Lost Grace (The Reminiscent Exile Book 4)

  LOST GRACE

  The Reminiscent Exile: Book Four

  JOE DUCIE

  Copyright © 2017 Joe Ducie

  All rights reserved.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  THE FIRST RESOLVE

  CHAPTER ONE - BY ANY OTHER NAME

  REMINISCENCE THE FIRST

  CHAPTER TWO - ANNIE’S CONCERN

  CHAPTER THREE - ROAD’S FIRE

  CHAPTER FOUR - THE TWILIGHT HOUR

  REMINISCENCE THE SECOND

  THE SECOND RESOLVE

  CHAPTER FIVE - ATTACK ON THE ATLAS LEXICON

  CHAPTER SIX - DREAD ASH ON THE WIND

  CHAPTER SEVEN - ACROSS THE SQUARE

  CHAPTER EIGHT - THE VALE CRYSTALIS

  REMINISCENCE THE THIRD

  CHAPTER NINE - BAT COUNTRY

  CHAPTER TEN - THEY COME TO HAUNT ME

  THE THIRD RESOLVE

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - THE CAVE OF BLUNDERS

  CHAPTER TWELVE - THE OLDER I AM, THE WISER I’M NOT

  REMINISCENCE THE FOURTH

  THE FINAL RESOLVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - UPON THE LILAC PRECIPICE

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - LIKE RAIN ON A SUNNY DAY

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN

  THE FIRST RESOLVE

  Wandering This Desert of Bastards and Whores as a Tequila Mercenary

  “I have taken more out of alcohol

  than alcohol has taken out of me.”

  ~Winston Churchill

  CHAPTER ONE

  BY ANY OTHER NAME

  “Dark and getting darker”

  Annie Brie handed me a takeaway cup of jasmine tea, steam rising in lazy, warm curls from the lip, just as something heavy shattered the front window of my shop. The object—a green bottle stuffed with a flaming white rag—bounced off the shelves bulging with thousands of books, and exploded in a wicked blast of purple flame on the hardwood floor between two narrow alleys of fiction.

  Just before the Molotov cocktail detonated, I had eyes fast enough to read the label on the bottle: Lagavulin 16. Perhaps my favourite whisky in this, or indeed, any world. How dare they. Whoever they were.

  Tendrils of flame, wildfire, found plenty of fuel in the haphazard stacks of books, stained with red wine, caked in dust, lining the floors and narrow passageways of my bookstore. I rose with a grunt as Annie took a step back, drew her service revolver (a gun she had recovered from her late partner, who had died hunting an abomination nearly a year ago now), and turned to protect my back, scanning the street through the small window alcove where we had been about to enjoy our tea. I was doing my best not to drink, best whisky in the world being thrown through my window or not.

  Still, this was more than whisky. The purple flames spread fast, a wave of tingling heat reached me and soon turned blistering. I raised my hand, muttering under my breath, and caught the heat with a burst of Will enchantment before it could do more than singe the hair on the back of my knuckles. The energy in the fire was immense, however, and I felt the heat already working against my enchantment, looking to overflow the dam of power, and roast me—and Annie—alive.

  I aligned my Will, cast silently as I clapped my hands together, and a burst of Arctic frost, colder than cold, fell from between my hands in a fat flow of liquid ice, which I wielded like a fire hose, and doused the flames from the Molotov.

  Most of my books were protected, enchanted against damage, but the purple flame had eaten through those enchantments as if they were, well, paper and tinder. Which meant whoever had thrown the damn thing was aware of the Story Thread, the World Compass, and how best to kill around the protections that awareness offered.

  “Clear on the street,” Annie said. She stood in her dropped cup of tea—four bleedin’ dollars from the café on the corner—knee-high boots splashed with jasmine. She glanced at me over her shoulder, jade-green eyes below jet-black hair, assessing the fire. “There’s no one out there… that I can see.”

  Annie, who when we had first met at a grisly murder scene nearly a year ago, had had no clue of the secret truth of the world—of Will magic (magic was a hateful word), of monsters, demons, and the infinite number of other worlds that brushed up against this one, the original world, True Earth—was learning. Annie was learning. Whoever had decided to try and burn down my shop had waited until she returned with the tea—he, she, it had waited until Annie was back, with two cups. They had waited until they were certain I was in here.

  Is this Atlantis business? Has she finally severed the celestial prison?

  I stepped behind the counter and retrieved a sleek silver shotgun, carved with runes of power along the barrel, and loaded with nine rounds of specially designed ammunition capable of even annoying a Voidling. I punched a button on the cash register, the scent of burning pages, smoke in the air, a wreath around my head. I filled the pockets of my jeans and waistcoat with a handy bunch more ammo and stepped swiftly toward the front door.

  The crude explosive had shattered the main window of my store, right through the Books Bought & Sold typography. A warm sea breeze—the Fremantle doctor—blew through the broken window. I scanned the courtyard outside, but it was mostly dark save for small pools of light from the streetlamps. The restaurants across the courtyard, food trucks, beyond the marble fountain at the heart of the plaza, were mildly busy for seven o’clock on a Tuesday, but none of the patrons seemed aware I’d just been attacked.

  I walked out into Riverwood Plaza, the bell above my door chimed twice, shotgun at the ready, but none of my usual instincts, senses honed in years of training, war, and worse, seemed to be tingling. Whoever had thrown the cocktail had fled—either on foot or sideways into another world—almost as soon as it had been thrown. I cast a detection net just to be sure, a web of Will designed to pierce veils, but the net travelled all the way across the plaza before it hit anything living—the folks at the restaurants, enjoying their dinner. Nothing but human. Still…

  “Anything?” Detective Brie asked. “It won’t do much good to call this in, will it?”

  I shook my head. A smile touched my face. “It’s my business. Knight Infernal jurisdiction, Detective.”

  “Are you… leaving?” she asked. Her leather jacket clung tight to her lithe form and I could feel her heart beating alongside my own. That was the petal of the Infernal Clock resting in her heart, a crystal piece of pure celestial illusion—true magic. I had used the petal to bring Annie back to life after defeating (well, forcing a retreat) the Everlasting Scion on Diablo Beach. She did not know about the petal, and I hadn’t brought it up. I didn’t understand it myself, and the same thing had happened to me over eighteen months ago, when I had been killed in the ancient ruins of Atlantis, many, many worlds from little old Perth on the coast of Western Australia. Though it had been in one of the empty lease shops across the plaza here that Aloysius Jade had brought me back to life with the petal of the Clock. Confusing, troubling business.

  “Declan?” Annie said. “You’re staring at me.”

  I blinked, cleared my thoughts, and had the good grace to blush. I had been staring at her chest. “No, I’m not leaving. As far as attempts on my life go, this one was pretty weak. Come on, we’ll head back
inside. I’ve still got a story to tell you.”

  “About Atlantis—where you’ve been these last few months with your old girlfriend, Sophie’s sister. Is that why she’s not talking to you?”

  I nodded. The net of Will cast over the plaza held steady as we stepped back into the shop. If anyone came within twenty feet of my door, I’d know it instantly.

  We returned to the window alcove—the shattered main window would keep till the morning—and I mopped up Annie’s spilt tea and then gave her half of mine. With a sigh, I sat back in the comfortable, whisky-stained leather couch, piles of books and papers towering over me on all sides, and placed the shotgun sharp-end toward the window across my lap.

  “Thanks for getting the tea,” I said. “And sorry I haven’t been in touch before today.” Last time I’d seen Annie, I had tasked her with taking and hiding my infant, new-born son—and not telling me where. The kid had two infamous parents. Myself, wanted and hated, with more enemies than I could count, and Emily Grace. Sweet Emily, who had turned out to be the Immortal Queen of the Renegades, my enemies during the Tome Wars, and more than that… Emily Grace had been Fair Astoria, one of the nine Everlasting—a race of malevolent gods, beings of immense power, who had steered the course of human history for millennia. Astoria had been one of the Everlasting not trapped away, which was too few these days.

  Not to mention you released their Peace Arsenal, Declan, whispered a voice that sounded like my brother, King Jon Faraday. No, not enough you release the Everlasting, you arm them, too.

  “How long have you been back in town?” Annie asked. “I’ve come by the shop most days, tried your number. Sophie and Ethan didn’t know what to make of you. All they could tell me was that you were swept away… in the ruins of Atlantis. Along with Sophie’s sister, Tal, who I was told was dead.”

  I nodded along. “Tal Levy was dead, but dead doesn’t mean much these days.” Again, the petal in my chest beat in sync with the petal in Annie’s. How much did she know? Suspect? I needed to find a way to tell her the truth. The only reason I was back here, in true time, on True Earth, was because of that petal in her chest. It had been an anchor, a waypoint in the dark across time and the space between universes.

  Annie’s eyes kept scanning the dark street beside my shop through the window alcove. Looking for more would-be bombers. She had also kept her revolver drawn, resting on one knee, as she sipped her tea.

  “It is really good to see you again,” I said. “It was only a few months for you, but for me longer than that. I spent a year, Annie, ten thousand years ago in the past, with Tal… in the lost city of Atlantis. Before it was lost, here on True Earth. I was living in that doomed city, a wonder of architecture, of magnificence and Will—built by the Vale, an alien race, vaguely humanoid, damned to the Void so very long ago… I’ve been living in Atlantis, Annie. That’s where I’ve been.”

  Annie masked her surprise, her doubt, with a sip of warm tea. “OK, sure,” she said. “How? Why? You… you what, you travelled back in time?”

  “Across wastelands and heartlands,” I said, shaking my head. “There and back again. Do you believe me?”

  Annie considered, then nodded. “You have never lied to me,” she said. “Well, never openly. You omit a lot of truths I would hear, though, Hale.”

  I thought about protesting that, but even the protest would be a lie of sorts.

  “How are things in Ascension City?” she asked, her tone light, as if discussing the weather and not the seat of all power in the Story Thread. Ascension City, the homeworld of the Knights Infernal, my people.

  “Preparing for war against the Everlasting, a war that will…” I ran a hand back through my hair and chuckled grimly. “Devastate the Story Thread, at the very least. The Tome Wars lasted a hundred years and unmade entire worlds, killed billions, created scar tissue on the face of reality that the creatures in the Void can exploit. A new war, a true war against the Everlasting, will make the hundred years of the Tome Wars look like kids throwing snowballs.”

  Annie licked her lips. “It’s that bad?”

  I sighed. “It will be. Unless we all come together, act against them. Unless I act.”

  “Then why aren’t you?”

  A lifeless smile touched my lips. “Because I fucked up, trying to be clever. And I want your advice, before anything else. And for you to give it, I need to tell you the truth—of my last year in Atlantis, of what I found, what I could take.” I crushed the empty cardboard teacup in my hand and tossed it aside. My other hand had been stroking the shotgun, and I put a stop to that.

  Annie held my gaze for a long moment. “There’s a choice to be made, isn’t there.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Indeed.”

  “People will die no matter what.”

  “Sure as pepper sauce on my steak.”

  Annie Brie nodded once, sharply. Her revolver, dull gunmetal, sat menacing in the half-light. “Tell your story then, Hale. Then we’ll see about this choice of yours.”

  REMINISCENCE THE FIRST

  (One year before Declan and Annie have jasmine tea, in Declan’s measure of time.)

  The Noble City of Atlantis,

  Heart of the World

  I was drunk on Atlantean rocket fuel and singing a pauper’s rendition of Billy Joel’s Piano Man, a song that wouldn’t exist for about another ten thousand years, when Tal Levy found me holding up the universe in the marble bar just a few streets over from the towering Vale Atlantia—the obsidian spire in the heart of Atlantis.

  “You want me to play you a memory,” I sang, kind-of-sort-of-not-really in tune. “But you’re not really sure how it goes, because I’m not really supposed to be here, drinking the closest thing I’ve found to gin.” The crowd laughed at me, with me, as I swayed on stage in front of a floating silver sphere that amplified my voice throughout the bar. “La…la…la…di-de-da…”

  Closest thing to gin, indeed, although it was more of a sweet wine—mead, perhaps. The amber drop packed a punch like clear liquor, and a man should never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast. The time lag from the journey to Atlantis—what I was calling the pounding headache and an inability to find restful sleep—made it feel like five o’clock in the morning all day long. Two weeks in the Yet-To-Be-Lost-and-then-Found-Again-by-Me-in-Ten-Millenniums city and I hadn’t been able to shake the fatigue of the journey.

  Tal slipped in at the back, through the glass entrance doors that led to streets paved with gold-inlaid cobblestones. She wore a strapless dress of red and black spun silk. Of all the not quite gin joints in all the worlds… Her soft eyes held me for a moment, judging and perhaps pitying, as the three-man band, playing instruments similar to guitars, drums, and trumpets—but no piano—struggled to match the swaying cadence in my voice.

  “Open mic night at the Embleton, ladies and gentlemen,” I said, as the music played on, snared me in its embrace. I held something that looked like a microphone, a small black cylinder with a soft glowing light, but the hovering sphere in front of me did the work of carrying my words to the farthest corners of the bar. Didn’t feel right without a proper mic, though, felt too exposed. Always needed a weapon in my hand—whether it be a crystal sword or a crystal scotch glass. “My name is Declan Hale and I’m here most nights. Fun fact: I died once. It went okay, I guess.” I raised my glass of amber wine - the sweet gin-like drop tasted like raisins soaked in oak casks and petroleum. Ginish. I was on my second flask. “None of you understand a word I’m saying, but that’s okay. Good music can span language… distance… and time, am I right?”

  I laughed and so did the bar, my voice echoing against the high glass ceilings. A nice twilit sky, azure bruising toward purple, could be glimpsed through the glass. Most of the clientele in the Embleton knew me by now—the madman from the future who said Atlantis would one day, perhaps one day soon, be swallowed by the Void. I’d been here two weeks, yes, since unleashing the Everlasting’s Peace Arsenal in the ruins of the cit
y ten thousand years in the future, but it had taken me only half a day to find my new favourite haunt after being released from captivity in the Vale Atlantia. And only minutes after that to recast the translation enchantment so I could converse with the bartender.

  Though a universal language transcended time and space in bars and taverns. Sit at the bar, drop a coin, and wait for a glass to magically appear.

  Tal took a seat at one of the round tables. An inch of sawdust coated the wooden floors to catch spilt drink. The lights were dim, a burnished half-light under the twilit sky, casting the blue marble of the bar a darker shade of ocean and making us all look good. Tal always looked good, especially when she rested her chin on her palm and gazed at me with a small, knowing smile. She looked like a woman who knew my every secret, my every vice and weakness—she looked beautiful—and I thought, perhaps, she wanted me to kiss her.

  But I was drunk.

  And could not be trusted on something as dire and recklessly sober as perhaps.

  “So I’ll sing you a song, but I’m no piano man,” I sang on, catching the rough end of the chorus. “I’ll sing this song every night. Because we’re all in the mood for a drink, and this place has got a few bottles of that, alright.” I took a sip and chuckled. The lyrics were awful, my singing voice worse. “That’ll do me, ladies and gentlemen. Lady in the front row, your dress is lovely. Gentlemen on my right, you going to cuddle that glass all evening? You’re letting the bubbles escape, my friend.”

  I cast aside my fake microphone to a round of subdued applause and a few looks of confusion that may or may not have been disdain. Or bemused merriment. Drunk before nightfall in a bar of strangers, but not yet slurring my words—about as well behaved as any Knight who had lived through the Tome Wars.

  And there weren’t many of us who could claim that.

  A strange thought that most of those who had died and died hard in the hundred year conflict wouldn’t be born for ten thousand or so years. I hadn’t quite pinned down the exact date or location of Atlantis in relation to my personal timeline. We were on True Earth, the real world, that much I could feel, somewhere mildly tropical, but all I knew growing up was that Atlantis had disappeared—and then been lost into myth—around ten millenniums before I was born. So the current date, the sky above my head, may have been ten thousand years, give or take a century or two, too early for me.