The Hunter's Prey (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 5) (10 page)

“I wasn't. I know full well that you do not need the petty tricks of poison to get from me what you want. You are much too powerful for that.” I took a sip of tea from the small cup, willing my exhausted hands not to shake as I brought it to my lips. The tea was honeyed mint, and it reminded me of kinder days in Morocco. It was lovely and warmed me through. And the sticky piece of baklava I bit into spoke of warm lands and long afternoons a thousand times more pleasant than this one.

As I ate I studied the Marid. The only creature I’d ever encountered who rivaled his power was a dragon, and while I was acquainted with that creature’s unique magic, the Marid was a mystery to me. Like a dragon, it would be so easy for him to end me with a flick of his wrist. A bat of his eyes. I might be the world’s most powerful witch, but I was nothing compared to him. Which made the fact that I was still alive all the more interesting.

The Marid filled his plate high with orange slices and an aura of deep contentment surrounded him. I guessed he did not frequently have the ability to talk candidly with another. Such was the way of the truly powerful: they traded away the camaraderie of peers for their power. Who better for him to speak to than his prey? Let him talk and tell me too much. Let him see me only as a victim.

“Let me ask you a question, young witch, how many Marids do you think there are in the world?” his voice nearly purred.

I shrugged. “I have always heard of Marids and their exploits, of course, but I have never met anyone who has met one face to face. So I would guess very few. A dozen. Perhaps less?”

He laughed and clapped his hands. “Wrong. There is only one. There has only ever been one! But I have made sure that in every legend and story about me there were always at least three mentioned. I have even gone so far as to burn every tome that states otherwise, but the truth of it is there has always been just one. Me.” He beamed. “I’ve never even had need for a name besides Marid because when you are the singular of your species, there is no need for naming. I am Marid.”

“And yet you have a daughter. Lila,” I said.

“Lila,” he said slowly. “Is that her name? She is no Marid. Not fully. She cannot be. For I am one. Solo. Only. Which is not to say she is not important. On the contrary: I need her.” He smiled. “Another question, clever witch, did you notice any similarities in those who hunted you today?”

I sipped tea and smiled back at him. “Besides their failed attempts to capture me? They were all in desperate need of a wish,” I said and willed my exhausted mind to come up with some other answer. “I assume that is how you got them all engaged in your hunt.” I paused again and thought about the vampires, the unicorn, and the spider, as well as all the other monsters I'd glimpsed in this palace. “They were also all old or wounded in some way. Suffering the ravages of time.”

“
Why is the tall, straight figure that divided the ranks like a spear now bent almost double? Why is it that the lion’s strength weakens to nothing?
” The Marid asked.

“I take the beautiful clothes back, so that you will learn the robe
o
f appearance is only a loan,”
I answered, quoting from the same Rumi poem that the Marid quoted. It had always been a favorite of mine.

The Marid clapped his hands and grinned.
“
Indeed! The beautiful clothes of life are taken back for all of us. Which is to say, time destroys us all, even those of us who are immortal, for there is no true immortality, is there? Not without some massive source of replenishment. Time breaks all of us down, and we are none of us able to stay strong and untouched by its slow degradations.”

I nodded, for I knew all about the weight of immortality. The dread of my own years, and how so recently I’d almost ended my own life for the weight of all the terrible mistakes I’d made over the years, decades, and centuries. They had come close to crushing me. “Though I am sure time does not affect you as it does most. You are far too powerful,” I said.

He looked pleased with my words, as I’d intended. “One would think so, wouldn’t one? Alas, it is true for me as well. Time erodes the Marid. Hard to believe, I know.”

“Truly?” I asked, willing him to say more.

“Truly. Though I am so strong that for a time my vitality slowly leaked away and I did not even notice. But then one day I awoke and I was half the Marid I had once been, for each wish granted had depleted me, ever so slightly. What was I to do? I could not ask my fellow Marid for help with this tragedy. I am the only one.”

I leaned forward and shook my head. “What a puzzle. I cannot imagine any way out of it.”

“Yes, lesser creatures would have given up.” He smiled and clasped his hands together. “I had to find my own path. It is a terrible thing, to have once been so mighty and then to find oneself weakened. I understand that, deeply, every time I gather my hunters for the hunt. It is why I let them hunt for me. Why I give them the chance to win the grace to return to their former greatness.”

“Kind of you,” I murmured and leaned forward as though he was the most fascinating creature on the planet, giving him exactly what he wanted from his captive audience.

He sucked on a slice of orange and threw it on the ground where it landed on a thick Persian rug. “So there I was, with my magic in need of being resupplied, and yet my magic was singular and strange, as was I. It existed solely within me. I confirmed this as I searched the world for a well of magic that could turn me strong again. I found nothing. But then I stumbled upon a secret text that hinted at something that could cure me.”

He paused.

“A secret book?” I asked, genuinely interested this time.

He nodded. “And that book led me to a scroll where I found, on yellowed pages of papyrus written in the shaky hand of a wizened mystic, that there existed a magic that was more elemental than all of the others. One magic that was purer. The first magic.”

He paused dramatically.

“No.” I said and shook my head. I sat up straight. In all my years of walking and finding magic hither and yon, every magic was always specific. It always had an origin. “There is no such thing as a pure magic,” I said. “Is there? I have not ever heard of such a thing hinted at.”

The Marid clapped his hand. “Nor had I! The knowledge of it has long ago been lost, just like those who held the pure magic. Once I found that the magic still existed, then my next step was to find one and woo her.”

My belly clenched at his words, sensing some logic to this that my mind did not yet know. “What sort of creature?” I asked.

“Nothing less than a goddess,” he said.

I frowned. “Goddess? That doesn't
—
”

“Exist?” he finished. “True and not true. Think of all the great human civilizations, risen and fallen. Think of all the varied deities they worshiped. I discovered none of those lost gods ever truly went away. They are all still around, though they too suffer the vagaries of a long life. None of them, that I have yet to meet, remember what they once were, and in doing so they live in plain sight, acting out the lives of normal human beings. Their god-minds create easy stories for them that hide what they truly are, from everyone and themselves.” The Marid paused and looked very pleased with himself.

In truth, he had every right to be. I had never known such a thing. Never even heard it whispered or postulated. I swallowed over the tightness in my throat. “So Lila's mother?”

“A Sumerian goddess, daughter of Inanna and Enki. A goddess made of love and mischief.” He smiled. “Over the years, I've found many interesting goddesses to bolster my powers.”

Which meant that Lila was half goddess and half Marid.

Lila, walking past me mute and emotionless, walking into Hell and me? Standing there watching and being powerless to protect this girl who I had sworn to protect. This girl who I loved as my own daughter.

This girl who was even more powerful than a Marid, most likely. Did it matter? What could such a creature, free and unfettered, do to the world? Anything she wanted, I suspected, but I didn't have time to think about that right now. “So you wooed her mother, but then she escaped from your nightmarish clutches to raise the child on her own.” I paused and then shook my head. “No, it was no mistake that she ran. You let her leave, didn’t you? Because later on, you always stage these hunts. These mother hunts, to find and kill the goddess who is the mother of your children.”

He nodded. “Yes. I always have to let my children go. I learned long ago that I must let them be raised by their mother, for I am not a father who is good for his children. I let them leave, that my children may flourish and grow strong. That my offspring might become the ripe flower I need them to be. But then the unthinkable happened this time: the goddess and my daughter disappeared, truly, and I could not find them. It took me much time and effort to find what became of the child.”

Because of the hiding and protection spells I’d set up around them both. I hid my small satisfaction over that. “Why hunt down the mother at all?” I asked, willing him to keep talking and explaining all the things that didn’t make sense yet. “It seems like a lot of effort, these hunts.”

He nodded. “Mothers of all kinds are surprisingly adept at protecting their children. Though the goddesses are dormant and ignorant of their true nature, I have learned that should they learn that their children are in danger, their goddess powers emerge and that is no small matter.”

I nodded slowly, putting all these pieces together. This Marid sent out his hunters who were desperate for a wish to do the dirty work of killing the goddesses, because he was too scared to kill them himself. “And then, once the mothers are gone?”

“Then I visit my halfling children, who have newly come into their Marid forms, who are filled with the wonderful magic of their mothers as well, and I let them serve me. Usually the mother is hunted and killed weeks before my children change and come into their power. Usually, I am always there to greet my child at the moment of their transformation.”

When they would be at their weakest. “And then?” I asked. My mouth was dry. I sipped some of the tea, but it tasted too sweet.

“Then they complete their life cycle, for they are brought into this world to nourish me, and they bring me back, again and again to my full power. They are the exalted and necessary sacrifices to keep me strong.”

I gazed at the floor, fearful that if I looked at him I would fling useless magic at him with the rage I felt at his words. There were many ways he could sacrifice his children, but I knew how he did it. I remembered the banquet table. “You eat them,” I said flatly. My belly clenched and I fought off a wave of nausea. This monster would eat my Lila.

He would try.

“Oh, witch, don't look so angry. A look like that could get my prey in trouble.” He laughed. “Not that you pose any harm to me. And know this: you should be infinitely grateful that I use due diligence to eradicate my kin and do not let them make their own kingdoms on this Earth. For my progeny, halflings that they are, would create havoc like you cannot imagine. They would have destroyed this realm many times over if I did not cull them.”

I shivered and didn't like the strangled fact that I believed him. A goddess and a Marid, young and full of the powers of both of their parents? That was a creature I would not ever like to face, unless she wore the face of Lila. But what if that was all that was left of her now that she had changed: her face?

The Marid laughed. “Oh you poor child of Adam. I can see the shock dancing across your face. She had you fooled, didn't she? You thought she was mostly human. My clever daughter.” He licked his lips.

“And her mother?” I asked, swallowing down my loathing and remembering that I should be getting as much information from him as I possibly could. “Is she still missing? You called this hunt to find me and not her mother. Why is that?”

A frown, the first on his smooth blue face that I'd seen, drew a deep line across his face. “The goddess mother is gone.”

“You mean you found where Lila went, but you still haven’t found the mother?”

“She is dead or moved on to a different realm, most likely. None could hide from me like she has.”

I wanted to laugh in his face, to scream at him that he was not invincible, that he would not always win, and that already on his quest to eat his most recent daughter he had lost both the mother and the child.

But I swallowed my words. I needed to live through this day and protect Lila any way I could, and there was still the fact between us that he had called a hunt not to kill me, but to bring me to him. Which meant I had a purpose for him. A use. And what could a creature as powerful as him possible need from me? I sipped my tea and stared at this monster who was so magical and powerful that it dulled my eyes to look at him for too long.

“And now the time has come for me to compel you to do what I need you to do,” he said softly.

“You fool,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying. “You stupid Marid. Do you really think you must compel me to go to Hell and retrieve your daughter?”

14

Compulsion

Surprise flitted across his face.

“You must need me because you cannot go to Hell yourself,” I said and then guessed at the reason why. “Because you escaped from there, long ago, and though you may be an apex predator in this realm, there are many in Hell who would happily devour you. It is the one place you cannot go.”