Nine Souls Read online

  I let out a breath. Whatever they were, they wouldn’t stop me from going.

  Story of my life.

  I stepped through the Gateway and into the rain. Carl and Talon followed, eyes alert, listening as I gave them the information that would keep them alive for the next ten minutes.

  Chapter 30

  I took a deep breath, smelling the air, eyes darting about, ears focused to hear the smallest sound other than the steady patter of raindrops. I even tapped into my Fae magic, fumbling with it to try and get a better sense of everything. It was still somewhat awkward for me to use – working better in the heat of the moment than for casual, everyday things – but it at least gave me heightened senses enough to be certain we weren’t about to be surprised. I studied the hut before us, facing it squarely, watching the dim candlelight in the dirty center window. It was a sagging, decrepit building made of ancient, waterlogged wood. The porch was slanted, and other than the candlelight, it looked uninhabitable.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small metal pen. I thumbed it on and blue laser lights shot from each end, a thin beam made more visible thanks to the overcast skies and heavy rain. I was sure to aim one end at the candle light, and shuffled a few steps laterally until I was confident the beam of light was ninety degrees at the wall of the building. I glanced over my shoulder, eyeing the other laser beam pointing into trees that looked like any of the others surrounding the clearing with the hut. I marked the spot, turned my back on the candlelit window and began walking away from the house.

  Talon and Carl silently fell in step with me as we made our way to the woods. After a few minutes of walking through the mud we crossed into the tree line. I kept my eyes on the trunk I had marked with the laser, occasionally glancing behind me to make sure the house still sat behind us. So far, so good.

  The path began to grow thicker, the mud deeper, even trapping our boots, making us struggle to continue. The smell of damp rot increased, and I heard Talon snort. Then he sneezed a few times. Carl’s eyes squinted to bare slits, his tongue flicking out to taste the air as everything grew darker and gloomier with each step.

  Low growls suddenly rumbled out of the nearby foliage. “No talk, no touch, no eye contact!” I snapped at Talon and Carl. “I warned you about this.”

  They stiffened obediently, their every predatory sense urging them to ignore my demand. But they listened, shoulders tightening as fingers rested on hilts of the weapons at their hips. Thank you, Dog Whisperer, I thought to myself.

  I continued walking as if I hadn’t heard the growls, eyes latched onto the tree I had marked. The growls grew harsher, angrier, and I even heard footsteps crunching over soaked twigs, the snapping of jaws, and saw fiery yellow eyes in my peripheral vision – stalking us.

  Then a blast of hot air struck me in the face as I took the last step between me and the tree.

  The gloomy woods were gone and I stood in a sunlit clearing. Talon and Carl each sucked in a breath, spinning warily to look behind us. A shimmering wall of gloomy darkness stood behind us, like a dirty window into those rainy woods.

  Talon shared a long considering look with Carl before they both turned back to me. I grunted and walked ahead. Towards the freshly painted house – like a vision of what the water-logged hut had been when first built. Fresh paint and the smell of cut timber filled the air.

  Mallory – in his human form, rather than his natural form as Pan, the Wild God – burst from the door, eyes glinting with the promise of death. He wore no shirt, and his white-furred chest did little to conceal the slabs of muscle over his body. A thin cord hung from his neck, adorned by a lone set of pipes that rested on the tufts of his chest hair, partly concealed by his thick, well-groomed beard. Charcoal brushes of color swept back from his temples, breaking up his long white hair which was tucked back in a baby ponytail – or possibly a man bun.

  He wore jeans but no shoes, as if we had just woken him from a nap. I spotted the feather tattoo on the back of the hand he raised to shade his eyes as he looked out at us before sweeping the rest of the clearing for danger. I waved at him, not slowing. “How is he?” I asked him. “And where are Baba and Van?”

  That was when I realized that the silence was brittle, and that Mallory’s face hadn’t changed.

  He turned his back on me and walked into the house. I glanced at Talon and Carl. Without a word, they took up places on the porch, glaring out at the peaceful clearing as if expecting an ambush. I followed Mallory inside, ready for anything.

  I saw an empty bed and flinched, spinning slowly to search for its occupant.

  Mallory stood with his beefy arms folded over his chest beside a couch. I looked down to see Van Helsing sleeping, and frowned. Mallory stomped his foot hard enough for me to feel it through the wooden floor from a few feet away. Van didn’t even shift, even though the sound was enough to wake him from all but death. Mallory pointed a finger to a rocking chair in the corner of the house and I froze. Baba Yaga sat in it with an unfinished blanket on her lap, and long needles still in her hands. She had been knitting – I leaned closer, inspecting the unfinished design – a skull amidst a field of flowers. I shivered at both her decision of a blanket and at a small birdhouse on the bookshelf beside her. It had… chicken legs.

  I slowly turned to Mallory, eyes wide. “Where the living fuck is he?” I rasped, pointing back at the empty bed.

  Mallory shook his head in answer. “Gone. And I can’t get them to wake up. They are not harmed, not in danger of even being harmed, but they will not wake.”

  I swept the room, suddenly very afraid. Was something else in here? Some trap? Some spell for the unwary? Whatever had spelled them all to sleep, but had woken up the other occupant?

  Mallory spoke as if sensing my thoughts. “The danger is gone. There is no spell left. Someone did this, not something.”

  I clenched my fists in fury. “Matthias,” I snarled, my vision flashing red at the edges. “What the hell? Why? How?” We had added the camouflage, the traps… and no one but the people in this room right now had known about it. Talon and Carl had only heard the details less than ten minutes ago.

  Pan grunted. “I don’t know, but it was definitely him. I can sense Maker all over this place. But how did he find it?”

  I took a deep breath. “You sure it was him? You haven’t told anyone about the precautions? At all?” he shook his head harshly. “The how doesn’t matter right now. He did this. But why?”

  “He did say he was interested in the Knight…” Mallory added.

  “But he also said he was going away for a while. Our last meeting was… hard on him.”

  Mallory grunted. “Not hard enough. Or…” he trailed off, scratching at his chest hair absently. “Maybe hard enough to make him do this?”

  I swore. Then I began to pace, scraping together anything we had learned, which wasn’t anything at all, really. No understanding of why the Knight of the Round Table was important, or even which Knight it was. One of King Arthur’s fabled heroes, we were certain, but not which one. Or why anyone should give two shits about him.

  My eyes settled on the sleeping forms of the guards who had failed to keep the Knight safe. “You’re sure they’re okay?”

  He thought about it, finally giving me an uncertain nod. I grimaced. He sighed in annoyance. “I can’t be sure without waking them up, and I dare not wake them up until I’m sure. I think it’s temporary. He… put their magical natures to sleep. Somehow. Since they rely so heavily on that aspect of themselves, their mortal body followed suit. I still sense magic in them, so I don’t think he… removed it or anything.”

  I gasped. “Removed it! He can do that?”

  Mallory shrugged. “I’m only hypothesizing. I don’t know what he can do. He’s been alive for centuries, and spent the majority of that time in Fae. Who knows how that changed him? The Mad Hatter,” he grunted sourly, kicking at the leg of the coffee table. I didn’t see a plate of food or a drink in sight, otherwise I migh
t have thought them poisoned. Pan met my eyes. “Who can know the mind of a Tiny God? And he did tell you that the Knights were once one of his pet projects…”

  I finally glanced at the birdhouse. It had been Baba’s Familiar – a sentient house that walked around on chicken legs. It could grow to any size, and usually walked around as a hulking, cloaked monster with a bone-beaked mask like one of those Renaissance-era doctors. Now, it looked like a toy figurine of that, the size of a birdhouse.

  A wooden door on the birdhouse suddenly popped open and a wooden piece that looked like a tiny bird skull shot out as the hut erupted with sound.

  Chapter 31

  I had rolled to the side, curling up behind one of the couches with crackling white fire around each fist. “CUCKOO! CUCKOO! CUCKOO!” a chirpy voice rang out three times and then went silent for a few seconds.

  I peered over the edge of the chair, searching for Mallory. He rose up from behind the couch holding the sleeping Van Helsing so that I could only see his eyes and the top of his head. Carl and Talon burst into the hut, blades out and hunched over, prepared to slaughter.

  “CUCKOO! CUCKOO! CUCKOO!” the birdhouse rang out again.

  Carl and Talon took one sweep of the room before turning to watch Mallory and I peering over separate couches, obviously terrified of the birdhouse.

  Nothing happened.

  I slowly climbed to my feet, squinting at the birdhouse. It looked like one of those cuckoo clocks – at least the wooden piece extending out from the tiny open door did. I jumped as the birdhouse rang out with its stupid chime again, before stomping closer to glare down at it.

  A small slip of paper was pinned to the bird’s skull extending from the open door. The bird wore… a tiny fucking hat, basically confirming who was responsible.

  Matthias Temple.

  The Mad Hatter.

  But… not many would understand the significance of that tiny hat. Just those close to me. Mallory was suddenly standing beside me, frowning down at it. Before I could reach for it, a furred paw shot past my shoulder and snatched the piece of paper, shoving me down to the floor with his hip. I glared up to see Talon hunched over me protectively, as if expecting the cuckoo clock to explode behind him.

  Nothing happened. We shared a long, concerned look, and he handed the piece of paper to me. I climbed to my feet, reading it out loud. It was written in elegant calligraphy, like a carefully penned letter from hundreds of years ago. A forgotten skill these days.

  “The King is Dead. Long live the King. Much that was lost to history can be found down a rabbit hole.”

  I blinked at it, my voice echoing in the tiny hut.

  “One of these days…” I muttered, handing the paper to Mallory. The moment it left my hand, it burst into flame for a fraction of a second, so hot and fast that it didn’t even have time to burn Mallory before disappearing. It didn’t even leave any ashes in the air. The bird skull and hat crumbled to ashes and the tiny door closed on the birdhouse.

  I shivered as I wondered what damage that message had done to Baba’s Familiar. Had Matthias… surgically implanted it in there? That hadn’t been the Familiar’s head, had it?

  I studied the bodies around me, wondering if they would suddenly wake now that Matthias’ message had been delivered to its rightful recipient. They didn’t.

  I turned to Mallory. “Rabbit hole is kind of obvious…” I said.

  The skin at the corner of his eyes crinkled as he nodded. He didn’t state the obvious. That it was likely some kind of trap. “Maybe too obvious,” was all he said.

  I nodded, thinking. “Well, we were headed there next anyway. Just for a recharge before…” I waved my hand, not wanting to say it out loud. Mallory’s lips tightened and he flexed his fists. He was one of the few I had told about my plan to go to Hell. Because he knew everything about my past anyway, and even though he didn’t like it, he knew that was the only place I could get answers. From my parents.

  Because they hadn’t even revealed all their secrets to him, and they had made him promise to kill me if I became a power-hungry dictator with no impulse control.

  We needed that recharge from Fae – we needed any additional strength we could get. But the time-shift in Fae presented a problem. Because even spending an hour in Fae could take a lot of time in the real world. But an hour was all we needed, enough time for me to meditate and calm my thoughts. Wylde needed his energy drink – Fae Bull. We would just have to be fast, because we dared not risk missing Death’s escort to Hell.

  “If Matthias meant any harm, I’m sure he would have killed Van, Baba and her house. They obviously didn’t pose a threat to him…” I hoped I was right. “I’ll need you to look after these three. When they wake up they might have something else to tell us. Or… we’ll need to try and wake them up ourselves,” I added with a sigh.

  “I’ll keep them safe. Maybe take them somewhere else if I’m confident it won’t harm them.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  “This will be faster than heading back to Chateau Falco,” Mallory muttered. “At least I can do something to help.”

  He waved a hand and a shimmering curtain of hazy green light appeared before us, seeming to sparkle. Beyond that glimmer was a cavern. A familiar cavern.

  “Home sweet home,” Talon murmured.

  “Thanks,” I told Mallory, extending my hand. He gripped it with his, and we both stared down at the feather he had tattooed on the back of his hand – identical to the one I had drawn there one day as a carefree child. He’d had it permanently tattooed there as a symbol of his love for me – even knowing that he could someday be tasked to kill me. Luckily for me, we had gotten past that stage, and I didn’t have anything to fear from Mallory. I squeezed his calloused palm and let go, turning to step through the door to the Land of the Fae.

  Talon and Carl followed me without a word and the door winked shut behind us.

  I let out a breath. “Meditate. Calm down. Relax,” I reminded myself.

  A silver blur erupted out of my peripheral vision and slammed into my chest, riding me down to the ground and straddling my hips. A sweet, seductive purr tickled my ears. “I’ve missed you, my sweet,” she cooed before licking my earlobes.

  “Shiny!” Talon roared, and I heard a struggle as Carl fought to restrain him.

  “Relax!” I shouted as the body jumped off me, hissing back at Talon. “She’s a friend! Barbie, stop shining. He really hates it. Or at least stay still long enough for me to talk him down!”

  The nymphomaniac sprite nodded, stepping behind me as I began to shout at my kitty cat.

  Chapter 32

  Carl went to sit on a rock at the mouth of the cave when it became apparent that the naked silver chick meant no harm, Talon was no longer trying to kill her, and that Talon was being yelled at for attempting to do so.

  Talon still shot hateful glances at Barbie, even though he now recognized her from my first trip over here. Barbie was a silver Fae sprite that fed on sex. She was pretty cool once you got past the whole sex thing, which most couldn’t.

  I’d also kissed her once and told her I loved her, which she seemed to recall quite vividly, trying to rekindle something that had never been kindled – me. I had explained repeatedly that I did love her, but not as a physical love. No lust. A familial love. A friendship love.

  “Friends can have sex. Even some royal families have sex. I don’t understand the problem.”

  It had taken me a few minutes to get past that, and all the while Talon was losing that instinctive anger as he stared at her – sometimes agreeing with her, and sometimes baffled at her thick-headedness.

  I sat across a glowing orange stone that gave off heat. It wasn’t really a stone, but an orb of molten lava that maintained its spherical shape on its own, discharging heat. Much like a fire.

  But since we were in Fae, nothing was as mundane as simply having a fire pit.

  “Oberon is furious that you let Matthias return. And with a guest,
no less,” Barbie finally said, answering the question of why she was here, having reluctantly accepted my answer on no means no. She didn’t bother putting on clothes, though, saying they chafed at her skin.

  I shared a look with Talon. “Matthias came here? You can verify that?” I asked, careful to keep my foreknowledge to myself. I had been pretty sure Matthias’ note implied he had taken the Knight to Fae, but having verification show up at my front door the moment I arrived, and neatly wrapped up with a silver sex sprite demanding satisfaction made me uneasy.

  “Did I not just say so, Manling?” she pouted.

  “Where are they now?” I asked.

  She glanced at me, not speaking for a few moments. Then finally said, “We do not know. No one knows. That is why Oberon was so upset. He sent me here to find answers…” she said, waving a hand absently at the cave around us. “He warned me of wards, but I felt none. At least, nothing that tried to stop me.”

  I leaned forward curiously. Originally, my parents had placed wards around this hill so that anyone searching for them would not find their secret home in the cavern. But when I had last met Oberon, he had told me that the magic was fading from the place. Still strong, but not as strong. He’d made it sound like he couldn’t wait for the ward to drop so that he could explore the cave himself in my absence.

  I almost said my next thought out loud, but remembering who I was speaking to, I closed my mouth. I had kissed Barbie, told her I loved her. Perhaps that let her find the place without issue? Or maybe the ward was entirely down, now. I wasn’t concerned too much about that, because we had scrubbed the walls of all evidence that I had ever been born here. Pan had made sure that my parents hadn’t hidden any other secrets in the cave – a stash of weapons for example, since they had been so keen on robbing others and storing their stolen goods all over the worlds. Worlds, plural.