The Demon's Revenge (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 4) (9 page)

I smiled and took a couple of steps so that I stood between the two of them and Lila. They would not take her. I wouldn’t let them. Without closing my eyes or making any outward signs of it, I began to pull up powers from the darkest places within me and make a spell that would blast them back to Hell and slam the door shut.

“You wanted Diego all along, didn’t you, Maria? You had no desire for myself or Merlin.”

“How clever of you to catch on much too late,” she said. “Yes, I came to Seattle for my cursed Diego. I had to set some kind of trap that would get him to come to Hell willingly. His suffering had twisted him, you had twisted him, everything about this city twisted him.” She sighed and shook her head. “It took some doing to convince him to become a demon and join me in hell. I tried to get him by saying he must save his unders and give me his soul to do with as I would. That was my plan all along, but it didn’t work.”

A cold smile played across Diego’s lips. “Not entirely,” he said. “I wanted the unders freed and more.”

“What more?” I asked.

“Revenge,” Diego said. “Revenge against every one of the demons in hell responsible for cursing and damning me.”

“Which I gave my love, my King, easily,” Maria said.

The two of them gave each other a long look, the picture perfect image of a couple in love.

She returned her attention to me. “Though I’m still willing to bargain, if you would like to avow your soul to my realm, I will take it happily. I can cut away all the useless parts of and let you be the true Morgan le Fay in all your violent glory.” She batted her eyes at me.

“An interesting offer,” I said and smiled. Keep talking, I thought, keep them both talking. I struggled with a weighty piece of avarice that wriggled and refused to be woven with the strings of refusal and anger. I kept my face calm even as I used all my attention to move the pieces together to make the first part of this spell. I should say something else to keep them distracted, but it took all of my concentration not to lose the pieces of my spell.

“So you’re the fabled Maria,” Merlin said smoothly as he stepped up beside me. He placed himself carefully, as I had done, in front of Lila. “Diego’s lost love damned to torture, damned to torture for every moment that he walked the earth. You are a cautionary tale. Not the Queen. Tell me lass, wouldn’t you rather dismantle Hell and take apart the levels of rot that hurt you so, rather than rule?”

Of course she wouldn’t. He knew that as well as I. I knotted together thick strands of forgetting and confusion, and tied it to the first piece of the spell. They held together nicely, bristling with power within me. Now I needed to carefully add in bits of fear and loathing, here and there. I was almost done. I was almost ready to fling it at them and banish them from this realm.

“Dismantle Hell?” The Queen laughed and shook her head. “Hilarante. Come Diego, mi amor, let me take you and this lovely creature,” she gestured toward Lila, “back to the wild lands where we belong. There is much I want to show and teach you.”

“Before you go,” Merlin said quickly, “tell us how is it that you came to rule. I collect stories, and I am sure that one is one of the great ones.”

“Travel with me and we will have all the time in the world to tell stories. The short of it? One day I grabbed my demon torturer’s weapons of pain and dug into my chest and managed to pull out my heart.” She smiled. “In Hell, metaphors commingle with bodies closely. The demon in charge of my little corner of the under realm noticed my act, and soon he set me to torturing others, while keeping up my daily doses of pain.”

“Pain,” she said and smiled. “One learns a lot when one lives in pain for so long. How to take it. And how to use it. Others soon noticed my gifts with torture, and I rose swiftly through the demonic ranks. Until there came the day when the King of Hell had one moment of inattention and I ended him.” She smiled. “The ruler of Hell tends to be full of rage and wrath, and though that was not the creature I was when I first went to Hell, that is surely what I am now.”

My spell was almost done. It was almost ready to put into an object and throw at them. I reached into my pocket and found some already spelled stones. The much larger spell within me would banish the smaller spell. I grabbed one of the ball bearings. It would work. It would be able to hold the spell, I hoped. But the spell within me needed to coalesce for a bit more. It was almost there. “And you, Diego,” I said. “You knew it was Maria, when I told you about the human Queen of Hell. You knew and did nothing to stop it.”

He shrugged and rolled his eyes. “The wretched creature I wore like an old and ragged coat suspected it might be her. But I was so determined to keep any and all safe from getting in harm’s way. I had some estupido plan that I would sacrifice myself for the unders, that I would let Maria put an even worse curse on me for leaving her in Hell.”

“But when I finally found him, I offered him something else.” She laughed. “Torture my amor? No. Hell is vast, and who better to rule by my side than Diego? Hell will have two rulers now: the doomed Diego and the tragic Maria. And oh how they all will suffer.”

“I’m so sorry that she hurt you, Diego,” I said and wondered if any part of him could hear it. “I will search out a way to bring you back.”

“Back?” For a moment he looked like the old Diego. The friend I trusted. “You of all creatures should understand, Morgan. Wanting to die. Wanting to be done with the curse of life. She lifted away all the pain. There is no pain any more. Come with us. We can sit and spend our days arguing with each other.” Something sly came into his voice. “I will give you your own realm, full of the formerly rich and powerful. You can hurt them as you like.”

“Tempting,” I said lightly. I felt my spell come together and I swiftly pulsed it into the ball bearing.

I raised my hand back to throw it at them.

“Stop her,” the Queen said.

I couldn’t move my hand. All I had to do was throw the spell, and I couldn’t move my hand. I glanced back at it and saw it was enclosed in a strange blue light. The light traveled down my arm. I couldn’t move it, either. Or my neck, a second later.

Merlin hit the ground with his foot and raised one hand.

“Stop him,” the Queen said.

I watched power flow from behind us and engulf him. This was Lila’s magic. Lila’s doing.

“Lila, you don’t have to
—
”

“But I do,” she said with her echoey voice and stepped in front of us. “I obey.”

“Leave her, Diego,” I spoke rapidly. “You love Lila. If there is any humanity left in there, don’t take Lila, don’t
—
”

“Humanity,” Diego chuckled. “Come, Marid, follow us as you have promised.” Diego turned around, hand in hand with the Queen, and swirls of darkness rose up around him. Lila, tall, blue, and solemn, followed two steps behind her.

I couldn’t move. Neither could Merlin.

A swift figure ran forward, right at Lila.

“No,” the Queen said, without looking back.

Lila turned and looked at Adam, and I hoped that the love between them might break through this.

Lila raised one hand and pointed at him. Adam dropped to the ground, so hard I heard the sickening crack of his skull hitting the ground hard.

And then the King and Queen of Hell, along with an obedient and enslaved Lila, stepped through the door. It closed behind them and disappeared.

I stood there, staring at it. Numb all over. Screaming and screaming, and making no sound at all.

14

Get Lost

It took several minutes for Lila’s holding spell to wear off. When it did, Merlin and I rushed to Adam’s unmoving form on the ground.

He had a lump on his head, but was breathing fine.

“His lycanthropic nature will change him and heal him soon enough,” Merlin said. “To the bathroom. We need a room where we can shut him in.”

Adam growled in his half-conscious state as we grabbed his arms and dragged him to the bathroom. Merlin placed him gently in the bathtub, before closing the door behind him.

We walked back to the main part of the studio. It was empty. All the light and all the darkness were gone, as though nothing had happened. Merlin grabbed a half-drunk bottle of wine off Lila’s counter, and took a deep swig.

He handed me the bottle and I followed him to Lila’s couch. I was here. Still here. Still alive. Of all the ways I had thought today might go. I hadn’t expected this.

Merlin watched me, keeping a couple of feet’s distance between us. He waited.

I sat there, and then crumpled inward, as though I was a thing made of eggshells and feathers. I didn’t expect it, but I felt his strong arms engulf me. I leaned into him and cried, longer than I should have. Longer than I knew I could. Eventually I dried my eyes and put the rim of the wine bottle to my mouth. I drank deeply and handed it back to Merlin.

“I realized Lila was Djinn folk a while back,” he said. “I had no idea she could even be a Marid.”

I bowed my head. Should I have told him? Would he have been able to help? Was it pure stubbornness on my part and had I put her in peril by not telling him? Another terrible decision. “She’s the only one I’ve ever heard of being born. Djinnis can be made, of course. And even Afrits, more rarely. But Marids, the most powerful of their kind. They are so rare.”

He nodded. “Ancient and few, thank the gods. It wouldn’t have worked, by the way, her giving her first wish to herself. I don’t think it would have worked.”

“I was going to try that, and if it didn’t work I would have her pledge herself to me, and then kill myself. An elegant suicide: killing two birds with one stone, so they say. I thought that might grant her freedom. I thought I could give herself that, along with my own dissolution,” I said.

Merlin glanced at me with a mixture of horror and disdain. “And if it hadn’t worked? What would you have left the world with?”

I didn’t answer.

“A grieving and perhaps mad Marid who had her most basic connection violently severed. Gods, lass. At least that didn’t happen.”

I deserved that, perhaps, and more. I shook my head. “I should have seen what had become of Diego. I should have figured out who the Queen really was. But I was so… done with this world and sure that this plot was to get me to the underground. I should have seen the truth.” I hung my head. Lila had counted on me. Her mother had trusted me to take care of her, and when she really needed me? I had failed. Just as I had failed in every other aspect of my life.

“You should have. So should have I. And now? Annihilation? Death? Suicide? Or is it time to correct past wrongs and set them right.” He glared at me. “Do not tell me you are willing to leave Lila damned and enslaved in Hell. That is not the Morgan I know. That is not the witch I love.”

“Of course I’m not,” I said and swallowed down the wave of despair that welled up in me. “But the times when it has mattered most, Merlin, I always get it wrong. Today again. And Lila is now the Queen of Hell’s Marid,” I said. “I drew the death card this morning. I thought it was mine. Turns out it foretold Diego and Lila’s descent into Hell.”

Merlin shrugged. “Or change. That card is as much about change as any sort of true death.”

I groaned. He was right, and I knew that about the card. Only, I had so wanted today to be the end, and instead it was the start to more and terrible things. “The Queen. Of Hell. Has a Marid. You understand that I have no power that even slightly rivals any of those forces? You understand that I can’t even begin to fathom how I might get Lila away, now that she has sworn obeisance to the Queen? Hell lords are infamous for their contractual law, to say nothing of the strange magic of djinn which makes them powerful yet so vulnerable. And does Lila even want to be away? Who is she now that she’s a Marid? I do not know. It all happened so quickly. I failed her. I have failed at everything, once again.”

Merlin rolled his eyes.

“It’s not funny,” I snapped.

“It’s not the least bit funny,” he agreed. “And there is no immortal who feels otherwise. I watched Arthur’s blood seep out on the battlefields and could do nothing. I watched my truest love leave me, and couldn’t even get her to tell me why. I took under my wing a boy who will be more heart-broken then I can possibly imagine when he wakes up. And worst of all? I stupidly continued to love her and hold out hope, when, at the first real trouble, she turned out weak and maudlin.”

“How dare you call me weak,” I hissed. I stood up from the couch and towered over him. “I am many things, Merlin Ambrosius, but never let it be said that I
—
” I caught a smile on his face. “You are goading me away from my death.”

“If ever there was a witch who looked good wearing rage, twas you,” he said.

I sighed. “I really wanted to be done with all this. I was ready.” I looked down at my hand. At my hangnail that still hurt a little bit. “Not that it matters overly much.” I remembered the Hell Queen saying she would have to wait seventy years or so for me. “When were you going to tell me?” I gestured at the scar on his arm.

“It seemed the least of it,” he said. “I would have told you when we were alone, if you hadn’t been throwing a death spell at me. Besides, I wasn’t in a huge hurry knowing where you were headed.”