“I will speak to Merle on this subject. He will know what is best when it comes to the fey,” Richard answered. “Arawn will be tried with wisdom. Not by us.”
“By whom then? The Morrigan or her ilk? The laws of the Holy See? Italy?” Cormac scoffed. “No. He has killed the pontiff. He has infiltrated the Vatican. He alone knows of Annwn, and the Seelie Court would more than likely let him off the hook for his affront. All that we have fought for—all that you have fought for—would be put at jeopardy by not killing him now!”
“If you try, I will kill you,” Richard said flatly.
It was the hardest thing Richard had ever had to say. The Cardinal Vicar was taken aback. The dark brooding eyes of Cormac stared at Richard. The knight stared right back at his elder.
“Merle or the Morrigan will know best how to punish the spirit inside of John Lewis Hugo,” Richard repeated. “It is the only way to ensure punishment is given.”
Breathing hard, the point of the Dark Thorn still pressing him against the wall, Arawn grinned. “My end will not come by your hand knight,” he whispered. “Not like your wife.”
“That may be,” Richard said, unwilling to let the personal barb unseat his authority of the Dark Thorn. “But your role in this is over.”
Arawn laughed, a sick sound.
And began to change.
Unsure of what he was seeing at first, a black fog clouded Richard’s vision, the miasma swirling out of John Lewis Hugo’s body and into the air. It hung suspended before him, diaphanous and cold, free flowing, unmoving.
Two red coals blinked in the ether.
The spirit of Arawn.
Latent rage at the escape attempt filling him, Richard sent the fire of the Dark Thorn into the cloud with controlled fury, wrapping the fey in coils of magic. Arawn struggled, fighting the staff, trying to invade Richard instead. The knight closed his mind to the offense. Bringing years of anger to the fore coupled with the memory of Elizabeth and her last few fear-filled moments, Richard tightened the magic of the Dark Thorn on Arawn like a vise, a dam of pain unleashed, crushing the spirit. Inhumanly wailing, the lord fought as the magic bit into him.
It did not matter. The mind of Arawn burned away as the fire of Richard’s will incinerated it.
The final, terrible scream of Arawn echoed through the suite.
Then all went silent.
Breathing hard, Richard looked upon the now palsied body below him. The fey lord that had come close to destroying him had vanished, leaving a body wracked by spasms and twitches, hands clawed and twisted. A dull moan escaped the mouth, growing into choking gasps of pain.
“What is wrong with him?” the Cardinal Vicar asked.
“The pain…” the man mewed, teeth gnashing.
Richard stared at the body of John Lewis Hugo, unsure of what he witnessed.
“Kill me…”
The fire that had made Richard a killing machine became smoke. Arawn no longer resided in the body, leaving only one possibility for who spoke to them.
It was John Lewis Hugo, his soul no longer trapped.
Pleading for death.
“Kill me…” John Lewis Hugo cried.
“No,” Richard said.
“Pleeeease,” John sniveled, gulping in air. “Kill meee…”
“Do not do so, McAllister,” Cormac ordered. “Or suffer damnation.”
Richard ignored the Cardinal Vicar and knelt, grasping the shaking wrist. Like he had done to Al and Walker in Seattle days earlier, the knight went into the mind of John Lewis Hugo.
There he encountered fractured pandemonium.
The agony of the man overwhelmed Richard. The soul of Philip’s onetime best friend was disjointed and broken, a shattered pane of glass. Richard had never felt such acute and traumatic memories in another before. John Lewis Hugo had witnessed every savage moment Arawn had been privy to—the mutation and breeding of thousands of children with fey and animals via the Cailleach to create a ghastly army of halfbreeds, orders given to assassinate countless political figures within Annwn to either gain favors or just to see them die, the torture and breaking of numerous jailed men and women in the Caer Lion dungeons merely to satisfy his insatiable curiosity about human anatomy.
John had screamed into the void where his consciousness lay, unable to alter the events his body took part in, until his very being frayed and snapped.
The distress was so poignant Richard had only one course.
Richard moved into what remained of the other’s mind and massaged it, lending his strength to John Lewis Hugo. The emotional anguish was too much for Richard to