Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
Ifelt empty as we walked down the driveway of the Professor's house. Wrung out, like a wet towel before it was hung up to dry. Donovan walked beside me, close, but not touching. He seemed to sense how delicate I felt, as if I would bruise if someone even bumped me.
My phone buzzed. I checked the screen. Unknown number. I answered. “Hello?”
“Susie Bean? Is that you, darlin’?”
I stammered for a moment. “Dad?”
“Too right it is. How are you, little bean? It’s been a while.”
Donovan, walking slowly next to me, raised an eyebrow.
I grimaced at him. “Too long, Dad. It’s been too long.
I guess you got my message.” I’d made a flurry of calls to both my mother and my father as soon as I realized that Donovan and his company weren’t hallucinations, but neither of them had answered.
My mother was on a spiritual journey somewhere in Cambodia. I had no idea where my dad was.
“What message?”
“I left a voicemail for you.”
“You know me, darl. Can’t keep a phone on me to save my own life. What was the message about?”
“Er… where are you?”
“Still in Perth. We’re heading down the mines right now, in fact. Thought I better give you a quick call before I lose cell reception.”
“I had something to ask you, but now might not be a good time.” Not if he was on a bus filled with other miners.
“Now or never, Susie Bean,” my dad said cheerfully. “Once we get to the Pilbangabanga, we’re going to lose reception.”
I glanced at Donovan and realized he had tensed. No longer walking with me, he’d shifted into a new gait, stalking, eyes flashing, poised to strike, listening carefully.
“I wanted to ask you about your heritage,” I said into the phone, dropping my voice to a whisper.
Dad hesitated. The phone line crackled. “Oh.”
A high, reedy cry echoed through the night. The air around me prickled.
“Chosen.” Donovan put his hand on my arm, stopping me in my tracks. Every line in his body was taut and vibrating with tension. We were just inside the warded gates; the odd blue glow of the ward shimmered in front of me. “Stay here.”
I shifted uncomfortably, not wanting him to leave me, but I needed to speak to my dad right now. It might be months before I got hold of him again. Okay, I mouthed.
Donovan flexed his huge shoulders, shrugging off his jacket, and pulled an enormous sword out of nowhere. His eyes glinted emerald in the dim light. He froze for one moment, listening carefully, then stalked forward, out of the gates, past the ward, into the dark, leafy street outside.
“Okay, love,” my dad finally said. “What did you want to know?”
A sudden urge to throw a tantrum poked at me. “Were you ever going to tell me that you’re not exactly human?”
He chuckled nervously. “I did, love, I did. You remember what your mum used to call me? A devil, an imp, a wicked little pixie, a leprechaun, a yowie, a little bloodsucking vampire.”
“I thought most of them were cute nicknames,” I hissed. “I didn’t know you were being serious. How was I to know that she was listing your ancestors?”
“Well…” he hesitated. “Your mum didn’t want you dwelling on it all, so she never wanted to talk about it. She’s a little mix of things as well, just like me. Mostly from the Upper World, though, so she was always a little embarrassed about falling for a handsome rogue like me.”
I slapped myself in the forehead with my palm. Now I knew where I got my penchant for falling for untrustworthy heartbreakers. My own mother had done the same thing.
“Your mum was already uncomfortable about being a mix. Her granny and grandad were mixes, too, but they were a bit snobbier about it. Me, I couldn’t give two shits.”
“So, it’s all true, then? I’m a mix of every humanoid species in all three of the Worlds?”
“Huh. I suppose you are, little bean. I’d have to get the ol’ family tree out to take a look, but I think that on my side, we’ve got most of the Lower World and a good chunk of the Middle covered.
Your mum is a mix of the Upper World, and some of the Middle.
And don’t be fooled—her great-great-great grandmother was part succubus, so she’s got some of the Lower in her as well. ”
I sighed. “Didn’t either of you think this would be important information at any point? I’m not human, dad.”
“One part is human. Maybe one-twenty-six-hundredth of you is human. But… little bean.” Dad’s voice suddenly turned so tender, it made me want to cry.
“Neither of us wanted you to think that it mattered in any way, because in truth, it doesn’t.
Fair dinkum,” he said firmly. “You’re you, baby.
You’re the most perfect thing in all the universe.
Me and your mum never wanted anyone to look down on you for being a mix, so we kept you in the dark in the first place.
I mean, I never copped that kind of shit—well, I did, but I never really cared.
But your mum did. That’s why she spent so much effort making sure you lived normally, as a human.
The truth is, your mixed heritage is a good thing, not a bad thing.
You got the best of all of us, Susie. You could negotiate a ceasefire in the Middle East and drink a Russian miner under the table. ”
A shout echoed over the gates. I flinched. A strange pattering sound followed it, almost like a thousand fat raindrops had started hitting the pavement.
No, not raindrops. They were footsteps. Hundreds of tiny footsteps. Children, running somewhere. Lots of children. And they were swarming. My heart started hammering. “Dad. Do you know what a banwyn is?”
“Sure do, love. Nasty little fuckers. My great-great-great-great granddad was a quarter banwyn.” He let out a snort. “Good thing we’re never invited to their realm for the holidays, because they eat their own when—”
The line cut out. “Dad?”
In the silence, I could hear grunts and smacks through the thick hedge to my left. The sounds of a fight. A clang of metal on blacktop. A sword dropped? A dagger?
“—then you have to scrub that shit out before it sticks. If you don’t, it’s worse than Gorilla Glue. There’s nothing that will shift—”
Cress’s voice, shouting a battle cry, came from my right, then, the telltale zing and crash of blades clashing. There was a battle going on just outside the gates, just around the corner, hidden by the thick hedge that surrounded the manor house property line. I stood, frozen, my phone to my ear.
A kid ran past the gate, moving too fast for me to really focus on. Then, another. Another. Little kids. I caught a flash of one running closer to the gate. Five or six years old, flaxen-haired, wearing adorable school uniforms. The banwyn swarm was running.
“—sure that you hit them in the right place, or they explode and make a damn mess. Anyway, darl,” he said cheerfully. “We’re coming up on the Pilbangabanga now. Before you go, just remember, and this is really important. Don’t—” His voice cut out.
“Dad? Dad?”
The phone beeped. Connection lost.
A chill ran through me. Goosebumps rose on my skin, and I shivered. The temperature was dropping; it wasn’t an emotional response. My breath came out in clouds of vapor.
A low gravelly voice cut through the silence, colder than the grave, vibrating with a preternatural timbre. “Heir. Get out of our way or perish.”
Donovan’s voice was just as cold. “The scribe stone is already closed. You are wasting your time here, Agarthon.”
I edged closer to the gate and slowly, heart thudding wildly, moved to the left so I could see out into the street.
Donovan stood there, poised in a half-crouch, with his sword held out in front of him, glinting silver in the dim light. He rolled his shoulders and shifted on his feet like a dancer, graceful but deadly.
Eryk and Nate flanked him. Eryk held two jeweled daggers in his hands, his reptilian battle leathers had visible cuts and tears on the trousers, glimpses of a sticky-tar substance splattered the bare skin.
Nate’s enormous muscles bulged, his arms outstretched, hands clawed and shimmering with an eerie blue glow.
To the right, Cress was in a warrior pose, a low crouch, a dagger in her fist, eyes blazing with fury. One of her sleeves was torn completely, her silky tan skin splattered with blood and dotted with what looked like tiny bite marks.
Horror gripped me. While I’d been eating bruschetta and drinking four-hundred-dollar bottles of pinot noir, they’d been fighting for their lives out here, trying to protect me.
Cress was injured.
“No,” I mumbled, my lips numb.
A huge man—at least seven feet tall, his wide, enormous frame encased almost completely in pitch-black armor that seemed to swallow all the light—stepped into my line of sight.
A helmet covered his head completely, sharp-looking spikes jutting out in a ring on the top, like a sinister crown.
His footsteps clanged on the blacktop like the toll of a funeral bell.
He walked two more steps forward, the rainfall-like pattering sound accompanied him.
A crowd stepped with him, shadowing him.
Banwyn. Hundreds of them, surrounding the terrifying big armor-plated man in the middle of the street.
A hundred little kids in neat, clean school uniforms—gray woolen shirts and knee-length trousers, crisp bright-white shirts, yellow and black striped ties—stood silently, blank-faced, wide-eyed, their dead-straight flaxen hair shining in the dim light
I’d never seen anything so damned scary in my life.
At first glance, they might look like little kids, but I could never mistake these things for human children.
They were horrifying. They stood too still.
Their hair was too thick, too straight. Their uniforms were too clean.
Their eyes were unmistakably alien, shimmering with an eerie light and glowing with a desperate hunger and cruel intent.
The enormous, armored man stepped forward again and raised a dull iron-gray broadsword. “If the stone is closed, we will take her instead. The rightful King will have his prize, one way or another. Perhaps another experiment is in order.”
Donovan growled. “Over my dead body.”
He lifted the sword higher, moving into a fight stance. “So be it.”
The banwyn rushed forward. Donovan charged, lifting his sword. I let out a squeak as the swarm streamed past Donovan, running towards the others, leaving him to the enormous armored man.
Cress whirled in a circle, cutting down banwyn as they charged at her, their teeth flashing. Bursts of flame exploded from Eryk’s palms, cutting gaps in the swarm’s charge.
“No,” I whispered. I had to help.
I pulled the heat from my core and poured it through my limbs. “Stop.”
Something zinged, then smacked me. I froze, unable to breathe.
The fight raged on beyond the gate. Donovan and the terrifying man smashed into each other—whirling, striking, parrying.
Nate roared a challenge, his hands sparking blue, and threw bright flashes into the swarm of banwyn, scattering them like cockroaches. But there were more. More and more…
The huge, armored man whirled his sword in a circle, stepped one foot forward and thrust; Donovan dodged it by a hair. The last-minute change of direction made him stumble back.
The man let out a cold laugh. It echoed within his helmet. “Your skills are substandard, Heir. Your brother would be ashamed of such a poor showing.”
“Then that fault lies with you, Agarthon,” Donovan spat out icily.
“Since it was you who taught me to fight.” He spun away, moving like water, and slashed out, ducked, and hammered an elbow into the back of the man’s knee, dropping him.
“You were the one who abandoned my training. You were the one who listened to the poison my brother dripped in your ears. He persuaded you to stop teaching me because I’d be too tied up in bureaucracy to go into battle myself, so there was no point.
He manipulated you into stopping my training, so that he would be the better fighter. And you fell for his lies.”
Holy smokes. The armored man was Donovan’s old teacher. Obviously Connor’s, too. So, this was one of the Devourer’s assassins.
“He is the rightful King,” the man said coldly. “You are the pretender. He made me see the truth. He was born to rule.”
“I care not for the crown,” Donovan said, breathing deeply, massive chest heaving. “If my brother wanted it, he could have it—if he would shoulder the mantle of responsibility. But he will not. I care for the safety and prosperity of my people; he only wants to dominate them.”
I unfroze and heaved in a breath, sucking the air into my lungs desperately.
Goddamnit, I’d tried to use my siren power, and it had obviously backfired against the ward.
Donovan and his old teacher were fighting again.
Swords flashed, and punches connected with sickening thuds.
A wave of exhaustion crashed into me, almost knocking me off my feet.
The banwyn were still swarming. More poured into the dark street, their little feet pattering on the pavement like a million cockroaches. A thick circle of them surrounded Eryk and Nate, darting in, biting the air, retreating. Cress was moving so fast I could barely see her.
There were too many. I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t help them from inside the ward. I had to get out there.
I held my breath and stepped through the ward to the other side.