Page 47 of Wicked Things

My first confused thought was that they had come here to Murias for revenge. I drew my own sword, knowing that I might not be able to survive a battle with them, but willing to fight them until my last breath. A hard, numbing blow on my shoulder made me drop my sword to the ground. I looked over with horror and saw an arrow sticking up out of it, high on the space between my shoulder and my throat and far too close for comfort. My chest began to ache at the thought that I was going to die here, and I’d never see Fionn again, never have the chance to say goodbye, but I pushed that thought from my mind, lest it paralyze me with pain. Fionn would want me to fight these creatures with all my strength, and that’s what I would do.

From the back of the horde came two riders pushing through, and both seemed human, though at first I thought I must be seeing things. I was even more shocked, however, when I saw their faces. The man in front was my uncle Leofric! Seeing him here in Otherworld, surrounded by the ogres, who weren’t at all threatening him, but seemed to actually be with him, was so disconcerting and confusing that for a moment I was completely speechless, so baffled by what I was seeing that I almost fell off my horse. Or maybe that was due to the blood that was pouring from my wound.

It was the sight of the other man with Leofric that nearly incapacitated me and filled me with dread. The last time I’d seen him had been on a dark plain in Hell, surrounded by fire and scorched air, smoke and brimstone. It was the filthy demon who had plagued my grandmother, who had assaulted her and sired a child by her, and who had called himself my grandfather. Zaguel!

For the space of a few heartbeats, I couldn’t speak. I was so shocked by the sight of them—the two of them together—that at first I couldn’t even cry out or speak. Leofric rode right up to me and yanked the reins from my hands, numb with pain, injury and shock. Zaguel, close behind him, rode up to me directly, too, seized me around the waist and lifted me from my little horse to pull me over to him. When I tried to hold on, he kicked out at my poor Crow, and the force of it made the little horse fall over with a high-pitched squeal like I’d never heard him make before. Obviously, this demon had great strength, and I could only hope he hadn’t injured Crow too badly.

Appalled, vengeful shouts rang out from the closest Murian guards, the ones most charged with my safety, at the sight of these men manhandling me and taking my reins. They raised their swords, horses rearing in anticipation of combat. They charged forward to be met with the ogres who were trying to intercept them while guarding Leofric and Zaguel. I could hardly believe my eyes. After a moment of shock, I pulled my dagger from my belt, and twisting around, I managed to bring it up and skewer Zaguel through his right eye. I delivered the cruel blow with all my strength, trying to make it lethal, driving the dagger all the way to the hilt and then twisting the blade. He cried out and tumbled backward off his horse, falling to the ground in an effort to get away from me. I thought he began his death throes as he clawed at his eye and writhed on the ground, screaming.

Before I could act again, I felt a crushing blow come down on the back of my head. As I was wearing no helm, since they had caught us unaware, I fell forward over the horse’s neck and would have fallen but for a strong hand that grabbed my arm and hauled me back upright. I felt another hard blow to the temple and that one proved to be more than enough, and all my poor head could take. My eyes rolled back in my head, as I passed out and knew no more.

Chapter Twenty-One

When I came back to, which had to have been much later, my only thought was that I had to somehow free myself and return to my Faery lord. Well, maybe not my only thought. I also badly wanted to find a way to kill Leofric, even if it was with my bare hands. Any softer feelings I may have had for him had fled in the face of his betrayal and cruelty. I hated him.

I had no idea where I was, but I soon realized I had been stripped naked and my hands were bound in chains and attached to a bed. I still didn’t understand how this could possibly be happening—I couldn’t make sense of any of this, but bitter hatred for Leofric and the fiend Zaguel burned inside me from the moment I woke up. I had no idea how or why, but I knew I had been betrayed and these people were playing with my life like it was a child’s game.

It seemed odd to want to kill the man I’d called my uncle all my life. And it appeared to be true that he was indeed my mother’s brother, especially considering how close he seemed to be to the demon Zaguel. Yet how could I have been so blind to what he truly was? I’d never really known him much before my grandmother died, and I’d struck out to make my own way in life. I had decided to become a mercer, a dealer in expensive silks and other fine fabrics, like some others in my family. That had been the dream back then, at least.

My relatives had long sung Leofric’s praises, talking about how successful he was and how well he was doing in Jorvik—he even had his own thriving shop. I hoped I could one day work my way up to that level.

I had believed all the things my relatives had said about him and how hard he’d worked for what he had.

Now I had to wonder if any of that had ever been true. Or had he lied and stolen and cheated to get to where he was today. I thought that must be the case. He pulled a chair up beside the bed and watched me hungrily, seeming to be unbothered by my distress. A scream of rage tore from my throat. I fought the chains, making the iron cut into my flesh, but I didn’t care. I wanted only to get to him so I could kill him. He watched me with unholy patience until I sagged back down in exhaustion.

He began to talk then, telling me his story, as I lay trussed up in that dirty bed, my shoulder still oozing blood, even though he must have finally bound it up while I’d been unconscious. He must have realized that Fionn wouldn’t pay him for a dead consort.

He told me that night exactly who he was—my mother’s full-blooded brother, son to my grandmother and her demon lover. A half-demon! My grandmother had lied when she said she’d forced a powerful being like Zaguel away with her religious charms and chants. He told me how he’d heard my mother’s stories when she’d returned from Otherworld. And though the “crazy bitch,” as he called my mother, had often raved and lied about many things, she had been wearing gold rings studded with jewels that she’d brought back home with her.

She had later sold them to get enough money to live on for a while, and he’d questioned the jewelers later who had said they were indeed Faery made. He had questioned my mother often, too, after that and learned about the portals and the enormous wealth of the Faeries, though she would never share with him where exactly those portals were, claiming she didn’t know. She obviously hadn’t trusted him—and with good reason as it turned out. She had lied and told him I wasn’t the son of any Faery, and that the real reason she’d had to leave Otherworld was because she’d cheated on the Faery with one of her guards and so the king had thrown her out. She’d continued to keep her secrets about me when she told the family her story. She hid her pregnancy and left for a while. When she finally returned a couple of years later with a toddler in tow, she’d made up a story about a soldier she’d been living with. My uncle had then renewed his efforts to convince her to tell him how to get to the portals that would take him to Otherworld, but she continued to claim ignorance.

When she had finally succumbed to the madness and killed herself, he’d thought his chance to find Otherworld and somehow gain riches for himself might be over.

Then his mother—my grandmother—had died and it was at her funeral that he’d seen the beautiful creature in the shadows that he’d boldly approached and found out about his true nature—and the fact that the demon was his own father.

In those last few weeks when I’d lived in his home, he told me he’d noticed the differences in me as my glamour began to crack around the edges, and he wondered if the stories he’d heard about my parentage were true after all. He’d come to believe my mother had lied to him, and that I did have a Faery father. That’s why he’d told me I could stay as long as I liked. And he had begun to formulate his plan.

He’d begun by asking questions of the few half-Faery and Elven traders he knew, who traded at the famous Svartálfheim markets near the Quendi forests, part of the Hollow Hills of the Sidhe. He’d asked so many questions that he’d attracted the attention of one of the Sidhe Faery lords, a man named Ehlbert of Falias, he said, who had begun negotiations with my uncle for his help in facilitating my capture, so he could either do away with me or marry me himself if my story checked out. Before it could be completely arranged, however, some other Faery lord had taken me away right out from under his nose, offering Leofric nothing.

Leofric had been furious, thinking that he hadn’t gotten anything in return for giving me a roof over my head and helping me in my job. He had learned by that time that I’d been taken by a Faery king—a truly wealthy and powerful one. He stewed and sulked over that for weeks and then he went to his demon father to try and make a deal. He wanted to use the shriveled kernel that was his half-human soul to bargain with to help him gain vast riches from the Faery king who had “stolen” me away. He thought he deserved payment for me.

Zaguel agreed to help him and the two of them had kidnapped me, arranging for ogre mercenaries to help fight my guards. They thought my lord would pay a lot to get me back. He told me that he had no idea I’d now become “as pretty as an expensive whore in a London tavern.”

“I might want to sample you myself before I give you back to the damned Faeries. It might give me a little of what I deserve. In fact, I think I will.”

Hatred burned like acid in my veins as he said these vile things to me. First, he’d tried to engineer my original kidnapping, though that was foiled by Fionn taking me before he had finished his plans. And now, he’d enlisted the aid of his demonic father to take me from my home, with a plan of ransoming me back to my king, with absolutely no care or concern for my feelings. I was to be sacrificed for his mad whim. I needed to find a way to kill him.

We had traveled back to the mortal world by way of another portal the ogres had shown him, and he’d stopped at the first tavern we came to, a few miles outside Jorvik. He’d wanted to drink and the innkeeper, a man of his acquaintance, had certainly obliged him. I heard him make lewd comments about me when he came in to bring a tray of food to the room and saw me chained to the bed. I didn’t fight my hatred and anger for them both, hoping to use it to stoke the boiling rage inside me.

My uncle had put iron on me, which bit into my flesh and kept me weak. Not only was it painful, but it would thwart any kind of magic I tried to use. I wouldn’t be able to escape it like I had the rope that Darragh had used on me. After Leofric ate, and after he’d drunk enough ale for three men, he took the long chain attached to my bound hands and slung it over the beam overhead in the small, filthy room, making me stand and pulling my arms over my head. He then secured the end of the chain to the wall. I waited, trying to conserve my strength, though I knew in some corner of my mind what my so-called uncle had planned for me. I pretended to be only half-conscious—it wasn’t very hard—and I waited. I was determined to kill him if I could.

As I hung there, I let no expression cross my face. He came to me and ripped off what little was left of my clothing, stripping me completely naked and then stood back, letting his lust take him over. Then he took off his trousers and came at me. He had an ugly, huge prick—he was the son of an incubus, after all –and I knew he’d no doubt tear me apart. I’d feel no sorrow about killing him. I felt nothing in that moment but utter rage and disgust for him. I felt him trace his dirty, possessive hands over my skin and though I reviled his touch and wanted to kill him, I remained still and silent as his hands mauled me and yanked at my body. The tears slipped silently down my cheeks as he stuck his disgusting, fat fingers inside me. He turned his back to put oil on them and other parts of him, no doubt intending to breach me, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand what he was planning to do to me. I vowed to die or kill him first.

He turned his back to put the oil down on the table, and I backed up a few steps and launched myself at him. My growl was long and low and vibrated with fury as I grabbed the chain, pulling myself up with my hands and leaping on his shoulders, my legs outstretched.

I wrapped my thighs around his neck and began to squeeze as hard as I could. I was trying to choke him to death and though he clawed at my thighs, gouging his hands into my flesh, I kept it up, refusing to be dislodged as he reeled against the wall, trying to crush me.

Sudden pounding on the door started up, and we both heard the wild, frantic shouting, as the door exploded inward. I met my Faery lord’s shocked gaze, stunned by the madness and fury I saw there. He rushed toward me, lifting me off my uncle and stomping and kicking him out of his way like he was a loathsome insect. His men swarmed over toward Leofric with drawn swords and loud, terrifying shouts of rage, as they pummeled him to the floor.