Page 78 of The Malevolent Eight

‘Because you’ve got some brilliant plan to defeat her later?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Because you’ve gone soft and you’re in love with this lunatic?’

Everyone was watching me, waiting for my answer. There was something amusing about the fact that they were far more enthralled by the idea that I was in love with the Spellslinger than they’d been about whether I had a plan to stop her and her bosses from bringing the world to an end. I decided to make them wait and went to the corner where my new coat, shirt and trousers lay in a heap on the floor. Before I got there, a bolt of indigo lightning obliterated them, fogging the air with charred fragments of expensive cloth.

‘You expect me to save the world naked?’ I asked, staring at the sooty remains of my beautiful clothes.

‘Forget it, Cade,’ Corrigan said angrily. ‘I’m done with your idiocy. We all are. You said we were going to be a team of heroes and all you’ve done is lead us from one disaster to another.’ I heard the sound of a pack being dropped onto the floor, the string ties being opened. ‘From now on, we do things my way.’

Now that I was freed from the wards they’d put in my cell back in the fortress, I had any number of ways of taking down Corrigan– well, at least one. I couldn’t, though. It wasn’t just that he was my best friend in a profession that didn’t lend itself to friendship, but that, truth be told, he was right. Nothing I’d done had dissuaded the Lords Celestine and Lords Devilish from their war. If anything, like Eliva’ren and her chaos magic, I’d brought our doom closer.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s try your way, Corrigan.’

I turned, half expecting him to blast me from existence, or at least to punch me hard enough in the face to do some serious damage. Instead, he was holding up a long dark leather coat in one hand, with matching trousers, a burgundy shirt and a belt in the other. Emblazoned on the breast of the coat in that same burgundy were a pair of lightning bolts forming the number seven. I could see more of the ridiculous outfits spilling out of the bag. The others picked through them to find theirs.

‘Uniforms?’ I asked. ‘That’syour idea of taking control?’

He tossed me the coat and trousers, then wielding the belt like a whip, waited for me to dress. ‘We’re all going to die, Cade. That’s what happens in the real world when you take on competing armies of supernatural morons. I don’t blame you for leading me to my death. All I ask is that we look cool while dying.’

I heard light, mostly restrained laughter from near the door. Eliva’ren stood there watching us, amusement and sadness in her eyes, and a terrible longing for something she had never known and hadn’t realised she had so desperately wanted. We exchanged looks for a moment as I dressed myself in Corrigan’s preposterous idea of a heroic uniform, and in those silent glances an entire conversation took place: a pleading on my part that she reconsider, a steely rejoinder that, unlike me, she knew where all this was heading, and that she had long ago decided that the only fate she cared about was that of her son; a suggestion that maybe her unyielding resolve was precisely what made doom for all of us so certain. An apology, and a farewell.

We let her walk away, listening to the sound of her footsteps as she descended the stairs.

‘Yes,’ I said once she was gone.

‘Yes, to what?’ Corrigan asked, buttoning up his own dark leather coat and discovering that his was a little too tight.

‘You asked a moment ago whether the reason I was letting her leave was because I’d fallen in love with her. The answer is yes. I’m positively nuts for this woman, Corrigan. I’ve got no plan, no strategy for how we can stop what’s coming for us. Even if the Aurorals and Infernals manage not to destroy each other and half the world when they get here– which is highly unlikely– or they don’t end up blowing up the other half in a witless attack on the Pandoral, it’s almost certain that what happens after will trigger this “doom” the Spellslinger was hired to bring about, which is apparently also the only way she can save her son from the Pandoral realm. There’s no plausible way the seven of us can prevent any of that from happening!’

I was breathing too fast, my heart was pounding and the aches and pains of my incarceration by the Pandoral’s minions suddenly flared up like the torture was happening all over again. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs and I knew– knew more clearly than anything I’d ever known before– that this was entirely the wrong time to have an emotional breakdown in front of the only six people on this plane who might at least try to save the world.

It took every ounce of discipline I’d learned among the Glorians, every perverse impulse I’d ever acquired from the Infernals, and a touch of something considerably more dangerous than both– I believe decent people call it ‘honesty’– to continue.

‘On the positive side,’ I managed between gasps, ‘if by some miracle we survive this, I’m thinking of asking the Spellslinger to be my girlfriend.’

Nobody laughed, not even a quiet titter. They remained dead silent for an uncomfortably long time. Finally– and unexpectedly– it was Shame who spoke for all of them. ‘This has always been a fight over whether the fate of this realm should be determined by gods or mere Mortals. To risk everything on sentiment seems a profoundly. . .humancourse of action.’

‘I like it,’ Galass said, her jaw set in that way of hers that refused to accept that fate or circumstance could rule our lives.

‘The Spellslinger better have beenreallygood in bed, is all I’m saying,’ Corrigan grumbled, though his grin was wide and full of that wild impulse to go out and die fighting impossible odds.

Temper thumped his foot several times, causing the whole floor to shake, which I guessed was him agreeing. Then he grinned at me, showing his fangs, and I wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to convey.

It was Alice who surprised me most, though, because she spoke so quietly, I almost hadn’t heard her until I saw the tears in her eyes. That’s when I understood what she’d said.

‘I would like to die for love.’

Strangest coven of wonderists this plane of reality or any other has or will ever see, I thought.

I headed for the door. ‘Come on,’ I told the others. ‘Let’s go and kick destiny in the face and save the world.’

We were halfway down the stairs when I stopped.

‘What’s wrong?’ Galass asked, crashing into me.

I turned and looked up at Corrigan near the back. Pinching the lapel of my leather coat, I asked, ‘Did you really– while I was being held captive and tortured to enact a spell that would’ve destroyed the entire Mortal realm– did youseriouslystop somewhere to get custom-tailored outfits made?’

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