“What are you doing here?”
“Meeting my fiancée.”
The brother narrowed his eyes. “Who?”
“The lovely Last Clark.” He waved his hand in a pure Bard manner. “This is where you offer congratulations. I’m sure she’ll love living in sunny LA. Thanks for that.”
The brother frowned. Then, as quick as lightning, he kicked the trickster in the gut. The trickster let out a whoosh of air and then bent over, clutching his stomach.
The brother clasped his shoulder and growled. “Congratulations.”
The Smiths strode past.
When they were gone, the trickster slowly straightened. He pulled off the cloak of carefree amiability. His eyes flickered jackaltooth-orange, and a rattle tore from his throat.
He lifted his hands into the conjurer’s pose and rained a river of water over Hell Gate. It drenched the flames, throwing steam and smoke toward the sky.
His eyes watered from the smoke’s sting, and he coughed as the flames were smothered under his deluge. At first, he poured a waterfall, but as he weakened, the waterfall became a rain shower, and then a trickle. Finally, his illusion guttered out.
He was a thirdborn, not an heir, and while he could pull down a river, he couldn’t do it indefinitely.
He stumbled and swayed, and the wind pushed him upright. He shook his head and then coughed again. The wind huffed, blowing fresh air toward him. The ash that had floated in a violent blizzard had congealed on the ground. It formed a soupy mortar that caked the charred stones together.
The wreckage was still hot. A hissing steam rose from the remains. If a human tried to walk through it, their skin would blister and peel.
The trickster bit his bottom lip. Shook his head. Argued with himself. He held out his hand, stared at his pointer finger, then clenched his hand into a fist.
The wind nudged him. There were beings alive in Hell Gate. The wind could hear their heartbeats. They were buried under the stone.
But it was too hot for the trickster to find them. He had no illusion left. When he twisted his hand, not even a drop of water formed.
“She’s probably not even in there.”
The wind blew a cooling breath over the trickster’s cheek.
“Or she is. And . . .” He shook his head. “Right. Okay.” He took a deep, steadying breath and then blew it out.
Then he closed his eyes, shuddered violently, and his human form was ripped away.
The wind screamed as the trickster exploded and became a giant, snarling jackaltooth.
43
There was darkness. But there wasn’t only darkness.
There was also the stench of burning tar, chemical fire, and noxious ash. There was the wrecking-ball boom of Hell Gate’s collapse. There was the thousand-degree heat spewed out from conjured flames.
There was a lot more to darkness than just the dark.
A second before Hell Gate had become an actual hell, Griff had transformed into his father’s form and thrown himself on top of me.
We didn’t have any warning. One moment, I was reassuring Griff I’d only woken up screaming because of a harmless nightmare, and the next, the wind had rattled the window so loudly I’d looked outside.
“Smith!” I’d screamed, trying to rip away the knots of flame. I hadn’t managed to pull any free. Griff had launched at me, and within half a second, we were buried under an avalanche of stone and fire.
We were cocooned under his leathery wings. He was large in this form. Twice my size. He had a horse-like head, horns, giant bat-like wings, clawed hands, hooves, and a pointed tail. His father had a bloodcurdling scream, and maybe Griff did too, but I’d never heard it. When he spoke, it was a monstrous growl, and the words were hard to discern. “Hello” sounded more like a snarl than a greeting.
Griff rarely transformed, and one of his greatest fears was that Jagger would keep him in his father’s form forever once he was a mine. As a kid, he used to wish he could cut that half of himself out. “I don’t want to be a Jersey Devil. I’m human. I only want to be human.”
