Revealed in Fire by K.F. Breene

Twelve

“I knew it!”I pushed out through the pack of fae, using the hole Halvor had just made. Magic swirled around me, tearing down the elves’ construction just like it had my father’s, but this was so much easier because of all the practicing I’d been doing.

The elves stood on the path, stunned, looking around at the desert landscape in confusion. Black sky stretched overhead with stars punched through, just like in the Brink. Barren dirt ran underfoot, smooth and flat, no rocks or debris in sight. It must’ve been cleared away long ago to create the alternate reality that had been there a moment before. A pale moon hung in the sky, its light dappling the ground. It was bright enough for most to basically see, but would hinder those without the advantage of vampire night vision.

“Mind fuckery,” I said, running with my sword in hand. I knew better than to hang out and admire my handiwork. Cahal had been an excellent teacher.

Halvor reached the lead elf first. His sword cut through the air and then the elf’s neck. I reached the elf beside it, dodging the falling head. It startled at my sudden appearance, having been lost to its surroundings a moment before. I stabbed it through, bowling it over, and kept going. As it fell, I yanked my sword free and rammed into some sort of troll-looking dude with a small head and enormous arms.

A roar shook the ground from Steve’s lion form, followed by Cole’s yeti bleat. I took those sounds, deep and primal and consuming, and magically echoed them. Using just my sword to hack at the (still confused and obviously very stupid) creature horde, which was second nature to me, I used my magic to fashion more beings on the periphery, hiding in the darkness. Working quickly, I duplicated, tweaked, and animated.

A spell bloomed in the air and then splintered, corrosive and volatile. Also, not well directed.

“Jesus, Penny, some of us are working in here,” I yelled, and dived to the side. I didn’t want to disrupt the nasty-ass spell. That thing would kill very painfully.

“Then turn on the lights,” she yelled. The stress was getting to her.

I lit up the area in fire, circling our new friends, who had (mostly) come out of their shocked stupor and started to fight back. My magical creatures stomped through it, their legs moving too slow for their speed, but the horde didn’t seem to notice.

I ran to the front of the shindig, where an elf’s curved blade was slicing through the air at a pace that made me just a little jealous. It slashed at Devon, the big black wolf, and then made a move on Charity, who fought alongside him.

I stabbed it in the back.

“All’s fair in illegal magical battles!” I ducked under another elf’s blade, rolled, and chopped at its ankle. It hopped out of the way and met the yeti’s big paw. Cole slapped the face off that elf, and it was very, very gross. “Don’t look, Penny!”

The lesser-powered fae and shifters worked around my fire, taking swings at the cowering horde, which was now focused on the magical creatures closing in on them. I still hadn’t figured out how to make my creations solid, but the elves’ pets were too stupid and scared to catch on.

I pushed the fire out and ran down the middle of the horde, spraying hellfire as I did so. I’d been so good for so long. I needed to let off some steam. “Here’s Johnny!”

Skin and limbs and magical parts burned away. There wasn’t much that could withstand hellfire, and I did not look forward to eventually meeting the creatures that could. Spoiler alert: it was my dad and his upper-tier minions.

I stabbed into a chest and then hacked at a neck, not nearly as graceful and elegant as the fae, and not caring in the least. A wolf took down a sorta blob-looking thing, and I wondered if it was a dybbuk—a disembodied soul. I didn’t even know how one of those killed. Not like it mattered. The wolf solved that problem by killing it first.

Turning, I went to slash, only to lose the mark to Yasmine, her white wolf form just as lovely as her human form. Some women had all the luck. On the other side, an elf met a grisly end in a combined attack from Steve and Kairi, and the wolf of Sour Face took down a cute little sprite that apparently spat acid. Yikes.

Before I could find a new target, I found myself standing in flickering firelight amid a bunch of bodies and panting good guys. Or, at least, “guys and gals with sometimes questionable ethics, who were currently not in the wrong.”

“Dang it, that was too fast,” I said, let down.

I cleaned my blade as Romulus worked his way closer, a smear of blood on his cheek and a sparkle in his eyes. He stopped beside me and looked from my still-flickering fire to the darkened sky.

“Here.” I fished another cloth out of my pouch.

“Thank you.” He took it and applied it to his blade. “That is a very handy…”

“Pouch,” I supplied.

“Yes. I saw some in the Brink. None so plain as that, but I like it all the more for it.”

“I’m not after the fashion element of it.”

“I wish no one was after the fashion element of it,” Emery groused as he wandered by.

“What’d you do, one spell?” I asked him.

“Half of a spell. I’m that good.”

“Lazy.”

“Ungrateful.”

I smirked and bent, stuffing the dirty cloth into a dead creature’s pocket. It wasn’t technically littering that way.

Romulus was still standing there. He was clearly trying to tell me something, but these guys seemed to prefer charades to words, and if it didn’t involve a weapon, I didn’t read body language.

“Hi,” I said, just to break the ice.

“Use your words, Dad,” Charity called, stowing her sword and then looking at the sky.

Taking the hint, I said, “Oh right, yeah. I’ll put the Realm back.” I grimaced and got to work. Not too many people made me nervous, but this guy did. It wasn’t that I feared for my life—I didn’t—but I felt the discomfort of being the crude chick among rich and polished people. It was the same nervousness I got when trekking into Darius’s French Quarter house, with its cream-colored rug and decor. This feeling had once prompted me to take off my shoes to eat dinner in his house, only to try to hide my shoeless feet when the very posh Marie joined me. In other words, it made me an even bigger shitshow.

“Use my words, yes.” Romulus chuckled quietly to himself, staring out at nothing. “Charity’s mother always used to say that to me. I do miss her. I wonder if the longing will ever go away…”

“Yeah…I’m not really…sure what to say to that.”

“Of course, yes.” He paused for a moment, and I wondered if something was expected of me. Where was Darius when you needed him? “I must say,” he finally went on, “you are effective.”

I gave a little smile and nodded, but something caught me up short. It sounded like a compliment, but his tone wasn’t all that different from the one he’d used to make a fool of that elf earlier. I didn’t want to be the person who preened when they were actually the butt of the joke.

I was going to end up embarrassing myself with him. It was inevitable.

“Until this moment, I had no actual proof that you were Lucifer’s heir,” Romulus continued. “Now, there can be no doubt, of course.” Romulus gestured around him as I reset the orange sky. The cold breeze still blew across us, though, so that wasn’t right. It should be a gentle, warm breeze with a hint of spicy fragrance. Except the fragrance and temperature of that breeze were supposed to be tailored to each person, something I didn’t know how to do. “You have been in the Brink all this time, within the magical community, and no one was the wiser. Amazing.”

“Kinda the same with your daughter, though, right?”

“No.”

He and Penny should get along well. They both had the radical honesty thing down pat.

I set the yellow-orange glow of the faux-sun, only then remembering it was actually nighttime. So I took the sun out, but then I didn’t really know how it was supposed to rise in the daytime. Did I, like, put it on a timer or something? Could I do that?

“I probably shouldn’t have torn this down,” I murmured. “This’ll be a dead giveaway that I came through.”

“Yes, most likely.”

“Good, yeah. Honesty. Very refreshing,” I said dryly, stitching the flowers back in and laying the cobblestone path.

“You clearly don’t have a mastery of the intricacies of your magic, but your fighting prowess is exceptional.”

“Thanks. I have a lot of experience.”

“It seems so, yes. The colors of the trees and flowers are completely wrong, by the way. The type of cobblestone is not accurate either. This color scheme will never work.”

“What do you mean? The flowers were purple, red, and yellow. That was the color scheme. And how many types of cobblestone are there? It’s brown. Wasn’t the other stuff brown? Or was it gray? Crap, I can’t remember.”

“The flowers were heliotrope purple, carnelian, and butter yellow. These are—”

“Whoa, whoa…wait.” I tried to pour over the words he’d used for colors. “So…deeper purple…maybe?” I changed those out.

“Now you are using majorelle blue.”

“Blue?” I dropped my hands. “What are you seeing? I’m seeing purple.”

“No.”

I gave an exasperated sigh. “Well, hell, I don’t know. Obviously this is not going to work. I don’t know colors.”

“It is not your specialty. There is nothing wrong with that. In the Realm, a master gardener usually works with a magical structuralist to create the designs, and then lesser structuralists to maintain them. Your imagination is very vivid, but your gardening…”

I left the flowers as they were. Hopefully no master gardeners would be wandering through anytime soon. The trees were easy enough, even though Romulus’s tsking when I added the leaves indicated they were the wrong green. The gold filaments came next, and since those were annoying and I had no idea why they were here in the first place, I didn’t bother. Maybe they’d get the hint.

“I do wonder, if you were fae, what your contribution to the community would be,” he wondered aloud.

How did you politely tell someone they were starting to get annoying?

“Demolition. I’d give all your masters something to do.” I finished up and surveyed my handiwork. “The colors look kind of like a circus.”

“Yes. It is quite hideous. I think you should pass it off as making fun of the elves. It’s the only way to avoid public ridicule.”

“Wow. Don’t pull any punches, huh?”

“You don’t seem like the type of person who would appreciate it if I did.”

“You’re not reading me very well.” I put my hands on my hips as Darius sauntered over, just as freshly pressed as ever, with his suit jacket buttoned and a hand in a trouser pocket. He didn’t believe in dressing down for the occasion. How he was comfortable traveling—or fighting—in a suit, I did not know.

“They are going to know someone messed with their scheme,” he said.

“We’ve established that, thanks. Maybe get on my team for a moment.”

“What I mean to say is, if you can’t join them, beat them. Make your father proud.”

I studied his handsome face for a moment, seeing the glitter of mirth in his eyes. This was a plot of some kind. It was part of his strategy, the one he’d probably just developed after the elves showed their cards.

Given it sounded like an amazing idea, I didn’t question him. I just tore the illusion down again.

“Can we help?” Emery walked over. “If you’re going to mess with them, let’s really mess with them. I have some experience with that.”

He certainly did. It was why they were so eager to hang him. Grinning, I nodded at him.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Penny asked, standing behind us. “Won’t we get in more trouble?”

“What more trouble can I get into?” Emery asked. “What are they going to do, hang me twice?”

“They’re not going to hang you,” Penny said with grit in her tone. “My mother would not send us to the elves to be hanged.”

“You, no. Me…” Emery let his words hang.

“They will not hang you, Mr. Westbrook. Their bounty on you is a gross miscarriage of justice. We will rectify the issue,” Romulus said, and his arrogance was on par with that of any vampire.

It didn’t seem like he’d learned much from the meet-and-greet we’d just had with the elves. Thankfully, he clearly had no problem with extreme violence when things didn’t go his way. I assumed it would be no different at the castle. Our best bet was to believe the Seers and stick together. Otherwise they could pick us off one by one.