Chapter 15

Fifteen

A cheerfully optimistic mood had come over the townhouse in the aftermath of the mission to Pooles Island. Everyone greeted each other with warm smiles as they gathered for coffee and oatmeal in the kitchen and Nox topped the happy morning off with an update from their patient.

"Tony just called and he survived the night with Ronan and already sounds so much better," he announced, causing the kitchen to erupt into cheers and whistles. He coughed and Nox grimaced sheepishly. "I also got a call from Ronan and boy, is he pissed! But he's taking care of Tony and expects him to make a full recovery in a few days."

"Thank goodness!" Everly had declared, earning a humph from Merlin.

"Thank the merrow, for once."

Bryn was just grateful in general. Like Everly, Bryn had felt an extra sense of responsibility for bringing the anti-Everly to Georgetown and the harm that had been done to Tony. But with Tony recovering, they could turn their attention back to Huge Douchebag and stop the anti-Everly.

Something would have to be done soon, before Hugh allowed his "pet" to attack another changeling or a human. It was agreed that Merlin and Fletcher would continue their search while Nox got caught up with work at the university. Nelson had gone to help with what he could, leaving Arawn, Bryn, and Everly to their own devices.

The trio had spent the day teaching Everly some simple self-defense techniques and preparing dinner. Nox and Nelson had a semi-formal event to attend for faculty and wouldn't be back until late, so it was taco night at the townhouse. Dinner was a success and they were just cleaning up when there was a commotion in the foyer. They all crowded into the hall to see what was going on and Merlin gasped as Nelson helped a pale, bruised, and battered Nox through the front door.

"What the hell happened?" Merlin demanded as they rushed into the hall.

Nox held up a hand, grimacing as he gestured at the study. "I'm fine. I just need to sit down for a moment. And a good glass of whiskey." he said while Nelson guided him through the study doors and around the sofa. "This is why I hate going to those stupid faculty cocktail hours, Nelson."

"No, it's not," Nelson said calmly, spotting Nox as he lowered onto the couch. "You hate them because you're immature and impatient and no one kisses your ass unless the dean is looking."

"I wouldn't have been out this late if it weren't for forced fraternization," Nox muttered with a shake of his head, glancing at Bryn. "We ran into the anti-Everly."

"It tried to take Nox's soul," Nelson ground out, placing a pillow under Nox's left foot but he answered with a belligerent snort.

"It tried something, but I knocked the creepy little fuck back through the veil."

"The audacity of this!" Merlin was turning red, his fists balled at his sides as he spluttered. "I will have Hugh Dùbhghlas's head for sending that…jumped-up zombie child to harass a god. And for what?" He threw a hand at the door, disgusted. "I wouldn't trust Hugh with a rock, I'm not surprised that this is how he would treat his ‘pet.'"

"Why risk it?" Bryn asked as he looked around. "He isn't desperate so why send his pet abomination after Nox?"

That earned a dark look from Merlin as he shook his head. "To see if the sad little wretch could and to possibly rid himself of a pet project that has become a liability, is my guess. The Abhartach wins and gets rid of Lennox MacIlwraith or it is fried into oblivion and Hugh can pretend the whole episode never happened."

"Except Nox flicked little Abhartach off like a flea," Nelson replied, wincing. "After we were blindsided in the parking lot. We weren't paying attention, just talking, when this child from my worst nightmare came out of nowhere and ran at Nox."

"That wasn't running!" Nox said with a hard shudder. "It moved like a broken marionette but at hyper speed and it stunned me for a moment, hissing and screaming like a teapot. The thing fought like it was possessed until I got a hold of it and launched it at the nearest brick wall. It disappeared and Nelson got us out of there as fast as he could."

Nelson nodded as he tugged on an earlobe. "It was hideous—the creature and the sound. My ears are still ringing," he muttered and Nox thanked Merlin for a tumbler full of whiskey.

"It's taken on a few banshees and won, I think," he told Merlin, earning a gasp from Everly.

"How do you kill a banshee?" he asked shakily.

Nox waved it off. "You have to trap her with a spell and stab her with gold or beat her with something made of iron. But why would you? Banshees are relatively harmless. They're harbingers of death and nothing more. Barely even magick."

"To see if it could," Merlin suggested. "And because it might gain the ability to find the dead before they are dead," he said with a pointed look at Bryn and then at Arawn. "So it can stay one step ahead of a hellhound, possibly."

There was a wry snort from Arawn. "It's just saving us time. Let it show up again while we're working," he said as he held a fist out to Bryn.

He bumped it, nodding. "Huge Douchebag might have trained it to pick on weaker fae, but it would take a millennia for that demon doll to acquire enough strength to hurt us. It's punching way above its weight, going after a sun god or hellhound."

Fletcher cleared his throat, waving from the door. "I went to grab my laptop. I was waiting until after breakfast in the morning for show and tell, but I think I found our anti-Everly."

A loud breath whooshed from Merlin. "Thank gods," he said, his voice wavering as he hurried to the decanters. "Let me pour you a drink, sir. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to hear it. I still wouldn't put it past Hugh to kill a changeling child, but the magnitude of this particular horror is not as great as I had feared. And it is a newer creation of Hugh's, not something he cultivated and killed for its qualities or talents."

Bryn's face twisted. "There's that, I guess. If you needed a bright side."

"That might be the only bright side," Fletcher warned while tapping the keyboard's trackpad and turning the laptop so it faced everyone. "Meet Edmund Chester. Born on April 14th 2014 and died late in ‘20 or early ‘21."

"Whoa!" Nox sat up quickly, spilling his drink and almost tipping off the sofa as he waved at the laptop. "April 14th? Give me that!"

"That's the boy!" Merlin said excitedly as he went to the board for a piece of chalk and Fletcher danced around Bryn and Arawn with the laptop.

"What's so important about April 14th?" Everly asked, his soft, flat voice rising and Bryn nodded.

"Why is that a big deal?" Bryn asked Nox.

His jaw hung, his eyes glistening as he read. "Tell them, Merlin," Nox said weakly.

Merlin nodded slowly, before giving himself a shake and clearing his throat. "Historians and astronomers were off in their calculations when they settled on April 16th. It was actually the 14th when Odysseus slayed Penelope's suitors in Ithaca—over one hundred young men from prominent political families. Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865 and the Titanic struck an iceberg in 1912, both on April 14th. One of the deadliest of the Dust Bowl, the Black Sunday storm swept across Texas and Oklahoma on April 14th, 1835. In 1999, NATO mistakenly bombed a convoy of Albanian refugees and in 2019 eleven tornadoes struck the US. Once again, both events occurred on April 14th. It is the unluckiest day in the history of the recorded world, not Friday the 13th, and those that believe in the old ways will tell you that April 14th is the last day of the Month of Alder, when the fae are at their strongest and wildest and most given to mischief," Merlin explained somberly, his voice trailing off for dramatic effect and the room was quiet as everyone shared wide-eyed looks.

"I was born on April 14th," Everly announced.

"Well…" Merlin's glance slid from Everly to Nox and the piece of chalk in his grip crumbled. "I'm sure that lots of good things happened too," he said weakly.

Nox made a dismissive sound from the sofa. "We canceled any curses that were upon him and there's a reason why Douchebag's changeling is the anti -Everly. Its intent is pure malevolence and it's being manipulated by its creator. You can feed a changeling banshees so it's cold and twisted and longs for death, but it will starve without love. There's no love up at Hugh's," he said, dismissing Merlin's concern.

"There's no love," Everly repeated and nodded slowly. His dark eyes were so big as he watched Bryn.

"Love you," Bryn mouthed back in case Everly was confused about just how different he was from Edmund Chester.

Nox pushed out a hard breath as he scrubbed his hair. "There was no autopsy because Chester was poor and they had a full confession." He passed the laptop back. "I've seen enough of that and that sad creature's life story. Douchebag would have thought he'd struck gold when he searched for orphans who died on April 14th and came across Chester." He sat back, pinching the bridge of his nose and hugging his glass for warmth or protection. Possibly both. Nox was still pale and his teeth would chatter every now and then. "His mother gave him up when he was three. She swore he wasn't her baby but no one would listen. She left the child at a bus station with a suitcase and she was never seen again."

"What happened to Edmund after that?" Everly asked, but Bryn had the urge to cover his ears, not wanting him to hear what came next.

"This might get dark, Ev," Bryn whispered and he nodded.

"I'm scared for Edmund but I might need to know and it seems like enough people didn't know when he was alive," Everly said with an unusual edge to his voice and Nox sighed heavily.

"It doesn't seem like it," he agreed. "Edmund was sent to his next of kin, his mother's uncle, Liam Kelly, a devout Christian. He told the police he sent for priests to perform exorcisms and kept the child in the basement because he believed that Edmund was a lustful demon," Nox said with a loaded look around the room. "A few months later, the house had to be evacuated because of a gas leak in the neighborhood and repairmen found Edmund's body in the basement. He had been dead for weeks, according to the report."

"What happened to Kelly?" Everly asked angrily, making Fletcher hiss.

He tapped the closed laptop, looking worried. "Kelly had been moved to a long term care facility while he was awaiting trial but they found him in a rocker with his tongue ripped out and his eyes were gone. That was four months ago," he said and Merlin hummed.

"I believe that's when the known changelings began disappearing."

"That's also around the time Edmund's grave was dug up," Fletcher said. "He wasn't treated that much better in death. It's a poor county without a budget for an ME or a crematorium, let alone the extra funding for burying paupers. I don't know if it was superstition or if they were cutting corners, but Edmund was put in a simple wooden casket—in his dirty pajamas and glasses—and was buried with the county's other paupers."

Bryn groaned sympathetically and glanced at Everly. He looked shaken so Bryn decided to move things along. "No wonder the anti-Everly's so angry. Any child—human or magickal—would be damaged. I almost feel sorry for it," he admitted but Merlin shook his head while writing everything Nox had relayed on the board.

"Feel sorry for the creature that died in that basement. Its soul left when Edmund died, leaving nothing but a haunted shell. That is what Hugh Dùbhghlas stole from the cemetery and trained to feed on souls, instead of nurturing it with kindness," he stated and there were hums of agreement and curses made against Dùbhghlas.

Nox held up his glass for a refill and to start the ball rolling. "If we can lure little Abhartach out again, I can burn whatever's in there out of it from this side and Bryn and Arawn can be waiting in case it jumps back into the Nothing and tag team it in there. Either way, we'll need both hounds there to ferry all those souls once it's gone."

"What about Douchebag?" Bryn asked, hugging his chest as he studied the board.

There was a worried sound from Merlin. "We will have to proceed cautiously with Hugh. We must find a way to catch him and this changeling in the act—together—or convince him to confess to more than ‘keeping a pet,'" he said with a sneer. "Hugh has already been banished. Many will say that is enough and there will be little appetite to confront him and draw his ire unless we have a smoking gun, as it were."

"I'll see what I can do about that," Bryn said sarcastically. "I'm not gonna lose any sleep if that slimy fuck bites it while we're taking out his attack doll. And I will gladly watch as his soul is warped into a sluagh by the Nothing," he added, making Merlin grin over his shoulder.

"I would not be the least bit bothered by that outcome myself. In fact, I anticipate losing my glasses on that particular evening and will have nothing helpful to share about the matter if anyone should ask," he said with a hard wink at Bryn.

Everyone except Everly agreed that Nox was the ideal bait. Times and locations were thrown around, but the group decided to wait until morning to see how well Nox had recovered before setting a plan in motion.

Bryn had expected more of a fight from Everly and to spend the night convincing him once they were alone. But Everly surprised Bryn by locking the bedroom door and leaping into his arms. Instead of worrying and blaming himself, Everly set about seducing Bryn in his adorably awkward, hilariously direct way.

"I don't want to talk about tomorrow or the anti-Everly. I want to pretend that I am an incubus and see if I can suck a soul out of a hellhound. With my mouth!" he added and almost killed the mood by trying to wiggle his brows half a minute later. His tongue protruded from the corner of his lips as he tried to see his brows, making Bryn laugh as he kissed Everly.

"Sure. Let's give it a shot."