The Wrath of Angels (Eternal Warriors Book 3) Page 10

  They were Gloriana and Lahalissa, Robin realized, but he spared them barely a thought. He was captivated by the sight of four angels on the right of the throne, especially a tall, beautiful one wearing a circlet of silver in her mass of red hair. In spite of everything, even his dreadful peril, for a moment he could take in nothing but her striking beauty, which had not altered in the slightest over the eight centuries since he’d last seen her. She met his eyes, but without interest, and if she likewise recognized him, she betrayed not the slightest sign.

  Without warning, a fist struck him from behind and smashed him to the ground. Everything went red, but as his vision cleared, he was able to see that the grass was truly real, for a little beetle crawled up the blade directly before his eyes. Oh, but that hurt! He wanted to reach behind his head to see how bad the damage was, but he was afraid any movement might inspire another blow.

  “I hardly think that was necessary,” commented a strange, high-pitched voice from somewhere in front of him. “No, don’t you dare kick him, Uzoth, you leave him be!”

  Fortunately, Uzoth was apparently inclined to obedience, and after waiting a moment to be sure that no further assaults on his person appeared to be imminent, Robin slowly raised his aching head. The blinding light had faded a little, and in doing so revealed a sight that was as strange as it was… no, it was simply strange, and that’s all there was to it.

  For upon the throne, which turned out not to be a throne so much as a very large red-capped toadstool, perched what appeared to be a fairy of sorts. Not a tall and proud being akin to the great fae over which Oberon and his faithless queen had once ruled, but a gossamer Victorian creature, all filmy white robes and transparent butterfly wings. She was a lovely little thing, with features nearly as delicate as her wings and long white hair that would reach down past her bottom were she standing. If standing, he realized, the top of her head might possibly reach as high as his knee.

  Wondering just how hard the Kesh’Adai had hit him, Robin had to glance back and forth between the massive guard demons and their attractive little liege lady twice before he was convinced that his mind was actually receiving the correct information from his eyes. This tiny creature was the Mad One? Could it possibly be true? It was too stupid for words!

  “So, Robin Goodfellow!” Her voice was high-pitched and sounded most pleased, which also seemed a little odd, considering the circumstances of his visit. “How marvelous to see you at last! Your fame precedes you, and so little survives of long-vanished Albion that a relic such as yourself is a veritable treasure!”

  Robin stared at her, not sure how to respond to what sounded rather like an insult of some kind. But there was no edge to her smile, and the expression on her tiny face matched the apparent delight in her voice. And, too, there was the small matter of her panoply of not-at-all tiny guards to consider as well.

  When in doubt, smile and make nice. While you still can. Before they break your teeth.

  Feeling a little as if he’d somehow stumbled into a Disney movie, Robin tried not to groan as he pushed himself up from his belly. He started to stand, but then, thinking better of it, simply rocked back on his heels in order to meet the little queen’s eyes.

  “You’ve been a very naughty boy, Robin, but I’m told that’s your motif, isn’t that so? I adore the tricksters, you know. To curdle the milk, oops! Poor milkmaid!” She clapped her hands, and threw her head back with a pretty trill of laughter. “Fiddle-dee-dee indeed!”

  While the guards remained impassive, the butterfly-winged bug-things, which Robin belatedly realized were also supposed to be some twisted form of lesser fairies, tittered and trilled with feigned mirth. At least, he hoped it was feigned, because it sure wasn’t funny.

  The Mad One, if it was truly the Mad One, seemed to notice that he was disinclined to join in the festivities, for she began to pout.

  “Oh, not just naughty, now, but sour,” she said, frowning. “And silent too, that’s not a good fellow, not at all, Mr. Goodfellow. Cat got your tongue? Because you see, if you won’t be a proper little sprite and use it, I may decide to give it to him.”

  Robin stiffened and flinched away from her, not because of her silly threats, but because a face appeared to be pressing out from inside the pink stalk of the toadstool upon which she sat. The fleshy mushroom skin stretched like plastic, and for a moment it looked as if the face would burst out. Robin did not recognize it, but had it belonged to anyone he knew, he certainly would have, for he could easily discern every facial detail, from the open, staring eyes and broad cheekbones to the strong, masculine jaw line. It was a bizarre thing, but what truly alarmed him was that although he could hear nothing, whoever the face belonged to was obviously screaming.

  “Er, no,” he stammered, trying to keep his eyes off that terrible face. “It’s just that I don’t know to whom I am speaking. I certainly don’t wish to cause offense.”

  “Ooh, how very delicate, Mr. Fine Fellow! But I feel so very strongly that we are destined to be friends. You must call me Maomoondagh. Yes, you simply must!”

  The queen’s face crinkled in a childlike smile.

  “Shall we be friends, then? Oh, I do think we shall! And what do you say to that, Mr. Fine Fellow?”

  “I think I would very much like that!”

  I know I’d like it a lot better than having those bull demons stomp my head again, anyhow. He dared a glance at Titania, who didn’t seem to be paying any attention to his presence. How did she put up with the creature? The thought of becoming bosom buddies with this lunatic would have been frightening enough even without Albion hanging in the balance.

  “Friends, how deliciously wonderful!” She leaped down from her toadstool and embraced him, planting a little kiss on his cheek. “And what do friends do? Why, they share their innermost secrets, of course?”

  Maomoondagh put her hands on her slender hips and regarded him thoughtfully.

  “So, who shall go first? I do believe I shall!”

  Her translucent wings, nearly as tall as she was, fluttered prettily as she hovered in front of him for a moment, then zoomed in a circle around Titania’s head before coming to light again on the toadstool. At the very moment her feet touched the mushroom, the silent screamer lurking beneath its red cap abruptly withdrew its hideous face.

  The little queen cocked her head at him and screwed up her face as if thinking deeply, then pointed at him and uttered what did not strike him as a secret, but a riddle.

  The question you deny

  Will bring a sure response.

  Two questions you decline,

  Another I ensconce.

  A third one circumscribed

  Will bring the dread blood cup,

  But you will not imbibe

  For I shall drink you up!

  Now tell me, faery sly,

  Precisely what am I?

  Maomoondagh stared at Robin and fluttered her eyelids charmingly, but her gaze was like being smashed in the face with a rock. Robin swayed, and had to put out his hands behind him to keep from being forcibly toppled over. He had never known such strength; he doubted even Oberon at the height of his powers could have met those iron eyes without reeling. Had he made a terrible, terrible mistake in attempting to restore his betrayed liege? He had a horrible feeling that the riddle and the screaming face on the mushroom were somehow related, but how, he did not know. Nor did he want to.

  “I don’t know,” he gasped. He was trying so hard to keep himself upright that when she smiled and the pressure disappeared, he lurched forward and almost struck his face on the ground.

  “Too hard, my darling trickster? Surely you are not so slow. It seems perhaps I shall have to provide you with a personal demonstration. A demonstration for a demon, isn’t that delightful? But first, your turn. Shall we start with an easy one?”

  She paused for a moment, then added three more words. “Where is Oberon?”

  This time, he was ready for the gaze, but it knocked him flat on hi
s back even so.

  “I don’t know,” he said, truthfully, staring up at the cloudless blue sky. Cloudless? Surely that wasn’t right! When was it ever cloudless in England?

  It took him a little while to summon the strength to roll over and get up to his feet, but she was still regarding him with a sad little moue of disappointment.

  “Answer for answer,” she said simply, and he didn’t understand her until she flew up into the air and pointed at Gloriana.

  “No!” screamed Lahalissa, fighting against her fiery bonds, but the flames blazed up and drowned out her cries as she writhed in screaming agony. Gloriana said nothing, she was silent as two of the bull-demons approached her and picked her up as if she was a battering ram, each grabbing an arm and a leg. She must have been under a mighty geas, for surely she would not have held her tongue otherwise. But her eyes sought out Titania, and they were like poisoned daggers.

  Titania must have felt their sting, as she stepped forward, and bowed low before speaking. “Majesty, she has erred grievously, to be sure, but she was once a queen of Faerie. Is this an appropriate end for a royal such as her?”

  Maomoondagh flitted over to stare down Oberon’s false queen. She did not say anything, but Titania averted her eyes and sank to her knees. Once, twice, three queens of Faerie, Robin said grimly to himself, even as the smallest and most powerful one angrily waved at her demons to continue.

  “Go on, go on,” she cried. They hastened to obey, and as they approached the toadstool, its red cap seemed to peel away from itself, starting in the center. There was a wetly vile sound as it peeled back to reveal a devouring mouth ringed with jagged white teeth and a long, sinuous red tongue licked them in an obscene and hungry manner. Strange sounds issued from its mouth, but not the bestial, hungry noises that one might have expected. No, Robin realized as horror filled him and fear knotted his belly, they were the screams of those trapped inside this most disgusting of prisons.

  The Blood Cup. He had never heard of it before, and he wished he had not now. But its purpose was clear. The horrid toadstool was an abomination beyond abominations, a thing to make even demons shudder. To feed upon the fire of an unwilling other was bad enough, but to imprison immortals and drain them slowly and painfully, over devils-knew how much time, was sadism beyond his ability to understand.

  He could not permit it. Not to Gloriana. Not when it was his doing that had put her in this peril.

  “I tell you the truth! I don’t know where he is! Torture me if you must, flay my mind, but I cannot tell you something I do not know! Only do not do this, please, let her go!”

  The guards stopped, and for a moment he thought Gloriana might be spared when Maomoondagh favored him with a dazzling smile. The incongruence of her seeming innocence was a violation, like stark blasphemy on the lips of a child. “But where would be the fun in that? Let her go? I don’t think so.”

  Obedient to their queen’s wish, the guards stepped forward and the obscene tongue shot out, knocking one of the big demons down as it wrapped itself around Gloriana’s waist. She pummeled at it, to no avail, as it drew her inexorably towards its now-gaping maw.

  The geas must have been broken as the monstrous thing began to ravage her feet and legs, for Gloriana’s lips were unsealed with an ungodly shriek. The silver flames of her bonds were engulfed by the purple fire that erupted from her, issuing a dark grey-purple smoke that smelled bizarrely sweet. Purple were the flames, the purple of royalty, and they swirled up and around Gloriana as if to protect her from the devouring horror. For a moment, they seemed to keep the ragged teeth at bay, but only for a moment. Then, as her strength failed, she screamed one last time and was gone, crushed within the teeth with a terrible snap that echoed with finality. There was a strange movement within the stalk, as if the thing was swallowing, and then the terrible jaws disappeared again under the red toadstool cap.

  “Don’t be sad.” Robin felt a tiny hand stroking his chin, and it took every ounce of his self-control not to swat the little monstress away like an oversized insect. “She’ll always be there in your heart. And in my throne, for that matter.”

  “Your throne?”

  “Did I say throne? Why, I must have meant stool! It’s rather useful, don’t you think?” She leaped away from him and twiddled her toes as she hung suspended in the air for a moment, then gracefully came to rest upon the quiescent mushroom, crossed her legs, and propped up her head on her entwined hands. She regarded him for a moment, but she must have withheld something, because this time Robin was able to bear her stare. Then she closed her eyes and sighed dreamily.

  “Mmmm. She had more strength than I knew. Such a lovely spirit….” The grey eyes snapped open, and her smile grew crueler now. “If only I could have her mind as well. Then I would have no need for this silly game of kiss-and-tell.”

  Robin swallowed hard. There was something strange about the Mad One, (for he had no doubt that this psychotic pseudo-fairy was the very usurper he hoped to destroy), there seemed to be some sort of symbiosis between her and the mushroom, or throne, as she had let slip. Or, as was much more likely the case, pretended to let slip. Did she somehow draw her awesome strength from the spirits it devoured? Why not simply drain their fire in a more direct manner? He set the matter aside for the nonce; there were more pressing issues at hand. Survival, for one.

  Once more, he met those iron eyes. Her smile, he realized, never seemed to touch them, perfect though it was and whitely though it gleamed.

  “Now that you understand the consequences, perhaps you will deign to answer the second question. Where is Oberon?”

  “That’s not a second question.”

  “Of course it is!” She was indignant.

  “No, it can’t be. It’s exactly the same question you asked before.” He folded his arms over his chest and hoped for a less painful demise than Gloriana’s. “You said that if I declined two questions, another would be, um, how did you put it? Ensconced. In that appalling… whatever you call it. That Cup. But you see, asking the same question twice is by no means the same thing as asking two questions.”

  “Don’t get technical with me, trickster.” She stomped her little foot. “Just answer the question!”

  “Don’t get technical? Don’t get technical? What kind of faery queen are you, anyhow? Of course I’m getting technical, that is exactly what every faery in the long and ignoble history of human-faery relations has always done!” Robin threw up his hands as if exasperated. “I mean, a mortal asks for long life, you give it to him and conveniently forget to keep him from aging… I mean, sure, it’s implied in the request, obviously, but he didn’t ask—technically!

  “It’s the oldest trick in the book! What would we be if we practiced the spirit of the law and not the letter? Well, I couldn’t tell you, actually, but we wouldn’t be proper fae, then, would we?”

  Even some of the guard demons were staring at him with open mouths, as were Titania and Lahalissa. Could he actually get away with it?

  “Enough, you’ve had your chance. I am ending this charade.”

  Robin gaped as a rumbling voice came from the tiny throat of the white fae, as if she was a direct conduit from one of the deeper pits of Hell. The little fingers snapped, and abruptly he was no longer standing in front of a toadstool under an open sky, but enclosed in a vast and terrible chamber of bones, a veritable palace of death.

  Chapter 11

  The Demon in Me

  Now the hungry lion roars,

  and the wolf behowls the moon;

  —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  He looked up, and was stunned to see what looked like an unthinkably large backbone directly over his head. Ribs arched down from it on either side, embedded in the rock -as if they were in the fossilized belly of a dinosaur that would have dwarfed the largest blue whale—and Robin wondered if perhaps this was where one of the more monstrous Nephilim had met its end.

  It was not only his immediate surroundings
that had changed. The white fae was gone, as in her place sat a tall, thin man with ashen skin and hair like slivers of platinum straw. Gone, too, was the smile and even the least pretense of good humor or charm. Only the eyes were the same, grey like a starving wolf or a darkening sky threatening rain, thunder and hail. Nor did she—he, rather—sit lounging on a toadstool. Maomoondagh was enthroned in bone, ancient ivory carved all about with sacrileges old and new, and runes of great power. His long fingers gripped the armrests, which were carved in the shape of talons gripping a sphere—the world perhaps? They were like claws upon claws. He gripped them tightly, as if drawing sustenance from that wicked seat.

  And he probably was, Robin guessed, if the rosy flush that was spreading upward from his hands and beginning to suffuse his pallid cheeks with colour was any indication. That was disconcerting enough, worse still was the recognition that he was alone with this mutating monster. In addition to the significant changes in décor was the complete absence of Lahalissa and Titania, not to mention all of the guard demons. Theoretically, this absence of defenders presented him with an opportunity of sorts, but somehow, he felt rather loathe to avail himself of it. The Mad One’s throne alone seemed like more than a match for him.

  “Where are we?” he asked the monstrous demon-prince.

  “We are where we were before. Only deeper in the truth.”

  “And what are you?” Robin wasn’t sure, but he had the distinct impression that Maomoondagh had not been talking to him in that deep voice about ending the charade, but rather to herself. Except that herself was now himself.

  As Robin tried to unwind the strange situation, he nearly missed what Maomoondagh was saying.

  “I believe the next question is mine, but I find myself inclined to a similar construction. Are you who you say you are, Robin Goodfellow? The others seem to believe so. I am not so sure.” The iron eyes suddenly bore into him, unthinkably powerful. They hurled him outside of time and space, and he hung, impaled, on the merciless spike of that cruel gaze. “Who are you?”