Authors: Edward Lazellari
Mal’s people were busy at work cleaning up sites where the battles took place and the suite at The Plaza. And by cleaning, everyone understood leaving as little evidence behind of magic and golems and their presence there. With the whole city on alert and thousands injured, the authorities didn’t have the resources to launch a proper investigation into the cause of the events. They didn’t know where to look. Sorcerers? Wizards?
The prince’s guardians sat exhausted in the recreation room of Tilcook’s North Jersey compound, watching the news on a fifty-six-inch television. They were licking their wounds in style surrounded by a huge roaring fireplace, pool table, full bar, baby grand piano, plush couches, high-definition television, and a neon jukebox containing every Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett song ever recorded. Mal recounted the battle in the Chrysler Building to a captive audience of Daniel, Scott, Tilcook, Seth, and Tony Two Scoops over some draft beers. Daniel slurped on a root beer ice cream float.
“Anyway … I got back upstairs and first thing I see is Lelani bleeding out on the ground,” Mal said. “She has this vial in her shaking hands, but they’re so bloody it’s too slippery to get the top off the tube. So I help her, and I realize it’s knitting powder—I’d never actually seen it, but everyone’s heard of the stuff—worth, like, four sacks of platinum standards. So I pour it over her wound and it starts to fizz…”
Cal drank his beer alone, away from the others, on a stool at the corner of the bar. A speaker on the wall above him played Sinatra’s “All of Me.” Cal looked over at Daniel contentedly; after thirteen years, the prince was once again among them, safe and whole.
Getting out of the city after the fight had been easy … Lelani had taught Seth her cloaking spell, which, though flawed, didn’t need to be perfect with all the confusion and hysteria in the streets. Seth, it seemed, had the ability to store some amount of magic in him, a fact that utterly fascinated Lelani and made her a little bit jealous. After a stop at the Empire State Building to recharge, Seth recast her illusion spell, and they blended into the chaos and joined the masses piling onto the Hudson ferries, which were overloaded to get as many people off the island as possible. They co-opted a van at a used car lot in Union City. Mal left cash for the vehicle in the office mail drop.
Cal studied the large room in the really big house, calculating the rewards of a life of crime: four-car garage, ten acres, eight bedrooms, swimming pool, panic room, and security room where all the cameras from a half-mile of perimeter fencing fed. If Cal were caught in here on a federal raid, his career in the NYPD would pretty much be over. At the same time, he could walk into Tilcook’s study and probably find enough evidence to put the crook away for years. They’d won, though, and people wanted to celebrate and relax before deciding what to do next. Even Cal agreed, planning was better left for tomorrow.
Bree played a videogame in the far corner with Tilcook’s daughter, Paradise, a spoiled brat of a girl with curly black hair and a heart-shaped face who, unfortunately, had the name of a stripper stamped on her birth certificate. Tilcook’s wife, Gina, with her teased hair, overdone fingernails, and blue-collar vocabulary, practically stepped out of an episode of
The Real Housewives of New Jersey
. She was not happy to have all these strangers in her home.
Notably missing was Cat. She was not in a celebratory mood, as Cal fully understood. Killing a person, no matter how justifiably, haunted you. It took Cal weeks to shake it the first time he’d killed a man in battle. Even though you knew you had to do it, the power over life and death for mere mortals was disconcerting. One had to be a sociopath or megalomaniac to handle the act with no ramifications. Coping involved desensitizing yourself to the sanctity of human life. It also involved time, which was by its very nature not a thing to be rushed.
Cal left the recreation room for the bedroom floors. The house was done in a neo-roman style—white columns, multicolored marble floors, vaulted dome ceilings—the kind that only Mediterranean types would call classy. In the first bedroom he passed, he heard Allyn and Colby’s voices. He knocked and entered. With the two men were Lelani and Colby’s son Tory.
“Any progress?” asked Cal.
“Yes and no,” said Allyn. “The boy’s eyes were severely gouged. They will take a long time to heal, months perhaps; I’m essentially regrowing them.”
“Can’t you use the knitting powder?” Cal asked.
“The healing powder works best on simple repairs, a torn artery, vein, or skin cells,” Lelani said. “To rebuild a human eye would require a pound of powder. Even if that much existed, the cost would bankrupt a kingdom. The powder is made of ground horns of a unicorn and white rhino, beak of a gryphon, hooves of a satyr, a garlic clove from the garden of a white witch, blood of an executed innocent, phoenix feathers, and a few other ingredients just as rare. And the ingredients are only half the effort.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Colby.
“On a positive note,” added Allyn, with a scowl toward the detective, “we mixed Lelani’s healing powder in a solution of isotonic saline and injected it near the break in Tory’s spinal cord.”
“Hurts like a mother…!” said Tory, grinding his teeth.
“… which is a great indication that the nerve cells are knitting,” Allyn added. “With rehabilitation, Tory will one day walk again.”
“That’s wonderful news,” said Callum with a parent’s sincere understanding. “And Colby’s problem?”
Allyn and Lelani balked on explanations.
“Yeah, we hit a snag on that one,” Colby said.
“It’s very complex magic,” Lelani said.
“It’s almost sacrilegious,” said Allyn.
Cal was shocked. “Allyn, don’t tell me you’re refusing to help this man. The prince would be dead if not for Colby. It’s not Colby’s fault that Dorn…”
“No, no…,” Allyn said. “I will honor our agreement with him. It’s just that, this is not a blessing that is readily done. I have never performed it, none of my brothers in the order have either, and I know of only two prelates who claim to have done it, one in Farrenheil and the other in Moran. We know it can be done, but I have yet to figure out some aspects of it. And Lelani is not herself sure of her end. Wizards can only do this with the help of a cleric, and you know what relations between clerics and wizards are like back home. There’s not a lot of communication.”
“So it’s a logistics problem?” Cal said.
“Maybe we can call UPS,” Colby quipped.
Cal locked eyes with the detective. “Colby, I swear, we’ll…”
“Settle down, Cal. What you’re doing for my boy … that’s more than I could ever dream of. For him to walk and see again … being undead is a small price to pay.”
“Yes, well, far be it from me to quit so easily,” Lelani said. “In anticipation for the time we are able to make you whole again, I’ve cleaned your heart’s arteries of plaque buildup, and used the powder to knit holes forming in your aorta and right ventricle. The organ should last another fifty years—far longer than your lungs if you continue to…”
Cal took Allyn outside into the hallway as Lelani and Colby argued the health risks of cigarette smoking.
“What’s going on at home?” Cal asked the reverend.
“Michelle is being Michelle—stubborn as a bull. But it’s my home, my family, and my church, and I will deal with it. I’m staying in this universe, Cal—and like all good things, my life here is worth fighting for. I can do tremendous good. Restore people’s faith.”
“But … Allyn, what about your clerical order? Pelitos? How can you preach Christianity knowing what you know?”
“What do I know, Cal?” Allyn said.
“But…”
“Cal, have you ever heard the story of the blind men and the elephant?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Three blind men were shown an elephant and allowed to touch it so they could ‘see’ what it was. They each grasped a different part and soon began to argue. The first man grasped the trunk and declared it was a snake; the second felt the animal’s leg and insisted it was like a tree, and the third man held the elephant’s tail and claimed it was like a slender rope. They were all wrong, and yet, all right. I have an enlightened view of the universe now, as is appropriate for all travelers. It does not exclude Yahweh or Jesus. And I truly believe the Christian path, when celebrated without prejudice and false airs, will lead people to a happy and moral life.”
Cal mulled over the sermon, suspecting it applied to his life as well. He gave the reverend his blessing and promised to let him know when they were planning to head back home so that Allyn could give him letters and photos for his siblings.
Cal walked down the hall and stood outside his bedroom door for a few moments. He breathed deeply and knocked. The light was still on, so he entered quietly, but Cat was awake and rolled over on the king-sized bed to face him. She wore leopard-skin spandex pants and a Bon Jovi T-shirt that Gina had lent her.
“You look lovely,” he told her sarcastically.
“You have to see this woman’s closet,” Cat said. “It’s as big as our living room and there’s not a single tasteful item in the entire thing. This whole house looks like a patrician villa in Pompeii before the eruption. I chose leopard skin out of desperation. If you prefer tiger or zebra…”
Cal stopped her with a wave of his hand. “That’s okay, thanks. Thought you’d be asleep.”
“Can’t sleep.”
Cal sat on the bed next to her. He rubbed her arm softly. “Lot on your mind, huh?”
She nodded.
“Is it what Dorn did to you, what you did to him, or what I did to you by not telling you about Chryslantha?”
Cat nodded.
He whistled. “All of the above. No wonder you can’t fall asleep.”
“I’ll make my peace with what I did to Dorn … eventually. After what he did to us—to me—it’s not as though he didn’t have it coming.”
“I see. And the other thing?” Cal asked.
“Do you still love her?”
It was the question Cal had dreaded ever since his memories returned. He could not lie to Cat, not even if he wanted to. “Yes,” he said.
Cat was being brave, holding her reaction at bay even as tears welled.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t love you, Cat. I just … Chrys and I didn’t decide to go our separate ways. There was never closure. She’s still in Aandor, hopefully unharmed, praying that I’m not dead and waiting for me to come get her. She still believes we have a future together. She’s such a good … a good…”
It was Cal’s turn to well up; emotions he didn’t allow himself to feel while he searched for the prince tore through his constraint. It wasn’t just what he’d put his wife through with the revelation. He experienced true bereavement—the loss of a loved one. It was as if Chrys had died—he could never go back to her. It was worse, actually—after all was resolved, after all the pain he and Chryslantha were slated to experience when he tells her of his marriage, Cal will have to bear the thought of her marrying another man—some choice of her father’s to bury the shame of his daughter’s carnal indulgence. Another man will make love to the woman he still cherished and who had been his best friend for his entire youth.
He took solace in his vow to Catherine; he very much loved her and Bree. Cat didn’t realize yet how much he would need her to help him through this tragedy. But before that could happen, he had to make amends.
“I didn’t know how to bring it up,” he told her. “There was never a good time. I hadn’t even worked out what the betrothal meant to me. Part of me thought if I died trying to save the prince, it would have been better for everyone. Then I wouldn’t have to break anyone’s heart. Not until I learned Dorn had you hostage did everything crystallize. I was so afraid, Cat—so angry. Not just for you but for myself as well—the thought of living my life without you in it.”
She sat up and wrapped her arms around his neck. Cal didn’t know where such a small woman got all her strength, but he thanked gods in both universes that she was on his side.
“You should have trusted me,” Cat said.
“Yes … yes—I’m not making excuses. Please, forgive me. You’re my wife. I’m taking you, Bree, and the new baby back with me, and we’ll deal with the consequences when we get there.”
“When?” she asked.
“A year, maybe two. What we’re considering … it’s ambitious.”
“Guess I should change my masters program then,” she said. “Medieval anthropology or animal husbandry.”
They laughed.
“We’re a little more sophisticated than medieval,” Cal said.
“Really? That why you hack each other up with swords and axes and call each other ‘my lord,’ and curtsy?”
“Well…”
“I just feel bad about my mother,” Cat said. “She’s going to have a much harder time with that kind of life.”
“You’re mother?”
“Yeah.”
“We are not bringing Vivian,” Cal said.
“The hell we’re not,” Cat said.
“There’s no room for her. It’s a small castle.”
“I’m not going up against your mother without mine at my back.” Cat cast him a determined grin.
Cal swallowed his response. He was too tired to fight, and had over a year to talk Cat out of the insufferable notion. He smiled back and kissed her. She pulled him down on top of her.
“Wait, the lights,” he whispered.
Cat smiled devilishly, clapped her hands twice in quick succession, and like magic, the room went dark.
EPILOGUE 1
Daniel sat under a blanket in a lounge chair on Tilcook’s back patio. The pool was covered for the season and the sky dark with a bright smattering of the stars. Daniel’s breath painted the air white before him despite the fire burning in the stone fire pit next to him. The wood cracked and spit as the fire consumed it, the smell of mesquite soothing to the boy’s senses. Seth Raincrest also sat beside the fire pit with his staff beside him. Daniel guessed that it was for his protection. Callum didn’t want him outside alone until they could account for all the golems and the few remaining bad guys. Daniel felt a bit like a prisoner. Tilcook had a lot of security on the grounds—dogs and roving groups of family soldiers—he thought having a shadow on top of that was overkill.