Ever My Merlin

chapter 18 – THE LION AND THE TIGER

Everything had changed.

I opened my eyes. The vision had been through Matt’s eyes. I didn’t know what happened to transfer it… Well, actually I could guess. I buried my face deeper into a fluffy pillow and inhaled the clean scent of Vane’s cologne. Resisting the urge to go back to sleep, I yawned and pushed up on my elbows. Muted rays of a setting sun streamed in through a window in Vane’s bedroom. I’d never been inside it. At least the double bed was bigger than the one in his Boston apartment. That one could be more aptly described as a pallet.

I sat up. White sheets caressed my bare skin.

The bed was empty.

A note lay on top of a book and an iPad. I picked up the note to find it was a postcard. I read the bold strokes of Vane’s handwriting.

Find another way, if you can.

I turned the card over, expecting to find a picture of a tropical island. I’d seen a picture of one in Sylvia’s office of Alexa and Grey as kids on surfboards against a backdrop of rainbow-covered mountains, high-rise hotels, and the pristine sands of Waikiki Beach. Instead, the postcard showed the House of Seven Gables with an old-fashioned sailing ship in the harbor. A cartoon witch rode a broom across the top. Ghost-shaped letters declared—Salem, the place for witches.

A command, a dare, a sly bribe, and nothing more than the one line.

I oscillated between screaming and melting at the same time. It was so Vane. The iPad was pulled up to a countdown app, causing me to grimace. The hardcover book had a plastic covering and an AC High label on its spine, the one he’d stolen from the school library. I hugged the book to me and let myself hang on to something tangible from home.

The door burst open. Matt strode inside. Grey followed on his heels, a sword in hand.

Matt halted at the sight of me in bed. “This is Vane’s suite.”

I nearly died from embarrassment. At least the sheet covered me. I pulled it tighter up against my throat, while gaping at them. “What are you doing here?”

Grey smirked at me. “Rescuing you. Not that you seem to need it.”

I asked, “How’d you get in here?”

“I brought a whole army,” Grey said.

“Where is he?” Matt demanded.

Gia walked up. She paused at the threshold when she spotted me. “It seems Merlin was right. I was looking for you in the wrong place.” Behind her, the living room stretched out. The suite was made up of two rooms and identical to the one across the hall. The one Gia and I shared.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

Her voice edged with anger, she said, “Your boyfriend hasn’t managed to kill me yet.”

“It was Oliver.”

“Vane’s still responsible.”

I sighed. She was right. Yet, it wasn’t entirely fair. There were no easy answers.

An incoming text buzzed on Grey’s cell. “Colin says he found Vane in the cathedral!”

He, Matt, and Gia rushed out.

I cursed. I threw on one of Vane’s shirts and ran across the hall to grab some clothes I left in the room. I ran down the stairs (not wanting to wait for the ancient elevator) and out into courtyard.

A firefight was going on. I wished I had Excalibur. Vane and a contingent of mermaids and wizards faced Matt, Grey, and their army of gargoyles. Fireballs flew across the pristine green lawn. They ricocheted off the lion’s head fountain, destroying it. Blue and green magic battled each other. Matt formed one huge fireball and tossed it at Vane. His eyes glowed with blue brilliance. I barely had a chance to register that Merlin had his magic back.

Vane caught the fireball and tossed it back. He had Excalibur tucked in his belt. The ground trembled where Vane walked, the power of the Earth Shaker roaring within him. Leonidas grappled with Grey. The green-skinned mermaids clanged swords with the beasts.

On the sidelines, I stood frozen. I had friends on both sides. Matt’s brown mane caught the light of a red sky. It bounced off him to his counterpart. Red highlighted Vane’s graceful muscles as he faced off with his brother. The lion against the tiger… in a fight that could have no winners.

Over us, the sky rumbled, echoing my pained bewilderment. The Minotaur rose. I saw its shadow rise above Vane. Green glowed from him. My anxiety increased. Blue began to burn around Matt, and the anxiety became full-blown panic. For a minute, I wondered if it was all over. We’d end up obliterating ourselves before Kronos’s Fury ever got the chance.

I had to do something or I would lose them both. I weaved and bobbed through the battle, straight into the middle.

Green magic surrounded me. I met Vane’s eyes. The monster colored them. It startled when it saw me, but it couldn’t pull the magic back. It was too far gone, drunk on the fight. Blue magic slammed into it. Around my neck, the Dragon’s Eye let out a scream. It echoed mine.

I held onto it. The explosion cratered the earth under me. The impenetrable stone buildings of the rectangle shuddered. The great grey-stone wall cracked and fell like rubble. The cathedral’s rose window shattered with a loud pop.

I felt myself fall.

In the dust, I saw everyone go down as the dueling magic sprayed out.

I lay dazed on the ground.

Only Vane and Matt remained upright. Vane stood, while Matt was on his knees. Vane watched me without moving, his eyes back to a normal hazel. As if he couldn’t move. As if he didn’t dare. Matt ran to me.

I tried to open my mouth to say something, but no sound came out.

His face covered with dust, his eyes tinged with blue, Matt picked me up. He shouted at Vane, “This is your fault.”

“Yes,” Vane agreed readily.

Around him, the mermaids started to get up. Behind Matt, so did the gargoyles. The wizards still lay on the ground. I flopped in Matt’s arms. I told my limbs to move. They refused.

With a flick of his wrist, Vane called Excalibur to him. “She’s mine.”

Matt shook his head. “I’m not letting her go.”

“I could take her.”

“You’re never going to be the right one, Vane,” Matt spat at him. “When are you going to understand that?”

“When I stop breathing,” Vane replied.

“Then you’ll have to stop my breathing,” said Matt.

The sky rumbled again. The clash of magic swirled in the clouds, turning them a muddy mess of colors. Vane stared at it. “Will you not work together?”

“You chose your path a long time ago. It’s never matched mine.”

“Then, I will leave. For now,” he said with finality. “Take care of her, but don’t get used to it.”

***

I woke up in my room. Grey snored on a chair beside the bed. I sat up stiffly and he jerked awake. With a yawn, he raked a hand through his hair. “This is becoming a pattern.”

“The perks of being the champion,” I said feebly.

“You’re up.” Matt and Gia walked in from the living room.

“Vane?” I asked.

“Gone,” Gia said flatly.

I sank into the bed, wishing I could just hide away, knowing I would never be able to hide from myself. I looked at Matt. “You have your magic back.”

“Upari.” Amber eyes lit with the brilliant blue of his magic. The entire bed, chairs, nightstand—every piece of furniture in the room vibrated and lifted off the ground. He let it hang in the air.

“How?”

Matt lowered the furniture. The bed landed with an uncomfortably hard thunk. “Apollo’s curse. My magic reacted to it, but instead of just disappearing, it rebounded from Vane back to me.” He gave me an ironic look. “I didn’t need the Healing Cup. All I needed was for you to sleep with him.”

I tensed. Not from awkwardness, but from worry. “And him?”

“As you saw, he’s still the Fisher King.” Matt glowered.

“He has Excalibur.”

“And I have his trident.”

I confronted him. “Is it true, Merlin? Is your whole plan to run?”

He blinked. “My whole plan is to make sure as many survive as possible.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“What are you talking about?” Grey frowned.

I explained about the evacuation plan—the gateways, the trilithons, and the apple. Gia turned green and crumpled against the doorframe. Grey sank into a chair beside the bed.

“I’m not giving up. As I see it, we have less than a month to figure this out,” I said with determination, foolish or not. I looked at them. “I would rather not do it with a team of one.”

Grey leaned over and put his hand over mine, the one clutching the sheet with a death grip. He squeezed it. “I’m all for saving the world. Joey owes me money for the limo we rented.”

“I just got into college,” Gia said with a small smile. “My mother used to smack me and call me stupid when I was a kid. I’m not going to miss my chance to show her up.”

Smacking wasn’t all it had been. I’d seen her memories when she drank lake water. Her mother had beaten her black and blue. Matt’s eyes lingered on the Dragon’s Eye.

He spoke in my head. “You’re not a team of one, but your refusal to pick a team hurts us all.”

“I did pick, Matt,” I said softly.

“You didn’t pick well.” With those words, he stalked out.

Grey’s cell buzzed. He took it out of his pocket. “It’s Deirdre. I should take it. If you need me, I’ll be downstairs.”

He ambled out.

Gia watched him go. Folding her arms, she leaned against the doorframe. Red hair fell around her face. She smirked. “So, champion, what does it feel like to get bagged by a douche?”

I threw a pillow at her.

“A hot douche,” she corrected.

“Why is this so hard?” I asked her morosely. I already missed him.

Her expression sobered. “He won’t change, you know.”

“I don’t want that.” I met her gaze. “I just need him to bend enough to accept I love him.”

***

One week passed faster than I could have thought possible. Gia and Grey went back to Boston to finish school. I wasn’t going to make it to graduation. I refused to let Marilynn walk across the stage in my place and would get an incomplete for my senior year. Sylvia sent the notifications to the colleges where I was accepted. More notifications than I thought—she filled out several applications for me. I cried when she told me… that she cared enough. Oddly enough, in that moment, I felt the spirit of my mother hovering over me.

Not unskilled with computers, I quickly found Vane’s schedule in his command center. There was no effort made to hide his plans. He planned on traveling the world and building a trilithon in every major city. Each one a hundred times the size of the one he built in Boston. With his core crew of mermaids and wizards, his calculations indicated he could make thirty-one gates.

Matt wasn’t going to take that lying down.

Believing he could build the gates with the Fisher King’s trident, Matt drove me to the quarries. The long-dormant quarries opened under a storm of environmental protests. The protestors, who’d spent years living in tunnels and tree houses to protect the national park and ancient monument of the Nine Ladies, had only recently packed up and left, thinking their long-standing battle won.

Near the town of Derbyshire, under grey English skies, Matt showed me the stone circle of nine. The upright sandstones sat in gothic silence on a mossy green clearing in a hilly area dubbed Stanton Moor. A tenth stone, the King Stone, sat out of the circle and looked down on the Nine Ladies. It struck me as a little creepy how identical the stones were to what I’d seen in the Kronos Eye. It legitimized the rest of it. The exploding star. The furious sun. A burning sky.

No place to run.

As we drove to the quarry site, I saw a uniformed guard wrestling with a protestor trying to storm past a heavily guarded gate at one of the reopened tunnels. We went past a chain-link fence to the front of the tunnel. We found a fairly isolated area with a giant pile of mined stone. Matt handed me the trident. We spent the next few hours with me trying to open a gate with the trident while he used magic to pull together the trilithon. Translation—he spent hours muttering, pacing, and shouting hocus pocus spells at weird metallic stone blocks.

I spent hours waiting around and getting hungry in between bouts of shooting at said weird metallic stone blocks. I didn’t mind, though. More gates meant more people saved.

However, the metallic rocks never changed state, from rock to gel-shape back to rock as the mermaid song had done to the blocks in Boston. The trident only broke up the stone into little bits. Not ready to give up, Matt got us rooms (separate rooms) at a local inn and we went back to the quarries day after day.

Meanwhile, because they had little choice after Matt’s failure to build a gate, the governments conceded and bargained with Vane. He got resources, cover stories, and however many seats he wanted on the evac trucks. (I had no contact with him. My info came through Matt and Grey. The Queen acted as his go-between. She refused to give me his number on his demand, and the Dragon’s Eye remained firmly quiet. He’d locked me out.) The Council regrouped to help the wizards with the preparations. The wizards flocked back to the school from various parts of the world, knowing Merlin was there. Vane had taken Leonora and Leonidas with him.

To build a giant gate took about a day. It became a game with me to figure out which cover story they used in which city. Not wanting to admit the pathetic stalking I was doing as Vane traipsed around the world, I only did this on the iPad when I thought no one was looking. I’m pretty sure Matt knew anyway. He would test me by casually asking which city was next on the schedule and then grimace when I replied from memory.

I researched the golden apple frantically.

Something about Vane’s memories nagged at me.

Matt finally admitted defeat in Derbyshire, and we returned to Avalon Prep. He and I often worked in the school library together… Neither one of us wanted to be alone. We worked, but we didn’t talk more than absolutely necessary. I didn’t know what to say to him—I’m sorry I may possibly kill you soon. I’m sorry I slept with your brother. (I wasn’t.)

I’m sorry my brother ditched you after one night. I imagined as his reply. Followed by, I told you so. He didn’t say it, but when I met his gaze, I knew he’d read my thoughts and I knew he agreed with them.

Help also came from other sources. Marilynn took detailed pictures of the Boston Library paintings and whatever other research bits she could from Boston. Grey tried to help, but was called into organizing the gargoyles for the evacuation. Gia got pulled into helping him. The excruciating part for everyone—the governments, gargoyles, and wizards alike—was picking and choosing who would be told about the evacuation and who not. Who would live and who would die.

I researched more. I slept very little.

But mostly I just missed Vane. As I watched the numbers on the countdown clock become smaller and smaller, my uncertainty grew bigger and bigger. The old insecurities crawled back. Was I just another in a long parade of infatuations? As Gia said, had he wanted to bag the sword-bearer? Was it another ploy for control?

Outside, the sun shone with excruciating heat as Kronos’s Fury neared.

Even the nights were hot. The airless atmosphere made everyone restless.

Then there was the constant anxiety at what was coming. Mark, Gia’s ex and one of the wizard candidates Vane recruited to try his hand at pulling the sword, convinced me to resume training. We had no teacher, but it helped keep the crazy in check.

Two weeks passed.

One afternoon, I stumbled on Matt watching a secure web feed.

“You don’t want to see this,” he said.

Of course the declaration made me want to see it more. So far all anyone had told me about the evacuation was “you don’t need to know” and “concentrate on getting better.” I sat down next to him. It didn’t take me long to figure out I should have listened to his warning. A group of world leaders sat around the rectangular table at the UN headquarters. From the limited number of people in the room, I guessed it was another secret session. I asked, “Is the Queen there?”

Matt shook his head. “Not for this.”

A mustached man, who I now recognized as the current president of the Security Council, came into focus. “Merlin, have you confirmed how long the gates will be open?”

Matt cleared his throat. “We will build as many as possible until the last possible moment. Since there is only one apple, we must open all of the gates at once from a central point.”

On the video chat, numerous faces stared back, waiting for a final number.

“Using the Kronos Eye as the model reference and extrapolating for the level of activity, the current data model sets the time at seventy-six seconds. We can last for seventy-six seconds before the Fury overwhelms us.”

Seventy-six seconds to evacuate our whole planet.

Murmuring broke out in the meeting room. Questions started coming at Matt about who made the determination, how it was made. I listened, but got lost at the names of experts being thrown around. I tuned back in when mustache-man steered the meeting along.

“… let us proceed to today’s topic of discussion. We have come down to these proposed criteria. The first is a lottery system. Second, standardized school scores…”

I took a harsh breath, finally understanding why Matt had not wanted to involve me.

They were coming up with a way to pick evacuees. As I listened to them define a system to designate a number rank to sum up a person’s worth, the overwhelming guilt I’d been keeping at bay threatened to choke me. Midway through the arguments my mind rebelled. I stumbled into the nearest bathroom, the nearest toilet, and tossed up the entire contents of my stomach.

I don’t know how long I stayed in there, but by the fading light in the window, I figured it was most of the afternoon. I alternated between rocking back and forth on the floor and hurling offerings to the porcelain gods. Finally, my stomach emptied.

I stayed on the cold floor, too weak to get up. Sometime later, Matt walked inside. Arms went around me. He pulled my back against his chest. The simple touch was all it took to open the floodgates. I turned into his chest and cried. Not the soft kind of weeping, but the kind where I expelled huge amounts of snot and tears until his T-shirt became soaked with fluid. He held me for what seemed like forever. I fell asleep on his shoulder.

I woke up later in my bed. He slept in Gia’s bed a few feet away. Hugging a pillow to myself, I stared at him. His eyes opened and he looked back at me.

“Do you think we can be friends?” I asked.

He stared up at the ceiling. “Probably not, but we can pretend.”

“I don’t want to pretend.” I tilted my head on the pillow. “Why did you tell Vane you wouldn’t let me go?”

“You know why.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “You have your magic back.” And the curse.

“He’s the wrong one.”

“Maybe I am too.”

He stared up at the ceiling. “Do you know I used to wait for him? After he left, I used to sit in the woods outside and wait for him to come. I made a secret satchel, so we could run away. I waited every day for two years. Then, one day I missed going out. A few months later, I missed two days in a row. Eventually I stopped. He never came.”

“The Lady forced him to leave.”

“I know, but I waited. I thought he could do anything.” His head turned on the white pillow. Shaggy brown hair fell over his eyes as he gave me a tired smile. “When I turned five, I started having dreams. They were horrible dreams. Of what he’d done… what he’d been forced to do. How many he’d killed. I saw them all. Then, he came back and I had the vision of me killing him. I wished he’d never come back.”

It hurt to hear him say it. It made me even madder at the Lady for tearing them apart. “Matt, he loves you—”

“I don’t think so.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. He didn’t think his brother loved him. I wasn’t sure how to convince him.

“It doesn’t matter, Ryan. We’ve got bigger worries.” Matt flipped to his side. “Didn’t I tell you it was going to be complicated to know me?”

“A swoon-worthy line.” I smiled at the memory of our first meeting. “I didn’t realize you were being literal.”

“Neither did I.”

After that, I tried not to think about the evacuation.

After that, things became less awkward with Matt.

Three weeks after Vane left, my mind swam with the details I collected from researching, but a silent hand seemed determined to keep it all in separate boxes, and I couldn’t make the connections I desperately needed. Finally, I ditched the library in defeat and went to work out. I hoped pushing my body to exhaustion might push my mind to flow.

I walked into the converted cathedral to meet Mark and a few other candidates. Past stained-glass windows and white-stone walls on the ground floor, curved archways led up to a turret with a winding staircase. On the second floor, the large gym had gleaming wood floors, intricate wood moldings on its windows, and rustic racks of weapons along the walls. Inside the medieval training room, a very modern gel mat outlined a workout space.

It was hard to be in the room. Every single time I stepped in I expected to see Vane, and every single time I didn’t, I felt a little broken. His office lay down below another winding staircase, off the side of the gym. I did sword forms with Mark and four others. Two friends of Blake and two more of Vane’s candidates. Three girls and three guys. Mark and I ended up being the mismatched pair since we pushed ourselves the hardest.

The arrangement had been working fine until Mark whacked me across the stomach with a sword. It wasn’t a practice sword. We were the last ones left. The others had already gone off to dinner. Mark dropped his sword. I sat down hard on the mat.

“Shit, DuLac.” He dropped down beside me and tried to heal the wound. Unfortunately, the cut exacerbated the healing wound and he wasn’t strong enough to combat the widening gash.

“Get Merlin.” I lay down on the mat, holding my stomach. My hands quickly became wet with blood.

Mark ran to his duffel bag. He cursed. “He’s not online.”

“He’s probably in the library.”

Mark hurried off. I closed my eyes.

Around my neck, the Dragon’s Eye heated.

I lay on a beach. Soft blue waves rolled gently into a curved cove. I hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t the same one from the Medusa visions. This one boasted smooth yellow sand. A lush green mountain with a hint of black on its peak served as a backdrop. Rain clouds misted the top, but down on the beach, the sun shone brightly. No threatening clouds hovered in the horizon. Warm blue-green water tickled my toes as I lay just above the surf.

I could have stayed forever.

“Leave you for a bit, DuLac, and you wind up with blood on you.” Vane’s voice washed over me. I blinked. The door between our minds gaped open.

“Nice place for a rest,” he said. The ocean turbulent behind him, he emerged from its furious waves. The mermaid walked on the beach. His hardened torso glistened under the soft rays of the sun. His hair wet and coarse with saline, I wondered if his lips would taste salty too. The wondering made me angrier.

Vane knelt down on the sand beside me. On top of my stomach, my hands curled into fists. Green ringed his pupils. He looked exhausted. I told myself I didn’t care.

I was not happy with him.

He gave me a wistful smile as if he read me, but offered no explanation.

“I’m going to put you to sleep,” he said.

“Not a chance!”

“You’re going to bleed to death if I don’t heal this.”

He’d healed me twice before while I slept. I didn’t know how or what, only that it worked. I had a feeling I didn’t want to know. That was before. Before he left me in pieces for Matt to pull back together.

“So do it.” It couldn’t be worse than what he’d already done to me.

“You don’t want to see this. Trust me—”

“You’re right. I don’t. Trust. You. At all. Because you’re a big egotistical jerk.”

I stared off into the blue sky and waited.

After a few seconds, he growled, “Fine. Be stubborn.”

Green intensified in his eyes. It overtook him. The monster snarled free. A shadow fell over Vane. Against my will, my eyes fell shut. Red eyes, horns curling out of his head, and the face of a bull melded into Vane’s sculpted chest.

The Minotaur sat on the beach. I lay spread out like a bonfire buffet before him. I took in a panicked breath. The monster I helped bring to life would be the end of me.