Chapter Thirty-Six
THIRTY-SIX
Eleonore hammered the steering wheel with her fist. “Le salaud dégénéré!” she spat. “Va te faire foutre, loup-garou.” She’d stopped crying hours before, but her voice was still rough from tears.
Her anger, though, burned hot as ever.
The miserable, lying, manipulative, rat fucking bastard. Le tra?tre! There weren’t enough words in any language to express her fury. God’s righteous ovaries, she wanted to gut Ben.
How had she been so stupid? So blind to his true nature?
I don’t want to lose you , he’d said. The villain had outright told her his motivations, and for once she’d taken something metaphorically rather than literally.
The ironic part was that he wouldn’t have lost her if he’d let her break the spell. She would have chosen to be with him, using her new, unlimited free will to start a life at his side.
She’d loved him.
Eleonore screeched and hit the steering wheel again. Some treasures were best known after their loss, and this was one of them. Yes, she’d felt a large, overwhelming feeling for him. Yes, the intensity of it had startled her. But she hadn’t put the word to it until it was gone. There was a shelf in her heart where her love for him had rested, and now that it had been stolen like an artifact from a museum, all that was left was the display tag.
Eleonore loves Ben, circa always.
Circa six hours ago, she told herself. A fleeting thing. A century from now when she was once more chained in eternal servitude to the Witch in the Woods, she’d look back at that love with the detachment of viewing a photograph in a textbook.
Except part of her feared that wasn’t true at all.
The trees were a green-and-brown blur on either side, the road winding between them aimlessly. An inefficient road, this one, carved to protect the natural curves of the landscape rather than blasting through them. There was probably a speed limit to help inexperienced drivers navigate safely, but Eleonore had excellent reaction time and no use for limitations. Her itinerary had narrowed to a few key objectives.
First: Retrieve her weaponry, her PADD, and the remainder of her belongings from Ben’s house.
Second: Torch said house.
Third:
…
…
…
All right, she didn’t know the third yet. Wrapping Ben in his entrails like a Christmas tree bedecked in tinsel would have been the obvious choice, but even if the curse had allowed her to hurt him, her mind couldn’t jump to that step.
Eleonore was tired of killing. Would never have killed another person after Isobel if she’d been allowed her revenge.
But there was another reason why she couldn’t disembowel Ben, she recognized bitterly. It was that stupid love. Not missing from its shelf after all, just smashed with a hammer. Shards of beautiful, delicate feeling.
Eleonore loves Ben, circa now and for a regrettably unforeseeable future.
Lights appeared in her rearview mirror, startling her. Eleonore eyed them, wondering what creature was pursuing her. A dragon of some sort, one that breathed pulses of red-and-blue fire in rapid succession?
A ululating melody started from the beast, obnoxiously shrill. Then the creature drew closer, and Eleonore realized it was a car. A car with something seriously wrong with it, given all the blinking lights and shrieking. Her brows knit together as her eyes darted between the road and the mirror. Was the driver in distress?
Eleonore sighed. Whatever was wrong with it, it was obnoxious. She spotted a wide patch of ground beside the road ahead and pulled aside to let the car pass. To her annoyance, it pulled in behind her. Though it stopped, the lights stayed on, casting red-and-blue flashes against the trees like a spell that had malfunctioned.
Eleonore unclipped her seat belt and stepped out. “What’s wrong with your car?” she shouted.
A man in a navy blue outfit exited the car, pointing—was that a gun ?—at her. “Get back in the vehicle!”
Eleonore eyed the gun with distaste. What a classless weapon. If this man had any courage, he’d fight her with his fists. “If you are looking for assistance, this is a poor way to go about it.”
The man squinted at her. “I said, get back in the vehicle!” His voice was less certain now, though.
She spread her arms. “And what will I do there?” she asked, moving from annoyed to downright furious. Not that it was a big step, since she was simmering with rage up to her eyeballs. “Whatever ails your car will still be a problem, and you will have accomplished nothing but annoying me.”
“Whatever ails my—what?”
She gestured at the vehicle. “The curse. Or mechanical malfunction. Whatever is causing that obnoxious flickering.”
The man’s gun wavered. He cleared his throat. “Um…how old are you?”
What a bizarre person. “Biologically or temporally?” Eleonore asked.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” The man pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “Let me guess. Immortal?”
She failed to see how that signified. “Not precisely. A foul witch imprisoned me in a crystal six hundred years ago, yoking my free will to her commands, and—”
“Right,” he said, cutting her off. That would have earned him a very mean hiss and perhaps some fangs in his throat if he hadn’t lowered the gun. “I’m a police officer.”
Eleonore eyed him up and down. She hadn’t heard many good things about modern policing. “Are you looking for a criminal? And if so, why are you antagonizing me?”
“Because you were speeding.”
“So?”
He looked at her like the answer was obvious. “You were going forty miles an hour above the speed limit.”
Apparently she had misunderstood the point of speed limits. “I thought that was a guideline for bad drivers.”
“No, it’s a law. Which you broke.” When Eleonore stared at him, he elaborated. “Which makes you a criminal.”
“Putain de bordel de merde,” Eleonore exclaimed. “How pathetic is this time? You ought to be wrangling murderous ghouls or saving cities under siege from the forces of darkness. Instead you care that I was driving too fast ? Do you have any idea how fast I can run?”
The gun came back up at that. Easily alarmed, this police officer. Her respect for the profession diminished further. “I’m giving you leeway because you’re an immortal and out of touch—”
“I am not out of touch!” she exclaimed. “I have researched many things on my PADD.”
“But,” he continued, sounding for all the world like she was being the obnoxious one, “you need to get back in the vehicle. That’s the appropriate thing to do at a traffic stop. Then I will approach your window and ask for your driver’s license and registration—”
“A license and registration?” she interrupted. “Do you tag drivers like bears to keep track of them?” She’d seen a documentary at Ben’s place and had found it concerning that even wild animals were subjected to this time’s obsession with surveillance.
“Let me guess,” the police officer said flatly. “You don’t have a license.”
This man was wasting her time and ruining her plan. Even if she only had two steps in said plan, those steps mattered. Her temper reached its limit. “Here’s your license,” she said, bending her arm at a right angle and slapping her other hand against her bicep. In case he was unfamiliar with the bras d’honneur, she followed it up by extending both middle fingers.
The police officer started approaching. “That’s it. You are officially—”
A red-haired blur dropped from the tree overhead, tackling him into the dirt before clubbing him over the head with the butt of a sword. “Unconscious,” the demoness Lilith said. She hopped to her feet, dusting off her pants. “Lucifer, I hate police officers.”
Eleonore blinked. That was…unexpected.
Lilith wore pirate garb with a green sash, and her hair was wild and tangled around her horns. She sheathed her sword, then stepped over the police officer. “I also hate lurking in trees for hours waiting for a certain SUV to pass, so you owe me an apology.”
“I—what?” Eleonore asked.
“Come on,” Lilith said, drawing a shimmering, flame-edged portal in the air. She stepped through, disappearing into nothing.
Well, what else was she going to do? Mystified but curious, Eleonore followed.
They emerged in the demon plane, and Eleonore barely had time to take in the crowded streets of a medieval-looking city before Lilith drew another portal and yanked her through.
This time they stood outside Ben’s house back on Earth. Eleonore’s heart jolted before tumbling into a frantic rhythm. She wasn’t prepared to face him yet.
Then reason returned. Fool , she told herself. There was no way Ben was here already.
“Look,” Lilith said, pointing at the garage door.
A white bedsheet had been duct-taped to it. It was covered in black paint.
the witch was casting a spell. i’m so sorry.
Eleonore narrowed her eyes, trying to determine what that was and why Lilith had brought her here. “Who wrote that?”
“Your werewolf did.”
She scoffed. “There’s no way.” She’d left him with no car—he ought to be hiking tragically through the woods for days on end while Eleonore retrieved her weapons, destroyed his house, and embarked on her unknown third step.
“He did write it,” Lilith said. “Since a certain beautiful, infinitely wise and far-too-patient demoness portaled him here ahead of you.”
“You brought him here?” Eleonore felt illogically betrayed. It wasn’t like she even knew the demoness past a few bizarre interactions and one shared crouch behind a newspaper box.
Lilith was studying the bedsheet with hands on hips. “A bit pathetic as grand gestures go, don’t you think?”
Eleonore didn’t know what Lilith meant by a grand gesture, but she knew bullshit when she saw it. “Does Ben think I’ll actually believe that?” she asked, pointing at the sheet and its messy apology. “I was a second away from breaking the curse when he ordered me away. I would have heard the witch chanting or seen her drawing runes.”
“I don’t think he’s a very good liar,” Lilith said.
“Exactly. This is a pathetic attempt to excuse his actions.”
“Not that,” Lilith said, flapping a hand at the sheet. “He was crying all over the car and moaning about your loss for an eternity. I’m pretty sure he meant it.”
“The car? What car?” Eleonore wasn’t following the demoness’s thought process.
“Were you looking at the witch’s hands when you were about to break the spell?” Lilith asked, ignoring the question. “ Both of them?”
“I—” Of course she had been, Eleonore wanted to say. She always paid close attention to her opponents. But when she thought back, all she remembered was the knife in Isobel’s right hand and a flood of hate, fear, and triumph.
A frustrated or angry opponent is more likely to make errors.
Eleonore had said that to Gigi about Cynthia Cunnington. It was one of the first lessons a warrior learned—how to use an enemy’s emotional state against them.
She’d been myopic in her fury. She had no idea what Isobel’s left hand had been up to.
“Merde,” Eleonore said.
“Apparently the witch was going to hurt you,” Lilith said, studying her sharp black nails. “But I understand if you still want to chop the wolf into dozens of pieces and scatter them to the ends of the earth.”
Eleonore was barely absorbing the demoness’s words. She stared at the bedsheet undulating in the wind.
Could it be? Had Isobel been playing a trick on her? She’d always been so strange about Eleonore—seeing her as a friend or a child sometimes, as a tool other times. She was as unpredictable as Lilith or any other immortal who had lived too long to think normally anymore.
Her remorse had seemed so real, and Eleonore had been so desperate to be done with her eternal servitude that she’d accepted Isobel’s insanity as the explanation for that remorse. She hadn’t paused to think before acting.
Ben was the thinker of the two of them. Ben was the one who paused.
“I didn’t hear her recite a spell, though,” Eleonore said, feeling like the ground was shifting beneath her. Even if she hadn’t seen the witch marking runes with her left hand, she ought to have heard a spell.
“Well, in that case,” Lilith said, “off with the wolf’s head!” She unsheathed the sword at her back and began marching toward the house.
Alarm spiked. “No, wait!” Eleonore said, speeding to Lilith’s side to drag her away from the house. “Let me think.”
“Great,” Lilith said. “Do it on your time, not mine.” She grabbed Eleonore’s arm, drew another portal, and yanked her into the demon plane and then back to the side of the road where the SUV remained with its door open and lights on.
“Why are we back here?” Eleonore asked, staggering when Lilith released her. She’d been so close to confronting Ben and hearing the truth from his mouth! “I’m still a day’s drive from Glimmer Falls.”
“Exactly,” Lilith said. “Do you have a phone?”
“No.”
The demoness made an annoyed sound. “Here’s a map of the area around Fable Farms,” she said, drawing in the mud with her sword. “Kai has a spare room you can stay in tonight.”
Eleonore blinked at the jagged lines. “Why? You could have left me at Ben’s place—”
The demoness drew another portal. “Bye!”
Eleonore stared blankly at the spot where Lilith had just vanished.
What the hell ?
She swore and slammed her fist into a tree, then regretted it immediately. She shook her hand out, frowning at the broken skin where bark had scraped it. Foolish to damage her dominant hand before a confrontation.
But what kind of confrontation would it be?
Well, she had all of today and much of tomorrow on the road to think about that, and she’d spent far too much of her life acting before thinking. Eleonore trudged to the car, girding herself for some prolonged ruminating.