The Lost Queen

by Jenn Stark

  And realized we had a new problem.

  “Um…Nigel?”

  “I see them.”

  He straightened, one of the children slung around his neck, silently sobbing, the other in his arms. I had sliced the bands on the third little girl, who I had perched on my hip, and I stood next to the Sultan’s Cup, which was still bubbling over with power, though that was only apparent to my third eye.

  But facing us over the body of the male witch…were skeletons.

  A lot of skeletons. Upright and animated, vibrating with more magic in one concentrated space than even I could safely wield, especially carrying a child, and—

  They rushed us.

  “Run,” Nigel yelled.

  Chapter Three

  We bolted out of the mouth of the cave as the sound of bones on stone followed us, then raced pell-mell into the darkness. I thrust one hand forward, sending balls of light spiraling ahead of us, wishing I could leave Nigel to fend for himself as I turned to lay waste to the skeletal golems behind me. But I didn’t trust Nigel to find his way without me, and I didn’t trust myself not to blow up the entire cave system of Castle Hill. Sometimes, wielding immense immortal power had its drawbacks.

  I didn’t have time to read the cards again to find the best way out, but for once, cards weren’t really needed. The earth was made up of energy patterns, from rocks to ground to grass to sky. Each of those energy patterns was woven differently depending on the entity it manifested. Rock might beat scissors in the popular hand game, but as far as my third eye was concerned, they were both easily identifiable. Same thing for open and blocked space. Now that I was merely looking for the fastest way to get the hell out of the cave system, my third eye rendered the entire space like a 3D map, showing me the shortest path to sunlight.

  Shortest didn’t necessarily mean easiest, though.

  “Hole!” I shouted, barely in time to turn my head to warn Nigel as I stepped into utter open space, the child clutched to me jerking in convulsive fear as we plummeted down five feet. I wrapped my hands around her and rolled into a quick somersault, protecting her head, then skittered out of the way as Nigel dropped in behind me. He cursed sharply in English as he hit the ground, but he didn’t crumple, and any pain he felt from pounding his ankles was likely masked by sheer adrenaline.

  We both took off running again, and I heard the skeletons crash into the hole behind us. Easily fifty of them poured through that hole, but the sound of running feet after us sounded…distinctly diminished. Maybe the bones had to be relatively close together to reassemble? I didn’t know, but my brain feverishly worked on the problem as we raced through the caves. I couldn’t exactly have the streets of Budapest running with skeletons by the time we were done here, but I had to get out—get the children out—and then go back for Vlad. Impaled or not, I had the feeling we hadn’t left the guy quite dead enough for him to be useless to me.

  The corridor formed a tee in front of us, both paths eventually leading to the daylight if my mental schematic was right, but one of them doing it through increasingly narrow pathways and more drops. The smoother choice was to the right. I whipped around, pulling my head up from the child’s bloody neck. “That way!” I ordered Nigel. “Can you—”

  I looked down into the face of the little girl I was holding, then jerked my head back reflexively. Her beautiful face was a mask of serenity, for all that she was covered in gore and sweat and dirt, but it was her eyes that stopped me like a punch to the throat. They were milk white, as if she’d been blinded, and her lips stretched into a broad, joyful smile.

  “You came, you came. As you must, to bring the dawn,” she intoned in an eerily adult voice, speaking in Romanian. I looked from her to Nigel, painfully aware of the skeletons behind us.

  “Can you run?” I finally asked the little girl, though how in the name of Christmas she was going to do anything as a blind person, I didn’t know. No matter how dark the caverns were despite my glow balls, you needed sight to maneuver around so many tricky corners.

  “Sara, no,” Nigel snapped back at me, clearly reading my mind. Another downside of knowing me so well.

  I hugged the little girl a last time, but my gaze pinned Nigel, and I put all the compulsion I could muster in my glare without actually manipulating him magically. From the naked fury on his face, he knew I could go there—would go there—if I had to. “Keep going that way. It’s safer, flatter. You’ll get there faster. I’ll be right behind you,” I said, then swung the little girl down.

  “I can run!” The child Nigel was carrying wriggled out of his arms. Without hesitation, the Ace of Swords bent down to scoop up the other girl. The third girl, whose hands remained tied, clung to his shoulder, still passed out. I touched her neck and felt a fluttering pulse. She’d survive, but she was injured—far worse than the other two were.

  “Come on—come on!” the healthiest child insisted, darting away down the dimly lit corridor.

  Nigel clutched the blind girl to him, and, with one last glare at me, he followed his small guide into the semidarkness. As soon as Nigel cleared each of the glowing fireballs, I doused them, then cast another set into the narrower, trickier left-hand path. By now, the skeletons were almost on top of me. I pressed against the wall, hidden in the shadows, and let them pass me by. One—two—twenty—thirty thundered into the narrower tunnel. Crap. Not as many of them had shattered into uselessness as I had hoped, but enough had, I decided. Enough.

  I swept up my hands into a fireball and cried out, my voice a high-pitched scream that could probably be heard all the way back among the wax figures in the Labyrinth tourist display. “Stop!” I roared in Turkish, and the jittering skeletons froze.

  I grinned. Good guess. The Ottomans had been Turkish, at least the ones that’d roamed these halls in the fifteen hundreds. Now the reanimated bones of their dead servants had been pressed once more into service, unknowing of what they were doing, but commanded to obey—much as their human souls had been commanded to obey in life, whether willingly or not.

  “Rest.” This second command was kinder, gentler, and somewhat of a gamble. But it was a gamble that seemed to work. I stepped back as the skeletons slumped to the floor, their bones dislocating again, with no energy to animate them, their bodies—

  I had only the barest second to react as I stepped on a spot in the floor that sounded curiously different, like a metal plate where there should be only rock. It gave way the slightest bit, and I heard the whoosh of metal, exactly as I had with wannabe Vlad in the pentagram chamber. A whoosh of metal that was followed by—

  I flattened myself to the floor as a row of spikes shot free of the wall, bolting across the narrow space of the corridor. They passed harmlessly over the skeletons, who’d already collapsed to the floor and clattered against the far wall, but I didn’t hesitate. Rolling into a crouch, I lifted my hands again and formed an immense net of protective energy, as tall as I was and three times as broad, and flung it forward. The blue-white mass of magic went soaring through the passageway that Nigel had taken with the kids. It would catch him in time, I prayed, before Nigel or one of his small charges unwittingly tripped any other booby traps Vlad or his modern-day doppelgänger had put in place.

  Speaking of…

  No way was I going to take the time to pick my way back to Vlad’s chamber overtop all the skeletons that had met a bad end, but that didn’t mean what I was going to do instead was all that fun. Still, I allowed myself only the slightest pity party…

  Okay, maybe a few extra seconds of a pity party.

  One of the newest skills I’d developed as Justice allowed me to move through space bodily, as long as I knew my destination. Instant teleportation sounded great, but to make it happen, I needed to destabilize myself, which meant to break down my physical form enough to go poof. There were a number of ways to do this. Unfortunately, I knew of only one that really worked for me.

  And it hurt. A lot.

  A
corona of flames burst around me as I focused on the pentagram, the chalk circle, the spikes—and dear old Vlad. A moment later, I’d returned to the chamber, where everything was as I’d left it.

  Almost everything.

  “Dammit, Nigel…” I muttered. The Sultan’s Cup had been taken from its stone perch, though how the wily Brit had managed that while he was scooping up children, I had no guess. This was why he’d been my number one nemesis back in the glory days of artifact hunting, I supposed.

  But those days were done. I glanced back at the stone pedestal, gnawing on my bottom lip. Mostly done, anyway.

  I stepped over to where the earthenware jars had been knocked over, their contents seeping across the stone floor. Blood stained the rock, mingling with the salt that had been so carefully poured into the carved stone. At least now I knew what those thick white lines had been. I squatted, laying my fingers gently against the nearest pool. I could still feel a burst of vitality in that blood, but there was nothing I could do to recall it to life. I couldn’t put it back into the bodies of the children who’d been pulled from the Danube. I couldn’t undo the murders committed by faux Vlad.

  Not for the first time, I regretted that I had no skill to bring back the dead. I was pretty sure that not even Death, one of the more powerful members of the Arcana Council, had that ability. And perhaps it was unfair for me to want to restore to this life a soul that had suffered so terribly upon this earth. I couldn’t help but think about all those I’d already lost, and all those I was destined to lose, simply by not being enough. Every time I thought that my powers had finally brought me to a place where I could ensure the safety of those around me, I was reminded how foolish a desire that was.

  “Unnghhh.”

  The man on the floor captured my attention, and I refocused on the problem at hand. The spikes remained in a pretty line along his body, but only half of them had impaled him. He would have a nice set of puncture wounds along his right torso and shoulder, but all in all, he’d escaped what should’ve been far worse damage.

  Good. More for Gamon to work with.

  I also couldn’t help but notice how much wannabe Vlad resembled the Ten of Swords. Sometimes, the cards really did have a sense of humor.

  Interrogations weren’t my strong suit, but this one, I couldn’t avoid. I ambled over to the felled magician and crouched beside him. The mark of Justice gleamed bright silver at his temple. I only knew the most recent of his crimes, and those would be more than enough to condemn him to a date with Judgment. Still, I had a few questions.

  “Yo.” I tapped the man on his shoulder, the one that was spiked into the ground, and his eyes flared open as he barked a short, agonized yelp. Then his eyes focused on me, and he shut up. Fast.

  “You know who I am?” I asked, speaking in Romanian.

  “Justice.” His voice was garbled, rough, and I thought back to his ululating cry. That probably was hell on your karaoke career. “I have no quarrel with you.”

  I burst out with a harsh laugh of my own. “Well, that’s really kind of you, but I have a quarrel with you. In fact, you’re marked.”

  I tapped his temple, and the man had the bad grace to look totally surprised. He opened his mouth, obviously to protest, and my blood pressure leapt.

  “You killed two children, you asshat. You used three others for your little summoning game, and now they’re barely alive. I should have shackled you with my bright shiny cuffs of Justice, but you went ahead and saved me the trouble by getting gutted by your own booby trap. I appreciate that.”

  “Those children were Promised,” Vlad said, clearly still mystified. “They are sworn to my service.”

  “They are human children, and as such, they are sworn to no one’s service,” I snapped. Something in my voice must have penetrated Vlad’s entitlement, because he zipped it before I incinerated him to ash. “They’re safe, no thanks to you, and whatever is left of your worldly possessions will go to the families of those you killed.”

  “My…” He nearly strangled himself trying to keep silent as his brain knit together the meaning of my words. I kept going while I still had him conscious and focused.

  “Who exactly was it you were trying to summon in that little pentagram of yours? Because that sure as hell wasn’t a demon. I’ve met a few.”

  To my surprise, the male witch had the gall to glare at me, his look turning mulish. I reached out and rattled the nearest spike that was currently pinning him, and he yelped again.

  “Do you even know who I am?” he demanded.

  “Well, right now, you’re looking like Vlad the Impaled,” I said, grinning at my own joke. He didn’t seem impressed with my humor. Everyone’s a critic.

  “I am a descendent of the house of Dracul,” he growled, curling his lips back from his teeth. I was impressed with his dental work. His canines had been carefully polished down to sharp points, giving him a definite edge in any Halloween costume parties. “These caves are as known to me as the back of my hand. My family owns them far more than the denizens of the castle ever have or ever will.”

  “Yeah, I saw your handiwork back there with the Indiana Jones adventure ride. What about the skeletons? That you too?”

  His smile was frosty. “My power is great. The male witches of my house command all that rests in this place.”

  “Uh-huh. You do that with your little cup of power? Because that’s missing now too. I don’t know where it could’ve gotten to.”

  “It will return to us,” Vlad said, with impressive confidence for a man spiked to the ground. “It always does.”

  Interesting—and something to look up, once I tracked down Nigel and his nicked tumbler of doom. “And when you say ‘us,’ who do you mean, exactly? In case I need to notify your next of kin.”

  His sudden silence made me realize he’d successfully distracted me, and I sighed. I was worse than a puppy at the dog park.

  “Back to the pentagram,” I said. “Who was she?”

  The pronoun definitely got his attention. “My wife,” he said. “My rightful consort.”

  “Really. She didn’t seem to share the attraction.”

  “She has no choice. The witch who responded to my call is the designated vessel for the scarred queen. She is destined to be the consort of the most powerful male witch on earth—and that is me.”

  I couldn’t help it. I reached out and rapped on the spikes again, making Vlad vibrate in pain. “Who is she in real life? A mortal? Or is she actually a demon after all?” I asked, looking back at the pentagram. There were female demons, sure, but most demons manifested as males on this earth. It was just their schtick.

  On the floor, however, Vlad coughed. This time, a little blood came up. “She’s no demon,” he sneered. “But don’t be fooled. She commits horrific crimes whenever she emerges, all in the service of whoever succeeds in dominating her. The howls of the afflicted rise and writhe whenever Myanya takes form. But in the end, she is not what’s important. Her consort is.”

  “So you’ve mentioned,” I said drolly. “Seems to me she was the one in control here. Where’ll she go now that she’s toasted you?” I didn’t like the idea of a fiery spirit like Myanya hanging around getting ready to strike again, and that silver mark at her temple was as much of a red flag as I was going to get.

  “Myanya’s spirit will retreat into her vessel, where she will stay until I claim her once and for all,” Vlad said. “Who she kills until then is immaterial. They were meant to die.”

  Great. Myanya had officially become my next target, whether I secretly sided with her in the case of Myanya vs. wannabe Vlad or not. “So she’s dangerous.”

  “She is nothing,” Vlad insisted. “Without her consort, Myanya is a filthy, sniveling spirit resurrected once a generation, whose destiny is to be subjugated and reviled by the one who owns her, like the pathetic whore witch whose body she inhabits. She has no choice but to kneel in utter obedience at my feet and—�
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  And…that did it. This pompous, delusional, insufferable man totally deserved a lot of alone time with Gamon, and I was happy to help him get to it.

  I grabbed his collar tight, and we both disintegrated into flames.

  Chapter Four

  Two days later, I sat back on my heels in a rare open space within my office’s impressive library, surrounded entirely by boxes, scroll tubes, and books. Around me hung four faint glow balls, the strongest I could conjure inside this heavily warded chamber. The wards weren’t mine, unfortunately, or I would simply have switched them off. Instead, the best I could do was flip them off.

  “These are all the old cases involving witches?” I asked.

  “This is the lot.” Mrs. French, the diminutive caretaker of the library of Justice, stood between two towering columns of boxes. She kept her eagle eyes trained on a young boy who looked no older than ten, but was in fact far older, as he hauled three more awkward scroll tubes to the pile. “You can set those right there, Ned, there’s a good man. Now off with you to breakfast, eh? I’ve put yours off to the side, with an extra surprise, for helping us.”

  “Thank you, Mum!”

  Ned scurried off down the corridor, not in the direction of the main door to the office, but to a point deeper in the library.

  I watched him curiously. “There’s a kitchen back there somewhere?”

  “More than a kitchen, an entire dormitory for the boys.” Mrs. French straightened, brushing her hands on her skirts. “We had it put in right after Justice Abigail opened the office, and it’s changed very little over the years. There never was much of a need to alter anything, you see.” Her smile slipped a little, and she looked toward the back of the library too. We could no longer hear Ned’s retreating steps. “Of course, that will change now. But change is good.”