The Angel's Fall (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 6) (11 page)

I blinked, unwilling to believe he was here. But of course he was here. Of course.

Lila's father stepped out the shadows in the alley. He looked thin and hungry. “I was beginning to think you were never coming back.”

15

Cannibal Asshole Dad

The man wore the same thawb he’d worn the last time we’d seen him, though the flowing white robe was stained and ragged.

“I was starting to think you had failed and Hell had bested you,” he said.

“A day,” I said. “A day passed.” I stepped in front of Lila, putting myself between her and her father. I reached into my pocket, wishing my mind were not full of spiderwebs and lethargy. My fingers brushed over a ring, a piece of wood, and a polished bit of lapis lazuli. But where was the dragonstone I needed?

“Be still, witch,” the Marid said.

He flicked magic toward me, and my hands turned to weighted metal. I could not move them.

The Marid chuckled. “A day, you say? For you, perhaps. Hello, daughter. I have long been awaiting this meeting.” He reached a long blue-fingered hand toward Lila.

“Hello, cannibal asshole Dad,” she said. Her voice sounded weak and young.

I began to pull up thick strands of hate and rage magic from the deep wells within me to feed into the bracelet I wore. I might not be able to move my hands but I could still—

The Marid glanced at me and snapped his fingers. Blue magic shot out from him like a bullet as he murmured, “No.”

It hit me and my magic dropped away. I was nothing to him. A mosquito. A gnat.

Merlin stepped forward. “You are not where you belong,” he said mildly. “Hell misses you.”

The Marid sneered. “Show me the demon who can drag me back.”

Merlin gave him a long look. “I just might, but there is much to be said for closure and all that.” He stepped aside and nodded toward Lila.

The Marid raised one eyebrow and smiled cruelly. He snapped his fingers. Blue magic shot out from him, hard and fast.

The magic hit Merlin and disappeared within his body. As though he were massive. Which of course he was. Merlin straightened his shoulders and gave the Marid a long look. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said.

“Yeah. Stop trying to hurt my friends,” Lila said and stepped toward her father who towered over her.

The Marid laughed and moved closer to her as well, looking her up and down. “Oh you! You will be delicious. I have waited far too long for this meal. I have been hungry and waiting, and yet look at you, so much riper and stronger than your siblings ever were. Perhaps I was wrong to always harvest them at their moment of transformation. You will return me to my full power and more. You are so much more than them.”

“I am so much more than you,” she whispered. “A goddess and a Marid. Morgan, mind if I—”

“Destroy him,” I ordered. At least I still had my voice.

“Yes, master,” she said and raised her hands. She moved her arms through the air like she was performing some sort of dance ceremony, and she spoke words with odd inflections and guttural sounds. Sumerian, I guessed.

Her father watched her for a moment, and then began making his own magic with snapping fingers and clapping hands.

Merlin moved beside me and wrapped an arm around my waist. “Help her,” I whispered to him.

“If needed,” he whispered back. “Wait.”

I felt the lurching pit-sick feeling of large magics flooding the air as the two Marids grew brighter and bluer. Their magic was so different from my own kind that it made me dizzy.

Lila’s father reached out and grabbed for her hand.

She shrieked and grabbed him back. They clutched each other as they both shone brighter and brighter.

I grew dizzier. The magic overwhelmed me and I saw stars at the edge of my vision.

Lila screamed.

Her father laughed.

The magic surged and pulsed and I felt myself losing consciousness.

I blinked my eyes open, and there was one Marid left.

“That was so wrong and so delicious,” Lila said and burped. “You have no idea how weird it is being me.”

Merlin, standing a couple feet away from her, stared at her and shook his head, back and forth.

“Your… father?” I stammered.

“Delicious. What? It's, um, what my kind do, I guess? How we fight each other, I don't know. It was eat or be eaten.” She yawned. “I'm really tired though. I feel like I could take a nap for five years.” Lila glanced toward a pile of white robes that lay on the ground and shoved her hands into her pocket. “What a d-bag. I can't believe my mom ever fell for him.”

“It has been a day of days for lost fathers meeting their children, my dear,” Merlin said. The King of Hell. The man who I loved, who I seemed to fall in love with, again and again, even though there were stumbling blocks after stumbling blocks in our way. But this time? I was not sure I could follow where Merlin's life would lead him next.

“Stop looking at me like I have murdered all your kittens, Morgan,” Merlin snapped. “I didn’t get trapped in Hell forever. Lila is well fed. There will be time enough to figure all the rest of it out later.”

“There will be time,” I agreed. I would wait to see what he would become with his kingdom.

“Can we go home now?” Lila said in a small voice. “I can't believe I get to go home. Earth home, Seattle home, you guys home. Can we go to wherever Adam is and can I crawl into bed with him and be the little spoon, even if I'm way taller than him now?”

“Of course, my dear,” Merlin said. “He will be so glad to see you.”

Lila nodded and stared hard at him, and then me. “Wait. I forgot. You two are still undead.”

I nodded and put a hand on my stilled chest.

“You could ask me to reverse it.”

“Didn’t want to tax you, Lila,” I said.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” She snapped her fingers twice.

All my vital essences started up again, and I took a deep inhalation of breath.

“Excellent,” Merlin said. “I was starting to day dream about places open this time of night that served brains. Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“That was clever thinking, making us undead,” I added.

Lila beamed. We flanked her on both sides as we walked out of the alley, neither of us, I think, quite believing that we had made it out with Lila. Not trusting that something else was not going to attack us, or trick us, or dissolve the very reality around us.

The road stayed a road. The air held the smell of rotting fish. Reality, for the moment, acted as it should.

It was a mere seven blocks to Merlin's hotel and penthouse. To a shower, a bed, and the blissful emptiness of sleep. We turned left on Third Avenue, wide and empty of cars at this late hour, save for a few lumbering city buses. Down the road, most of a block away, something shone with a bright yellow light.

“Pretty,” Lila said and pointed. “Oh, and magic. That's new, right?”

Merlin and I nodded as we drew nearer to the shining
…
statue. A statue of a man, wound through with a type of magic that would render it invisible to the mundanes of the city.

“Is that…?” Lila’s mouth dropped open.

We quickened our pace and walked toward the tall statue of a man that looked like a well-shaven and impeccably dressed Adam. The statue stood on a marble base etched with words.

Adam Rivera. Werewolf. The Sheriff of Seattle, bringing justice to all magical creatures and under folk since September 2016.

The date was six months hence from when we had left for Hell this morning. I swallowed. The Marid had said we’d taken a long time.

Merlin scowled and reached into his bag, rustling around for a while before he pulled out a cellular phone. The fancy kind with a wide glass front. He turned it on and showed us the date.

“How is that possible?” Lila said.

“Hell was destabilized, unmoored in time as well as place, it seems.”

We'd been gone for a full eight months. Adam had been the sheriff for two months.

I looked up and up at the statue.

“A sheriff for unders? What does that even mean?” Lila asked. “And who made him sheriff?”

“I'm afraid we will soon find out,” I said.

We walked on from the statue and into the night, desperate and exhausted and trying to pretend, each in our own way, that we had gotten out of Hell unscathed and that we were fine and ready for whatever happened next.