Bitter Night

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

“Not before I kill you.”

  “For a witch?” the angel said contemptuously. “I had heard you were not so loyal.”

  “Maybe it’s my compulsion spells. Or it could be I just don’t like you,” Max retorted.

  He grinned, an expression of genuine humor. It took Max aback. He was ethereally beautiful, as all angels were supposed to be, but the smile changed his entire face and made him look almost human. Almost. His head tipped to the side as he studied her with his bloody eyes. She firmed her grip on her knife.

  “Slavery does not suit you,” he said softly.

  For a moment Max couldn’t speak. Her mouth was unaccountably dry. “Slavery doesn’t suit anyone,” she said finally. “But what do you know of it?”

  This time his smile was as bitter as lye. “More than you think. My mistress sends a message. Will you accept it?” He looked past Max to where Giselle still stood on the steps of the RV.

  “I’ll take it,” Max said. “Give it to me.”

  “That might prove ...fatal,” the angel said with a slight frown. “It is protected from all but the witch’s touch.”

  He didn’t say Giselle’s name, as if it weren’t worth knowing. Max shrugged. “Then I guess you’ll be taking it back.”

  “Max,” Giselle said warningly.

  “No,” Max said flatly. “Shut the fuck up and let me do what you made me to do.”

  To her surprise, Giselle said nothing. The angel’s frown deepened. Max wanted to laugh at his confusion. She didn’t really understand herself either. For thirty years she’d wanted Giselle dead at any cost. A day ago she would have talked her compulsion spells into letting the witch take the scroll, hoping it would blow her head off. But today Max was different. More was at stake. Things weren’t about just Giselle and Max anymore. This was about Horngate and the men and women that looked to Max to protect them. She wasn’t alone. She hadn’t been for a while, but today Max actually realized it. And like it or not, Giselle and her magic were the lifeblood of Horngate. Without her, nothing Max could do would keep its denizens safe, no matter what Magpie’s vision said.

  “Either give it to me or hit the road,” she told the angel, holding out her empty hand.

  For a moment he did not move. Something moved deep in his eyes. Then he pulled the scroll back and reached down and plucked a small feather from the underside of his wing. Blue flame flickered along its edges, then sank inside. The iridescent black bled to blue, and heat rippled visibly from it. The angel slid it along the covering of the scroll and melted away the net of thread. Power exploded from his hands, billowing outward. It thrust against Max and rocked the RV from side to side. She stood firm, feeling Giselle clutch her shoulders.

  The threads dropped away, sticky and black. The angel closed his fist around the feather, and when he opened his hand again, it was gone. He held the scroll out again, this time offering it to Max. She didn’t hesitate. It felt hot in her hands as if it had been pulled from an oven. She turned it over in her hand and looked at the angel again.

  “Is that going to cost you?”

  He shrugged, his mouth twisting, his nostrils flaring. “Everything costs. I can afford the price,” he said disdainfully.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t have to.”

  “My mistress gave me a task. I may complete it as I see fit.”

  Exactly as Max had always done, and in the process she’d made a point of provoking Giselle any way she possibly could as often as she could. For that, Max had always been willing to pay. Slowly she slid her knife back into its sheath. A gesture of peace.

  “Do not think you can trust me. We are not enemies now, but we may be when next we meet,” he said, watching her deliberate movements.

  “I’ll worry about it if the time comes,” Max said. “For now we are ...not. I owe you my thanks. You could have let me suffer the consequences of that spell. So thank you. I owe you.”

  Max heard Giselle’s loud gasp. The witch’s fingers clawed deep into Max’s shoulder. The angel’s eyes widened and he stiffened. “Do you know what you have done?”

  Max nodded. “I know the rules of the game.”

  Giving him thanks gave him a hold on her; it opened a dangerous door between them. That was bad enough. But putting herself in his debt gave him a real link to her. If he chose to call it ...With his magic’and angels were powerful creatures of the Divine’she’d be his puppet, dancing as he pulled the strings. It could give his mistress a door into Horngate. All in all, it was a damned stupid thing to do, but all the same, it was the way the game was played’at least, if you played by the rules. She’d made a sacrifice for the Hag, and the Hag had gifted her the hailstone. The angel had sacrificed as well. Who knew what his mistress would do to him for breaking the binding spell on the scroll? Whatever it was, Max was sure it would be unpleasant. That much she could read in the set of his jaw and the strain around his eyes. So she owed him. And when you owed, you paid. She didn’t have much, but she still had her pride and her integrity and her good word.

  “I must go. I will return soon for your answer,” the angel said to Giselle, never looking away from Max. His chiseled, white brow was furrowed.

  “One thing,” Max said, stopping him. “The fires I smell’they are yours.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “They are a gift. And perhaps a threat. For others it is a promise,” he said cryptically. “We will see each other again. Farewell.”

  With that he leaped upward. Above the RV, his wings spread wide. They beat powerfully and he rose into the sky, winging westward.

  Giselle’s hand dropped from Max’s shoulder. “Max, inside with me,” she ordered icily, and stepped up inside her RV.

  Max looked at the gathered Sunspears and Shadowblades. “Get the rigs ready to move.” They started to disperse, all but Alexander, who didn’t budge. Tyler grabbed him by the arm to haul him off. Max held up a restraining hand. “Have you got something to say?”

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” Alexander asked, repeating the angel words. “You’ll never be rid of him. He’ll never let you free.”

  “Is that all?” Max said coldly. Her mind was twisting tight and she felt herself withdrawing inside the emotional shields she’d long ago built for herself. She didn’t regret her decision, but Alexander was right. She’d opened Pandora’s box, and there was no closing it now.

  Alexander started to say something else, then shook his head and held up his hands in surrender. He turned and went with Tyler.

  Max drew a deep breath, steadying herself. Then she followed Giselle inside, shutting the door carefully and handing her the scroll.

  “What in the hell did you do?” Giselle demanded as soon as Max was inside. “What were you thinking? He owns you now. I can’t do anything to help you. When he decides to use you, I won’t be able to stop him.”

  “Oh, damn. How will I ever cope?” Max asked sardonically. “Being a slave will be such a change.”

  “I told you how important you were to me, to Horngate,” Giselle cried. “Then you go and put yourself under his power. You’re useless now. Useless! I can’t trust you at all. I’ll never know if you are his puppet. You almost got yourself killed for that worthless Alexander, and now this!”

  “You know I won’t betray Horngate,” Max said softly. “That’s the one thing in the world you and I agree on. We both want to keep it safe.”

  “How will you stop yourself if he tells you to?”

  “Same way I stop myself when you start pushing me around too much.” Max leaned on the edge of the kitchen counter and folded her arms.

  That caught Giselle up short. She slowly sank into a chair, her hands knotting around the scroll. She seemed wholly unaware that she was even holding it.

  “Can you?” she asked finally.

  “You know me. What do you think?”

  “If anyone could, it would be you. But you have no idea the power angels have. And his mistress’You’ve
done some stupid things, Max, but this one is imbecilic. Why? Why now? Old Home may have been attacked, and Horngate may be next. Selange will be on the warpath after us, and you decide now is a good time to put yourself into the debt of an angel? Have you gone insane?”

  “I owed him.”

  “I need you. Horngate needs you. That should take precedence over whatever you think you owe him. What did he do for you anyhow? Save you from a bomb he planted himself? It’s ridiculous. If you hadn’t insisted on taking the scroll, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “And if it had blown your arm off or killed you’where would Horngate be then?” Max shook her head, biting hard on her lower lip, tasting blood. She stared down at her feet, reaching for calm. Quietly she began again.

  “Let me spell it out for you. For those of us who don’t have much freedom to make our own choices, it costs us dearly to break the rules.” She looked up at Giselle without lifting her head. “You know all about that. So, yes, he brought that spell and it was trap. But he didn’t make it and he didn’t send it. His bitch mistress did. And he chose to help me when he didn’t have to. You can bet your life that his mistress will punish him, and we both know how creative you witches can be about that. So while it might seem to you to be unnecessarily risky to acknowledge his gift, the truth is that for me and for him, what he did was huge and it deserves a return on investment. It’s the only thing of value creatures like him and me have left to give.”

  Giselle shook her head. “It was a mistake and it could cost Horngate everything,” she insisted.

  Max shrugged tiredly. It was pointless to talk about it anymore. It was done. “Are you going to read that thing and find out what I bought for us?”

  The witch rigidly unrolled the scroll. Her hands were shaking. Max’s gaze narrowed. Foreboding uncurled along the marrow of her bones. She watched Giselle read. A minute ticked past, then another and another. The color drained from Giselle’s face. She reached the end and her hands clenched convulsively on the parchment. When she looked at Max, her eyes were like black holes.

  “The angel’s mistress is Hekau.”

  She announced it like Max should know who it was. “Who?”

  “Hekau. She’s a Guardian.”

  Max stared. “As in the Guardians?” Giselle nodded. “What does she want?”

  Giselle pressed a hand over her mouth as if to stop an angry scream from escaping. Or maybe it was to hide the tremble of her lips. A moment later her hand dropped to her lap, her face going still as a frozen lake. In a monotone she said, “She summons me to serve’me and all of Horngate. To fight under her banner in the coming war’she is calling it the War of Retribution. If I refuse, Horngate will be destroyed. Like Old Home.”

  Max could only stare. It was exactly as Giselle had warned from her vision. It was so exactly the same that she couldn’t help but doubt that the witch was telling the truth. Max’s expression must have told the tale.

  “Are you going to tell me I’m lying?” Giselle asked, rubbing her brow tiredly. “That all of this is just an elaborate manipulation to get you to cooperate and obey me?”

  Max bit the tip of her tongue. This was it. She’d already decided. Horngate meant too much to her. But she hated to give Giselle the satisfaction. And one day she would be free, come hell or high water. She swallowed. There was no other choice. Giselle hadn’t sent herself an angel love-gram. It was time to plan and act.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked at last.

  Giselle stared a moment, then closed her eyes, her shoulders slumping with palpable relief. A second later she straightened, her expression turning determined. “You have to get the Hag.”

  That was not what Max had expected. “What?”

  “I think ...If I refuse to go to war, I’m sure that Hekau will use angelfire to strike at Horngate’to make an example out of me. That must be what happened at Old Home. But why didn’t Alton tell me?” Giselle frowned, perplexed, then shook her head. “The angel was a warning’to tell us what Hekau could do to us. The Bitterroots hardly need more than a spark to turn into a conflagration, and angelfire has to be put out with magic. Once it’s burning wild, I won’t have the magic to put it out, not even with the rest of the coven helping. Horngate will be burned to ash.

  “But with the Hag, we might have a chance. She commands water and winter. Between us, I think we could smother angelfire. If you can convince her to come to Horngate and help us, it could buy us some time to figure out a way to get out of going to war.”

  “Me? How am I going to convince her?”

  “You said it yourself. You saved her; she owes you. If you hadn’t broken the spell circle, she’d be a prisoner of Selange.”

  Except that the Hag had paid for her freedom and the breakfast of Max’s blood with the hailstone. But Max wasn’t going to tell Giselle that. The stone was hers. Nor did Max remind her that the angel now had a similar hold on her. Not that she needed to. The bitter set of Giselle’s mouth said that she already recognized the irony.

  “I’ve still got half the night. I’ll take Akemi’s truck. I’d better take Alexander with me, too.”

  “Alexander?” Giselle asked sharply. “Why?”

  “I don’t want to send him to Horngate with all of this hanging over our heads. He’s too dangerous. He could bring Selange down on you.”

  “I don’t like it. He could just as easily stick a knife in your back.”

  “Maybe. But that will still keep him from calling Selange down on your doorstep. And with you so shorthanded and your wards gone on the RV, I don’t want to take the chance that he’ll come after you. He could very well succeed. He was Prime, which means he’s very good.”

  Giselle tapped her fingers on her knee. “Fine. Get going and take him with you. But be careful.”

  “I always am.”

  “Liar.”

  The worry in Giselle’s voice was palpable. Max hesitated. “I’ll be as careful as I can.”

  “Hurry back. We won’t have much time before the angel comes back demanding an answer. I can’t just say no.”

  “I want you out of here now. Don’t take I-15. Go up I-5 through Oregon, then up through Washington and Idaho. Keep moving. Don’t stop except to fuel up and switch out drivers,” Max ordered.

  “I will.”

  “Then I’m on my way.”

  Max turned and reached for the door, but was arrested by Giselle’s quiet words.

  “I know that today is Tris’s birthday. I’m sorry you missed it.”

  Max couldn’t hide the pain that twisted her face. With her back to Giselle, the other woman didn’t see it. “It’s not like I can do anything but watch like a stalker,” she said, her hand squeezing the door handle until the metal crushed in her grip.

  “Still, she’s your sister.”

  “No, she’s not. Not anymore. Not for thirty years.”

  Tears slipped down Max’s face as she pushed open the door and pressed it firmly shut behind her. Tris was forty-three years old today. She was married with two kids. Max’s brother was only thirty-three. She had never really known him. He’d been born right before she left for college. Now he was divorced and remarried, with two stepsons and a daughter from his first marriage. Both of Max’s parents were still alive, too. Her father was diabetic, but he managed it well, and her mother was spry and healthy. Every year between Christmas and New Year’s, Max made a pilgrimage to see them. They never saw her. And half a year later, she returned for Tris’s birthday. She couldn’t stop herself.

  She sucked in an aching breath and squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the tears and the memories. There was no time. She had to get Akemi’s truck loaded, collect Alexander, and get the rest of them on the road.

  Twenty minutes later, she and Alexander sped silently down the freeway, on their way back to Julian after watching their companions start west on I-10. Max had added her own weaponry that Tyler had rescued from the Tahoe to Akemi’s stash beneath the backseat of the crew
cab, as well as a duffel of spare clothing and a cooler of food in the light-sealed emergency-refuge box in the back of the truck. She’d ransacked Oz’s bunk for more clothes for Alexander and snared a pair of hiking boots for him from Tyler.

  Now they drove in silence. Alexander asked no questions about where they were going or why, though if he had two brain cells to rub together, he’d have figured it out the moment they headed south. Time was of the essence. Silence settled thick in the cab of the truck, pressing down like a thousand feet of ocean water.

  Max drove on autopilot. She felt raw, her emotions running too close to the surface. She thought of the angel. What would he want from her? She knew it was stupid to even imagine she could trust him, and she didn’t. Still, they were the same. Slaves to witches, even if his was a witch dosing on magical steroids.