Queen of the Magnetland (The Elemental Phases Book 5) (5 page)

Chason
had spent the 1980s working on a…
something
for his father.  He no
longer remembered what the “super-important-for-our-defenses-and-we-must-rush-to-complete-it-or
risk-destruction-from-our-enemies” project
was
, but the damn thing had
taken awhile.  He’d missed most of the human fashion and culture changes for
that decade.

Still,
he did recognize that fact that the Zakkery wore the kind of shredded denim and
leather jacket with metal spikes that had been popular back then.  His shoes
were high tops decorated with the Union Jack and a bicycle chain was looped
around his wrist like a bracelet.  On his right hand, he wore a black,
fingerless glove.

Insane
or not, Chason wasn’t stupid enough to make a deal with someone dressed like a
hoodlum.  He glanced over at Sullivan, thinking that maybe he was imagining how
ridiculous this all was.

“A
business proposition?”

The
human arched a brow at him.  “Some friendly advice from a commoner?  I probably
wouldn’t sign any legal documents with this guy until you sober up, Emperor Magnet.”

Zakkery
flashed the human a glare.  “I’m not pulling a con on him.  I just posted his
bail, for Christ’s sake!  I just need to show him something.  Can I take him
outta here?”

“Well,
I’d miss you both, but… sure.”  Sullivan glanced over at Chason.  “I’ll be
wanting to take a formal statement from you about that Abel guy when you’re not
still drunk, though.  Also, I’m gonna ask Nia if she wants to press charges for
the kidnapping you just confessed to.”

“Great. 
Give her a call.  Come on, Chase.”  Zakkery seized hold of his arm and herded
him toward the door.  “You won’t believe…”

“Get
your hands
off
of me.”  Chason yanked himself free.

This
was completely unacceptable.  He might be a felonious, insane, suicidal, drunk,
now, but he still had standards.  Degenerate scumbags didn’t get to paw him and
call him “Chase.”  He’d always had a terrible temper, but it had gotten harder
to control it since Mara died.  His energy had grown stronger and darker, the
instability of it feeding into his destructive rages.  He didn’t want to
destroy the police station, just because this kid pissed him off.  But it was
starting to get tempting.

“I
don’t know who the hell you are, but…”

Zakkery
interrupted him.  “Hey, sorry.  Look, backing up.”  He held up his palms, but
didn’t stop with the sales pitch.  His kind had likely sold submerged acreage
all over Florida, back in the day.  “This is on the level.  I just have
something I think you might want and I’m willing to make a trade.”

Chason
scoffed.  He didn’t want anything, except his Match and a peaceful death.  If
he somehow won the lottery today, he wouldn’t even bother to cash in the
ticket.  What could this boy possibly think to trade?  “
You
have
something
I
want?”

“Yeah,
I do.  Now, right from the get go, understand that I’m really just an innocent
bystander, here.  That’s
it
.  I swear to Gaia.”  He held up a palm like
a crooked defendant being sworn-in in front of a jury.  “People just give me
stuff.”

Sullivan
snorted.  “Like car stereos?”  He couldn’t have looked more bored.  “Jesus,
that’s it.  I’m hiring a secretary to keep people like you out of here.”

Zakkery
ignored him.  “I’m like a middleman, helping people reconnect with the things they’ve
lost.”  His smoky gray eyes fixed on Chason.  Beneath the bad clothes and
sleazy condescension lurked a kind of crafty intelligence.  “Or things they’ve
had taken from them.”

Now
he had Chason’s attention.

Zakkery
smirked knowingly.  “Sometimes, I hear that somebody has been robbed, for instance,
and I can’t rest until I return that lost item to where it rightfully belongs.” 
He paused.  “And collect a small reward.”

Chason’s
chest swelled with long dead emotion.  For one brief moment, his saw the world
clearly and relief swamped him.  The black edges of madness receded in his mind
as he realized what Zakkery was saying.  What the Smoke Phase wanted to trade.

Mara
.

***

“Remember,
this wasn’t my doing.”  Zakkery stressed, as they made their way towards the
smoldering shell of the Smoke Palace.  The building had been burned down during
the Fall, but the ruins continued to smolder.  The odd grey stones glowed red
deep inside, guiding their path.  “So, don’t try to kill me the second you get
her back or anything.  I know you love all that vengeance shit.”

Chason
had no patience for his caveats.  “Just know that she’d better be
exactly
the same
when I see her.”  He narrowly avoided stepping on some kind of
skittering rodent.  “If her dress is so much as wrinkled, I’ll be taking it out
on you.”

The
Smokeland really was a swamp.  Crooked reeds poked out of the knee deep water
that spread off into the horizon.  Chason had to follow just where Zakkery
stepped to avoid sinking into the stagnant sludge.  The spongy ground was
hidden in fog and the whole Kingdom was shrouded in gloom, so he had no idea
where they were going.  Since the Smoke Phases engaged in a constant war of All
Against All, he was also braced for some kind of ambush, aimed at either him or
Zakkery or both.

Over
all, the whole place was only slightly less dank than the Magnetland.

“Well,
she’s
not
exactly the same, so prepare yourself.”  Zakkery warned.  “And
I’m not the one who messed with her, either.”  He paused.  “Well, at least I
didn’t
start
it.  It’s not my fault she’s been… altered.”

Chason’s
teeth ground together.  He couldn’t think about what might have happened to
Mara’s body.  Couldn’t ask for more details about who else was involved.  Couldn’t
consider why they might have done this.

He
just… couldn’t.

Not
if he wanted to hold it together long enough to get her back, again.  If
anything had happened to her, beheading Zakkery would come later. 
After
the Smoke Phase showed Chason where Mara was and her body was safely returned
to the crypt.  Until then, it took everything in him just to stay in control. 
He couldn’t let anything distract him, not even the rage broiling inside his
head.  Retrieving Mara came before everything else.

See?

Very
sane.

Zakkery
shot him a sideways look, obviously not trusting Chason’s silence.  “We’re
agreeing on the not killing me part, right?  Because, unless I live long enough
to collect my reward, this is all kinda moot, ya know?”

“I
agreed to the trade.  The Justice box in exchange for my Match’s body.”

“Yeah,
well, things usually don’t go this smooth for me.”  Zakkery muttered.  “And you
agreed to give up a potential universe destroying super-weapon awful easy.  You
haven’t even asked what I intend to do with it.”

“I
don’t care what you do with it.”  Chason no longer cared about much of
anything.  “All I want is my Match returned to me.  After that, you, the box,
and the rest of the world can all sink into that marsh.”  He gestured to the
endless quagmire of the Smokeland with an indifferent flip of his wrist.

“You’re
probably gonna reconsider the world sinking part, in a second.”

Zakkery
stopped at a jagged, freestanding piece of the Smoke Palace’s wall.  There was
a nearly invisible a door in it and Chason realized there was no way he’d ever
be able to find this perfectly ordinary looking rock, again.  For all he knew
Zakkery had been leading him in circles.

“This
way.”  Zakkery tugged the door open, revealing a set of stairs leading down. 
Noxious smelling water from the seeping bog dripped onto porous stone steps. 
Zakkery reached over to the wall and clicked on a series of recessed halogen
lights.

Chason
arched a brow.

Zakkery
shrugged.  “Lazarus, the old king, liked human tech.  Most of the kingdom’s
been fucked back into the Dark Ages, but whatever’s left of the palace still even
has wireless access.  I think I’m the only one to notice.”  He snorted.  “But
then, I was
really
motivated to look for some modern conveniences.  You
have no idea how hard it is to view porn without the internet.  I mean –Shit!--
we did it for centuries, right?”  He shook his head.  “But, once you find those
websites, you can never go back to just the magazines.”

Chason
made a disgusted face.  Unbelievable that countless millennia of his pious,
upstanding ancestors had all lived and died and contributed DNA so that the
final king of the Magnet Kingdom could be here at this moment…

Buying
his dead bride back from a perverted lowlife.

He
looked up at the sky, although he had no idea why.  He knew that there was no
one up there to beseech.  He had to get out of this world soon or he really
would go crazy.  He swept after Zakkery, resisting the urge to push the Smoke
Phase right down the steps.

“Are
you working with the Light Phase?”  Chason knew that somehow a Banished Light
Phase was involved in Mara’s abduction, but he hadn’t found that man, yet.  It
was just a matter of time, though.  When Chason focused on killing someone,
they always wound up dead.

“A
Light Phase?  No.  I hang out with a better class of criminal.”

Under
other circumstances, Chason might worry about this being a trap.  His sword was
still in that human’s evidence locker and Chason hadn’t taken the time to go
get another one, so he was unarmed.  But honestly, what possible difference
could it make if Zakkery tried to attack him?  Chason would either die.  In
which case,
good
.  Or kill the Smoke Phase.  In which case,
better
. 
Either way, having Mara back
now
was worth the risk.

Why
was this taking so long?  Had Zakkery hidden her body in another goddamn realm?

Chason
could feel his temper edging into the red zone, again, as they descended.  “Where. 
Is.  My.  Match?”  He ground out, carefully spacing his words.  His voice
echoed in the damp chamber.

“
Chason! 
Is that you?
”

The
desperate scream cut through him like a sword.

For
the first time in what seemed like forever, the phantom melody that endlessly
played in his head… stopped.

Chason
felt his blood still and the pupils of his eyes dilate.  He’d been hearing
music for two years, but he’d never,
ever
hallucinated voices before.

Especially
not
that
voice.

“Shit,
here we go.”  Zakkery groaned.

Chason
didn’t even process the complaint.  He shoved passed the Smoke Phase, taking
the steps four at a time.  He burst through a door at the bottom, his wild gaze
swinging around a room lined with jail cells.  It looked eerily similar to the
one he’d just left in Mayport Beach.  Zakkery had been right.  Lazarus must
have been a big fan of human innovation, because they were all constructed of
Plexiglas.

And
there on the left…

“Chason!” 
A woman stood on the other side of the plastic, her palms flat on the clear
partition separating them.  “Oh, thank Gaia!  Please, get me out of here!”

Mara
.

At
least, she looked like Mara.

Exactly
like Mara.

Smooth
black hair fell to her shoulders, the same vivid purple streak at her temple. 
Her face was perfect.  It had always been that way.  Classically lovely and
strikingly unique all at the same time.  Tall and slim, she still wore the
amethyst Phazing robes that she’d been buried in.  And her eyes… they were the
familiar ebony color that had haunted his dreams from the first moment he ever
saw her.  Beautiful black eyes that had smiled up at him as she stood in the
rain.

Chason’s
head tilted.

Not
believing.

Not
even processing.

“
Chason.
”
 She cried when he just stood there frozen.  “Help me!”

Chason
couldn’t move.

Raiden’s
prophetic words came back to him: 
I’ve seen your Match
returned to you.

What
was happening here?

“See?” 
Zakkery came up next to him and sighed.  “I told ya she was a little altered. 
It’s just been getting worse, too.  I was hoping she wouldn’t be so… awake,
until after I handed her over to you.  I knew it would be a whole big scene.”

Every
muscle in Chason’s body was paralyzed with shock while thoughts ricocheted
around in his skull.  Was he imagining all this?  Was he still passed drunk on
the human’s floor?  Was she a Reflection Phase, disguised to look like his
Match?  Was he just finally, irrevocably insane?

Was
she… Mara?

“Actually,
I’d try to keep a low profile on this whole thing, if I were you and wanted to
avoid a lot of drama.”  Zakkery lit a cigarette.  “Plenty of folks are gonna
have questions about why she’s not dead anymore.  There’s bound to be a whole
zombie debate and whining about playing God.  Not to mention some bad guys are going
to be looking for her, pretty soon.”  He shrugged.  “Technically, her body’s
right there, though, so no reneging on our deal.”