The Crimson Brand

by Brian Knight

  What kind of parents just left their kids and ran away?

  That line of thinking always brought her mother and aunt to mind—their identical appearances and dissimilar personalities, and awakened a dreaded certainty in Penny that she had never even known her mother, that it had been her aunt who died in the plane crash, that her mother was still out there, somewhere.

  It was Susan’s words—“you remind me a lot of your aunt Nancy … Di was the outgoing one”—and the tattoo on her mother’s wrist in those pictures. The tattoo Penny had never seen.

  Of Morgan Duke, there was not a trace. Somehow he’d gotten the news of his son’s arrest before Ernest, and had flown. When Ernest escorted his brother and a contingent of state police to the secluded spot where Morgan had set up camp, the truck and camper were gone. Gone south toward Mexico, was Sheriff Price’s assessment. A man with his connections and wealth would find a way to cross the border and set himself up like a king.

  The girls had their doubts but didn’t share them. They were just little girls … who would take anything they had to say seriously?

  “I don’t think King Cobra is finished here yet,” Penny said during a discussion of the topic in her bedroom, where the four girls spent most of their time when away from the hollow.

  “It wasn’t a cobra,” Ellen informed her. “It was a sidewinder … I’ve seen pictures.”

  “Have you ever seen pictures of one with arms?” Penny asked, a little grumpily. All of the waiting, waiting for Zoe’s parents to come and take her away, waiting for the newest monster in her life to come back and try to finish them all off, waiting out spring break closeted in her room while half of her classmates were looking at the ocean only an hour west of here, was playing a jagged symphony on her nerves.

  Ellen only shrugged in response.

  Penny later Googled “sidewinder” on her new laptop and had to admit, at least to herself, that Ellen was right.

  What they all agreed on, even Ellen, to whom all of this was new, was that the monster sidewinder was still close, and if it was, so was Morgan Duke.

  They didn’t think they’d seen the last of him.

  * * *

  The first official news regarding Morgan Duke arrived via televised press conference that Monday evening. Sheriff Price stood on the steps of the town building that housed the courthouse and jail, Michael on his left and the state Fire Marshal on his right. The sheriff had never been particularly cherubic, but that night he positively glowered down at the gathered reporters and television cameras.

  He waited for the smattering of unwelcome questions to die out before beginning.

  “The fire of last Friday night has now been positively identified as an act of arson. The perpetrator, Joseph Duke of Miami, Florida, is in custody but refuses to cooperate in the ongoing investigation. Authorities are now seeking Morgan Duke as a material witness and possible accomplice.”

  A barrage of new questions flew at him and he stoically ignored them all until silence fell.

  “I would urge Morgan Duke to turn himself in and cooperate with both state and local authorities ....”

  “Joseph Duke is known to have been employed at the Dogwood landfill,” a particularly bold reporter shouted from the crush of people crowding the courthouse steps. “Is there any connection between the Friday night fire and the reported disturbance at the landfill the following morning?”

  Sheriff Price seemed taken aback by the question, his startled expression suggesting he hadn’t thought the events at the landfill were public knowledge. He quickly arranged his face into a passable imitation of his previous composure.

  “As Mr. Duke was already in our custody at the time we have no reason to suspect that the disturbance was anything but an accident.”

  “Ernest Price is a known business associate of Morgan Duke’s,” another shouted, emboldened by the last question’s unexpected success. “Will there be an investigation into what some people are calling very shady business or Ernest Price’s possible complicity in the arson, which some people speculate ....”

  “This press conference is finished,” the sheriff bellowed, turning his back on the shocked crowd below him and stalking into the building.

  From the seat of her recliner, Susan aimed her remote control at the television, looking almost pleased, and turned it off.

  “He should put in his application at the landfill now,” Susan said.

  Penny and Zoe sat at opposite ends of the couch facing her, Penny with The Aikido Student Handbook open on her lap, Zoe with her head lolling on her left shoulder, eyes mostly closed, on the verge of total collapse. They had spent part of the previous night and most of that day at the hollow, trying to prepare for the fight they were sure was still coming, but mostly just moping. Penny had never fully realized how much they had counted on Ronan’s counsel and encouragement. Without him there to guide them, if even only in spirit, everything seemed hopeless.

  Ellen was learning the basics quickly enough—having her own wand was a bonus in that regard—but wasn’t yet ready to join the circle. They all learned the spell that Penny and Katie had used in the tunnel beneath the landfill to break open the homunculi’s heads, and Katie had given Zoe an unused bike to replace the one crushed in their retreat, slightly older than Katie’s but much newer than Zoe’s old one. Katie had also attempted to translate the passage from their book that allowed them to fly. It was very close to Latin but not, and they could only guess that it was an invocation to some natural force or another. The one word she had positively identified was Besom, an Old English word that referred to a witch’s broom.

  “Penny?” Susan stood in front of her, snapping her fingers. “Earth to Penny!”

  “Huh?” Penny flinched, startled out of her reverie. She hadn’t seen Susan rise. She suspected she’d been on the edge of sleep too.

  “Do you have any thoughts about dinner?”

  Penny shrugged and looked to Zoe for ideas, but Zoe was currently flopped on her end of the couch and snoring lightly.

  “Frozen burritos it is,” Susan said, and marched to the kitchen.

  Penny checked the clock above the television, a charmingly antique thing that she suspected had been with the house for a long time, and saw it was just past seven. They were meeting Katie and Ellen back at the hollow that evening around eleven. She would rather have had a full night’s sleep for once but knew the evening practice was more important than ever now.

  At least let Zoe sleep for a while, she thought. She needs it more than I do.

  Penny followed Susan into the kitchen to help. If she was very lucky, she might be able to talk Susan into letting her brew a half-pot of coffee to wash their burritos down.

  * * *

  Penny and Zoe arrived at the hollow before Katie and Ellen, Penny slightly revitalized by the one cup of nasty reheated coffee that Susan allowed her, Zoe still dragging despite the extra sleep she’d stolen before and after dinner. As always, Penny scanned the lower limbs of the old ash for Ronan and, as always, felt a stab of grief when she remembered that he wouldn’t be there.

  The captured homunculus was still there, however, dangling from the tightly wound willow limbs and totally immobile, turned into a statue. Penny supposed that meant he was asleep. She envied him a little.

  Katie had wanted to kill the thing outright, had been aiming her wand right between its eyes, but Penny had convinced her not to. She just didn’t feel right attacking something helpless.

  Penny started a fire in the pit and sat while Zoe busied herself with the book. She was watching the door expectantly when an unanswered and forgotten question recurred to her.

  “Hey, Zoe, did you ever find out who Janet is?”

  The mystery girl from her old photo album had slipped her mind in the wake of last weekend’s events, but now that Penny had remembered her, the curiosity burned as strongly as before.

  Zoe shrugged without turning to acknowledge her. “Never got a chance to ask.”


  “Ask what?” Katie popped through the door and into the hollow, Ellen on her heels. They both looked a little livelier than on the previous nights, almost optimistic, in fact.

  “Nothing important,” Penny said, wanting to steer the conversation away from the topic of things Zoe had never had a chance to ask her grandma. The woman may not have appreciated Zoe’s company, or anything else about her for that matter, but Zoe still mourned her. “What are you so happy about?”

  “Snakes are reptiles,” Katie said, apropos of nothing it seemed.

  “Yesssss,” Penny said, hoping Katie would reveal the relevance of her statement without too much of a windup. “So are iguanas and geckos.”

  “And what do all reptiles have in common,” Ellen asked, bobbing up and down with excitement.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Zoe said, clearly more interested in a bit of lint on the knee of her jeans, which she picked off and examined before casting aside. “They’re green and slimy?”

  “They’re cold-blooded,” Katie said, a certain deadly triumph in her voice.

  If there was a point, Penny wasn’t seeing it.

  Zoe, however, regarded Katie and Ellen with a growing interest. Her entire demeanor seemed to change. She didn’t look happy at the news but somehow was satisfied with it.

  “I’m sorry,” Penny said at last, returning the others’ triumphant looks with a puzzled one of her own. “I don’t ….”

  And then she did get it. The others could see the light of understanding in her eyes.

  Snakes are reptiles, and reptiles are cold-blooded.

  Their monster had a possible weakness, if they could only learn how to exploit it in time.

  Katie pointed her wand at the water rushing by and closed her eyes, but nothing happened.

  “Procellium,” Zoe said, and when the others regarded her with confusion she explained. “When we were trying to find you that … thing ….”

  “Sidewinder,” Ellen said, then blushed and mimicked zipping her lips.

  “ … Attacked us,” Zoe continued, giving Ellen a pointed, sour look. “It made a storm. Almost blew us off my bike.”

  Ellen nodded but kept her mouth shut.

  “It pointed its wand into the sky and shouted procellium.” Zoe shrugged. “Maybe we can make it snow on him.”

  “Worth a shot,” Penny said, then pointed her wand skyward and said, “procellium!”

  The sensation that followed was one of the strangest Penny had ever experienced.

  Her body and mind separated in an instant of horrible vertigo, and she fell upward, upward into the sky, toward the sun, and her scream of panic became the wind.

  “Penny!”

  Someone shouted her name, and she strained to see through the distance to the ground below.

  Did someone down there know her?

  Something touched her arm, but she was alone and incorporeal in the sky. She was the sky.

  “Penny! Wake up!”

  Now the voice was next to her, the arm tugging on her ….

  And she opened her eyes, looking into three startled faces above her.

  “What happened?” She tried to sit up but felt weak and woozy.

  Ellen and Zoe helped her to her feet.

  “You went all rigid,” Katie said. “And your eyes rolled up into your head. Then you passed out.”

  “Did … anything else happen?” The memories that had deserted her flooded back. She remembered what she’d tried to do and was desperate to know if anything had happened.

  “The wind blew a bit,” Katie said.

  “What was it like?” Ellen guided her to a seat by the fire, and Zoe pressed her wand back into her hand.

  Penny explained the sensation as best she could, the feeling of separation from the earth and her body, the feeling that she had become the sky, forgetting herself and everything else.

  “Hmmm,” Ellen seemed to consider this for a moment before venturing a guess. “Maybe the trick is not forgetting who you are while you’re … up there.”

  They each tried it in turn, Ellen first, who experienced nothing more than an odd queasy feeling; then Zoe, who didn’t fall down like Penny, but did no more than rustle the higher boughs of the hollow’s trees. Katie tried last, and with more success than Penny had hoped for: a strong but short-lived breeze and a slight darkening of the sky as the thinnest smudge of cloud coalesced above them, but nothing like she had described from the night of their rescue.

  After a few minutes to rest, Katie described her experience.

  “There’s a balance between the earth and sky,” she explained. “Like a teeter-totter. You have to find it. It kind of saps you, though.”

  She yawned hugely, as if to illustrate her point.

  “If I keep practicing, maybe I’ll get better.”

  “Maybe,” Penny said. “But how much practice do you think it’ll take?”

  After a short debate Katie conceded Penny’s point, and they agreed to try to find something they could learn a little quicker. After another half-hour of wasted effort, Zoe was able to create a thin scrim of ice that broke up too quickly on the surface of the creek.

  “How did you do it?” Ellen demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Zoe snapped.

  “Maybe it’s time to ask the book,” Penny suggested, eager to avoid any more bickering.

  “Already did,” Katie said, and indeed the book was open in her lap. “If there is a freezing spell it isn’t in here.”

  She shut the book and shoved it inside the chest.

  “Maybe instead of making the air colder, we need to remove the heat.” Ellen seemed to be grasping at straws.

  “What?” Penny said.

  “There’s this little thing called Thermodynamics,” Katie said, ignoring Penny and speaking directly to Ellen. “I’m pretty sure the Zeroth Law might have something to say about that.”

  “Who?” Zoe looked as lost as Penny felt.

  Ellen tilted her head down slightly and narrowed her eyes at Katie. “I have an air conditioner in my house … been using it all summer, and the Physics Police haven’t shown up to arrest me yet.”

  Penny shook her head and sidled up to Zoe.

  “Let the science nerds work it out,” Penny whispered in Zoe’s ear.

  Zoe shrugged and endeavored to look interested, though her eyes began to glaze over at once.

  Katie folded her arms across her chest and rolled her eyes.

  “An air conditioner doesn’t make cold air,” Ellen explained, as if she were a teacher lecturing a science class. “It removes the heat from warm air. The coil absorbs the heat from the air that the fan blows through it, so if we can just figure out how to absorb ….”

  Ellen lost steam then, shrinking back a little at the expression on Katie’s face.

  “And how are we supposed to do that?” Katie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ellen said, throwing her hands into the air in frustration. “I’m the noob here, you figure it out!”

  It sounded like nonsense to Penny, but she was willing to give anything a shot. She imagined her wand siphoning heat from the air around her, and to her surprise, it actually worked. After her first attempt, the handle of her wand warmed up until it was uncomfortably hot, but the temperature inside the hollow became almost wintry. They all huddled a little closer to the fire.

  “Time to call it a night?” Zoe followed her suggestion with a long, languid yawn, which the others mimicked.

  They agreed and went back through the door, Katie and Ellen first, then Penny and Zoe.

  * * *

  Penny knew as soon as she stepped out of her wardrobe and into her room that there was no more time to prepare for the fight. An unsteady orange light that shone through her window told her that the end game had already started.

  The wheat field that Susan jokingly referred to as “Price’s back forty,” the piece of land that Susan had years ago grudgingly allowed Ernest Price to lease from her, was blazing, and the fire wa
s racing up the hill toward the house. Zoe saw it too; she leaned heavily against Penny as she peered through the window.

  “Susan,” Penny whispered but was unable to finish her thought aloud. She seemed to have no breath. It felt like someone had punched her in the stomach.

  Zoe tugged on her arm. “We have to tell her!”

  Penny felt her paralysis break with Zoe’s panic and they rushed down to Susan’s room.

  She pounded on the door, then threw it open and rushed it.

  Susan sat up with a startled grunt, and when she found Penny and Zoe staring at her, confusion became irritation. “What in the world are you two ….”

  “Fire,” Penny blurted, and Susan stopped in midrant.

  “The field out back,” Zoe said.

  Understanding dawned in Susan’s eyes. Anger followed it.

  “Let’s go,” she said, rushing to them in a T-shirt and a pair of cut-off shorts. “Get to the car and I’ll meet you there.”

  She shoved them out ahead of her and hurried them down the hall.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Penny nearly fell down the first flight of stairs, and had to grasp the railing to keep her feet and the pace Susan forced on them.

  “Calling the fire department,” Susan said, slapping them on the back to hurry them along the landing between floors. “Then I’m calling Michael. If Morgan Duke is up here, we’re going to get him!”

  Penny almost felt bad for Morgan Duke.

  Almost.

  Penny saw Zoe stuffing her wand into a pocket of her pants, tugging the hem of her shirt over it, and hurriedly followed suit. In her rush she’d forgotten she was still carrying it. She felt in her other pocket for her mirror and pulled it out, holding it discreetly in her closed hand. The second she was out of Susan’s sight she would call the others.

  They reached the foyer, and Susan squeezed between them to open the door.

  “Straight to the car and wait. I’ll be right out.”

  “You ain’t going anywhere,” Morgan Duke said from the other side of the threshold. He grinned down at them, and as Penny reached down for her concealed wand, he raised a gun and pointed it at them. “Nothing funny now. We’re just going to have a nice sit-down chat, the four of us. If you behave, no one’s going to get hurt.”