Harley Merlin and the Cult of Eris (Harley Merlin, #6)

One thing was for sure, everyone was out for themselves in this place. And, if we didn’t jump on the selfish bandwagon, it’d be our necks on the line.

Greater good, greater good, greater good. I kept repeating the mantra, but it didn’t make this any easier to handle.

“Explain, now. With details. And quickly, before my itchy trigger finger slips and I decide to deal with this in a more direct manner.” Katherine was keeping her calm exterior, but I wondered what was going on beneath the surface. Regardless, I had no time to think about the morality of this. We had to act fast or risk being splattered.

Finch stepped forward. “I received word yesterday from my source in the National Council, but I couldn’t find Tess to confront her. Regardless, they did identify her as the informant. She’s been selling your secrets because she’s bitter and angry about her sister’s death, and the fact that you wouldn’t permit her to bring her sister’s body back to the island.” He was going at this full-throttle, no remorse necessary. “She just told us that you only use people, that you don’t care about your followers beyond what they can do for you. She told us, outright, how much she hates you now, and how much your vision has changed from the one you promised everyone. She wanted us to find a way to escape this place—she told us we had to get out before we got suckered in.”

Oh… clever. Even if Tess didn’t make it out of this alive, airing all of Katherine’s dirty laundry would mean she didn’t die in vain. Everyone was listening, rapt. They were hearing everything that Finch had to say and would undoubtedly make their own opinions from it. Perhaps they’d share in some of Tess’s thoughts—thoughts they’d been too afraid to admit to themselves.

Even so, I couldn’t find my voice. Finch was doing all the talking, and I just felt numb and scared. This could only end one way, with either Tess’s head on the chopping block, or ours. Maybe both, if Katherine was pissed enough. All of this had taken me by surprise, and I honestly had no clue how to react. It was all happening way too fast, leaving my mind spinning.

“You liar!” Tess roared.

Finch smirked. “Oh, really? Then how come I have a recording of you, saying exactly what I’ve just said?”

“You don’t. You can’t.” Tess wavered, as if she wasn’t quite sure whether or not Finch was bluffing. Neither was I, in all honesty.

He opened out his palms and closed his eyes, a holographic bubble appearing in his hands. Tess’s face wavered inside it. A moment later, her voice echoed through the now-silent library. “Even others in the cult are starting to doubt her. The vibe is bad here, seriously bad...”

I gaped at Finch. I had no idea he could do something like this, but then, I didn’t know everything he’d learned in this place. It looked like he’d picked up a devious spell or two along the way. Now, everyone had heard what Tess said, and the whole congregation was reeling in shock. Even Tess looked stunned, her eyes wide and panicked. She’d underestimated Finch’s cunning, and so had I.

A moment later, everyone turned to look at Katherine. All bets were off. The calm, calculating figure everyone was used to had morphed into something else—a fiery hell-demon who’d finally had her buttons pushed. Her eyes flashed with poison, her lips curling into a grimace of sheer fury.

“Get her out of my sight!” she bellowed. “Take her to my private quarters this minute! If it weren’t for the third ritual, I’d deal with you right now, you venomous snake.”

Tess was shaking, her eyes wide in desperation. “Eris, please, you know me. I would never—”

“While you’re waiting for me, I want you to think about what you’ve done,” Katherine interjected, her tone lowering to a hiss. “I want you to think really, really hard. And, once you’ve realized the stupidity of your actions, I want you to think about your death.” She took a step closer to Tess, getting right up in her face. “It’s going to be painful beyond your imagination. I’m going to sift through every dark and terrible spell I have and pick the worst one for you. Just for you. It will be so slow that you’ll wish your mother had never squeezed you, wailing and screaming, into this world. You’ll wish you’d died in your sister’s place, you can count on that.”

Even though she’d tried to throw us under the bus, I felt sorry for Tess, not to mention guilty. Nobody deserved what she was going to face, especially not somebody who was working on the same side as us. Katherine meant it, too. She didn’t use words lightly. She was going to annihilate Tess in the most horrific way possible, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. I glanced at Finch, who’d gone pale. He wasn’t the remorseful type, per se, but he looked pretty shaken up right now. He’d given Katherine the evidence she needed, and now Tess was going to die. I knew they’d been friends, once upon a time. This had to be hitting him hard. His body was stiff with tension, as though he didn’t trust himself to move a muscle.

The guards surged forward and seized Tess before she had the chance to make a run for it.

“Katherine, please, you’ve got to listen to me!” she screamed, as the guards took her away.

“It’s Eris to you, you traitorous wretch!” Katherine howled in her face. “And I’ve heard quite enough from you. One more word and I will make your insides your outsides, in front of everyone here.”

With fear in her eyes, Tess unleashed a searing crackle of Electro energy, sending the guards around her into spasms. As if she’d been expecting the attack, Katherine immediately sent out a lasso of Telekinesis, wrapping it around Tess’s neck and squeezing, in a horrible replay of what we’d done to the guards. A few moments later, she was limp on the ground, her cheeks purple. I quickly sent out a wave of Empathy to check whether she was still alive. The pulse of her frightened emotions was still there, deep inside her, though fainter than it had been before.

Fresh guards replaced those who were writhing in pain on the floor, hauling Tess up by her arms and dragging her out of the library and away to Katherine’s private quarters. I got the feeling Katherine wasn’t quite done yet. She turned to the rest of the cultists who’d gathered at the entrance.

“Don’t you have work to get to? Do you all think this is a free ride? That I’ll do all the hard stuff, so you don’t have to? I suggest you all get on with your duties, before I decide to add a few more to my kill list.” She glowered at them, and they scampered. Only the security detail remained, all of them trembling before the sight of a furious Katherine. I sensed that they hadn’t seen her lose her cool, either. “I want double security on this room, do you understand? Nobody is to get in or out until midnight on All Hallows’ Eve. I want a rotation, twenty-four hours a day. If even one of you takes so much as a toilet break, I’ll have your bladders removed. As for the two of you who were supposed to be guarding this place, I’ll be coming for you.”

They bowed low, a ripple of assent vibrating through them. Those guards were a problem. They hadn’t seen our faces, but they’d tell Katherine they were attacked, in order to save their skins. I guessed we could always tell Katherine that we’d heard a commotion inside and had found the guards knocked out by Tess. That might work. Still, panic was bristling through my body in a torrent. We would be relying a lot on her faith in us, and I doubted she had any, right about now.