Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A Reaper, a Harbinger, and an Acolyte walk into a bar…
Ok, it’s the receiving room of a mansion as sprawling and ridiculous as my future in-laws’ place. Still, the butler serves us drinks before leaving us alone to wait for Gregory and Hassan to join us.
When I try to bring my drink to my lips, the ward stops me. I glare at the tumbler and sit it down, shooting Fox a meaningful look. Fox pours my drink into his tumbler and then takes Bellamy’s as well, scents it, and chugs all of it. “It’s just arsenic,” he explains.
I level my most deadpan expression at him.
No need to waste perfectly good liquor.
“Some of us aren’t immune to poison and death,” Bellamy mutters, stepping away from the poisoned tumblers.
“Yet,” Fox replies. “We’ll get you caught up on your immunizations.”
I drop my jaw at Fox.
You’re going to kill our son?
His eyes light up with laughter. “Multiple times.”
“How exactly is that supposed to work? I’m not immortal. Not without Romily’s magic.”
Papa.
Bellamy doesn’t respond.
Neither does Fox.
The stalemate lasts a whole minute before Bellamy capitulates to fate. “Not without Papa’s magic.”
Fox answers immediately. “My fathers will give you both immortality when we decide to retire.”
Which ones? Or all of them?
“Omp and Pater. Omp could do it alone, but he would need the council’s approval to do it. With Pater, it’s a family matter that the council can’t control.”
“You’re going to ask your parents to make me immortal?” Bellamy rasps out, bringing my scrutiny to his face because he’s clearly gotten emotional about this.
“Yes,” Fox confirms, watching our boy as intensely as I am.
Bellamy swallows a couple of times, white-knuckling the handle of his gun case. He looks between us before surrender takes over his features and he looks at the wall somewhere behind us. “Thank you.”
Fox and I exchange a glance, but he doesn’t really get it and I do; it’s hard not to get emotional when someone offers you unconditional acceptance. In a private message to him, I let him know I’ll explain later, then switch back to the group chat between the three of us.
Since they poisoned us, you think maybe they’re not going to show up?
“They don’t expect us to die. They just can’t help themselves,” Bellamy sighs, regaining his composure.
A few minutes later, Gregory and Hassan prove him right by showing up. Hassan looks pissed, while Gregory just looks suspicious.
“The council sent you?” Gregory demands, standing with his arms crossed and Hassan at his back.
“What happened?” Fox questions, ignoring his greeting.
Gregory scowls at him, but honestly the guy is so innocently pretty it just makes him look like an angry toddler. “Someone broke through the ward around our bedroom, hit us with a paralytic spell, and grabbed Santanos. They teleported out.”
“Do you have a strong projector?” Fox asks, pouring more of the arsenic liquor (which smells like almonds, by the way—do you even know how awful it is that my favorite coffee flavor could get poisoned and I would never know it?) into his tumbler.
Hassan and Gregory both watch him imbibe, wide eyed, but say nothing about the arsenic.
Fox wipes his mouth, daring them with a blank mask to comment.
Gregory finds his voice first, which is fine since he seems to be the representative of the two anyway. “Uh, a projector? Yeah. We have a couple in house.”
“Hassan, go get them, bring them to us in the room Santanos disappeared from. Gregory, lead us there,” Fox orders, and whew, is it hot in here? That sexy commanding voice makes me want to find out what he sounds like giving orders in bed. Or taking them. Damn, that would be hot as hell.
I give Fox a very suggestive look, fanning myself because he should know he’s hotter than the Fourth of July.
Fox flashes me a tiny smirk but has to wait on any real reaction when Gregory puffs up at his commands.
“What? You don’t trust our eyewitness accounts? We told you everything.”
Bellamy just fucking moves . One second he’s standing in a half circle with me and Fox, and the next he’s got Hassan pinned to the wall with the edge of a machete pressed up against Hassan’s Adam’s Apple.
“I think it would behoove everyone under Santanos’ command to just follow the orders of the men sent here to find him.
You requested Annette’s help; you were sent the most capable team.
We could be finding the missing cherubs, we all would rather be finding those cute little fuckers, but we’re here instead.
Get the projectors, take us to your room, and let us get to work.
And Gregory, unless we ask you a question, keep your damn mouth shut or I will occupy it with less courtesy than Santanos affords you. Understand?”
“Traitor,” Gregory hisses.
And Bellamy slices Hassan’s neck open.
Fuckityshitbitch.
Gregory gurgles as Hassan hits his knees, pressing his hands to his neck.
Bellamy swings his knife over to Gregory, putting the blade against his neck.
“Did you think that a Harbinger claiming me would change my capacity for violence? Especially when that Harbinger made me the Acolyte of Arlington Fox, the Blackblade of Paris? Get the fucking projectors and take us to your room.”
“You cut his throat!” Gregory cries, twitching to go to Hassan.
“Yes, I did. And if you cooperate instead of wasting time, he will only have a nice little scar to show for it. Shall we get on with this so you can administer first aid?”
Wow, Bellamy in professional assassin mode is scarily competent. He’s totally going to end up being Annette’s favorite minion. I’m not even jealous; I’m just really fucking proud of my boy.
Gregory whines and complains the whole time, but he also makes a couple of calls for people to meet him in the “master’s bedroom” and leads us up to the third floor to a grandiose bedroom with a four poster platform bed big enough to fit fifteen people on it.
It doesn’t even take up a quarter of the room, which is nicely appointed even if the theme is torture—I mean sex.
There’s a St. Andrew’s Cross, so I was probably right the first time.
Two people join us, a dragon lady with red scales, a long serpent tail, and green hair—she looks like a Christmas tree, and like someone who would eviscerate anyone stupid enough to say that aloud—and a beautiful young man with yellow eyes and orange hair.
I take up space holding up a wall while Fox starts instructing the minions.
“I want to see what happened physically first. Then show me what happened magically.”
“Hurry up! Don’t dawdle!” Gregory barks before either of the two minions can even blink.
The dragon lady hisses at him. “Go away, cocksucker,” she rasps, voice brittle and charred like she’s spent her entire life smoking.
“Don’t you talk to me—”
“Out,” Bellamy cuts him off, shoving him out the door. “Go tend Hassan.”
Gregory jumps like he’s been shocked by a cattle prod and runs out.
The dragon lady glares at Bellamy for a minute before turning to Fox. “I’m Calssandr of Agenamon, this is my apprentice Haigan Leafling.”
Fox dips his chin in acknowledgment. “Are you here of your own accord or a slave?”
Calssandr scoffs. “Not even the prince of darkness can enslave a Draconian.”
“But the Avatar of Evil may,” Fox comments.
Calssandr grunts at that. “I’m here at the council’s request.” She waves a clawed hand at Haigan. “Project the physical.”
Haigan nods and his smile brightens as he turns toward the center of the room and starts chanting under his breath.
In a few moments, the room dims and the translucent forms of Gregory, Hassan, and Santanos appear on the bed.
They’re cuddled close, one bodyguard on each side of Santanos.
He looks so sweetly innocent in his sleep, young and pretty.
A few seconds later, a man pops into the room, masked like a ninja.
His appearance disturbs all three men, and they’re up before the masked man throws a vial of liquid over them.
Immediately, Gregory and Hassan freeze in place.
Santanos says something, rolling off the bed to his feet, but this projection of the events is only visual, and I don't read lips, so I have no idea what he says. Then the masked man reaches out and just grabs Santanos. The shock on the Avatar’s face reflects my own; the attacker got past his ward.
The masked man draws a line in the air and reality splits open behind Santanos. Without any ado, the masked man pushes Santanos backwards through the portal and follows him through. The portal closes and Gregory and Hassan come back to life.
“Now the magic,” Fox urges, and we watch the whole thing again, this time with neon colors just fucking everywhere.
The bedroom walls are bright orange, pink, and red, and then those colors blink out.
Black smoke forms out of nowhere and the man pops into it.
The liquid in the vial is bright blue. The words Santanos speaks fill the air with puce, and when the man breaches Santanos’ ward, which flares blindingly bright white, he breaks it with a spear of steel gray that draws the white into itself.
The portal he opens is black as pitch, and when he closes it, the black of the portal and the blue of the liquid in the vial disappear.
The orange, pink, and red ward around the room doesn’t reappear once he’s gone.
We all stare in mute horror at what we just witnessed. The dude broke Santanos’ ward.
Godfuckingdammit. Someone knows how to break the council’s wards.