The King's Leash (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 7) (10 page)

“Stop,” I commanded. “All of you stop. Arthur, Merlin, and Mordred,” I said. “You cannot—”

Magic flew off Lila as she misinterpreted my words for a command. Everyone stopped. All upon the hill besides Lila and myself stood frozen.

I silently cursed that I had forced her to exert magic when she was already so spent.

Lila swayed from side to side. Her shoulders slumped forward. “Still fine, boss,” she said with a whispery voice. “But can I kill someone soon? The mean one, Guinevere at least, right? We owe her payback for trying to kill me. Or the dude? They aren’t good people and I….”

She would be able to fill some of her reservoirs of power quickly if she killed them. It wouldn’t be as good as killing another Marid, but it was the quickest route to replenishing her power.

“Mordred and Guinevere are both evil incarnate,” I said, considering what to do. Lila was my responsibility. I should take care of her. And killing them would solve many problems. It would make this thing over before it had even started. For surely, the both of them walking this Earth together would bring trouble and all her friends to me and mine. But why were they here? The larger mystery still loomed. “We have to let them live, for now.”

A taut smile curved across Mordred’s face as he watched the both of us. He moved even though Lila’s spell froze him, a testament to his strength.

“Okay, then. Everyone behave because I’m hungry,” Lila said and waved her hand. Everyone sagged forward as they became freed from her holding spell.

Arthur stepped back from Mordred and sheathed his sword. “I will have your head, dread wizard.”

The black-haired man nodded. “You shall try. Someday, we shall have a rematch of our final battle, King. But before that, there is a place and a project I think you’ll be very interested in seeing. That is, if any of you have any desire to understand why the Department is interested in all of you. Or you can remain ignorant pawns. Your choice.”

“Are you sure I can’t hurt him even a little?” Lila asked.

“Nice pet you’ve got, Morgan,” Mordred said.

“In time, I shall let you rip him apart limb to lymph nodes,” I promised Lila.

“Cool,” she said.

Guinevere ran her hands through her tangled hair. “I for one want to meet the Department. I want to see the people I will eventually destroy.” Her hand rubbed something around her waist. I looked and saw the odd and silvery shimmering of a star. And I sensed one through Mordred’s armor, as well.

I wondered if the Department would try to do the same to Merlin and me when we went there. With that thought, I noticed that I had decided I would be going with Mordred. I wanted the truth. I was done with not knowing why they were in my city and bringing back my two least favorite people in the world, along with my brother.

“Come along, little ones,” Mordred said. “Come, teacher,” he nodded toward me. “King, witch, wizard, sheriff, and… pretty blue thing. Follow.” He began trudging up hill through the slithering muck. His armor seemed able to move through it easily. The rest of us slipped and slid as we walked.

Guinevere gathered up her long skirts in one hand and followed Mordred as closely as she could. My gaze slid back and forth between them. Life had dealt them both some hard blows, but how they had chosen to deal with their hardships? Their troubles had twisted and shaped them in grotesque ways. In irredeemable ways. It wasn’t that they did bad things now and again, it was that they were rotten, as rotten as the ground and all this realm, all the way through.

Chapter 14

A Drink of Water

We left Faerie, and again I felt a heady rush of love for the outside world and the basic fact that it did not smell like blood.

We walked down from the Experience Music Project. There were enough buskers, street performers, and homeless people that we did not garner undue attention.

As we headed toward Fifth Avenue, Mordred pulled out a sleek smart phone from a pocket within his armor. His fingers danced across the surface of it. He must have been in this realm for a while to use technology so expertly.

As we came to the crosswalk, an Uber van pulled up for us. It was bedecked internally with purple crushed velvet and seats that faced each other. Mordred climbed in and took the back seat. I sat near him, all the better to keep a close eye on him.

He ignored me and typed several text messages. His phone beeped in reply. Mordred read the response and smiled. He slid the phone back into his pocket.

“What has been a disgusting day is shaping up to be a most excellent one,” he said and laced his hands behind his head.

Everyone glared at him. He sat there like a man of power, with wide-splayed legs and a relaxed visage. In truth, he was the only relaxed one in the van.

“How long have you been here?” I asked him quietly. “I assume you were frozen and then revived, just like Arthur?”

He paused, calculating what it would cost him to answer me. He shrugged. “Yes. They awoke me first, before Arthur.” He was proud of that.

“They needed you,” I murmured.

He nodded again, and for a brief moment he looked like the bright young student he had once been, trying too hard to please me, to impress any and all, but then his face hardened into angles and scowls.

“They needed you and put a star on you, like the others,” I said. “They like their leashes, don’t they? Are you fighting it at all, or do you accept the star upon you?” I looked him up and down, but my spectral check of magics was immediately met with a blocked wall.

“A bit forward, witch.”

“I was merely wondering to what degree they control you. How much of your soul they own,” I said.

“Ever the Morgan who cannot abide by anything except the purest freedom, never mind the truth of what the world is made of.”

“Decisions and consequences?”

“The powerful and the owned. How many centuries have you lived, and you still don’t understand that?”

“I understand the way things are. I don’t accept that’s the only way it can ever be,” I said.

Mordred yawned.

The music stopped and the car came to a halt in front of the tallest building in Seattle. The Columbia Tower, also known as the Darth Vader building, spiked upward into the sky. It was modernity's hubris in the face of gravity and decay.

We got out, and Arthur stared up and up. His mouth dropped open. I wondered about the shock of this modern world. He had said he'd had some training when he'd come through into this future, but surely, jumping forward fifteen centuries was startling, again and again.

We walked together toward the door, where Mordred flashed some sort of key to open it. Not a spell, but anyone from my time would have thought so, for the door slid open.

A man sat inside behind a wide desk. He nodded at Mordred and our motley crew, as though a man in black armor and people filthy with mud were a normal sight here.

One set of elevators dinged open, and we entered and went up as high as it went. Then we had to get out and transfer to another elevator that took us higher still. As we rose, an uneasy silence filled the air. I sensed this was some sort of trap. Though if any thought height and reinforced steel would be enough to keep me and mine in, they were sorely mistaken.

The elevator took us to the very top of the building, and when the doors opened, we stepped out into a large conference room with a large round table at its center. The table was polished and had a surface so smooth the wood resembled liquid. A floor-to-ceiling window on the far side of the room showed off the tableau of Seattle with a crystalline and dizzying view. As we walked toward the table, another door opened, and three men walked in.

Three men, shaved and shorn, wearing ill-fitting jeans and shirts. I didn't recognize them at first.

Arthur had no such confusion. He moved toward them as if in a dream. And they approached him with a gravitic pull. Only men who had fought battles side by side, only men who had pledged and braided their fates together, would look at each like they did. When they drew close, the three men sank to their knees and each kissed Arthur’s hand, even though it no longer bore his kingly ring. Arthur pulled each of them up to standing and hugged them.

“A touching reunion of troglodytes,” Mordred said.

“I’ve had them all,” Guinevere commented under her breath.

“For those who may not know,” Arthur said as he turned and wiped a tear from his face, “these three good men are Gawain, Tristram, and Lamorak. Knights of the Round Table, as true and honest as any who have walked this earth. The best of men!”

They surrounded him, and though they were short and slim by modern standards, their deadly soldier’s grace was evident in the way they flanked him.

“Oh please,” Guinevere sneered. “Send me back to the hands and mouths already.”

Lamorak leveled his gaze at her and reached for a sword that wasn’t there. Tristram eyed her with his keen archer’s gaze. Gawain leaned close to Arthur and whispered something to him. He gestured toward Mordred.

Arthur shook his head. “Not yet,” he mouthed.

“Sit, everyone, sit,” Mordred said and walked to the wide window. He turned his back to us and surveyed the city stretched below.

I took a seat with Lila, Adam, and Merlin on one side of the table. Arthur sat with his knights across from us. Guinevere sat apart from everyone else, closest to Mordred.

I studied the people gathered here. All of us were old and from Camelot, except for Adam and Lila. And they were here because of their affiliation with Merlin and me, I presumed. We sat here, a people from an ancient time, a storied time, but in truth not that different from any other medieval place in Europe. What use might the government have for us?

Perhaps it was because we were all from a time of stories and adventures? The Sword and the Stone, Merlin the grand wizard, and the Knights of the Round Table were all told in modern popular culture. Might those mistold stories be why we were here? Perhaps the leader of this Department was some sort of history buff and favored the tales of Camelot?

Except using time travel to pinpoint people and put them in stasis for millennia did not seem like anyone’s whim. It would cost money, I guessed. Money and other resources. So they must think there was something we could do for them. Some way we would be useful.

And with that thought, like a punch to my belly, I suddenly understood why they had gathered us together. There could be only one reason. My neck twinged with pain. I swallowed and longed for a sip of water.

On the tail of my loathsome understanding, I also saw that Merlin must have guessed the same thing as I. I knew why my wizard had tried to keep me away from Arthur, from all of this, for as long as he could. Oh, Merlin. What a man to try to hold back the flooding world. What a man to think he could protect me from anything. Despite all his lies, he had tried to do well. No matter that it failed, I appreciated the sweetness of the gesture.

Mordred turned from staring out the window and leveled a patronizing gave at each of us. He smiled without mirth or kindness.

“Thank you all for coming here,” Mordred said.

“As though we had a choice,” Gawain mumbled.

The other two knights nodded and touched the stars they wore at their belts. That was another thing this room had in common: everyone wore stars, except for Lila, Merlin, and myself.

“Thank you all for trading in your lives, or the lives of loved ones,” Mordred nodded at Adam, “for service to the Department. Need I remind you, that the contracts we signed stated not unending servitude, but freedom once we fulfilled the mission the Department gave us. At the time, none of us knew what we were signing up for, merely that we wished to live. Or that we wanted our lover back.”

“The Department didn’t get Lila back,” I said. “Merlin and I did. Tell your bosses—”

Mordred shrugged. “I’m sure you’d love to read the legalese of the contract and how it states that Lila would be returned, not the mechanism for how it would occur.”

“You did it to get me back?” Lila whispered to Adam.

The Sheriff put his arm around her waist. “Of course.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

He shrugged like it was a nothing kind of thing, but his fingers touched the silver star on his belt.

Lila kissed his cheek. “Thanks, dude.”

“Always.”

Love, I thought with a sinking feeling as I watched the both of them. Love was how the Department was going to trap us. I sat up straighter, steeling myself against what would be coming next.

Mordred took out his phone and called someone. He spoke into it. “It’s time.”

He placed it face up on the table, so that whoever was on the other end of it could hear everything. “Blue girl,” he said, turning his attention to Lila. “Think carefully, do you value the wolf’s life?”

Mordred licked his lips as confusion covered Lila’s face.

“Of course I do.” Lila said. “Of course I—”

“Now,” Mordred interrupted her.

Whoever was at the end of the cell phone acted, and Adam’s star flared bright. The werewolf’s mouth dropped open, he clutched his throat, and then fell forward like a stone. His head hit the table. He didn’t move. His aura dimmed. He wouldn’t last long.

Lila flared bright with magic. If looks could kill, and hers could… she steadied her gaze on Mordred. “Stop it. Now,” she commanded.

Mordred nodded. “Done,” he said.

Adam gasped back to life, flailing and flopping around for a couple of long moments before he regained his senses.

“You see now, blue Lila, what we will do if you step out of line? If, say, you do something as gauche as attacking me? Instead, you will serve us as best you can, and if we get any inkling you are doing anything against us we will—”

“Shut up. I get it. I’m not stupid,” Lila said.

Merlin sat beside me, watching it all with an outward calm, but beneath the table his hands shook. He reached down and grabbed some sort of spell from his bag. He whispered, “I’ll kill him. Should have done it long ago, I’ll—”