A Witch's Beauty

by A Witch's Beauty (lit)

  David glanced back to see that Dante had disappeared. The Dark Ones' scavenger and spy, but only barely tolerated by them, he'd warrant. He might still prove useful. The traitorous bastard.

  As David drew two of his daggers, Mina at last looked toward him. Even with the illusion gone from her, both her eyes were blood red. "You should drop those."

  "Your spell gives me the mandate of protecting you. They're not going to touch you, if I can prevent it. Protect yourself however you need to do it."

  "All right," she said. And blasted him with a current so strong it somersaulted him backward.

  David hit the ground hard, just as she lifted her arm and a sizzling green and purple dome of energy crackled around them, causing the Dark Ones to sheer upward, then turn, shrieking and snarling. She responded in the same language, shrieking and keening in that shrill voice.

  After a few dizzying moments, he was able to sit up, shake himself and retrieve his daggers. She let him move back to her, close enough to protect. If she'd let him. In the meantime, she'd snarled, hissed and apparently threatened her way to a satisfying conclusion in their peculiar communication form. The Dark Ones now adjusted their flight formation, giving more of an impression of an advance guard preceding her toward the tower. But they were hovering, staring at him. Waiting.

  As she turned and looked at him, the command exploded in his head, like shrapnel striking nerve centers, driving him to his knees.

  Strip. All of it. Leave it all.

  He fought her, fought himself, and yet couldn't stop his fingers from unbuckling the harness, letting it drop. Unbuckling the belt on the tunic, unwrapping it, dropping it so he was entirely naked. Weaponless. She had complete, ruthless control of him.

  His father, with a gun. Ordering him to strip. Mina, doing the same. He fought to keep it separate in his mind.

  I will use it against you...

  But then on top of that, he couldn't rise, was kept on his hands and knees from the force of her spell. The Dark Ones shrieked in startled amazement, swooped in, but couldn't come inside that dome of energy. They grazed it, risking the crackle of electric energy along their eager talons, the singeing of their wings.

  Some had landed, and while he'd been distracted by the ones in the air, there were Dark Ones on foot who'd also come out to meet them. Gathering around, closing in, their presence making his head pound, even with the Dark One blood.

  Crawl, angel.

  As she issued the mental command, she turned and began to walk toward the tower. David felt the fire searing his skin, the ice freezing it. The purple and green energy faded away, leaving him facing a nightmare come to life.

  He hadn't permitted himself to feel fear, made himself view everything up to this point as steps to prepare for battle. Now he would face it weaponless, to honor the Legion, the Lady and himself. And most importantly, to protect Mina. This was how he would serve her best.

  The Dark Ones closed in on him, their shrieks filling his ears, rupturing them as talons and teeth began to tear at his wings.

  Twenty-three

  MINA didn't look back, just kept walking. A tile of ice, a tile of fire, the stench of sulfur, Dark One decay and waste. The wriggling, grotesque life-forms they fed upon.

  This life was the part of her she couldn't deny. The part she likely understood better than the human, merperson or seawitch.

  When she'd been locked in chains against the Abyss wall, there were times, at the very first, when the pain and horror of it had been so overwhelming that she'd broken and screamed. Screamed until she had no voice. Pulled against the chains, both the magical and physical, until her blood attracted even more predators. Then, after a while, there was no sense of the passage of time. There was just now. Getting through the next minute. No past, no future, just an existence to which her body kept clinging for whatever reason, when anything seemed better than this.

  But knowing all that, remembering it, she knew this was worse. What was about to happen was too horrid to contemplate, to handle, so she simply shut down. She knew she was evil now, because even if it was the only way the Trumpet could be recovered, no one with a scrap of good inside their souls would have come up with this idea. There were some things that the universe should be sacrificed to preserve.

  Perhaps it was a blessing they weren't going to survive. He might call it love now, but what would it be after this?

  She didn't let her steps falter when they wrenched the first scream from him. Drawing on the Dark One blood within her fiercely, just as she'd told him to do, she immersed herself in it. She could go so deep her conscience would drown. She'd feel the same thrill as they did when he cried out. That deep, she might forget why they were here, but it was unbearably tempting. She couldn't do this if she felt his agony as well as heard it, knowing she was trading his torment and life for this.

  I will love you no matter what.

  No one should be loved no matter what. Nobody deserved that, particularly her. She'd never loved anyone. And not only had she never been loved, she'd never been loved unconditionally. He'd given her both without requiring anything from her. She wasn't strong enough for it.

  At the base of the tower, she was lifted under the arms, almost respectfully, by two of the winged Dark Ones. Lifted up, higher and higher, headed toward the top. Her fear of heights didn't touch her. Being dropped and all her bones crushed by impact might be a welcome mercy, after all.

  As they lowered her on the flat expanse of the keep, littered with rubble from the spires that surrounded it like rotting fingers pointing at the sky, she saw the Resurrection Trumpet.

  The gleaming gold and silver instrument had a long and slender throat, a red silken cord and white sash of silk wrapped around the handle. They had placed it on a stone tablet, surrounded by a circle of thirty or so higher-echelon Dark Ones. Higher echelon because they were taller, with eyes that narrowed with a far greater intelligence. She identified the one standing directly behind the Trumpet as the most powerful, for energy pulsed from him, and the containment spell, buffering them from the emanations of the complex spells the angels had on the Trumpet already, bore his signature. He was likely the one responsible for figuring out how to circumvent her cave wards and enter the portal from the ocean side. She narrowed her focus to him. He was what she had to defeat.

  All she had to do was touch the instrument with a bloodied hand, and it would be gone, in Jonah's hands. She would die. Perhaps after being tortured as long as they could make it last.

  David would be destroyed as well, for the binding spell on him would destroy him if she were killed. But the Dark One she was staring at would figure that out before he killed either of them. He would keep her alive long enough to use David's Dark Blood to make him truly one of them and unravel her binding. Then Jonah would one day face his young lieutenant and be forced to strike him from the sky, incinerate his putrid, monstrous body.

  No. There had to be another way. Gods, she'd spent her life in study of magical systems, historical conflicts and survival strategies among various species. She should be able to think of something different than this pointless martyrdom for a tin horn. But she knew all the other ways were too risky.

  We only get one shot at this. We have to choose the best way.

  Thirty pairs of red eyes followed her as she approached. David had been brought up as well, for the flock of bloodthirsty Dark Ones dropped him to the surface on the rough ground behind her. She could hear his panting breath, knew from a brief glimpse out of the corner of her eye he was on his side, struggling to lift himself on one arm. The other one appeared to be broken, useless, a wet gleam of white bone poking through his upper arm and at his wrist. Someone stepped on it as she watched and he screamed. A rock was shoved into his mouth, wrapped in a filthy cloth. It was too large and it was forced in, hard enough she heard the snap of his teeth.

  An oyster shell, leaving wounds that took nearly two years to heal well enough for her to be able to comfortably eat...

/>   She yanked her attention away.

  "Who is he?" The tallest one's voice shrieked along her nerves, but she could not deny her sire's blood also responded to it, such that it perversely helped steady her.

  "An experiment." She cocked her head. "You know they have been guarding me from you, thinking you intend me harm. He is young, and I was able to get him alone, tricked him into drinking our blood, and bound him to me with an enslavement charm. It is part of why I have come. The experiment was successful, but I could not stay there without invoking the wrath of the Legion."

  "You stole an angel for us."

  "I stole an angel for me," she corrected coldly. "I brought him to you so that the Legion could not take him away from me." She tilted her head, allowed a feral smile to stretch across her face, reveal her fangs. "But I might be coaxed to do it to other angels. Slaves that serve you all. And your children, the humans."

  "How do we know if you lie? How do we know he is fully under your power?"

  She arched a brow. "Look at him. He cannot fight them off. Though he continues to struggle, his powers are hampered. He can only strike out in my defense, not his own. You know angels cannot bear the stink of your kind. If he could kill all of you, he would."

  There was muttering in the circle around the Trumpet, hissing, suspicious looks. She lifted a shoulder. "You've been hovering over me in my dreams since I was born, and you don't feel why I'm here? I am tired of being neither one thing nor the other, of running. Of being cold and wet. If I have a place here, then that ends."

  "You helped them."

  "Yes. In the past. Unlike your pathetic Dante, I choose my allegiances for my own reasons, but it allowed me to get close to them, to learn to do this." She jerked her head toward David. Still didn't look at him. "But you've never cared about that. You knew the blood was calling me. The dreams enticing me to come have increased, even as you pretended to seek me for revenge. It was never about revenge. You want me to unravel the magic bindings on the Trumpet and play it." She gave the tallest one a derisive look. "Can't figure it out yourself, or can't play it if you did?"

  His crimson eyes went to malevolent slits. "You should not taunt us."

  Shrugging, she flicked her fingers, sent a zap of electrical power toward a small Dark One that had been creeping up on her ankle, probably to bite her. It retreated with a yelp.

  "Chaos on the blue green place will give us more of what we want," one beside the tallest said.

  "So what does that give me?"

  The red eyes narrowed. "We will use the humans to help us procreate, make more Dark Spawn. Stronger than humans. Replace them. It will become your world, instead of theirs. You are powerful, but we think you have not truly embraced your power. You reject it because of your mortal mother." His gaze shifted behind her, to the scuffling sounds going on, the groans and thuds. "But we are encouraged by this."

  The this was drawn out, sibilant, but she noted he cut it off. Trying to appear civilized, articulate? It was laughable, considering their surroundings.

  She considered it. "It can be done. It'll take some destruction, some reworking of the firmament and terrain after you use the Trumpet, but it can be done."

  "You will help us?"

  "Perhaps."

  "You think you have a choice?"

  "Of course I have a choice." She took a deliberate step forward, until the nearest Dark One around the table was only several feet away from her. Meeting his gaze just long enough to get him to shift his, she swept the faces of the ones around him with a disdainful look. "If you make it not a choice, you won't get anything from me. I care nothing for pain or death. I've experienced both, and I wasn't impressed. And there is no one I care about."

  "Even the daughter of Arianne? What if we brought her here, cut her babe out of her womb while she screamed, let her bleed and die before you?"

  Jonah would tie you in a ball with your own intestines and kick your bony ass back here before you got within a hundred miles of Anna. And you know it. Else you wouldn't want a girl to do your fighting for you.

  "You already know I am cursed to protect the daughter of Arianne, no matter my own wishes." She laughed, an extremely unpleasant sound, rough to her own ears. "It never occurred to you that was why I was in the Canyon? I never did one thing to protect the angels. Only her."

  There was shifting, muttering, a consultation of sorts. Mina waited, maintaining a dispassionate mien, walling out everything. The gag must have fallen out, for another terrible scream came from behind her. The kind of scream that ripped from one's throat when one had an appendage torn off. She remembered her fingers, a small barracuda biting them as she tried to fend it off. Then there'd been several other fish, and she'd lost the fight.

  She felt the close regard of the Dark One Council. Sighing, she gazed boredly out over the landscape. Gods, I will do this. Damn the whole world, but I will do it. I will get that Trumpet back, for David. Then I will annihilate all of you. All my life I've repressed my Dark Blood. It's time to use it.

  "You are right." The tall Dark One was looking at her with different eyes now. Not completely convinced, but far closer to it than a moment before. "It is something we had missed. The angels who have been following you around made us uncertain."

  She lifted a shoulder. "Her mate feels that I did it out of regard for her. She is an innocent fool, a being of light. He thought I needed protection, and as I said, it gave me the opportunity to study the angels more closely. If you want to disembowel her, and can figure out a way to do it where the curse won't compel me to protect her, I would savor the watching."

  "If all you have said is true, we will welcome you," the tall Dark One said. "I am Amal. The beginning for the Dark Ones." He looked down at the Trumpet. "Prove yourself to us. Unravel the spells on this so that we may use it. Can you do it?"

  If she'd had any sense of impending victory, it would have surged through her now, but all she had was simmering violence and a clamp on her emotions so strong she was certain she'd never feel anything again, even if the universe disintegrated around her. The rein on her control was so tight, it almost made her nauseated, but there was no time to steady her stomach. She stepped forward, and the Dark Ones parted, let her come forward, press her hip against the side of the stone tablet to still the distracting ache, the beginning of a cramp starting there. "Yes. I can do it."

  "How long?"

  Mina ran her hand over top of the instrument, not touching it. "A few minutes."

  A hiss of surprise. "Our oracles tell us true about your power. If you are telling us the truth."

  She tilted her head, gave him a sidelong glance. "Only one way to find out, right?"

  Amal lifted a lip in a bloodcurdling expression that she supposed they might call a smile, if Dark Ones knew what a smile was. It was all right. She didn't really understand smiles, either. Any more than she would ever know what laughter was.

  Amal spat out three words, and the universe disintegrated in truth.

  Twenty-four

  IT was as if the Dark Ones' world had been a paper backdrop and his words had punched a hole into it, the ends curling back, already on fire, disappearing. Stars, a swirling pinwheel of them. She remembered when David had shot up in the sky with her, that first time when she'd had little but fear of him. How she'd fought and he dropped her. There'd been this moment of suspension, very brief, when the mind registered that it was about to topple in a free fall. This was the same, only the heights were far, far greater, the terrain of the Earth far below, the moon off to the right, looking the size of the Abyss.

  Before she could draw breath, she was snagged in the sharp talons of one of the winged Dark Ones. They were spiraling through the dark sky, past that moon and all those stars, down toward Earth, so fast it was like traveling with the angels.

  At least it was over quickly. In a blink, they were past the ozone layer and standing on a high, frozen mountaintop, where it seemed the air was so thin she could barely draw breath, though
she'd had no apparent problem in the reaches of space where there was no oxygen.

  And David was still with her, a blessing and a curse. They dropped him in the snow twenty feet from her. A spray of blood spattered the ground, a momentary impression before his captors were covering him again, like piranha over a water buffalo. Being the lowest of the lower echelon, like the one that had tried to gnaw her ankle, they were simply hungry pets for the more evolved Dark Ones. David was being used as a bone to keep them occupied while the adults took care of business. She saw a flash of his other hand, trembling fingers, showing he was still alive, and then she forced her gaze away again.

  She'd even taken away his ability to fight back.

  "Do not get angry with them," Amal commented, now at her right side. "They will not kill him. They know he is yours. But we have suffered so much at their hands, and of course it is so irresistible to have one at our mercy."

  He couldn't control the sibilance this time. She thought if she ever heard the word irresistible spoken again, she would be sick.

  Then the Trumpet was lowered on its stone dais before her. The Dark Ones carrying it backed off, leaving only her and Amal, and that half circle of his cronies. "The angels will locate us quickly now that we are in their sphere," Amal said. "Do it. Prove yourself. We can feel the blood in you reaching for us. For this."

  They pressed around her, those tall ones. Talons drifted across her nape, an unexpected intimacy they'd bestow on a child toward whom they had improper urges. She suppressed a shudder.

  They had wasted little time once reasonably convinced of her willingness to help, which suggested they feared the angels coming up with possible alternative magics to render the Trumpet inert. They were afraid of losing their opportunity to at last realize their dreams of ultimate destruction. Like comic book villains. She had a couple of comics, favored fare of the sailors on the freighters. Now she found those graphic pictures far less fictional and overly dramatic than she'd first imagined.