Page 57 of Killer of the Bells
I was running through the woods as the thought arrived in my head, and it nearly caused me to crash into a tree. I breathed a sigh of relief when I managed to dodge it. I wasn’t concerned for myself. The tree would have exploded, and I would have been fine, but it was what might happen afterward that was the concern.
Do you remember what I said about the ancient ones that live outside Underhill? The ones with so much power that the laws of magic no longer apply to them? The Cody is one of them, but I wasn’t near her territory. I was in the territory of someone far more dangerous than her.
He was difficult to rouse to anger—almost impossible from what I’ve been told—but he did have his triggers. The tree I’d nearly smashed into was close to his lair, and it was ancient for its species. Most red maples don’t live much past a hundred years, but from the size of this one, it had to be pushing four hundred easily.
That meant it was cared for byhim,and that was rare. Paris’s dog Trixie’s true master—not Paris. I’m pretty sure Paris is more like her pet than anything— wasn’t known for caring for anything other than his shadow children, and even then, he was a hands-off parent.
No, I won’t speak his name. It changes with the years, but in the dumbest ways. Trixie’s master simply changes a few letters every time he changes his identity, thinking it’ll fool people. Over the countless centuries of his existence, it’s become unrecognizable from its original form, but it still has enough similarities to make it confusing to all of us who are old enough to have witnessed the changes.
It's ridiculous, really. He’s far too powerful for any of us to be able to do anything to him with or without his name, true or otherwise.
Names among the fae have power, both true and assumed. Wraith is not my eternal millstone’s original name, nor is Vale my own. We both chose these names to use for a few decades and will discard them once they start to gain too much power. It’s the way of the fae, and I grow more bound to their rules as the decades pass.
One day, there would be no difference between me and them at all, and then there would be no hope for me to change my fate. I’d be stuck with Wraith’s curse, and I’d outlive Echo whether I managed to keep him from killing himself or not.
You see, I’d made very little progress with my attempt to use magic and science to cure Wraith and myself from his curse. In more than a century, I’d done little more than make advances in medicine for humans. Their lifespans had only increased from my studies, rather than me learning how to decrease my own.
The irony didn’t elude me.
Perhaps one day, after Echo died, I would stop caring about Wraith’s continued existence and kill us both.
But until that day came, I would fight to give Echo enough reason to live that he would choose to stay alive as long as possible.
In the spirit of that decision, I made my way to the church grounds to observe Echo in action.
He was a beautifully clever creature, using an economy of motion to achieve his goals. He didn’t handicap himself by falling into the fallacy of morals. His traps would cause serious damage to anyone who fell prey to them, but he didn’t place them in touristy areas.
To me, that meant he recognized the need not to kill the cash cow, while still knowing that one had to go for the throat to get the prize.
He used far more poisoned darts than he had on the previous day, telling me that he’d either perfected a particular recipe or learned something from his fight with Mavolyn.
I wanted to know which one it was. I wanted to go to Echo and ask why he did what he did. I wanted to learn what was going on inside his head. I wanted to feed from him and get the undiluted answers for myself.
Sigh.
Which was why I was keeping my distance.
I watched Echo as he worked, keeping my distance, yet still getting as close as I dared. I wanted to be close to Echo. It felt right to be with him in a way nothing ever had.
I wanted to be done with all of the bullshit between us so we could simply be together, but I didn’t know how to do such things. It was all a mystery to me how romance worked since I’d never experienced it myself. I’d never studied it.
So, I studied Echo to see if I could figure out how to win his heart.
I did nothing as the time grew near sunset. I wasn’t partaking in the hunt in any capacity other than to instill fear into the hearts of the fae to make sure they did as I ordered.
Echo’s body went still as the sun set. His energy went from busy to absolute calm as he tucked himself away to hide and watch the carnage unfold.
As the humans and the fae began their dance of wits, tech, and magic, Echo contented himself to wait and watch, biding his time until the moment was right. Unlike the day before, he wasn’t able to find a quick path to the door. The chaos spilled over onto the path he’d taken before, leaving him with no other options than to retreat or wade into the fray.
Of course my little danger-happy love waded in.
My body was as tense as a bowstring as I watched him duck and weave through the crowd, avoiding a knife to the back, ataser to the chest, and somehow ignoring at least three spells (harmless ones, of course. No fae would risk provoking me). In fact, Echo was so good that my orders were almost unnecessary.
It enraged me that I’d missed him in all previous hunts. I’d never wasted my time in the churchyard, so I’d never seen him in action. I’d only heard of his exploits through complaints on the forum.
Eventually, Echo managed to enter the tower and pelted for the stairs. Then inexplicably, rather than lead a pursuer into it, he raced for one of his own traps and triggered it. It was the rope trap he’d been working on the day after we met.
Instead of using it for the purpose of snatching some poor fuck into the air by their ankle, Echo grabbed the rope and allowed it to propel him up and into the darkness above.
