magnet, drawing me in. Nevertheless, I only wanted the easy stuff right now: the cute tales, the adventures, the love that my dad and my aunt had shown me, without me even knowing it.

  “We will save her, Harley.”

  I turned back around. “Yeah… yeah, we will. Now, come on, we’re not going to get her back without a decent portal, so get one opened pronto!”

  He smiled and set to work, tearing a hole in the fabric of the universe. “Banquet Hall, madam?” he joked.

  “Much obliged.” I stepped toward the portal and teetered on the brink for a moment, before jumping through. These things never got any easier to deal with.

  A split second later, I tumbled out of the portal exit and landed with a bump on something firm and uneven. Darkness surrounded me as the portal snapped shut behind me. Wherever I was, it definitely wasn’t the Banquet Hall. A shout went up, causing me to panic and scramble backwards, getting tangled in a throng of vine-like things that grabbed hold of my limbs and drew me under. I fought back, thrashing violently, trying to break free. Up ahead, the weird mass that I’d landed on was moving and groaning, a shadow growing taller in the pitch-black room as my eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom.

  Oh, crap… I’m going to die here. Wherever here is.

  A light flickered on. My eyes flitted up toward the figure, fearing the worst. Wade Crowley stared back at me with deeply unamused eyes, his bare chest looking like chiseled freaking marble in the soft glow of the bedside lamp. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Only when his legs wriggled beneath me, and I realized I’d tangled his lower half in the sheets during my battle with the bed linen, did I look down and gulp. My cheeks burned furiously. I’d pretty much had my head nestled in his crotch this whole time, while I’d thought I was fighting a vicious monster. Yeah, actually, if you could go ahead and kill me now, that’d be swell.

  “Harley, what the hell?” he growled.

  I jumped back as though I’d been zapped by an electric shock, doing my best not to stare at either his muscular chest or the defined dip of his abs as they slinked below his boxers. “I—I can explain everything!” I babbled. “I was training Jacob and he sent me through to here. Well, not here—it was supposed to be the Banquet Hall, but I guess he misjudged.”

  Surely he wouldn’t have purposely sent me here? That’d just be cruel. Then again, I had teased him about Tatyana. Is this payback? It’d better not be. If it was, Jacob was on borrowed time.

  “Wait… what?” He rubbed his eyes and sat up straighter. “Jacob?”

  Ah, crap… His name had spilled out without me realizing it. Now, I had two options: try and wriggle my way through a convoluted lie, or come clean to Wade. Although the first choice was tempting, I knew it would be easier to tell the truth. Given my slip-up, he probably wouldn’t have believed a lie anyway. Right, then, time to face the music.

  “Tarver. Tarver is Jacob. He’s wearing a creepy-ass mask to stay hidden. Alton knows—I mean, of course Alton knows, duh. Anyway, long story, nothing to worry about. A simple accident,” I rambled. “I’ve been helping him, and I guess he needs a lot more work because here I am… in your room… landing on your bed and getting all tangled in your sheets. I, uh, thought they were creatures trying to grab me. Sorry about that.” I smoothed down the covers like a class-A idiot, my hand rubbing along his thigh. I snatched it away, my face burning.

  Slow it down, Merlin. He’s going to think you’ve downed a gallon of coffee and a case of Red Bull.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said calmly, his face half-shrouded by shadow. “Jacob is Tarver. Alton disguised him in order to protect him—after everything that happened with Isadora, I’m guessing? And you’ve been helping him with his portal work, but he sent you here by mistake?”

  “Bingo! We were working on short-range openings.” I clung to the technical side of things, using it to ease my rapid heartbeat. It jumped up a notch as my gaze lingered on his half-naked body once more. Stop looking at his beautiful damned abs! Sure, they looked like they’d been carved by the gods themselves, but I needed to focus and quit making a fool of myself.

  “And you didn’t tell me any of this because…?”

  I shrugged in apology. “Alton told me not to.”

  He sighed and threw back the covers, revealing himself in all his Calvin Klein glory. I sat down on the edge of the bed and stared like a starving woman as he padded over to his closet and grabbed some clothes. He threw on sweats and a T-shirt—two items I’d never seen Wade wear in all the time we’d been here—and turned back to me. A flurry of something like anxiety washed over me, coming from him. It was mixed with stifled desire that he was trying desperately to hide from me. After all, I was here, in his bedroom. It was just the two of us.

  “I’m coming back to the training room with you,” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “It’s late and since I’m not getting more sleep anytime soon, I might as well make myself useful—see what you two have been hiding from me. It might be worth knowing who else’s bedroom you’ve accidentally tumbled into, in the middle of the night.” There was no anger in his voice, only that same undercurrent of unspoken desire.

  “Nobody’s!” I protested. “Just… uh, yours.”

  “Good to know.”

  With that, he pulled on sleek sneakers and headed for the door, leaving me to follow after him, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me whole. Of all the rooms in all the coven, why did it have to be his? On second thought, I pictured myself landing unceremoniously in Alton’s bed, and figured there were worse ways this could’ve turned out.

  Two

  Harley

  We hurried back through the empty hallways of the coven, passing a few guards in the magnolia courtyard who looked about ready to stop us in our tracks. Wade put his arm around my shoulders and flashed them a wink, most of the male contingent giving him a sly nod and letting us pass through. Wow… Alton really needs to get better security. Still, it felt nice to be pulled close to him, even if it was just for the sake of a ruse. He smelled good, of sleepiness and the faded aroma of a spicy cologne, the scent intoxicating at such close proximity.

  As we moved down past the Banquet Hall and on to the training rooms, his arm dropped from my shoulders but stayed stiffly at his side, his fist clenching and unclenching in a tense rhythm. He was fighting to keep his emotions away from me, but I was too close and too attuned for that. Something like longing made its way toward me, twisting my own insides into knots. I missed the weight of his arm draped around my neck and the closeness of being pressed to his side. But how the heck was I supposed to tell him that? Every time I tried to speak around him, I ended up tongue-tied and looking like a complete dingbat.

  He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Sorry about that. Didn’t want anyone getting suspicious. I know you’ve got Alton’s permission and everything, but it’s best not to draw too much unwanted attention, especially with the coven on edge,” he said quietly, as we pressed on.

  “No, no, it’s totally cool. After landing in your lap, what boundaries are left, right?” I choked on my forced laughter.

  He cast me an odd glance that set my heart racing. It held a thousand unspoken things, some of which I could feel flooding out of his body and into my veins, making them brim with a sudden urge to push him up against the nearest wall and kiss him hard on the lips.

  Get your head back in the game, Merlin! No more doe eyes at Crowley. I kept my gaze fixed ahead as we made our way to the preceptors’ tr
aining room without any further frissons. Still, by the time we walked through the black double doors and into the baroque-style room, I was exhausted from the effort of keeping my thoughts to myself.

  Jacob looked up in surprise, lunging for his mask.

  “It’s okay, he knows,” I said.

  He paused. “Oh… well, I guess that’s a relief. It’s claustrophobic in that thing.”

  “I bet it is,” I replied.

  “Did you end up in the Banquet Hall?” he asked hopefully, his tone genuine. So, it hadn’t been some underhanded ploy to get me back for teasing him earlier. It had been a genuine mistake. I tried not to let my disappointment show, but part of me wished it had been a trick. Then it might’ve been clearer that we were making some progress with these portal shenanigans.

  “Not quite,” I replied, trying hard not to look at Wade.

  Jacob frowned. “Where did you end up?”

  “In Wade’s room.”

  He looked shocked. “What? How?”

  “I was hoping you could answer that.” I gave a wry laugh and patted him on the back. He was trying his hardest to get to where we needed him to be. I could only imagine the pressure he was under. There was a constant current of unease coming off him, but I knew that only scraped the surface of the strain he was feeling. Even if I told him not to listen to Alton’s comments about coming up with the goods, that wouldn’t stop Monsieur Director from breathing down his neck.

  “I must have been thinking about—uh, it was after I told you about that thing that I mentioned.” He gave me a pointed look that I understood all too well. He meant the Tatyana thing. “As soon as I thought about that, I started thinking about similar things. My mind must have focused on something else when I was conjuring the portal, and it led you to… well, Wade’s bedroom.”

  I was grateful to him for not outing me there and then. Although he’d been suitably vague, I got the gist of what he was trying to say. He’d picked up on my crush a while back, after watching me fumble through a conversation with Wade, and he could’ve exposed me if he’d wanted to. Fortunately, Wade himself didn’t seem to have a clue what was going on, as he’d taken to inspecting the colored sandbags that lined the edge of the room.

  “Have you been sending these through?” he asked.

  Jacob nodded. “We figured it was easier to start with small objects before either Harley or I stepped through one of my portals. My precision comes and goes, and Harley insists on safety first.”

  Wade shot me a surprised look. “Really?”

  “Hey, I can be Captain Health and Safety too, when I want to be,” I retorted. “Anyway, sorry we took so long getting back to you, Jake. Do you want to try again?”

  “Ready when you are,” Jacob said with a shy smile. “Shall I do short-range again? I promise I won’t let my mind wander this time. I’ll focus on the Banquet Hall and nothing but the Banquet Hall.”

  I smiled. “Then take us there.”

  Wade and I stepped back as Jacob prepared to open another portal. I’d lost count of the number he’d managed to create that evening, but desperation seemed to be giving him a burst of stamina. He was determined to get it right. Who was I to stop him? In his position, I would’ve been, and still was, just as stubborn.

  He lifted his palms, gathering the power of Chaos to him. His sleeve slipped back to show a leather bracelet, with a black stone fixed in the center. He’d returned from his last visit with Isadora with it on his wrist—a gift, which had found its way back to him. Apparently, his mother had given it to Isadora who, in turn, had given it to him. One thing was for certain; it wasn’t an ordinary bracelet anymore. Jacob had found his Esprit, which was extremely lucky for a guy with that much power. He’d already improved by leaps and bounds, the sandbags reaching their destination more often than not. I might not have reached the correct destinations quite as often, but nobody was perfect.

  The black stone glowed as the light of his Chaos shone emerald at his fingertips. He closed his eyes to slow everything down, just the way Isadora had taught him. He’d told me all about it when we’d started these evening training sessions and the idea fascinated me, making me wonder if I could use it with my own powers. However, that wasn’t important now. Jacob’s abilities took center stage here, not mine.

  He clapped his hands together with measured force, the energy pouring out behind him, feeding into the tiny cracks in the fabric of the universe, the imperfections that allowed him to dig in and bust open a huge tear. With an almighty roar, a portal opened behind him, revealing the gaping void of the wormhole beyond. As soon as it appeared, I knew something was wrong. The gap was far bigger than it had been before, the edges crackling and spluttering. Gold and green sparks flew everywhere like a glittering rainstorm. The entire fissure seemed to shudder with innate violence.

  I looked to Jacob, whose eyes flew open in panic. His body was trembling all over, his face drained of color, his lips opening and closing as though he were trying to say something to us. The glow that shone from his hands was building in intensity, and the light grew so bright that it was hard to see him properly.

  I squinted against the glare, trying to get a better look at him. It was clear he was struggling to control his powers, even with the Esprit to help him, but there was something else as well—through the blinding light, it looked as though Jacob was starting to disintegrate. Parts of him were ablaze, while tiny flecks of gold and green peeled away from him like dust motes. Only, they weren’t dust motes; they were part of him. His atoms, being dragged into the portal, one by one.

  “Help!” he cried out, his voice weirdly muffled.

  “Oh, my God,” I muttered in complete shock. “It’s killing him.”

  Wade glanced down at me. “What?”

  “It’s killing him!” I yelled.

  Without another word, I lashed out with my Telekinesis lasso and hurled it toward Jacob. I felt the edges slip around him, my hands and mind working together to gather the invisible tension around him before I tugged him back. He jolted forward, flying toward us as I yanked him as far from the wormhole as possible. I hoped that, by taking him out of the equation, it would sever the connection to the portal.

  The trouble was, the moment Jacob landed on our side of the room, I felt a tug of my own. It sent me sprawling to the ground, an unseen power dragging me along the floor. The portal had somehow managed to grab hold of my mental lasso and was now pulling me toward the gaping tear. I felt the particles of my magical energy get eaten up by the vortex of the wormhole, the enormous power sucking in the very essence of my Telekinesis’ Chaos.

  “Break the link!” Wade yelled, as he sprinted over to grab me. His arms encircled my waist as he played a tug of war with the portal, with me at the center. “Let go of the lasso!”

  I realized that I still had Chaos rising from my palms, the light glowing from my partially broken Esprit. Those two empty sockets still grated on me. In the panic that had ensued, I’d kept hold of it, somehow thinking it would keep Jacob safe if I just held fast. Immediately, I severed the link between myself and the lasso, the last of the energy surging into the vortex. As soon as the final wave barreled into the mouth of the portal, it snapped shut, having sapped all it could like a hungry beast who’d finally been sated.

  However, a second later, a faint rumble emerged from the thin line of light that remained, where the portal had just been.

  Wade grabbed me and dove to the floor with me in his arms as a silent wave of power rushed through the entire coven, pushing out of the training-room doors. It pulsed over our heads in a visible torrent of electric gold, shot through with veins of piercing white, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up on end as it passed us by.

  As the initial burst ebbed, I lifted my head higher to check on Jacob, only to realize that something terrible was happening to the walls of the room. And, possibly, the rest of the building. The entire section of the interdimensional pocket that formed the training room shuddered and bl
inked for a second, as though it wasn’t quite sure if it was going to hold out. A few bronze particles peeled away in a flurry of eerie light, cascading down like the last of fall’s leaves.

  “Something’s wrong. The pocket’s failing,” I murmured, my heart hammering in my chest.

  “What do you mean?” Wade asked.

  “Look!” I grabbed his head and turned it toward the coven walls.

  His eyes went wide in horror. “No… It can’t fail. It can’t.”

  As if sensing his words, a swell of bronzed light flooded back in the opposite direction to the blast, restoring the integrity of the walls. Like a defibrillator starting a heart back up again, it looked as though the explosion had only jolted the Bestiary generator for a moment, before it dutifully came back online. With it being so late at night, I hoped that nobody from the outside world had noticed the little glitch. Citywide panic was the last thing we needed. Moreover, I hoped that the rest of the coven were asleep and hadn’t noticed the momentary lapse in protection in this section. Alton in particular.

  I glanced over my shoulder to look at Jacob, who was in a heap on the floor against the far wall. Scrambling to my feet, and ignoring the fact that Wade’s hand lingered on my waist for a moment as I stood, I rushed toward Jacob. He groaned as I neared, his eyes blinking rapidly as if he couldn’t stand the light.

  “Jacob? Jacob, can you hear me?” I asked, kneeling beside him. I took his hand and held it tight. Please don’t die, please don’t die, please don’t die.