Josh shot him. He didn’t know why—there were still balaclavas live, with rifles, and armor, and combat training—but they were only dangerous. The old man scared him.
He missed.
He must have missed.
He could not have missed.
There had been a flash in the air in front of the old man’s head, a bright red like the afterimage burned into your eyes after you stared too long into the sun.
The old man shrugged, and stepped over a fallen balaclava, into the crossfire.
Bullets found him. They didn’t miss. But Josh saw fire in the air, in a smooth sphere about a meter from the old man’s heart, and the night was alive with ricochets. Window glass shattered, crates splintered, pavement chipped.
Impossible. Some strange technology. Or an illusion. What could do that? Magnets? But that wasn’t how magnets worked, lead wasn’t that magnetic, what on earth—
The old man tilted his head toward the crates behind which Kazmir’s men had taken shelter. He drew one gloved hand from the pocket of his overcoat, held it out at arm length, and snapped his fingers. The crates erupted into flame.
• • •
Nadia saw the old man emerge, saw the bullets glance away from him, saw his smooth, even march toward the truck. She froze. She knew magic—magic performed in back rooms, hidden charms in deep pockets, great rituals toward secret ends. This much, out in the open—used as an obvious weapon, with so little concern for secrecy or the power spent—it felt grotesque, sacrilegious. What was the right play against such an enemy? Alestair would know. But he was on the other side of the field of fire, and she was left on her own.
Tanya, beside her, grabbed her sleeve. “Come on.”
“What?”
“We don’t have a chance against such magic alone. But if we get to the river, to the ley line, we can counter him. He doesn’t know to look for us—he cares about the truck.”
As ideas went, they would have been hard pressed to come up with worse: running across a field of fire without a plan, hoping to evade the witch’s notice before they were in a position to stop him. But Nadia didn’t have a better one. She raised her gun, and nodded. They ran down the ramp. Of the five balaclavas left standing, three had followed the old man into the crossfire, laying down return fire within his protective bubble. Nadia shot one of the two who stayed behind, and Pritchard, from his hiding place, downed the other. Tanya sprinted past, her legs pounding for speed, hair flaring behind her. Nadia ran faster, and for a second she wasn’t running through a firefight, she was just a girl on holiday, chasing her friend to the river.
They made it through the open stretch, past the truck, to a stand of crates beside the dock. The barge and a fishing boat bobbed at the dock, miraculously, infuriatingly immune to the rest of this nonsense. Nadia envied them.
The Czech line had evaporated before the old man’s approach. The fire he threw clung where it caught, and danced from man to man, consuming flesh. One of the mobsters fell, clawing tracks in his melting face. She felt sick.
She would be sick later.
Tactics now.
The three balaclavas ran forward, took the truck. Alestair fell back, firing—ineffectually at first, but then one of the balaclavas took too long to aim, and Alestair dropped him with a gut shot. Then Alestair, too, was in cover beside Nadia.
Tanya had sunk to her knees as soon as she reached shelter, drew a pocketknife from her purse, cut her thumb, touched the blood to a piece of chalk, carved a circle. So fast! Of course so fast. Nadia had been recruited into the Ice; Tanya had grown within it, like a crystal in solution, learning magic her parents had practiced, and theirs before them.
Her partner looked up, desperate, chanting in Old Church Slavonic, and Nadia took her hand, and held hers out to Alestair.
Alestair took it. “Deuced weather we’re having.” Power rushed so near them: the ley line, like a song to which their radios weren’t quite tuned, popping and hissing through the static. It grew; Tanya chanted. Almost there.
But Alestair straightened. “Wait. That fishing boat wasn’t there before—”
Then the monster hit him from behind.
It was a shape of shadow and green flame, boxy and broad, featureless as a smudge, and when it struck Alestair he crashed into the crate, knocked it over. The monster leapt over the wreckage, landed on the other side, cracking asphalt beneath its feet, and ran toward the truck.
Tanya’s spell shattered like glass.
There was a flurry of gunfire from balaclavas and mobsters alike—but the bullets bounced off the beast. It grabbed one of the mobsters, spun, and threw him, head over heels, into a balaclava goon; they both went down in a crunch of bone and a tangle of limbs. Balaclava number two fired, and the monster backhanded him ten feet across the concrete. He lay still. Two more Czechs ran to intercept, and it punched one down, and threw the other into the burning wreckage of the crates.
And Nadia recognized the rhythm of those blows, and the weight with which they fell.
Her world went cold.
See you soon, love.
Heart pounding, mouth dry, she slipped from Tanya’s grip, ran out from behind cover, and tackled the monster.
The adversary—think of her that way, not a monster, surely, but just someone between you and your goal, not someone you’ve pressed to a mattress, not someone whose thighs you’ve kissed—barely noticed. The flames on her skin gave no heat, and the shadows did not part at Nadia’s touch, but she felt skin underneath, just as unyielding, phenomenally strong. Nadia caught her arm around the adversary’s throat, clenched her fist in her other elbow, braced her legs against her back, pulled.
The adversary stumbled; muscles tensed in her neck. Nadia pulled harder: Her back burned and frayed. Then those broad arms caught her ribs. The world inverted, and she struck pavement hard. Her skull bounced. Lights flashed before her eyes. The monster glared down at her. Its grip tightened, casual as killing a kitten. Nadia tore at the arm, at the fingers, but her nails slipped from the shadow.
Nadia was about to die.
Then the pressure stopped.
And the shadows slipped from its face, and the green flame banked, and the woman holding her—teeth bared, furious, skin slick with sweat, veins pulsing at temple—was Van.
• • •
Some damn thing was happening down by the water, but Josh couldn’t see. Whatever kept the old man bulletproof, it seemed to be wearing off faster than the fellow expected—the flames that ringed him grazed his skin, and he broke into a slow jog toward the cab of the truck, not quite a run.
Edith rose from cover and emptied a full clip straight at the old man’s chest. This time, the old man’s flames blocked the bullets so near to his body that the embers singed his coat. But the old man just frowned, shrugged off the coat, and climbed into the truck cab. Almost as an afterthought, he snapped his fingers toward Edith. A line of light darted from his fingers to the car, and the car exploded.
Kazimir crouched, staring, awed, at … well, everything. “Is not possible. Is not.”
Josh agreed.
But, when he looked inside himself in those stretching seconds of gunfire, he discovered something strange: The fear was gone. It had just … fallen away.
Maybe he was about to die. Maybe this was God talking to him. Maybe this whole situation all made so little sense that whatever down and dirty animal part of his mind evaluated chances of survival just flung up its hands in disgust.
Whatever it was, he no longer felt afraid.
“Come on,” he told Kazimir, and gripped the man’s shoulder, and for once he was the one grinning—wildly, fiercely, with utterly unforced joy. “That was it. He’s not bulletproof anymore. We just have to hit him once.”
The truck engine turned over, and Josh stepped out from behind the crate, and took aim.
His first two bullets cracked the windshield; his third shattered it completely and popped into the cab wall to the left of the old man’s e
ar. Heavy pull, Gabe had said. Click. He ejected the mag, took aim again.
The old man raised his hand.
Josh met his eyes, and steadied his weapon.
Snap. Bang. The gun’s retort. A line of light.
In a haze, Josh fell. He wondered why he was falling. He’d felt a weight strike him from behind. He hit the pavement, skidded.
Kazimir stood behind him, screaming, and on fire.
No.
He had the old man dead to rights, and the old man had him just as dead. Kazimir had pushed him—spoiled the shot—saved his life—
Kazimir staggered forward, his face a rictus of fury and transcendence and pain. His skin blackened, cracked. He ran for the truck, as if he could embrace it and explode.
He hit the pavement, still, still burning.
Tears blurred Josh’s vision, a high-pitched whine filled his ears. Gun. Where’s the gun—there. A few feet away. Get up, get up—
The truck trundled forward. He found the weapon, forced himself to raise his head—stared into the old man’s black, sharp eyes, saw him raise his glove—Josh tried to take aim, but his hand shook, the trigger pull, the goddamn trigger pull—
The old man’s fingers snapped.
A line of light.
Motion, between them. A cry, barely human.
And there, between Josh and the truck cab, stood the thin man in the hat.
Who—somehow—gloriously—melted into Alestair.
God, Josh was crazy, he had to be crazy.
Alestair was holding the line of light. In his hand. Which was gloved, somehow, with a kind of greenish fluid that was also air, that was also lightning.
The mingled flames made him look enormous, alien, a man of geometries and angles, not a man at all.
Alestair cast the fire back at the truck, but the truck was already moving—burning past them into the night.
• • •
Van stared down at Nadia.
Nadia stared up at Van.
She did not know what to say. She did not know what not to say. There had been entirely too much silence already—but the silence strangled them both.
Nadia reached for her, slowly. Just to touch.
Van’s face twisted with disgust, with frustration, with laughter at the cutting joke of the world.
Then she released Nadia’s throat, and ran after the truck, and left her lying alone on the wreckage of the dock, wreathed by smoke and silence.
5.
Gabe found Edith near the burning wreck of the car. He didn’t have to shake her; she was awake, her eyes focused. She’d already been moving away from the car when Terzian attacked; she’d thrown herself back before the explosion, lost her breath on the landing. She held out her hand; he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and helped her to her feet.
The freight yard burned.
Tanya knelt by a magic circle, staring at the remnants of the op. Nadia lay on the ground, struggling to rise. Josh knelt by the burning, still body that had been Kazimir. Alestair stood over him, unable to reach out, unable to speak, barely human in his firelit, bloodstained suit.
“What happened?” Edith said, when she found her breath. “What was that?”
And Gabe, God damn him, was too tired to say anything but “Magic.”
• • •
Zerena finished her book around two. A perfectly pleasant read, with a twist at the end that no doubt made the author quite pleased with herself.
She climbed the stairs to her room, closed the door, arrayed herself before her vanity, and removed her earrings first, then, with a cloth, her makeup. The lights were still on. She must have forgotten to turn them off before she went downstairs.
“Darling,” she said, light and dreamy, “it’s all going so well. Tanya, you know, she really is fantastic.”
There was no reply. She hadn’t expected one. Her husband was a deep sleeper.
She brushed her teeth, and washed her face, dealt with her hair, and uncoiled herself in the bed beside him. She reviewed him: the elegant bones, the cold taut skin, the sigils glowing beneath his nightgown. She kissed him, once, on unyielding lips.
“They’re shaken now.” She stretched beside him, and felt the moment, the silk slick against her skin. “Shattered. Sasha thinks he’s won. And dear Tanya dances on my palm, waiting for me to close my fingers.”
He said nothing, of course. Her power held him fast.
“Sleep well, darling. We have work tomorrow.”
The Witch Who Came In From the Cold
Season 2, Episode 9
Aftermath
Ian Tregillis
Prague, Czechoslovak Soviet Republic
April 26, 1970
1.
As had apparently become the local custom, the gutter outside Bar Vodnář hinted at a small personal story of excess. But Edith, who had become inured to such things, stepped over the mess with hardly a wrinkled nose. Tonight of all nights, she had other things on her mind. As did Josh: things that required marination in the strongest possible alcohol before they could be digested.
Which is how, after an indeterminate time wandering the city in a cloud of mutual befuddlement, Josh and the Langley investigator had found themselves sitting at the same table—in the same chairs, even—as they had several weeks ago. For all Josh knew, even the Beatles ditty blasting from the Wurlitzer might have been the same.
It was almost déjà vu. Almost.
Last time, he and Edith hadn’t staggered into the bar like extras in a George Romero movie. They hadn’t been favoring bruised limbs, the scent of smoke hadn’t wafted from their hair, their clothes weren’t stained with soot, their skin wasn’t stippled with gunpowder residue. Last time, Jordan hadn’t recoiled at the sight of them. Last time, the dark city hadn’t echoed with the wail of sirens racing to and from the docks.
Josh took a long draw from his beer bottle. It clinked against the peanut bowl when he set it down. Edith stopped swirling the ice in her gimlet, shook her head as if in silent argument with herself, then downed the whole thing in one go. Same drinks, too, Josh realized.
And yet everything was different. Last time, the world had made some goddamned sense. It was complicated, but it’d had fucking rules.
Last time, Gabe had been here, a welcome and essential intermediary. Tonight, however, Josh had fled the docks as if the man were radioactive. Everything about his op had gone to shit, but Josh couldn’t and wouldn’t stick around to do damage control. He needed time to process what he’d seen.
But speaking of Gabe—
—and fire—
—and Alestair—
Edith slammed her empty glass on the table, spilling peanuts far and wide. The pattering on the floorboards made Josh think, for some reason he really didn’t want to investigate, of hailstones made from children’s teeth.
From behind the bar, Jordan watched their mess grow, but she just sighed and shook her head. Good bartenders knew when to keep out of it. Smart. Trust me, lady, if you had seen what I’ve seen tonight—
Edith broke the silence that had enveloped them since they fled the docks. “Just what, in the name of Jesus’s shriveled blue balls, happened back there?”
Her breath smelled of juniper and lime. It was the only nice thing about this very not nice evening.
He coughed, as though his body refused to voice his confusion. Speaking of it meant confronting it. “Did that fire seem a little—”
“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, no.” Then, after a moment’s contemplation, she added, “It seemed a lot.”
He nodded. “Uh-huh.” A laugh escaped him, so sharp it left fine shavings of sanity on the floor at his feet, where it belonged. Because surely he’d imagined the rest. Because only a madman would believe…
“I could have sworn I saw Alestair… I thought for sure he’d been…”
“He was, Josh.” Edith’s whisper had an edge, too. “Twice. In the chest,” she said, eyes focused on something only she could see, fingertips
lightly brushing a spot just over her heart.
He didn’t want to think about that. Not yet.
“But the fire.” He finished the bottle with another long swig. “I mean, it really looked like there was a, uh… person… inside it.”
“Oh, thank Christ,” she said, sighing and burping at the same time. “I was certain I’d imagined that shit.”
He blinked. “You know, you swear a lot when you’re upset.”
“I swear a lot when my day takes a turn through the fucking twilight zone.”
“So,” he said, drawing out the vowel as if it could keep the world sensible just a few seconds longer, “I guess we saw the same things.”
“And that’s a comfort?”
He sighed. “Not really. I’d hoped to chalk this up to the Soviets field testing some kind of psychotropic agent.”
But there wasn’t such a thing as a shared hallucination, was there? Not when the details agreed right down to the number and placement of bullet holes in a man’s bespoke windowpane suit. The one Alestair’d had made in Hong Kong, the one with the burgundy sateen lining, the one with the delightful story about the tailor—
Josh shook his head. Even the Reds couldn’t do that. Nobody could do the things Josh had seen tonight.
And yet.
He caught Jordan’s attention with a raised finger, silently indicated his empty bottle and Edith’s empty glass. Before she came to relieve them, he screwed up his courage and met the investigator’s gaze.
“Edith. What will your report say?”
“I don’t know. What the hell happened tonight?”
• • •
“It’s me. Open up.”
Nadia’s voice carried a hard edge. Diamond hard. It startled Tanya, even though she’d been expecting the visit. They’d gotten separated in the chaotic aftermath of the fiasco at the docks. Now Tanya stumbled from the kitchen to the door, swaying like a drunk. She might as well have been, even though she’d merely stared at the bottle on the table, watching the play of sunrise through glass and alcohol, while waiting for Nadia. She was drunk with exhaustion, drunk with regret, sick with second thoughts.
The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2) Page 31
