Witch-Blood

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  The gate wasn’t particularly large or stable. It was kind of jagged, really, and the edges flickered with raw magic as my enchantment tried to keep up with the changing situation. But it was my gate, and that evening, I wasn’t going for style points.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” I said, glancing at Lailu.

  She smiled and motioned to the gate as if pushing us on, and without another thought, I stepped into the orchard. Joey followed a few seconds later, and I broke the enchantment behind us, sealing the rift and our escape route.

  “Now what?” he whispered.

  Tensing in the presence of so much steel, I slid a step away from him and hoped he didn’t notice. “Pick a tree, any tree. We wait.”

  He grimaced, then slowly climbed the nearest gnarled apple tree, taking his time as he worked against the added weight he was carrying. I took the one beside him, though I caught my sword in the branches three times on the way up and had to stop and disentangle myself even as Joey made his slow upward progression. He chuckled as I swore and yanked at the cumbersome blade, and I considered telling him off, but before I could, I heard footsteps crunching over the gravel path and froze where I’d landed. Joey also fell silent, and we waited in the darkness as the footsteps neared—slowly, hesitantly, the scurry-and-pause pattern of someone who knows he’s not supposed to be poking around.

  It was too dark to see the person approaching—I could barely see my hand in front of my face—but the realm’s voice echoed in my head: As promised.

  Hoping that Faerie lacked a sick sense of humor, I jumped out of the tree and whispered, “Astrid?”

  The footsteps paused. “My lord?”

  “It’s Aiden, I’m—”

  I’d meant to say something reassuring, but I never got the chance. Astrid threw her arms around me and squeezed, and I saw stars flicker in the corners of my eyes before she finally let me breathe. “What happened?” she hissed, gripping my arms to hold me in place. “You never returned, and they said there was a hole in the floor of the king’s room, and—”

  I pulled my left arm free of her grasp and held out my hand, and Astrid gasped as the green fireball in my palm flickered to life. “The realm and I had a little chat,” I whispered, extinguishing the fire before we could be spotted. The orchard was a fair distance from the palace, but there was no sense in taking stupid risks. “She’s letting me borrow Coileán’s power for now.”

  “You mean—”

  Joey hit the ground beside us with a jangling thud. “There’s a reason why I’m carrying most of the gear,” he whispered.

  Astrid stepped away from his armory, but she continued to squeeze my arm. “My lord, you…you don’t mean to confront—”

  “I do,” I replied, extricating myself. “And I’m asking for your help again. We need a diversion.”

  “Turns out we can’t just carry the boss out of that room,” said Joey. “Booby-trap enchantment or some such. But if we can give Oberon a fight, make him divert his attention to protect himself instead of concentrate on Colin…”

  “I’m not asking you to go near Oberon,” I added. “But if there’s anyone left in the palace who might be willing to distract his guards…you know, give us a better chance of reaching him…”

  “I could give you ten names without thinking,” said Astrid in a low murmur, “and it might be possible to break into the dungeon, should the distraction be sufficient. But if this fails, Oberon will kill us all. You understand this, yes?”

  “Of course. Wish I had a better idea.”

  Her dress rustled as she folded her arms. “My lord, I mean no disrespect, but are you certain that you’re…uh…capable of fighting—”

  “I am,” I interrupted, praying that Joey went along with the lie. “Val’s been working with me, and he says I’m ready.”

  “Valerius? But he—”

  “Is as much a traitor as you, Astrid.”

  She stood there silently for a long moment, mulling this over, then blew out a long breath. “The last time I saw him,” she said softly, “he was at Oberon’s side.”

  “So he’s already in position, isn’t he?” said Joey.

  My eyes had begun to adjust, and so I caught the flicker of motion when Astrid instinctively reached for Joey, then remembered what he was packing and recoiled. “You think you have strength enough?” she asked him. “You and your toys, you think you can stand against Oberon?”

  “I had less than this when I went up against Titania and Mab,” he replied.

  He neglected to mention the fact that he’d also had Coileán, Robin, and Toula with him on that occasion, but if Astrid realized this, she let it pass. “My lord,” she said, turning back to me, “if you think this is the best plan, then tell me what you would have me do.”

  She jumped in surprise when I hugged her, but I didn’t care about propriety that night. “When does the palace sleep?” I asked when I released her.

  “Never fully, but in the small hours, it drowses. All but the essential staff.”

  I nodded to myself. “Then that’s when we’ll kick this off. Go back,” I told her. “Find the people you trust, and tell them to distract as many guards as they can. If they can open the dungeons, so much the better. And tell them…” I paused, hastily throwing my planned glamour back together, then held up a fireball to reveal my borrowed face. “Tell them to look for me,” I said in a voice almost like my brother’s.

  Astrid grinned in the greenish glow. “Quite passable, my lord.”

  “It’s not too obvious?”

  She cocked her head and squinted. “I can barely see the enchantment around the edges—it’s there, but it’s subtle enough for tonight. With a little more practice…”

  “I can live with subtle,” I muttered, letting the glamour fall. “Let’s synchronize watches and let you get to work.”

  “What watches?” Astrid asked, holding up her bare wrists. “Any timepiece you make is useless after a few days—the realm can’t stick to a schedule, you know.”

  I held out my free hand and focused, and a trio of thin, clear wristbands appeared. “Countdown timer,” I explained as Joey and Astrid took theirs and slipped them on. “Assuming we launch this around, say, two or three…” I tapped my band, and 07:00 appeared in bright red where a watch face should have been. The numbers flickered, and I waited until the first minute had clicked down before tapping the band again and hiding the readout. The others copied me, and Astrid pulled her cuff over the band, hiding it from view.

  “Will that give you enough time?” I asked her.

  She smiled grimly and nodded. “Until the morning, my lord,” she said, then stepped away from my fire and melted into the trees.

  When we were alone again, Joey sighed, and his hand crept to the nail gun at his hip. “There’s a decent chance that we’re going to die, isn’t there?” he muttered.

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, it’s even elevated by ‘roaming the wilds of Faerie’ standards.”

  “Uh-huh.” I cut my eyes to him and found him standing with his hand resting on the holster. “Look, Joey, I can try to open a gate out of here if you—”

  “Don’t start with that.” He stared into the darkness after Astrid for a minute, then sighed again and adjusted his sword. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to be alone for a bit.”

  I sank to the dirt under an apple tree and extinguished my fire, then watched the sky through the leafy canopy to keep my eyes from drifting to the timer on my wrist. Fighting the urge to simultaneously crawl into a hole and throw up, I wrestled with myself to maintain at least the façade of serenity.

  I wanted Joey beside me. I wanted Val there to talk me down and tell me it was going to be okay. I wanted my sister and her protective wand. I wanted my mother to hug me again and tell me I was just fine the way I was. I wanted to hide behind my brother, who could seemingly do anything.

  But Coileán was enchanted, Mom wasn’t speaking to me, Hel was probably still avoiding the Arcanum�
��s thugs, Val was keeping up appearances with Oberon, and Joey was making his peace with God. This one was on me.

  The future of the court was riding on how well Aiden Theodore Carver, Dudley to his enemies, remembered his two weeks of magical training—and that thought alone was almost enough to let my queasy stomach triumph. But then I heard the little voice from deep within me speak up once again:

  Dudley is dead. Dudley is gone.

  Which left…what? Beneath the rage, the power, the veneer of confidence, something was still hiding inside me, shaking with fear and this close to working out a gate back to Montana, where if things were bad, at least they were predictable. That part of me certainly hadn’t gone anywhere—if anything, it had grown louder that night. This was a terrible idea, it insisted, my worst yet, and I was going to get Joey and Astrid and all the court killed…

  Child, said the realm, interrupting my runaway train of thought, do you believe you are the only one who knows fear? Who doubts himself?

  “Well, uh…” I whispered, but she cut me off again.

  The boy hiding in the bunker will always live in you, she continued, but there was no chastisement in her pronouncement. There are boys rather like him living inside Coileán and Valerius and Joey. Girls like him inside Toula and Helen and Astrid, in Mab and Titania. You cannot kill the boy, child—but you can learn to close the door on him. Lock him in his room, where he’s safe. He’ll come out from time to time, often when he’s least wanted, and you will have to lock him away again because you are braver than he could ever be, and you have work to do. She paused, letting that sink in. He is what you fear you truly are. And in some way, that is the case—the boy is part of you. But Aiden, you are so much more than the boy, she insisted, and you can silence him. Do you understand?

  In my mind’s eye, I saw myself as I’d been little more than a year before, pasty in the fluorescent lights and the glow of my monitor’s screen, hiding in my bedroom and fearing any unexpected knock at the door. I’d hoped to study robotics. I’d yearned to be a wizard. And I’d never imagined the awful, wonderful truth.

  Hang in there, I thought, and closed the door on my younger self. With that accomplished, I took stock of my emotions, then frowned at the orchard. “Still terrified,” I told the realm.

  Of course you are. You’re not stupid.

  “You’re saying this plan is a bad one?”

  Not the wisest course of action.

  I leaned against the tree and sighed. “Got a better one you’d like to share, then?”

  She said nothing for a time. I thought she’d left me until I heard her murmur, Remember that there is a boy much like yours inside of Oberon, child. With that, Faerie went quiet, and I kept my lonely vigil, waiting for Joey to return and the clock to tick the night away.

  There was too much on the line to risk making a gate into the palace, and so Joey and I approached on foot through the dark gardens. Marine crawling was out of the question—our gear clanked enough when we were walking, let alone sliding over the terrain—but I was relieved to see that the palace didn’t appear to have been affected by a case of mass insomnia. When we were within shooting distance of the walls, we hid behind a hedge and considered our options. Our timing had been spot-on—the readout on my wrist flicked over to 00:01 when I checked the clock—and I considered our options as I called up the glamour once again that would disguise me as an imperfect copy of my brother. “Preference as to door?” I asked Joey. “There’s a chance that he hasn’t patched the hole in the dungeon yet.”

  “Mess up your hair,” he replied, and I tousled it to get the desired effect. “Better. And I’m pretty sure that Coileán would go in the front.”

  I gave him a hard look. “That’s fine and dandy, but appearances aside, I’m not—”

  A blue-flamed explosion ripped through the still night, propelling a wave of stone and glass shrapnel over our heads and through the bushes around us. Joey dropped into a crouch, and I raised a shield over us both, waiting until the larger chunks thudded into the grass. “The hell,” he muttered, peering through the hedge, then stood and pointed toward the palace, wide-eyed. “Shit, man,” he whispered, “there’s a hole in the back wall the size of a semi!”

  I split the holly for a look and saw shadows running around the massive wound in the stone, jumping inside and out like ants defending a disturbed mound. My wristband informed me that the appointed hour had arrived, and I grunted as I dropped the shield. “Right on schedule. She’s good.”

  “And that’s our cue,” said Joey, pulling his nail gun from its holster. “Who’s on point?”

  I pushed him back and marched toward the palace’s front doors, trying to channel my brother. “Cover me,” I said as my hands began to spark.

  “Do we give quarter?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Fair enough,” he muttered, and followed me up the wide stone staircase toward the bronze-banded oaken doors.

  At the top of the steps, I paused for the space of a breath and considered for the last time what we were about to attempt. But instead of the expected fear, which had dogged me all night, I felt an upwelling of the now-familiar anger. The palace had been my safe place, damn it all. Oberon and his invaders were in my home. And the things he had done to Coileán…

  “Aid?” Joey murmured beside me. “Got it under control, bud?”

  I was glowing again, but for once, I welcomed it. “Close enough,” I replied, then glared at the doors, extended my hand, and punched them open with a blast of force. The wave knocked one door from its hinges, but the other was shredded into a cloud of splinters, catching the two guards on the far side unawares. As they ducked behind their shields, I stepped through the opening I’d made, looked at both of the ashen-faced strangers, and called up a fireball in either hand. “Anything to say for yourselves?” I asked, smirking as they cowered.

  Before I could incinerate them, Joey stepped up and let fly a rapid series of shots. The iron nails easily drove through the young guards’ shields and into their flesh, and both howled as their wounds began to smoke and blacken. “I’m going with no quarter,” Joey told me, raising his voice above their wails. “Want to do the honors, or are you sitting this one out?”

  Twenty seconds later, the guards were blackened husks, and the room stank of overdone pork. I threw a shield around Joey and muttered, “Stay close,” then hurried down the long stone-walled hallway, looking for signs of life.

  Mercifully, Astrid’s demolition team seemed to have their act together. I gathered from the cacophony of shouting and running feet that something nasty was going on at the back of the palace—I mean, it had to be bad, as at least half of the people we encountered completely overlooked us in their rush to get to the action. As for the rest, Joey and I didn’t give them time to raise the alarm. I wasn’t accustomed to killing, and I hadn’t been sure how I would handle it, but that night, I could just as well have been swatting flies. Val’s training, even as brief as it had been, had made my defenses automatic, and I was able to keep my attacks effective under pressure, riding the wave of anger that carried me on. As I played with fire, Joey practiced his marksmanship, and I caught the dark look of satisfaction that crossed his face when his projectiles hit home.

  And then, as we pushed into the largest of Coileán’s formal parlors, I got sloppy.

  Three guards were still in the room—lieutenants, I assumed, judging by the hologram of the palace that floated in the middle of their huddle. The bright dots within the structure must have corresponded to people, given the luminous rear wall, but I didn’t have time to study their security system before the guards noticed us and jumped into action. Two ran, and I shot them in the back before they reached the far door. But while I was focused on them, I neglected the shield around Joey, and the third guard aimed a bolt at him.

  Joey survived that attack only because the guard’s aim was less than perfect. It struck him in the right arm, and he screamed as his bones shattered and t
he nail gun fell. I killed the guard without much trouble, then dragged Joey out of the room and into the smaller salon next door to assess the damage. Two doors were easier to defend than four, after all, and my backup had been neutralized.

  His arm was a mess, and I suspected that the wrist and elbow had sustained damage as well. Joey had managed to retrieve his gun with his left hand, but he couldn’t quite fit it into the holster on the other side of his body—not with his right arm in that state, at least. I looked around the room for suitable tools, then grabbed a decorative pillow off the overdone pink loveseat and shoved the corner into Joey’s mouth. “Bite,” I muttered. “This is probably going to hurt.”

  Tears leaked from Joey’s eyes as I moved his broken bones into position, but he didn’t scream. I quickly pulled together the healing enchantment that had worked so well on me and waited for him to mend. After a few minutes, however, once it had become clear that Joey’s arm was still useless, he pulled the pillow out of his mouth and said, “I don’t heal like you do, remember? It’s going to take at least another half-hour at this rate, and the bones will still be soft.”

  The footsteps in the hall outside the salon were growing louder. “Damn it,” I grunted, leaving the enchantment in place, then yanked a lacy tablecloth off a little side table and twisted it into a sling. “We’ve got to keep moving,” I told Joey as I slipped it over his head. “I can’t make it work any faster.”

  He eased his arm into the improvised sling and winced as the bones ground together. “I know, man.”

  “Can you shoot left-handed?”

  Joey tested the gun in his working hand, then nodded. “But I’m still pretty weak with a sword. It’s right hand or nothing.”