Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY THREE
“What is this?” I gasped, my fingers pressing to the bloody wound on the back of my head, shards of green crystal piercing my skin.
The man who had been Mavus jerked and thrashed, his face changing from Solomon Imai to some unknown Fae, then again and again, his body rippling as muscles shrank and expanded, wings burst from his spine then rippled away to be replaced by a spiked tail.
He began to rise out of the abyss, tendrils of darkness puncturing his spine, lifting him higher like some freakish mannequin hoisted up on a stage where only we were the audience.
The Reapers were dead, Kaiser and Bastian calling out our names as the ground continued to tremor beneath us and we fought to scramble away from the gaping edge of that terrifying chasm.
I fought to get to my feet and Bastian caught my arm, hauling me back as Mavus’s face turned pale, his body lengthening, his hair becoming white.
Kaiser had hauled Everest upright too, the four of us huddled together before the grotesquely-transforming body, more limbs and claws formed of darkness driving into his body and making him scream.
His face changed again, becoming familiar, hauling a lifetime of memories to the forefront of my mind.
“Dragor?” I breathed, staring into the hard lines of my prince’s face in utter confusion.
It wasn’t possible to cast magic like that – any Fae worth their salt knew how to protect their image from magical impersonation and there was no Fae alive who would be able to make their face appear as that of the king of Stormfell. But there was no denying who I was staring at.
Dragor yelled in pain, his height lowering a fraction but muscles expanding, and I shook my head in dismay as he became Earl Tarlord, then Mavus again, then a bald man of advanced years whose harsh expression stirred memories in the corners of my mind.
“That’s the Cardinal Reaper,” Everest croaked, her voice hoarse where she slumped against Kaiser who held her in his arms.
The man’s face and body shifted again and again and again, a roar escaping him which could only belong to the monster we’d fought so hard to deny entry into our world, the thing which was driving itself beneath his flesh, forcing its way inside him.
He jerked and screamed as those slick tendrils of darkness forced their way inside him and I leaned back against Bastian who held his sword out before us defiantly.
The man’s face and body kept shifting though the scream on his lips and horror in his eyes never changed, only rising in pitch and fear until every piece of darkness from within the abyss had forced its way inside him.
They’d become one somehow, that beast and this man – but I still didn’t understand how Mavus now wore the faces of so many others.
“We have to leave,” Bastian snarled, hauling on my arm and pushing me behind him so that I could retreat, his sword still raised between us and that…thing. “Come on,” he barked at Kaiser who tugged Everest into his arms and hurried to join us.
I wanted to argue, wanted to keep fighting. But my limbs shook with fatigue, every scrap of magic gone from my grasp, even the ether fleeing my call as if it ran from this place too, knowing something which I hadn’t quite managed to figure out yet.
But as we scrambled back towards the door, rocks slammed down from the roof and sealed us in.
“You can’t leave, lass,” Mavus called and we whirled to look back at him as he took a slow step towards us, his feet landing on the edge of the abyss, his eyes locked on Everest as they gleamed a bright yellow.
He appeared the same as he had done before plunging into that abyss but there was a darkness that clung to him now, a hidden power which haunted his steps like a lost shadow.
“What are you?” Everest breathed, pushing herself free of Kaiser’s hold so that she could stand tall in the heart of our group. “What have you done to my friend?”
Mavus grinned widely, his cheeks stretching abnormally and far too many teeth appearing at once.
“We were friends, weren’t we?” he purred, taking another step towards us and though his foot landed lightly on the stone, I felt a ripple of power pulsing through the rocks beneath our feet at his advance. “And friends help each other out of a bind.”
“A bind?” Everest asked. “Is that what you’re in?”
I eased my last dagger from my belt, my pulse settling at the feel of steel against my palm even if I had the feeling it would do me no good.
“That I am. You tried to help me but–” His words cut off in a haunting scream, his knees slamming to the floor as the bellow of a monster burst impossibly from his lungs, his eyes flashing that bright and haunting yellow again as he jerked his head back up to glare at us.
“You betrayed me!” he howled in a booming, unnatural voice which didn’t seem to be his own at all.
“I wanted to stop it from escaping!” Mavus howled at Everest, his voice his own again though it was raw and filled with pain now. “But there was never much chance of that.”
“We need to get the fuck out of here,” Kaiser hissed as Mavus began to jerk and thrash again, black, reptilian wings bursting from his spine.
“I’m out of magic,” I replied, my eyes darting around the room in hunt of some point of escape.
“We all are,” Kaiser breathed.
“There.” Bastian jerked his chin towards a dark passageway on the far side of the chamber where some of the Reapers had escaped earlier. But it was right across the echoing space, past the creature and whatever was left of Mavus now that it had forced its way inside him.
We tensed, all of us ready to run, Kaiser’s hand coiling around Everest’s in the shadows.
I turned the dagger in my grip, met Bastian’s roiling gaze for half a second, then threw it.
The monster screamed so loudly that rocks broke from the roof above us as we ran, its fury hounding our steps while we sprinted for the exit.
I led the way, Kaiser keeping Everest close behind me while Bastian guarded our backs.
The passageway was close, closer–
A wave of power slammed into us so forcefully that we were all thrown from our feet and hurled across the ground, broken shards of crystal cutting any piece of exposed skin they could find.
We landed in a heap, and I fought to scramble upright. If I was going to die here, then I would do so on my feet.
I whirled towards Mavus and flinched when I found Dragor scowling back at me, those black wings still protruding from his spine. But that wasn’t right. Dragor was a Harpy; his wings had feathers and were white.
“How are you doing that? How are you wearing his face?” I demanded furiously, my own anger at this situation all I had left because it had come to nothing!
I’d given all I was to this plan, to this fool’s hope that I might be able to do something good with my life after rotting in the bad for so long.
And this was what it came to? Us dying in this frozen hole while that monstrous thing escaped anyway and carried out its plans regardless of all we’d done to thwart it.
Dragor laughed, that cold, haunting chuckle I knew so well.
“I’m not wearing anything, little witch,” he purred, his voice, his expression, all of it so precisely him. “I own this face just like all the others. I earned it and took it and made it my own.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I spat.
“He’s an Incubus,” Bastian breathed, his arm brushing mine as he stood beside me, his silver shot eyes bright with haunted understanding.
“Ah – I see those extra few hundred years of life I gifted you weren’t for nothing then, my sweet Dragon. At least one of you can see the beauty of my truth.”
“An Incubus?” Everest hissed. “I thought they just shifted for sex – made themselves look like your most desperate desire so they could steal your magic and–”
“And what?” Dragor asked, except he wasn’t Dragor anymore, his face was changing again, his hair and complexion darkening, his eyes flashing red until Kaiser stared back at us, a grin on his lips.
The real Kaiser released a low growl of warning beside me, his grip on Everest’s arm tightening as if he thought she might launch herself at the Incubus.
“Thank you for this face by the way, Everest Arcadia,” the fake Kaiser said, offering her a smirk. “It will make it all the easier for me to get closer to the Matriarch.”
The real Kaiser broke from our group, raising his sword as he ran at the Incubus with a furious bellow but he didn’t get within ten feet of him before he was blasted back by the wild force of energy which seemed to surround Mavus – or whoever the fuck he really was.
Kaiser collided with our group and we were all knocked to the ground once more, his sword skittering away across the stone while Bastian’s arms wrapped around me protectively.
The Incubus swiped a hand over his face and as he dropped it, he was Mavus once more.
“I am sorry, lass,” he said with a voice that was at once his but also laced with the growl of the monster. “We tried, didn’t we? But this is what it is now. And I can’t have you coming back to try and stop me again.”
Power built in the chamber, the walls cracking as a howling wind blasted through the space and the Fae who had been Mavus advanced on us once more, his eyes blazing yellow as a beast peered out from the depths of his soul.
Bastian held me tighter and my heart raced in panic as I felt the wings of death flying straight towards us. We were going to die. He was going to die. And all he’d ever had from me were half-truths and chains to bind him so that he could never fully claim the freedom he so longed for.
I looked up at him with tears burning in my eyes, my hand gripping his face so that I could peer directly into his soul and nowhere else.
“I love you,” I told him, shattering every wall I’d placed between us with the admission I’d fought for so long. “And I won’t let this be your end.”