Page 45 of Monsters of Midnight

I had come to the section of the hallway where knights were once buried, their tombs lying, hidden in stone sarcophagi. It was in between these tombs, some of the oldest written words of the current branch of the ruling class of the Seelie could be seen.

I came here because I felt like it was old enough to know something, but not so old that it became mythic. They might’ve tried to put some level of logic on it.

“She’s dead,” Magnus stepped into the hallway, completely unexpected. His voice rang out among the bones in the basement of the church.

I looked up at him, startled to see the wreckage on his face. I didn’t even have to ask who he was talking about. “Mother,” I said, my breath, inhaling sharply as the reality of the words hit me.

She was dead.

Magnus’ bloodshot eyes blinked, and tears slipped down his cheeks. He came forward, falling into my arms, and even as I hugged him, a cold chill came over me.

“What are you doing here, brother?” I asked, pushing him off me and taking a step backwards.

“I killed her,” he said. “She asked me to do it. She asked me and I couldn’t deny her. She did it not just for herself. She did it for you.”

My stomach roiled as I reacted to his words, trying to process the information. My mother, the woman who had been a centerpiece of my life for more than a thousand years…my mother was dead.

My brother Magnus had killed her.

His hand clutched up, but I took a step back and he grasped air. “And we thought it would give Caroline a way out of Undirheim,” Magnus moaned. “And it would give mom respite from her human feelings.”

I heard what he was saying, and while I understood the logic of it, there was no way I could get behind what had actually happened.

My brother had killed my mother.

I turned my back on Magnus, and it was then I saw the symbol etched in the stone across from me. An arrow pointing and angled to the right. I reached up and turn the symbol to the left.

“What’s that?” Magnus asked.

“It’s a trick,” I said, moving the arrow back again. “This is the symbol for the Vatican, the monsters use on their runes.” I moved the symbols, so it was pointing upwards in the left-hand direction. “And this is the symbol the monsters use on their runes for hell.”

“Sister cities,” Magnus said. “I thought that was always kind of a joke.”

“In this case I guess it isn’t,” I mused, flipping the rune back and forth.

“It makes sense monsters want to rule Earth but not from Earth it so they want to rule it from Undirheim.”

The thought turned my stomach.

Even the brief moments I was in Undirheim were enough to let me know it was completely different from Earth. It was muted and hushed and quiet and dead. There was apathy and lack of feeling and lack of sensitivity, and it was something, as a monster, demigod, and human that just didn’t fit anywhere in my world. I could understand chaos. I could understand heightened emotions and intensity. I couldn’t understand apathy, or the ritual cleansing of the spirit and memories that seemed to go on in Undirheim.

“We have to go there,” I turned to Magnus.

I saw him blanch. “If we go there, it’ll be almost impossible to come back,” he said. “I know you did it, but I don’t think just anyone can do that.”

“I don’t care if you come back or not,” I said, harshly.

I didn’t want to unpack all my feelings for my brother right now, but him coming back was the least of my worries. If the monsters were about to overrun Undirheim, Caroline was going to be right in harm’s way. She had about twenty-four hours before she passed into the fae afterlife, and we still needed to find our way from another portal to Undirheim. Fortunately, in the eternal city that wasn’t hard to come by. Just finding one open for business was a little harder to do.

Fortunately for both of us, Magnus knew people.

I supposed when you’ve been around as long as we had been, you got to know people too. It was just in the land of the fae I wasn’t considered one of their favorite people. This was one of the places where Magnus had more friends than I did.

Some of his activities that were dubious against the DGC were smiled upon by the fae, while my work was clearly in the DGC camp and was much less favored. It didn’t take long for Magnus to find a portal to Undirheim, and a demon who was willing to let us pass. I didn’t ask what agreement Magnus had made with the demon. The truth was, I didn’t want to know not at all. I just wanted to get to my girl, to find out how she was and just see what I could do to help her. I had to stop the monsters from overtaking Undirheim and ultimately ruling the earth from there.

Chapter 27

CAROLINE

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