DIRE : TIME (The Dire Saga Book 3)

by Andrew Seiple

  “They might not be able to. Could be a thing with the circle itself.” Dottie didn’t sound convinced. Grimacing, she made her way to the altar, and leaned in with a lit taper. “Oh dear.” She swayed a bit, and I steadied her. She stared at the corpse, at the gruesome wounds, and the still-oozing blood.

  “That’s not right,” she said, squinting. “The heart’s still in there.”

  “He didn’t try to take it out?”

  “It’s cut half-through.”

  “Am I the only one disturbed that you know what a human heart looks like?” Unstoppable chuckled. We looked at him as one, and he lifted a hand. “Sorry, sorry.” He was sweating again, I noticed. Not heavy, but it was there. The wolfsbane was wearing off.

  “Spread out,” Dottie said, abruptly, grabbing some nearby candles, lighting them, and handing them to us one by one. “Look around. See if you can find something out of place.”

  We did.

  I almost missed it. Almost missed the wet noise my boot made as it came down next to a corner pew. But when I lifted my boot, it glinted red in the light. I knelt down, stared under the pew, using the candle to illuminate matters.

  There was something small and black, and a hand-sized puddle of blood congealed around it. A scrap or two of black cloth was soaking in the gore.

  I reached a hand back for the glinting black thing—

  And paused. The black fleck was glittering, as it shifted in the weak light. It was rolling closer to my hand. Coming to meet me.

  I pulled my hand back, and it stilled.

  “Hey, Dottie? Come look.”

  She did, and her breath hissed between her teeth. “Elfshot. I knew it!”

  I looked around. “No other blood back here. The rest is all up by the altar.”

  “That’s because it’s not the priest’s. It’s his. This is Mitternacht’s blood.” Carefully, she pulled out a handkerchief and dipped it in the blood, putting it into her empty wolfsbane jar.

  “That’s useful?”

  “If I were a proper witch he’d be right bent over. Sadly, I’m not. But I do know that’s elfshot.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What elves throw at you when they’re angry. Kind of like horrible little bugs. If they touch your skin they burrow in, find their way to the bone. It’s a horrible numbing thing, you have to cut them out or the limb they dig into is paralyzed forever. And if they get into the chest or head, well, that’s all she wrote.”

  I shuddered. My fingers had been inches from the deadly little thing. “Should we be standing here?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt to back up. They usually fade after a few hours if they don’t find a host. This one must be fairly fresh.”

  Memory flashed before me, as we backed up. “Mitternacht was limping, when he walked away.”

  “Yes, it has to be! It hit his leg, and he dug it out. Must have hurt like the dickens.”

  “Her heart bleeds sympathy.”

  Bryson interrupted. “So he offended the fae. Can we use this?”

  She sighed. “Maybe. I think what happened is that they didn’t mind the desecration, or the priest’s death, but when they saw he was dedicating the heart to someone that wasn’t them, they got stroppy. Interrupted the ritual, which forced him to retreat and cut the shot out.”

  “So why are there werewolves?” Unstoppable asked, his voice wavering.

  “Does it require a priest to make the werewolves?” I asked.

  “Probably not. He probably went and got someone else and did the ritual somewhere else.”

  “Okay. Back to Bryson’s question. Can the fae help us out, here?”

  “Well... yes. For a price.” She swallowed. “These aren’t the kind of fae you read about in storybooks. These are kin to the Erl King, or older. They’re more like forces of nature than things you can talk with. I can talk with them. Maybe.”

  “Your grandmother again?” I asked.

  “There’s supposed to be some... old blood in my line. I can maybe call upon that.”

  “We are not sacrificing you,” I said. “That option's off the table. Altar, rather.”

  A crash echoed from the back, and we jumped. Henri and I glanced to the back door as one, and took up positions, drawing guns. “This soon?” I asked.

  Snuffles and growls from the back room, followed by a surprised yelp. Then quiet.

  “The room back there’s not part of the circle proper,” Dottie said.

  Bryson pondered. “But the moon’s empowering them enough that they can get this close. I imagine they couldn’t before.” He tapped his cane on the ground. Bryson's face looked bored, but his eyes were riveted on the back door.

  I glanced around front, and saw glowing red eyes peering through the cracks where the MAUSER had knocked them slightly off-frame. “Oh yeah,” I whispered, “they’re closer now.”

  And in the silence I could hear them panting.

  “Not me.” Dottie said. “You wouldn’t be sacrificing me. But they’d want at least a heart. Then I could... negotiate with them. One of us would have to die.”

  We looked at each other. “Out of the question!” I snarled.

  Dottie nodded. “Agreed. So—”

  Unstoppable rose, moved to the altar on tottering legs, and pushed the priest off. While we gaped, he clambered on, and lay still on his back, arms wide. “Well? Get cutting. Gonna have to be quick, or it’ll heal up before you can finish.”

  I blinked. Could it be that easy?

  “It might not be that easy,” Dottie whispered, and her voice grew low and wary as her eyes grew wide. “This is magic, this is old power. This is bronze knives in the night and the riders of the strangeling moon and they who supped on the kings of the bean. I don’t care how good your powers are, this might just kill you. Kill you kill you.”

  “Well, if it doesn’t then we’re good. And if it does, shit, I was gonna get real fuzzy here real soon anyway.” He was sweating more. It was pooling down his forehead, and puddling back where he lay. “Do it.” He caught my eye, and chuckled. “Besides, at least I’m giving my heart to the best women I know, huh?”

  My throat felt rough, and breathing was hard for a second. Everything went misty, as I blinked tears away.

  Dottie closed her eyes then turned to me, unspoken questions wavering on her lips. I nodded, and gave her shoulder a squeeze.

  “Help me?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  In the end, it took all four of us to hold him down, and hold the wound open. He thrashed and screamed, and Dottie’s hand shook as she used Mitternacht’s own knife to do it, but finally the ribs were held back long-enough for her to scoop the heart out. I didn’t recognize the strange language that rolled from her tongue as she uttered words, whispers that echoed in the strange air of the church, but when she held the heart up high, there came a sound like the striking of a bell. For a second I thought the church bell was ringing, and I looked up to the ceiling—

  Only to see stars. Strange stars, in a violet night sky. My head swam as a wave of nausea rolled through me, and I staggered, put one-blood slicked hand against the altar, and felt bare stone.

  I looked down. Unstoppable was gone. The altar was different, no longer a Christian affair. There were blood gutters, and symbols I didn’t recognize, and a bearded, antlered face carved into it. The blood ran down the gutters, into the face’s mouth.

  “Oh dear,” Dottie whispered, and we turned. Bryson and Henri stiffened, reached for weapons. I froze.

  The church was gone. The circle remained. The ground was wispy and grayish-green and stony, and a tall, endless forest stretched around us, trees that had never known the touch of an axe draped with moss and hung with skulls. A loose ring of things surrounded the circle, wearing hides and bones and glittering shards of stone and jade and crystal strung over their thin, ropy-looking bodies. Dispassionate eyes studied us, pure black with neither cornea nor pupil.

  “Do not draw your weapons,” Dottie whispered. �
��And leave the talking to me, please.”

  Through a screaming headache I saw the tallest among them advance, horned head bowing as he passed under a cross-brace of the circle.

  I did not know if our situation had improved.

  CHAPTER 10: MINNA – PROXY SHELL

  “Minna. She was scary. Like you'd take everything that makes up a normal person, and strip it down to the bone, and she was what was left over. The way she watched people, the way she moved, the way she spoke... you could tell she'd been through some serious shit, and she was just waiting for more to start. Nothing mattered but the next hardship to survive. Well, nothing besides that and Anya. Anya mattered the most.”

  --Conversation attributed to Carol Shriver, rumored member of the Legion of Dire

  The others were arguing again. Their voices rose and fell, and Minna ignored them all. Now was Anya’s time, not a time for arguments. It was the last couple of hours of frantic play before Anya had to go to bed, and it was very important that she do that.

  “Doggy leash?” Anya asked, holding up a loose coil of baling wire. Minna smiled, and twisted it into a leash, before handing it back. The little girl squealed in glee, her puffball blonde hair bobbling as she bent over, and with solemnity befitting a funeral, put the wire loop around the grimy, beaten up plush dog they’d found in one of the crates. A legacy from when the warehouse had been in use, long before Dire acquired it as an auxiliary lair. Minna nodded in satisfaction as Anya giggled and dragged the dog toy around the cleared space between the crates.

  Soon Minna would say ‘bedtime’, and Anya would cry and fuss. Not because she hated sleep, but because the world was so full of wonder that she hated to leave it, hated to stop watching it for even a few hours. Such was Anya’s way, and the way of most children.

  Minna’s way as a child had involved bruises, and yelling, and tears, and the heavy hand of a drunken father. It had been fear, and locking her door at night, and praying that papa would forget about her and beat her mother instead.

  Anya’s way was better. Minna would give, had given everything to see that it was so. She had killed to save Anya before she was born, fled the Vory v Zakone handlers assigned to keep her a whore, and lived as a vagrant. Still, it was vagrancy in one of the richest nations of the world. Better than being on the streets in Romania, to be certain.

  Even so it had nearly crumbled. The wealthy monster who pursued her caught her, obsessed and able to turn his obsessions into reality.

  Dire had saved her. Saved Anya, too.

  I owe her everything. Minna knew. And so she huddled in the dusty, oil-stained warehouse, on the run from the mad machine-mind that sought Dire’s death, listening to the few people she trusted argue with the one she had to pretend to trust. And it was still better than what her life once had been, because Anya was playing walk the doggy, and laughing.

  It almost made up for the bitch’s whining.

  “Without communications we’re dead in the water.” Vorpal snarled. “We cannot fight if she is listening into our plans!”

  “So we put together a code. I did the same in the service, got a few that are easy to learn. I’ll teach you.” Bunny was trying to be reasonable. It wouldn’t work. Arachne had poisoned the bond she had with Vorpal, hurt their relationship. They’d had a screaming argument about it earlier, but it was not settled. Minna did not know if it would ever be settled again.

  Martin made the mistake of getting between them. “Look. Worse comes to it we go to cell phone and keep it short. She can’t cover all the phones in the city—”

  He only made Vorpal angrier. “Yes she fucking can! She is an artificial intelligence! And until she gets Dire, she will do everything she can to find her!”

  “So we use the cell phones with a code, and—”

  “You are not listening! Codes will not work! That thing can break them as easily as you could do your sudoku puzzles! We will not succeed if we cannot communicate!”

  Minna looked to Anya as the others argued. The little girl was watching them, her lips trembling. Martin was upset. To her Martin was Daddy, or the closest thing she had. Anya hated to see Martin upset.

  Minna closed her eyes. She hated speaking to them like this, but she hated seeing Anya’s tears more.

  “Stop,” she said, rising to her full height, looking down on them all. Even Martin, if only by a few inches. “I say stop.” She put her voice to the tone she used when Anya was bad, and they stopped. Looked to her. “If we cannot talk then we should not go.”

  Martin stared at her, betrayed. Vorpal nodded, her mouth quirking in a small sneer.

  Bunny sighed, and rubbed the back of her bald head. “That’s not an option, Minna.”

  “Yes it is.” Minna tapped the whiteboard, the one with all the names on it. “We send someone else.”

  Martin shook his head. “Won’t touch us. We’re too hot. You seen the news lately?”

  She had. It was full of excited people in bad suits shouting about the worst villain attack to take place on American soil in years. About the senseless destruction, and the missing people. Not an hour went by without a grieving family member or friend doing an interview and sobbing about how their loved ones were gone and they didn’t know if they were coming back.

  She didn’t blame them. Minna didn’t know if they were coming back either.

  “Yes. I see the news.” The shows had gotten an upsurge a few hours ago, after the robbery at Helios. “We are hot. But is that bad for ever one on this board?” She tapped it with a knuckle.

  “Everyone, Minna,” Bunny corrected her. Minna nodded her thanks, unsmiling. Bunny was good. She was not as good as Martin, but she was kind to Anya. Played with her sometimes.

  “You are thinking the Steampunks?” Vorpal studied her. Minna met her eyes, keeping her face still and refusing to blink. Vorpal was not kind to Anya. She was not cruel, but she acted as if the child was a nuisance, something to be ignored. By itself it was no concern. But there were other things that were of much concern. Minna could not trust her.

  Vorpal stared back, challenging. Minna blinked, turning it into a slow nod. “Yes. The Steampunks. They are the thrill seekers.”

  “You think they would risk themselves for us?” Vorpal shook her head. “There are thrills and there is stupidity.”

  “And there’s a hell of a lot of money.” Martin interrupted. “They did last time, back when the Black Bloods were goin’ Mad Max on shit. Just had to pay them a shit-ton of gold.”

  Bunny looked over to the smartframe, hovering over the table as always. “Hey pixelhead, do we have a shit-ton of gold?”

  “No. In fact, Arachne has located and sealed the more easily accessible accounts.”

  “Mother-fucker!” Martin pounded a hand on a crate, then shot a guilty look over to Anya. “Uh, sorry.”

  “She has heard worse,” Minna said. “Smartframe. Has Arachne stolen our accounts yet?”

  “No. The front Dire was using to pay you remains. It is minuscule, down to seven-thousand dollars in its liquidity.”

  “But our accounts are still excess able.”

  “Accessible,” Bunny corrected. Minna nodded again. Bunny frowned, and Minna hid a sigh. Bunny thought her rude because she did not smile. She had been brought up not to smile, it was nothing personal.

  “You want us to pay for the Steampunks?” Vorpal glared a challenge.

  Minna nodded. “Yes. I will put all I have.”

  “Which is what?” Martin asked.

  She pulled out her phone and showed him. He whistled. “When’s the last time you bought something?”

  “I need very little.” Anya needed a few things now and again, but not much. No expensive toys, they would spoil and make a child weak. Diapers, clothes, books for schooling at home, but not much more really. Minna spent practically nothing on herself. She had nowhere to go, nothing to spend it on. Her life was Anya, now. And Martin when she needed the occasional fuck.

  Martin nodded. “Aight. I
’ll throw mine in too. That might get more in the neighborhood of what we need. Bunny?”

  Bunny hesitated. “Shit. Guess I can’t spend it if we’re dead.” She pulled out her phone, clicked a few buttons, showed him. He nodded. “Okay. Puts us close. Might be enough by itself.”

  Minna looked to Vorpal. The shorter woman gnawed her lip, avoided Minna’s eyes. “Will you give yours?”

  Vorpal glanced at Martin. “You think what you have will be enough by itself?”

  “Maybe. Ain’t no guarantees. But if it ain’t, we don’t get another shot at it. I know how they think, and if we look too desperate they’ll blow us off.”

  Vorpal closed her eyes. “We are gambling. This is—” She shut her mouth, shook her head.

  “This is what?” Bunny asked, voice soft.

  “This is madness. Look, we already know that Dire will survive. I met her in the future. She must survive, otherwise it would not happen so!” She thumped her fist into a crate, stared at Bunny, eyes pleading. “We can walk away from this! We should have run away from it already!”

  “Thirty thousand people.” Bunny said, pointing at the matrix full of winking lights, each one of them a person.

  “And none of them are worth you!” Vorpal hissed. “Or me, for that matter.”

  “You think Arachne gonna let you walk after this?” Martin asked. “Bitch got a long reach, more with WEB behind her. Everyone and everything connected with Dire, she gonna try to take it down. She won’t—”

  “You owe her.” Minna strode forward, jabbed a finger in Vorpal’s face. “You owe her your life.”

  “I, I, I do not—”

  “You owe her your life, but you will not spend your money.”

  “It’s my money.”

  The statement hung in the air like rotting garbage. Bunny looked away. Martin sighed, sat on a crate, and rubbed his jaw. Vorpal flushed, and pushed Minna’s hand away. “There. I said it. I do not want to throw my money away on a fool’s errand. I am not like you. You treat her like a prophet! You act like she is a god or something! Like she can fix everything! Well she cannot fix this. So no, I’m going to... going to....” There were tears in her eyes, now.