The Night Everything Fell Apart (The Nephilim Book 1)(107)

Arthur poured a blast of hellfire into the door’s lock. The metal didn’t even heat. He redirected his magic into the door itself. The oak remained uncharred. A line of fire along the edge of the door failed to melt its hinges.

“Arthur!” Mab called. “Give it up.”

The spiders swarmed up their legs.

Cybele screamed and slapped her pants. Arthur fought the urge to do the same. The tiny creatures raced up their bodies, slipped under their clothes, scrambled into their hair. They burrowed into ears and nostrils. It was hard to see or even breathe. Cybele made a choking sound and ducked her head inside the neck of her shirt. The creatures were real. Horribly, terrifyingly real.

Hellfire blasts landed on their right and left. Too close. Cybele’s illusions were faltering. She dropped into a crouch, shoulders hunched toward the door, arms shielding her head. An inch-deep mass of spiders swept over her. It was the last thing Arthur saw before the things swarmed into his own face.

“Ready to surrender?” Mab called.

Not quite. Arthur turned his magic to the sky. Angry weather rushed to his aid. Dashing spiders out of his eyes, he tilted his head back and steered the clouds into a single dark formation directly overhead. Lightning cracked. Thunder boomed.

Rain poured down, pounding with all the intensity of Arthur’s rage and fear. The drenching downpour succeeded where hellfire had not. Spiders dropped out of his hair and fell off his arms. They slid down his legs and disappeared into cracks and crevices in the ground.

He wiped the last of the creatures from his eyes and lifted his head in time to see Mab land in the garden. She faced him with wings high and eyes blazing. A word summoned her favorites to her side. Rand and Hunter touched down on her right, Evander on her left. Their alpha’s crackling red nimbus expanded to envelop the three men. Within it, their eyes burned red and their bodies blazed with opalescence. The rubies at their necks glowed.

Upon contact with the heat of Mab’s power, Arthur’s rain hissed into steam. Rand handed something to his mistress. She accepted it, and then turned with arms outstretched, lifting the object into Arthur’s view. With a jolt of horror, he beheld his enemy’s offering: a ring of twisted wood set with a glowing ruby sphere.

“Arthur Camulus, this collar is your destiny. Accept it freely and I will allow you to stand at my side. Reject it and you will grovel at my feet.”

“Get this through your thick head,” Arthur shouted. “I will never be your thrall.”

“You’d rather go to Oblivion?” Mab tilted her head as if considering. “I’m so sorry, sugar, but that’s just not an option. I want you alive.”

Beads of sweat broke out on Arthur’s brow. He angled Merlin’s crystal toward his enemy and fought to keep his voice steady. “Forget your threats. I hold the power here.”

“Do you?” Her white teeth flashed. “For someone who’s holding all the power, you’re talking a mighty lot of bull. That ol’ staff might as well be a stick of dead wood, with a lump of coal set on top, for all the damage it’s done. You know what I think? That thing in your hands is nothing but a prop. And a piss-poor one at that. Give it up, Arthur. Admit you’ve lost and salvage at least a little of your pride.” She held out the collar. “Here. Come and take it. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t make me bring it to you.”

Arthur brushed her words away, as if they were stray cobwebs. He let them seep through the crevices in his awareness, barely noticed. He turned his focus inward, where myriad ancestral memories drifted in his murky subconscious. A preternatural calm descended upon him as he sorted through the remnants of his forebears’ lost lives.

A single thought—a vivid snatch of a memory spoken in the voice of a long-dead ancestor—caught his attention.

Power is weak.

It made no sense. Not at first. Then, in a flash of insight, Arthur understood.

Mab possessed powerful magic. She ruled the clan with brutal purpose. Viewed through the eyes of the boy he’d once been, she’d seemed invincible. Now, as a man, Arthur pushed aside that frightened boy’s nightmares and considered Mab in a new light. Weakness propped up her power. What fear had driven her to amass such terrible strength? What lack within herself drove her to rule with such vicious might? What horror lived in her nightmares?

The answer came to him. He saw it clearly, because he recognized it so intimately. Mab shared Arthur’s own worst fear.

Betrayal.

Arthur didn’t know what lay in Mab’s past, but whatever it was, it had driven her to rise above her peers, and then use her position to curtail every freedom of the Druid clan. She craved control. She made slaves rather than releasing new adepts to freedom. She wrapped collars around their necks and tethered their magic to her own. She had no friends, only subjects. She stood alone and trusted no one.

He darted a glance at Cybele. Her expression was solemn. But not panicked, or even despairing. She trusted him, Arthur realized. She still believed he would win.

“I need you to make Rand and Hunter think they’re blind,” he said tersely. “For ten seconds. Maybe fifteen. Can you do it?”

“Yes. Just say when.”

Arthur nodded, then lifted his eyes to meet Mab’s contemptuous gaze. “If you want me to wear that thing you’ll have to place it around my neck with your own hands.”