Witchbane (Book 5 in The Twilight Court Series)

by Amy Sumida

  “The Undead Army sounds pretty cool too,” Killian nodded pensively.

  “Either way,” Daniel looked to Keir, “I think you're right about Rue using humans as a tool to get rid of witches. She obviously wants to wipe out our kind, and she's smart enough to get others to do her dirty work. With the instructions on the Internet now, violent humans have all the information they need to find the tribes.”

  “You should warn the Casters,” I said.

  “Already done, Princess,” Daniel nodded. “And we've shown this to the coven elders too, so they're warning the tribes as we speak. Hopefully we won't lose any more witches to these attacks.”

  “Abominations,” I frowned, Keir's words coming back to me. “Killian, didn't one of the witches say they overheard Rue calling them 'abominations'?”

  “Julie said she heard Rue say the word 'mutants',” Killian added his frown to mine. “But yeah, close enough.”

  “Rue's crazy enough to add bigoted genocide to her reasons for wiping out the witches,” I exhaled roughly. “But the why of it doesn't really matter. We need to stop her, regardless.”

  “If only we could find them,” Killian growled.

  “We need bait,” I narrowed my gaze on him thoughtfully.

  “Why are you looking at me like that, Twilight?” Killian asked warily.

  “Because you suddenly look useful,” Conri chuckled.

  “I don't make good bait,” Killian growled. “I'm too big.”

  “I don't know,” Gradh mused, “I might bite.”

  “What?” Conri gaped at the female knight.

  “Thanks,” Killian gave Gradh a lopsided grin and a wink.

  “So we've got our bait,” I nodded.

  “Now hold on,” Killian stopped smiling. “I never agreed to it.”

  “You'd rather we put an innocent in danger?” Daniel pointed out. “Someone without your talents? Someone defenseless?”

  “Yeah, someone like Conri,” Killian said with a straight face.

  “You wanna see how defenseless I am, little witch?” Conri growled.

  “Killian!” Daniel snapped.

  “Son of a bitch,” Killian whined and hung his head.

  “My mother was not a bitch,” Conri deliberately misunderstood. “She was a glastig.”

  Killian gave Conri a horrified glance before sighing, “Fine. What do I have to do?”

  “I don't know yet,” I stood up. “Give me a few hours to think about it.”

  “Where are you going?” Killian asked.

  Cat woke up from her little nap beneath the dining table, and followed me.

  “To get some ice cream from the kitchens,” I said like it was obvious. “I always think better with ice cream.”

  “I'm going to speak with the high council members,” Keir stood. “We'll need to organize units around the world to help prevent any witch-directed violence.”

  “And we should include the coven elders in the discussion,” Daniel added as he stood.

  “Yes, of course,” Keir agreed. “Shall we?”

  “Thank you,” Daniel closed the laptop, picked it up, then followed after Keir.

  The King's Guard strode out after the two men. I sighed and stood aside as they all left. I had intended to be the first out the door so I wouldn't have to wait for the parade. But Keir was an expert at making both grand entrances and grand exits.

  “I suppose you all want ice cream too?” I huffed at my Guard and they looked hopeful. “Alright then, let's go.”

  Killian came with us, casting wary looks at Cat as he walked on my other side.

  “She won't hurt you,” I assured him. “Now that she knows you're a good guy.”

  “You never can tell with animals,” Killian frowned. “She could decide I've looked at you wrong, and launch herself at me again.”

  “Oh, scared of a puka?” Conri slapped Killian on the back. “That's so cute.”

  “Not scared, just wary,” Killian huffed. “That puka has sharper teeth than you.”

  “But you haven't seen me in my other form yet,” Conri bared his teeth at Killian as he slid by us.

  “Cat understands me,” I interrupted their macho bullshit. “She's not an average animal.”

  “Oh?” Killian peered at Cat and she gave him a steady look.

  “Danu touched her,” I nodded proudly. “She's practically human.”

  “Definitely smarter than one,” Conri shot back at us.

  “Conri,” I called before Killian could attack the bargest, “remember that I'm half human.”

  “Sorry, Your Highness,” he actually sounded contrite.

  “Wow,” Killian grinned at me. “You shut up the bargest. Now that's impressive.”

  “I'll shut you-”

  “Conri!” I snapped before he could finish his sentence.

  “Fine,” Conri huffed. “But I better get a huge bowl of ice cream as a reward for my infinite patience.”

  Gradh strolled ahead, and Conri followed the sway of her hips hungrily.

  “Forget the bowl,” Conri purred and chased after her.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Putting Killian out into the world as bait was a concept more difficult to implement than you may think. For starters, we had no idea where to place him. There was Salem of course, but most of us felt that Uisdean and Rue would know better than to send their fairy-struck humans into the same location twice. So that pretty much ruled Salem out.

  So where to begin? The whole point of bait is to lure the fish to your hook, make them come to you. But first we had to find out which lake our fish was in. It was Killian himself who finally came up with the solution.

  Use the Internet. Not as a lure but as a map. We spent hours searching through websites of wanna-be witch hunters, seeing exactly where not to be. The premise was, if hunters were announcing where they'd be hunting, then the prey wouldn't go there, would they? Real witches would be staying far away from any area patrolled by human hunters. I mean, duh. Why would you go and advertise where you'd be looking for witches? Did they think witches couldn't use a computer?

  Taking this logic a step further, we deduced that Uisdean and Rue wouldn't be sending their humans out into the same area that these self-proclaimed witch hunters would be patrolling. The diabolical duo wouldn't want to deal with non-struck humans and the insanity that they would inevitably spawn. No, Rue and Uisdean would want to abduct their witches where no one would be the wiser. So we mapped out where the witch hunters would be, then ruled out an area of a hundred miles around each location.

  After we finished with our Internet research, we formed a team of human council members, with computer expertise, to destroy all of those witch hunting websites. Uisdean and Rue had started a domino effect of damage that would continue to escalate without their aid. We had to somehow stop those dominoes from falling. Taking down the websites and combating them with our own sites discrediting the witch reports as hoaxes, was the best we could do for now.

  It was a start, and it had taken us all day to implement, but it still seemed impossible to find a location where Uisdean and Rue might strike. There was the entire world to look at, after all. We had hunters, extinguishers, and witches all over the world too, but we couldn't just send teams out willy nilly, hoping we picked the right spot.

  Then Conri suggested that the attacks across the globe were distractions. Yes, of course they were, we all knew that. But Conri went on to say he believed Uisdean and Rue wouldn't have moved very far from their last location. He theorized that my Uncle and Aunt could have easily fairy-struck a human into handling the Internet aspect of their plan, the spread of fear and the descriptions of witches. Just because a human was fairy-struck, it didn't mean they were dumbstruck. They could function as fully as the fairy in control allowed them to. So even though Uisdean and Rue would have little talent for using the Internet, one of their human flunkies could handle it for them. Okay. Yes, again obvious.

  Then Conri added that Uisdean and R
ue could also get their fairy-struck humans to fly to places across the world and abduct witches. Simply done, and again, obvious. These were assumptions we'd already made based on the information at hand... as Gradh pointed out scathingly to Conri. Conri only blew her a kiss and continued to his conclusion. How very like him to draw it out.

  These were the things we knew Uisdean and Rue could do, Conri said, but we needed to think about what they couldn't do. Like travel through HR with their army of fairy-struck humans and rotting zombies without being noticed. That would be tricky, and it would no doubt be best for them to limit such journeys. And they couldn't travel through the raths either, because all of the raths in the Human Realm were guarded by fairies. Fairies who were now on high alert. Lastly, they'd need to find a suitable location to house a growing army.

  These three restrictions: travel by secretive means, travel without the use of raths, and a destination which would fit the needs of a large amount of people; gave us a much smaller area to focus on. We assumed that Uisdean and Rue would want to travel by night and not attempt it more than once or twice. If they were smart, and we knew they were, they would follow the speed limits so as not to attract attention from the police. So we had a maximum length of time for them to travel as well as a speed. After that, it just took some basic math skills to come up with an area to search.

  A very large area.

  And since we had Killian with us, we couldn't move around using the In-Between. So we had to fly into Helena, make our way outward to suspected sites, hopefully find hotel rooms for the night, prowl the streets, then return to the hotel for a few hours of rest. And repeat. It was exhausting and took up a lot of time, about two days per location, since we first had to drive there, then had to sleep afterward.

  After ten days and five stops, there hadn't been a single bite on our Killian lure. It was disheartening, to say the least. And every day brought more death. Whether it was Rue or the crazy humans she'd inspired, we weren't certain. But witches kept disappearing from various locations, their bodies discovered shortly thereafter, all in horrifying conditions similar to the first crime scene.

  The FBI was called in to investigate, but the lead agent had been brought into the supernatural loop by his superiors (the Human Council had undercover members in high places throughout the Governments of the world) and he knew to stay out of our way. But that wouldn't last much longer. The FBI couldn't walk around looking official, while actually doing nothing, forever. They needed results or they were going to have to start getting in our way.

  I couldn't blame them either. The crime scenes Uisdean and Rue were leaving behind had become more and more gruesome. Riots were breaking out among the humans; protest parades turning into lynch mobs, and peace rallies shifting into battle scenes. Witches were running scared, but they weren't the only ones dying. Human error. Just like with the Salem Witch Trials, modern witch hunters were making lots of mistakes. In fact, it was how we were able to determine which crime scenes were the work of Rue and Uisdean as opposed to that of crazy humans. The human witch hunter dump sites weren't nearly as gruesomely creative, and the victims were all human.

  If Uisdean and Rue's plan had been to get humans to slaughter witches for them, it was failing. But if they'd merely wanted an elaborate distraction so they could dump bodies with impunity, they were doing great. Regardless of what the plan had been, the human element had given us another clue. Those copy cat crime scenes, with their subpar drama and lack of actual witch corpses, helped us to rule out areas to search within the radius we'd already established. We were closing in.

  Still, it was exhausting. When dawn rose on the sixth site we'd chosen to patrol, we all returned to our hotel rooms with dragging feet and grim faces. I just wanted to take a shower and fall into my bed, but as I was toweling off, Cat came into the bathroom, looking at me expectantly.

  “What?” I asked as I slipped on some panties.

  A knock sounded at the door, and she gave me an anxious yip.

  “What now?” I sighed and yanked on a T-shirt, then quickly pulled on some jeans.

  I opened the door to find Killian standing there with a bottle of tequila and one of cheap Margarita mix. He lifted them and gave me a grin. Then he saw my T-shirt and his eyes went wide.

  “Really?” Killian eyed the arrow pointing to my crotch, and then read the words above it, aloud, “Source of all evil.” He chuckled, “I had no idea it was right in front of me this entire time.”

  “It's from a book series I read,” I rolled my eyes. “The Devil wears this shirt in it.”

  “Ah,” Killian started to come in, but I held up a hand and stopped him.

  “I'm tired.”

  “So am I,” he sighed. “But we can't keep fighting the good fight if we don't take time out for some R and R.”

  “Getting drunk is R and R?” I lifted my brows.

  “Hey, I brought the mix,” Killian shook the plastic bottle, with its neon green liquid, at me. “It's not like I showed up with limes, intending to do shots. I just thought we could have a couple drinks and hang out.”

  “Hang out?” I grimaced.

  He pouted.

  “Fine, come in. But I gotta put a bra on if we're hanging out.”

  “Let the girls hang too,” Killian chuckled as he shut the door behind him. “They look perky enough to be able to handle my company for awhile.”

  “Ha ha,” I shook my head as I went back into the bathroom with my bra.

  I shut the bathroom door on his smirking face and pulled off my shirt. When I was decently clad, I went back out into the shabby hotel room to find Killian sitting at the tiniest table ever, which every hotel room we'd been in seemed to have a version of. He had poured my drink already and was currently pouring his. Cat was watching him from the bed, laid out comfortably with her head on her paws.

  “Hey, I'm going to go grab us some ice,” Killian stood and capped the tequila. “Don't lock me out, Twilight.”

  He scooped up the ice bucket and left.

  I made a face at the door and mimicked him, “Don't lock me out, Twilight.”

  Cat made a huffing sound.

  “It's just a few drinks,” I said to her.

  She growled.

  “It's not like I'd be cheating on anyone, even if something did happen.”

  She yipped angrily.

  “Yeah, I know,” I huffed and went to sit at the tiny table, “I'd regret it. Bad.”

  She gave a satisfied huff and laid her head back down.

  “He's hot though, and Karmen always says nothing gets you over the last, like getting under the next.”

  Cat jerked her head up and stared at me with wide, horrified, doggy eyes.

  “I'm just teasing you,” I laughed, and she laid back down with an annoyed sound. “The look on your face,” I shook my head.

  I was still smiling when Killian came back a few minutes later. He eyed Cat, then me, and pursed his lips.

  “Why do I feel like you two talked about me while I was gone?”

  “Cause we did,” I grinned at him. “Cat doesn't approve.”

  “Join the club,” Killian said to her and sat down. He put the ice bucket on the table between us, and fished out a few cubes for each of our cups. Then he sat down with a sigh, swished the drink before him, and took a sip. He made a face, “Ugh, it's awful.”

  I sipped at mine and agreed immediately, “Yep, that's what happens when you buy cheap tequila and even cheaper Margarita mix.”

  “They didn't exactly have the finest selection,” he scowled at his drink until he was brave enough to take another sip. “Yep, still awful. Maybe I should swig some straight tequila before I drink anymore of this.”

  “Couldn't hurt,” I shrugged. “At the very least, it will numb your taste buds.”

  “Cheers,” Killian twisted off the cap on the tequila bottle, and threw one back. “Oh man,” he gasped for air as he put the bottle back down. “What the fuck is this?” he asked as he peered at
the label. “Baja Agave. Fuck you, you agave-growing bastards.”

  I chuckled as I tried another sip.

  “I spoke to my mom earlier,” he said conversationally.

  “Yeah? How's she doing?”

  “Worried,” he shrugged. “For me and all of our people. The elders have called for a complete lockdown, shutting and barring the main gates and forbidding anyone from leaving the community.”

  “Damn,” I whistled. “That sucks, but at least they'll be safe.”

  “As safe as rats in a cage,” he took a long swallow. “Huh, it's actually not so bad anymore. You want a swig?” he lifted the Tequila bottle.

  “No thanks,” I grimaced. “I'll just suffer through this.”

  “Only the best for you, baby,” he gave me a saucy wink.

  “Yep, you're a classy guy,” I nodded. “Why would I want a king, when I could have you and your Baja Agave?”

  “Ouch,” Killian held his hand to his chest. “You didn't have to go there, Twilight.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, and gave him a conciliatory tap on his left wrist, right over the Flame symbol we'd glamoured on him.

  Killian didn't have a tribe tattoo, and that was the most obvious way we could make him look like a witch. It's not like he could go walking down the street making it rain fire while he shouted “I'm a witch and I'm proud!”. So we gave him a temporary tattoo, fairy style. It would do the job of getting him noticed and then his magic should cinch the deal.

  “How is the King of Everything? You speak to him recently?” Killian asked.

  “Are you referring to my father or Raza?” I grimaced.

  “Raza,” Killian huffed.

  “I don't have a way of contacting him here,” I shrugged.

  “What, no cell reception in Fairy?” he teased.

  “We scry each other through crystal balls,” I explained. “Do you see a big, round piece of crystal anywhere?”

  “Shut up,” he huffed.

  “No, I'm serious,” I took another swig. It actually was starting to taste better. “We have enchanted crystal balls which can establish links to each other. Sort of like your cluster crystals.”