Chapter Forty-One
I looked around, searching for a way out, but all I saw were Horrors of every type and description, and looking worse now than they had up top. The close-up view, because they were maybe forty yards away, allowed me to see the damage the fight had done to them. Some were relatively unscathed—I assumed those who’d been at the back of the pack—but the rest. . .
Half of the ones we’d been fighting were missing limbs or had acid scars or burns sketching patterns across their bodies, and a cloud of blood was staining the water on their side. But they were still deadly, and worse, they were angry. Now, it was personal.
But the ones arrayed behind us were undamaged, having never been in the fight, and they looked eager for a taste of battle. Or more likely of our flesh. Yet, for some reason, neither group was advancing.
Huge tails and other appendages I didn’t have names for were whipping up the water behind them in their excitement, causing ripples I could feel from here. But the creatures themselves weren’t getting any closer, even though we couldn’t do anything to stop them. Including Bodil, whose ring light had finally flickered out.
“What is it?” I asked Pritkin. “What’s stopping them?”
But he didn’t know any more than I did. Until a few huge specimens moved aside, and someone appeared in the gap between them, but it wasn’t Faerie. It wasn’t anyone I’d ever expected to see again.
“Feltin,” Pritkin breathed, and the name in his mouth sounded like a curse.
The blond surfer dude was looking a little rougher than the last time I’d seen him. Instead of a Liberace-esque robe, beaded and spangled within an inch of its life, he had on scarred leather armor, something like Bodil’s if it had been worn continuously for a few decades. His long hair, floating like a cloud around his head, was also longer and shaggier than before and had white streaks among the blond, and his expression . . .
Wasn’t entirely sane.
“Surprised to see me?” he asked, his voice echoing underwater as Bodil’s had done, but powerfully enough that there was no trouble understanding him.
“Moderately,” Pritkin replied as Feltin was looking only at him. Until his eyes slid over to me, and his expression turned even more mad.
“Still have your little whore, I see. Thought she’d have been killed by now as the monsters are drawn to magic. But this makes things easier.”
“Makes what easier?” Pritkin asked, sounding absurdly unruffled under the circumstances. Which wasn’t a sign of calm but rather his bad-things-have-hit-the-fan voice, only Feltin didn’t know that. Strangely, it seemed to reassure him slightly.
The nervous, jittery energy he’d been giving off, which seemed to have whipped up his troops, calmed. He even managed a smile, although it was terrible. Mad and unpractised, as if he’d forgotten how.
“You’re fond of the bitch,” he said casually. “If you want to save her life, give yourself up without a fight, and she and the rest can go.
“The gods will deal with them soon enough.”
Yeah, sure, I thought, staring at the ranks of his army, which were fanning out to encircle us better. And I do mean encircle, as we weren’t on land, where an army would only have four directions to come at us. We were in the water, and they were taking full advantage of that, trapping us in an ugly, snarling, savage ball of hate.
In seconds, we found ourselves in a 360-degree Thunderdome, and I didn’t see a gap big enough for a mouse to slip through unnoticed.
Nobody was getting out of here.
“Give myself up?” Pritkin repeated, and again, there was no emotion in his voice, just vague curiosity. While behind him, something sparked in the water.
I wasn’t sure I’d even seen it because it was so faint. But it was dark down here except for the glowing eyes of some of the creatures and ?subrand’s pale moonlight. And Pritkin’s body blocked most of that.
Then it came again, and I was looking right at it. Blue sparks lit the darkness for a moment, dim and barely staining the water, like the ones that had briefly appeared up top when he was summoning his mother’s old spell. He was still trying to get us out of here while keeping the madman talking.
It made me feel a surge of something powerful, gratitude maybe, or affection because Pritkin would struggle to the end. But not hope because, just as before, it wasn’t working. And the fact that Pritkin knew that and was still trying said everything about how much trouble we were in.
As if I needed it, I thought, staring at the growling, hissing, and screeching mob. The sounds echoed horribly underwater, to the point that I thought the sheer vibrations, hitting us from all sides, might tear us apart before their claws could. But then Feltin raised a hand, and they suddenly quieted down.
“Why?” Pritkin said. “Aren’t we past all that? The challenge is over. You won—”
“Won!” Feltin choked on what might have been a laugh or a snarl. “Won!” he repeated, raising his arms and staring around. “Yes, it looks like it, doesn’t it? Behold my glorious victory!”
“Be that as it may, the contest has ended, and we lost. Why go through all this to pursue us?”
“I have orders!” Feltin spat. “Zeus wants you. He said ‘at whatever cost’ and would have come himself, but he doesn’t dare. That so-called goddess haunts this place, and he’s afraid of her.”
“So he sent his lackey boy instead?” Alphonse said, and shit.
Alphonse didn’t seem to understand that this wasn’t a conversation. This was Feltin trying to extricate Pritkin without risking the horde tearing him apart while they savaged us. Anything could happen in battle, and he didn’t want to further jeopardize his god’s prize.
But why was he a prize? I suddenly wondered. And why was Zeus afraid of Faerie if he already had Pritkin’s ability in his arsenal? Pritkin glanced at me, and I stared back, my eyes huge.
He isn’t dead , I mouthed, thinking of Pritkin’s incubus. But he also wasn’t here, so what had happened to him after we left? I didn’t know and didn’t ask because shock after shock kept hitting me before I could absorb the last, the way Faerie always did.
Only this latest one . . . was literal.
Something shivered across the world, something deep and foundational and coming from all around us. It could have been anything. It could have been a mild earthquake or even my imagination, but if it was the latter, Bodil was imagining things, too.
She looked at me wildly, both of us having been there to hear Faerie’s last words. And while I doubted that the Horrors had heard her or understood if they had, they didn’t like that feeling. They didn’t like it at all.
Pandemonium broke out without warning, to the point that they were screeching and fighting again, and some were about to make a break for it. Before Feltin gave a roar, fisted his hands in reins he wasn’t holding, and pulled them back. And it worked.
It looked like he had a mental grip on the creatures the same way he probably had the Kraken when he sent it to attack us. A gift from the gods to their servant or part of his natural mental gifts, I didn’t know, but he and the horde were acting almost as one entity. And it didn’t seem that the Horrors could break his grip because they stayed in place, although the agitation factor had ramped up to eleven.
“Make your choice, demon!” Feltin shouted, still battling with them.
“What choice?” Pritkin bellowed back. “Zeus wants me badly enough to spare all these?” he spread his hands and looked around at us. “That sounds . . . unlikely.”
The last word dripped with sarcasm, but Feltin didn’t react to it, maybe because he was already reacting to something else.
“He always has,” the gorgeous blond all but spat it. “I gave him everything—Nimue, a kingdom, an army— everything! Yet he wanted more. Wouldn’t let me just kill you both and be done with it. Oh, no. He must have his prize.”
“You betrayed her,” that was Bodil, who I guessed hadn’t figured things out until now. “You betrayed Nimue to her death!”
“Not her death,” Feltin scowled. “They didn’t send enough people for that. Even after I told them—but it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter?” Bodil’s eyes were flames and bright enough that Feltin saw them across the murky water.
“Oh, don’t act so grief-ridden,” he sneered. “I was there for the shouting matches you two had. You and she never got on—”
“But I didn’t kill her!”
“No, but you should have . And you should thank me for it. She was going to fight, did you know that? Going to ally with Caedmon to try to take Aeslinn down. I heard her talking about it with his ambassadors one night and knew she was serious. She hated that bastard; their marriage was a nightmare, and he let her hang out to dry afterward. She should have never even given them an audience, but there they were, drinking tea like old friends!
“I knew then that something had to be done.”
“So you betrayed all of us,” Bodil said, and unlike Pritkin, there was no lack of emotion in her voice. If fury and loathing had a tone, she’d managed to find it.
It enraged Feltin, who darted forward, dragging his horde of Horrors along like a vicious train. Until he caught himself and paused, maybe thirty yards out now, looking shocked for some reason. As if he hadn’t even realized he’d moved.
Then he laughed, despite being underwater and without the bubble most of us were using.
“That was good,” he told her. “You almost had me. But I know better than to get anywhere near your clutches, Lady Bodil.” He sketched her a bow, and some of the Horrors actually bowed along with him, including a huge, scaled monster like something resurrected from the primordial ooze, who nonetheless put a clawed hand on his chest and bent over slightly.
I wondered if I was going mad.
“And for the record,” he added, “I saved you—or I tried. The gods were returning, whether we liked it or not, and the only choice was between dying uselessly or joining the winning side. I chose the latter, and because great Nimue was too idiotic to see it, I chose for all of us.
“And I made a good deal, a survivable deal, do you understand? Give them Nimue and put our army under Aeslinn’s control once I assumed power, and no part of what was to come would touch us—”
“You call this no part?” Bodil hissed. “They destroyed us!”
“No! She destroyed us!” he screeched, pointing at me. “I had the deal, and Zeus even modified it once the half-demon showed up for the Challenge. Give him over, and even the army could stand down. We could stay neutral. We could live !
“But the bitch ruined everything! When she vanished with the god’s prize, he was furious! He blamed me, even though I had done all that he asked. He ensured that we were one of the first attacked when the Black Day came, and I could do nothing to stop it, even though I went to beg for forgiveness personally.”
“How?” Pritkin said. “We heard that you went to Earth. How could you have seen him?”
I blinked at him, impressed. I was finding it hard to think at all except about the one revelation I’d managed to hold onto through all this. But he was fishing for information. Now, when we were staring down the gullets of the army about to eat us!
But it didn’t work because Feltin didn’t know anything. “He and Aeslinn had gone to Earth to prepare for whatever happened. I found them there, much good that it did me. And it’s of no importance now.
“Nothing is, except that you make a choice. Which is more than the rest of us were ever given. More than me.”
“You made your choice,” Bodil snarled. She’d been so calm earlier when the rest of us were losing our shit, but she seemed to have reached tilt. Pritkin had the right idea about how to deal with Feltin, but she couldn’t emulate him. Not now.
And now was all we had.
But it didn’t matter because Feltin was mad. Seeing his machinations destroy his world had broken his mind, or maybe Aeslinn and his godly rider had done that. But he was muttering to himself now, and his creatures were becoming increasingly agitated.
“His control is slipping,” Pritkin told me, his voice low. “And when it goes—” He didn’t have to finish that. “Go with Bodil when I tell you,” he said. “Go fast.”
“Go where?” I said as Feltin’s creatures lunged for us, and he had to drag them back again. “They’re everywhere!”
“I’m going to charge Feltin. He’s controlling these things. If I can take him out—”
“He’s too far away!”
“—it may throw them into confusion—”
“And get you killed in the process!”
“—and give the two of you a moment to slip away—”
“Now, who’s trying to convince himself?” I said, furious.
“I can’t watch you die!” The green eyes were wild. “Don’t ask me to watch you die!”
“I’m not. I’m asking you to stay with me and keep me with you. Partners , remember?” And I held out a hand.
I didn’t know if he’d take it. He was a stubborn man, and this whole hellish experience had asked him to grow faster and in ways that many people couldn’t, bringing up long-buried things from his past and introducing horrible new twists. Most people would have buckled under its weight or folded at the terror of where we were now.
Most people weren’t John Pritkin.
He took my hand, and the eyes were still fierce, but the grip was strong.
And then Feltin was back, only . . . not entirely.
It was starting to look like the symbiosis between him and his allies went both ways, as their agitation was leaking through to him. They didn’t want to talk; they wanted to tear, to rend, to taste blood in their mouths, and to visit dire retribution on the people who had hurt them and failed to die as proper prey should. They wanted to win , and we were right there —
It affected their master, who had his own grievances with more than one of us.
“Didn’t have a choice,” Feltin said, staring at me again. “ She did. She could have stayed away, let things run their course, let us be . I had it all planned out. You were never going to win; wouldn’t have had a single point. All kinds of ways to make sure of that, and I’d used them all. But then she showed up, and I immediately knew it was over.
“Know the type. Nimue was the same. Never stop; no, no, they never stop . The gods keep going and going until they win or die, but she wouldn’t die . And neither would you.”
His eyes shifted to Pritkin. “Zeus said I can’t kill you. Said he wants you for himself. Threatened my life if I don’t bring you back.”
He laughed again, and it was insane and furious and somehow strangely tragic, all at the same time. “My life ,” he sneered, followed by a word I didn’t know and that my translator wouldn’t help with. “Well, he can have it or what’s left of it! Which was nothing after you came. And her. And him . But I can’t kill him, can I, no matter how much he deserves it—”
“Shit,” Pritkin said.
“—but two out of three will have to—” Feltin cut off abruptly, but not because he was finished, but because—
“Shit!” I said, staring at the bloody trident suddenly sticking through Feltin’s chest. And I do mean all the way through, as the entire three-pronged head was visible, along with a cloud of what must have been most of the blood in his body.
He died with his mouth open, ready to pronounce our doom, and I didn’t understand anything. I thought at first that one of the Horrors must have done it in retaliation for him being ready to betray their god. But they didn’t use weapons like that.
And then I remembered who did.
“Oh,” I said as three things happened at once. The Horrors were released from Feltin’s control and immediately came at us; a very pissed-off group of Margygr descended on them, coming out of nowhere with weapons flashing; and another rumble, harder than the last, tore through the water, throwing everyone into everyone else.
I’d never experienced anything like an earthquake at sea. And I wasn’t sure I was experiencing one now. But something was happening, something that felt like being in a snow globe that was being violently shaken, only without the snow.
And with a lot of terrifying monsters, one of which had kept his eyes on the prize and came churning through the water at us despite everything. And was blasted out of existence before I even got a good look at it by something that looked a lot like wand fire. Maybe because it was, I realized, as Enid, with the tail she claimed not to have, came shooting up and grabbed me.
And began babbling something I couldn’t make out because all hell had just broken loose.
“What?” I yelled and was jerked within an inch of her suddenly much flatter nose.
“They’re going to kill us all!”
“I know! The Horrors aren’t under Feltin’s control anymore—”
“No, not the Horrors! The Margygr ! I went to them for help, but . . .”
“What?” I stared around. “They’re not rescuing us?”
“They’re not rescuing us,” Alphonse said, grabbing a trident all of an inch from my nose. And then seizing the guy who held it and introducing them to each other repeatedly before glaring back at Enid and I. “Don’t just float there. Run !”