“Elle’s in the Palace,” I snapped, sitting up abruptly and startling my company. “She’s almost completely frozen. We have to move fast.”

“And her mother?” The Shelia asked, producing weapons out of thin air and arming herself.

“Don’t know,” I admitted. “And I don’t know if Fate is in there. I’d assume she’d have to be to perform the spell.”

Ripping the tangled sheets from my body, I stood and then stopped. “What happened to the statue?” I asked.

The Siren was still frozen, but some of the ice had been chipped away.

“Ask Lizard,” Gemma said with a grin and a shake of her head. “That boy is nuts.”

Turning, I eyed my freakish Demon and waited. If he could somehow remove the ice maybe all wasn’t lost.

“My bat,” Lazard announced with pride. “I was afraid to go too deep because I didn’t want to knock her head off. She looks like a nice lady.”

“Umm… okay,” I said not quite understanding how he got nice from something that looked like the painting The Scream by Edvard Munch. My Demon was a bizarre one, but at least he was industrious. Maybe with his bat and my magic we wouldn’t be too late even if my Siren was frozen.

“Alrighty then, what the Hell is that?” The Sheila asked, pointing at a shimmering purple orb that suddenly appeared next to the statue. It was the size of a sedan and crackled with hissing magic.

“It’s a portal to leave Kismet. Elle created it. She wants us to leave,” I told them all and then paused. Closing my eyes and balling my hands to fists, I tried to stop myself from speaking the words that wanted to force their way from my mouth, but for some ridiculously ethical reason I couldn’t. “If you want to go home, go now. I can promise you what’s about to happen will not be pretty. I don’t want your possible deaths on my hands. I shall leave the choice up to you. There will be no repercussions if you choose to depart.”

All four Fairies stared at me as if I’d grown another head. Reaching up to my shoulder, I checked to see if I had. Nothing would surprise me now.

“You’re actually kinda good, Mr. Bad Dude,” Gemma said as a wide smile pulled at her lovely mouth. “I think I might like you.”

“Let’s not let this get out of hand,” I replied with an eye roll.

“I’m staying, my Liege. I will never forsake you,” Lizard announced, dropping to his knee and bowing his head.

“I will stay,” The Shelia said. “I want to see this through till the end and I have no intention of dying today. I didn’t get laid in Hell and that is not working for me. I say we get this shit done and then I go pick up a gigolo—or three.”

“As will I—not the gigolo part—the staying part,” The Kev added with a deep chuckle. “You will owe me many favors to keep my mouth shut, Lucifer.”

“I had a feeling,” I muttered, not really caring what the Fairy wanted. I would gladly give it. Of course, I’d bitch like a girl the entire time but that was to be expected. I did have a reputation to uphold.

“There was never a question,” Gemma said, crossing to me and taking my hand in hers. “And just so you know… your aura is changing color.”

“Yes well, let’s not let that hideous news get out,” I grumbled.

“My lips are sealed,” she promised.

I wasn’t as sure about The Kev’s lips, but I had no time to even think about the possibility. Time was a luxury that we didn’t have at the moment.

“I’m quite sure there will be Trolls, so be ready,” I instructed.

And those were some fucking prophetic words…

* * *

The stuff that true nightmares and debilitating fear is made of is far more than just monsters…

Picking up speed as only those who lived for eternity could do, we raced the rest of the way toward the Ice Palace. Our pace rendered us invisible to the human eye and hopefully Fate’s. The wind had picked up and a hailstorm showered us making it difficult to see.

Even through the pounding ice the Palace towered like a deadly diamond above us. As we drew closer, I realized I could feel my Siren. I wasn’t sure if it was that I possessed her soul in my body or that she was simply mine that I sensed her, but I didn’t care. The sensation gave me hope that I was close.

“Do you think Fate knows we’re here?” The Shelia yelled over the wind. “Or is this another farked up defense mechanism?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care,” I shouted back. “Just muscle through it. Get under my wings. Let me take the brunt of it. It can’t kill me.”

The physical pain I felt was nothing I couldn’t endure. The glacial door of the castle was only a hundred yards away, but with the tempest raging around us, it seemed like a thousand.

“Stop!” Lizard bellowed. “Look.”

I shielded my eyes from the stinging ice pellets and tried to make out what my Demon was seeing. My heart went to my throat and my hands began to spit fire.

“No,” I shouted as I pushed my way toward the scene of horror in front of me.

Fate had just signed her death warrant.

My movement was sluggish as if I was underwater. As much as I pushed my body to go faster, it betrayed me and went even slower. What I saw was burned into my brain. Of all the horrors I’d witnessed over my long life this won.

It was personal. It was vile and someone was going to pay.

Most of Elle’s body lay splayed on the frozen ice—naked and beaten almost beyond recognition. But not her all of her… her neck was positioned in a guillotine that was about to drop and behead her. Her blonde hair was matted with blood and it blew in the wind, whipping across her beaten face. There were others alongside her, but I could only see my Siren. She wasn’t frozen at all, but she was about to die in front of my eyes.

Unacceptable. Why in the Hell weren’t my feet moving? My world was about to be demolished to meaninglessness and I was a useless fucking mess.

Powerful hands grabbed my wings and pulled my sluggish body to a complete halt. I wasn’t sure who it was, but I didn’t give a damn. I blasted the offending hands with black fire and continued toward the one I loved more than myself. The searing shot of magic that was launched from behind me sliced through my body like a hot knife through butter. Fuck it, I would heal. I had to stop the guillotine.

“It’s not real,” The Kev grunted and tackled me to the ground planting his fist in my face to distract me before I could burn him to ash. “It’s not fucking real. Look at the others. NOW.”

I could taste the salty blood dripping from my lips. My eyes narrowed at the Fairy in pure hatred. What the fuck was he talking about? Elle was about to die. She was mine. I had no time for games or lies.

“Look at the others,” The Kev hissed, furious. “That is not Elle. Look, damn you. Look.”

Turning my head in my flattened position, I scanned the group and sucked in a furious breath. The Fairy was correct—maybe. About forty away, next to Elle was a facsimile of a bloody and torn apart Gemma. Next to the illusion of Gemma was a brutally beaten version of The Kev. On the other side of my Siren were the partially decapitated Martha and Jane and at the end of the line was the inordinately powerful Fairy, The Dave. He looked the worst of them all. His legs were missing and he was bleeding profusely from the mouth.

“It’s an illusion,” The Kev said, still breathing hard. “Whatever we love the most is dying in front of us. And now we have to kill it.”

“This is fucked up,” I whispered. “I don’t know if I can kill it.”

“You can. You have to,” The Shelia said, wiping the tears of horror and distress from her blue eyes. “You think I want to kill the man I’ve waited thousands of years for? Do you?” she shouted.

“We’re all gonna need some fucking therapy after this,” Gemma said, gazing at the mirages our dying loved ones.

“Are we completely sure?” Lizard asked with crazed eyes as his body shook with so much fury I thought he might implode.

“Yes,” The Kev said.

“No. We’re not sure,” I growled, pushing The Kev off of me and getting to my feet. “We know that those things aren’t you and Gemma. You’re standing right here. We don’t know if the others are real or not.”

“He has a point,” The Shelia said with her eyes glued to the quickly fading The Dave.

“They have auras,” Gemma said. “And they’re all very bleak and dark. Just like the Trolls from earlier.”

“My mate is a fucking Siren. She lies like a rug, steals, and used to suck the lives from her victims before she figured out a way to feed without killing,” I roared. “Her aura is going to reflect that. That argument doesn’t fly.”

“You just said she’d changed her ways,” Gemma yelled back, getting up in my face with the most insane bravery anyone had ever challenged me with. “Are you lying?”

“No.”

“If she has remorse for her prior actions, her aura would not be as tainted as what I see,” Gemma hissed. “I was there when she saved us all from the wraiths. Adrielle Rinoa does not have a dark aura. I will bet my life on it.”

I stared at her and the crazy woman just stared right back. There was not one damned duplicitous thing about her. Gemma was telling the truth—or at least she believed she was. “And the rest?” I asked, not knowing what to think at this point.

“Martha and Jane might be profane, partially bald, hideously dressed pains in the ass, but they are good deep down. I don’t want to hang with them or anything like that, but they don’t have auras as filthy as what I’m seeing on those imposters.”

“And The Dave?” The Shelia asked on a sob, unable to hold back her tears. “What do you see?”

“His aura is the worst of them all,” Gemma said staring at The Dave with fear in her eyes. “From what I’ve heard of The Dave that is a complete impossibility.”

“My Queen is telling the truth,” Lizard said.

“Prove it,” I growled, still unsure. “Give her the gum and ask her again.”

“I have a better fucking idea,” Lizard grunted as he grinned like a psychopath and took off running toward the menagerie in front of us.

“What in the Hell is that boy doing?” The Kev yelled, watching in horror as Lizard moved faster than the speed of light and shoved gum into the mouths of the dying bunch.

“Clamp their lips. NOW,” my insane Demon shouted at the top of his lungs.

Without a second thought that one of my Demons had just given me an order, I waved my hands and sealed the mouths of Elle, Martha, Jane, The Dave and the illusions of Gemma and The Kev shut. Lizard sprinted back to us, covered in blood and filled with a vicious pride.

“What do you want me to ask them, my Lord?”

“Are they who they appear to be? If not, make them show their true selves,” I said.

And he did.

The illusions groaned and writhed on the ground, trying to fight the enchantment that Lizard had forced upon them. Slowly one by one they morphed into enormous Trolls. However, the kicker was they still kept the face of whom they’d been impersonating. It was surreal.

“What the ever loving ass?” Gemma gasped out as the Trolls with the facial features of those we loved the most began to charge.

“This l’appel du vide is some fucked up stuff,” The Shelia said as she quickly took her beast form.

The Shelia was correct.

And Gemma had told the truth.

That was not my Elle. It would still be difficult to eliminate something that bore even a slight resemblance to her, but I was about to do it. Time was one of the only things that waited for no one. And I didn’t have a lot of it left.

Shit was about to get ugly.