Witch-Blood

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “You believe him?” asked Joey.

  “I have no reason to doubt him,” said Val. “You must understand his mind—he’s fae. Wholly fae. The lust for power…it’s not some idle desire. It drives him. Now, in his mind, he’s offering me power, a title—all those things I’ve never had. He imagines that I crave what should have been mine through Mab. It’s the only conclusion that makes sense to him.” Val smiled and resumed his attack on the pizza. “So, logically, since one of the Three is making me this offer, how could I possibly do anything but play along? To do anything else would be acting against my self-interest.”

  Joey and I watched him as he ate, and after a moment, Val called a glass of red wine into existence and washed his meal down. “I don’t want a court,” he said, eyeing us carefully. “I have no desire to attempt to repair what Mab broke, nor do I want to fight to control a court that spent the last millennium in the Gray Lands. Mab’s blood or not, I’m surely not among their favorite people at the moment. Not after that business with Geheret,” he muttered. “Beyond that, Coileán has been good to me, and he is my king. But even more importantly,” he continued as his eyes narrowed, “if Oberon wanted my cooperation, he made a tactical miscalculation in attacking the Arcanum.”

  “He didn’t consider Toula at all?” I asked.

  “Oh, he considered her—he just didn’t imagine that I would value her over a court. And I’ve not seen fit to enlighten him,” he murmured. “If some harm should befall my sister as a result of Oberon’s idiocy…”

  He didn’t need to finish that thought—the flash in his eyes said it all.

  “So yes,” said Val, “I’ve played my role. It’s reassuring to hear that Astrid thinks me a traitor—I suppose I’ve been more convincing than I realized. But I swear to you,” he said, turning to me, “if you fight Oberon, I’ll be at your side.” He paused, giving me quick consideration, then added, “Just not today. Let’s make this plan slightly less suicidal first, shall we?” He stood, brushed the crumbs off his hands, and nodded toward the cave opening. “Meet you in the clearing shortly. Try to make sure there are no piq underfoot before we begin. I’d rather not explain any unnecessary casualties.”

  Though Joey was eager to help, Val forbade it. “If Aiden is as strong as he thinks he is,” Val explained, “then I am taking a risk. For your own safety, stay underground. Let your head rest,” he added, lightly rapping his knuckles against Joey’s temple. “Take a nap. Just stay away from any place that could be within Aiden’s line of fire.”

  Word circulated among the piq as well, and so when I met Val in the assigned location, I found the clearing empty but for a pair of cautious doves in the trees. “So,” I said, trying not to sound nervous, “what first? Warm-up exercises?”

  Val sat cross-legged in the grass—which, I noticed, was strangely damp for that late in the day—and motioned for me to sit facing him. “You still can’t block your thoughts?” he asked.

  “No…”

  “Good.”

  I barely felt it when Val started poking around inside my mind. The sensation was odd, like the fluttering of a microscopic moth against my brain, but almost unnoticeable. He retreated after about ten seconds, smiled to himself, then looked over my left shoulder into the distance. “What was that about?” I asked, absently rubbing my head.

  Val continued to stare at nothing, and, puzzled, I turned around and froze.

  Not ten yards away stood Russell Mulligan, messy ponytail and all.

  It couldn’t be Russell, my rational mind insisted—the last time I’d seen him was in the silo, crying as one of the wizards whose breakfast we’d interrupted led him and his burned hand off to be treated. There was no conceivable way that Russell had found his way into Faerie and stumbled onto my hiding place. It was an illusion, I told myself, nothing more than glamour. Val had pulled something out of my memories to mess with me, that was all.

  But even as I talked to myself, I felt my arms tighten and my fists clench—and as I looked down, having realized that I’d gone to my feet, I saw the glow begin to flicker around me.

  “Hey, Dudley,” said Russell, smirking as he pulled his wand from behind his back. “I thought I told you I didn’t like your face. Let’s see what we can do to make it prettier, huh?”

  I knew he wasn’t real—I knew it—but my racing heart had yet to get the memo. “Back off,” I told the illusion. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  Russell chuckled as he raised his wand. “You should be, you little mongrel shit.”

  The rage washed over me then, white-hot and sparking, and without quite knowing what I was doing, I threw a stream of fireballs at Russell’s head. In an instant, the illusion dissolved, the grass smoldered, and I shook as the adrenaline rush ran its course.

  I jumped and shrieked when Val came up behind me and squeezed my shoulder. “Congratulations,” he said quietly. “You just killed the boy.”

  My response came out as a jumbled rush. “I…I mean, he…I didn’t, he was—”

  “He got the best of you, you lost control, and now he’s dead.” Val released me and pointed to the grass. “As I’d expected. I took the liberty of soaking the area in advance,” he added as the smoke curled above the scorched patches. “Ready to try again? Breathe, calm down.”

  I closed my eyes and focused on my exhalations until I felt my pulse slow to a reasonable speed. “All right, I’m ready,” I muttered. “What’s next?”

  Something hit me in the gut, and my eyes shot open, only to see Milo Brown’s other fist flying toward my face with his impeccable form. The blow connected with my chin, and I reeled, tasting blood.

  Within seconds, the clearing had acquired a new set of burned pockmarks, and I was prodding my sore jaw and split lip as the glow subsided. “The hell?” I shouted, spotting Val a few yards behind me. “That hurt, man!”

  He folded his arms and shrugged, unbothered by my complaints. “And the boy is dead. Do you see a pattern emerging?”

  Milo and Russell flickered back into existence, but that time, they had been reduced to blackened bodies in the grass, distinguishable only by the little tufts of blond still visible on the ruins of Milo’s head. “Yeah,” I mumbled.

  “Good. You know what’s going to happen,” he said, waving the illusions away again. “Now figure out how to control it.”

  “But I don’t know—”

  He held up one finger, silencing my protest. “You’re telling me you’ve never been angry in the past? Not once?”

  “Of course I’ve been angry.”

  I felt Val prod into my thoughts once again, and suddenly, my mother was standing beside me with her hands on her hips. “MIT?” she exclaimed. “Are you out of your mind, Aiden? You’re fifteen—I’m not sending you across the country to do God-knows-what in Boston!” She shook her head and pursed her lips, an expression I knew all too well. “Come on, sweetie, you’re smarter than that. You didn’t really think we would just go, ‘Okay, have a good four years,’ did you?”

  It was like watching a video I’d replayed a dozen times before. I knew my lines—mumbled promises that I wouldn’t get in trouble, that I could get a scholarship, that no school in Montana offered anything close—but Mom inevitably shot me down. In the live performance, I’d stormed off and slammed my bedroom door, defeated and furious. But hearing her again in that meadow, seeing her mixed look of annoyance and pity…

  “Careful,” said Val.

  I was glowing, and I hadn’t even noticed. “What do I do?” I asked through clenched teeth.

  “Acknowledge what you’re feeling. You’re angry—even the memory stirs it in you.” He stepped beside the illusion of my mother, whose expression was frozen as it had been at the moment when she crushed my hopes of escape. “What do you want to do?”

  My stomach knotted with the memory, and I felt my muscles tightening in anticipation. “Something.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Just something? Come now, surely you have stronger
feelings than that. What do you want to do to her?”

  “Nothing,” I muttered.

  “I didn’t ask what you should do. I asked what you wanted to do. Admit the truth and face it, boy, or I can’t help you.”

  I closed my eyes against Mom’s unblinking stare, and in the darkness, I took stock of my feelings. No matter what she had done the last time I saw her, I loved her—she was my mom, for crying out loud—but anger overwhelmed the rest of my thoughts. I could lash out. Strike back. I was stronger than she was, stronger than she would ever be, and I didn’t have to take no for an answer. How dare she—

  Damn it, that was Mom. No matter how angry I was, fireballs couldn’t be the answer.

  I blinked and turned to Val. “I want to strike her down. Maybe set her on fire. It’s kind of nebulous, but those are the main options right now.”

  He nodded, apparently unconcerned with my expressed desire. “Are you going to do so?”

  My arms were still tense, ready to attack or defend, but I breathed deeply and forced them to relax. “No.”

  “Sure about that? You seem uncertain.”

  I glared at him and felt the anger swell again, and Val cocked an eyebrow. “You’re cheating,” I snapped.

  “Fight it.”

  So I did. I wrestled with the overwhelming rage until I could look at the illusion of my mother and feel only peeved instead of homicidal, and when Val was satisfied with my mental state, the vision disappeared. “How was that?” I asked, wincing at the headache on the horizon.

  He shrugged. “A beginning. Too slow. Try again.”

  The surprise bolt threw me off my feet, and I jumped up and turned around to find Morgan Kramer and Leo Rossi, the shortest of the pack but the best with their wands, standing at the ready. “Hiya, Dudley,” said Leo, casually brushing his straw-like bangs out of his dark eyes. Morgan said nothing, but that wasn’t unusual—he’d been reading Dr. Seuss in the third grade, long after the rest of us had discovered chapter books. As his ample baby fat had solidified to muscle, I’d always thought that Morgan resembled a troll. Having finally seen a troll, I had to reconsider my assessment, but that did nothing to change the fact that Morgan had no neck and biceps as big around as my thighs.

  “Two? Really?” I yelled at Val.

  He stood back and grinned. “You need the challenge.”

  “You’re an asshole,” I said under my breath, but turned my attention back to the illusionary wizards. “Okay, I’m not killing—”

  A shot from Leo’s wand threw me halfway across the clearing, and I held my aching head as I struggled back to my feet. “How do I—”

  “Figure it out,” said Val. “And you might want to hurry.”

  Morgan struck that time, hard and fast, and I screamed as my left leg shattered. My eyes watered, and I cried, “Val, I can’t—”

  “Fight it.”

  Leo raised his wand, and my fear and pain overwhelmed my defenses. When the red haze cleared, I saw more smoldering fires in the grass and groaned. “I lost it, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.” Val squatted beside me and rested his hand on my broken leg, and the healing enchantment commenced. “It’s all about control,” he said, concentrating on his work. “There’s a wide ground between doing nothing and blasting your opponent to dust, but you must learn for yourself how hard you can hit. I can’t teach you that—no one can. So we practice until you figure it out.” He focused on my leg for another moment, then stood and nodded. “Better?”

  I tested my weight and found only a twinge of pain remaining, though the bones were still soft. “Better.”

  “Then I suggest you focus on creating a shield,” he said, and pointed to the far side of the clearing, where Terrance Anders and Dan Solomon were coming into focus. “And do it quickly.”

  CHAPTER 15

  * * *

  Val was nothing if not a patient teacher. For five days straight, dawn to dusk, he conjured up my darkest memories, ignored my mental trigger warnings, and systematically broke every bone in my body. He never seemed to get angry—even when I screamed and cursed, he wouldn’t speak above a conversationally moderate tone—but he was ruthless in his attacks. Sure, he was quick to patch me up between bouts, and I was actually getting to eat my fill at every meal, a real treat after weeks in the woods, but I spent most of that week in pain, and I woke every morning with the ghosts of healed injuries on my mind.

  “It’s Val’s method,” Joey whispered after I collapsed into my sleeping bag after my fifth full day of training. “It’s hell while you’re doing it, but you’ll be stronger for it later.”

  “He’s going to kill me first,” I mumbled into my pillow between shallow breaths. My lungs hadn’t yet accepted that my repaired ribs weren’t about to puncture them.

  “He knows your limits. He pushes you right up to the edge, that’s all. You saw how long he left me black and blue last year.”

  “I don’t know, man.”

  “Come on,” said Joey, nudging me in the shoulder, “you’re not giving up, are you?”

  I rolled over and glared at him. “No, I’m not giving up. But the last time I checked, he wasn’t teaching you to fight by cracking your legs in half.”

  Joey grimaced. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. Ouch.”

  I flopped back onto my stomach and closed my eyes, willing myself to be calm and go to sleep—and that was when it hit me.

  I’d been annoyed with Joey, I’d been thinking about the day’s injuries…and I hadn’t blown up at him. Instantly, subconsciously, I’d suppressed the instinct to turn his sleeping bag into a flaming crater. Yeah, I’d flared a bit, but Joey wasn’t a threat, and I’d avoided maiming him.

  As little as I liked to admit it, Val’s methods were working.

  I told him as much the next morning after breakfast, when Joey had disappeared with a piq hunting party for something to do and Val and I were alone again in the clearing. “Excellent news!” he said, beaming. “Your control is improving. As soon as we’re comfortable with it, we can transition to your offensive work.”

  My heart sank. “You’re not satisfied yet?”

  “Not quite, but prove me wrong,” he said, and cut his eyes to the open space behind me, a gesture that by then made me flinch on cue.

  “Hey!” I heard Russell yell. “Going to cry today, Dudley? Huh? Going to run like a little baby?”

  “You know,” I said, calling up the basic shield that I’d learned to make with a stroke of luck and seven broken limbs, “this would all be more convincing if he were speaking English.”

  Val snorted and grinned smugly. “I’ll learn the barbarian tongue once you learn to defend yourself. On your guard, now,” he cautioned, just as the first bolt shot through my shield and shattered my knee.

  I dropped and grabbed at the wound, forgetting Russell with the pain. “Son of a bitch!” I shouted, and followed it with a long string of multilingual profanity.

  My tutor crouched beside me and began the healing enchantment. “See?” he said. “You teach me even now. We’re learning together.”

  I recognized the rising urge to lash out at him and forced it down. “Jerk,” I muttered in Fae.

  “Now, that’s not fair. If I were a jerk, I would let you keep fighting with one leg and see how much more damage we could do.” I glared at him, and he shrugged. “Combat doesn’t stop after a single hit. You’ll need to learn how to handle yourself injured eventually.”

  I glanced at the illusion of Russell, which was frozen mid-step, wand raised and ready. “Or I could just kill him.”

  “Well, obviously,” he allowed. “But unless the realm makes up its mind and empowers you more than it has, you won’t be able to kill Oberon. Not alone. And believe me,” he said, patting my sore knee, “Oberon won’t stop if he hurts you. He won’t stop until you’re ashes.”

  “If we work together—”

  “Perhaps. But Aiden, you must understand that I’m neither his equal nor yours. Not with the rea
lm behind you.” I started to protest, but Val shook his head. “I know what I’m doing, and I’ve been around long enough to build my strength—but next to him, I’m still a boy. Bear that in mind while you plan,” he said, then looked up from his ministrations and met my eyes. “And let that also show you exactly how much power you wield beyond your years. Do you see why I’m putting you through this?”

  I nodded and gave my knee a testing flex, then mumbled, “I’m a danger to you.”

  Val broke the enchantment and stood. “Why do you think I’ve been directing your focus elsewhere these last days? Shield up, now, and try to hold it together, hmm?”

  Even with a belly full of fresh venison, courtesy of Joey and his team of piq, I couldn’t sleep that night. Stiff from the day’s training, I limped up to the surface and climbed through the bushes, intending to stretch out in the clearing and stargaze until I dozed off. But before I could get comfortable in the grass, I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Val on my tail. “Pleasant evening, isn’t it?” he said, taking a seat beside me. “Good weather. And if you don’t sleep, you’ll be useless in the morning.”

  “Just not feeling it yet.” I winced as I bent my thrice-broken knee. After considering my state for a moment, trying to deduce what would make it better, I hesitantly stretched out my hand and focused. A plastic bag half-full of ice cubes appeared from thin air, and, grateful that I hadn’t accidentally set something on fire again, I held it against my jeans and tried to numb the pain.

  Val kept his face still, but when I called up a flame in my empty hand, I read the approval in his eyes. “Not yet prepared to address the problem directly?” he asked.

  “Since there’s a fifty-fifty chance that letting me work on my own knee would end in an amputation, I’ll stick with icing it down,” I replied. “Besides, healing takes practice.”