Red Magic: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 6 (The Othala Witch Collection)

by JC Andrijeski

  “Have you ever seen one before?” Donal asked. His fingers combed through my hair. He gave his hand a sharp shake at the end, flicking off the blood and bone chips he’d pulled out of the long strands. “Alive, I mean? In the flesh?”

  “I’ve never even seen one dead,” I told him. “Not outside of Heaven’s Sky.”

  When I glanced up, he frowned, wiping more gunk off my face and shaking it off his fingers, trying to get as much as he could through the metal bars.

  I noticed he had the same greyish-black gunk all over the front of his shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  Instead he continued to clean it off me, a concentrated look in his eyes.

  I let him do it, unmoving from my place on his thighs. We didn’t speak again as we crouched together in the bottom of the boat, watching the shore get ever closer.

  WHEN WE PULLED up to the docks, ten more of those black-uniformed guards awaited us. I watched them stare at us with cold, passionless eyes. Five of them trained rifles on our side of the boat already, in addition to those guards I saw manning the towers.

  The other five simply waited, their eyes watching me and Donal without expression.

  I noticed a lot of those eyes on me, presumably because my face was new to them.

  When the boat’s motor turned off, three of the guards hopped easily onto the stern.

  Two others, without saying a word, aimed their guns at me and Donal through the metal cage.

  Donal gripped me hard around the shoulders, encircling me with an arm. Before I could react, or even turn, he lowered his mouth, murmuring in my ear.

  “Don’t worry, Maia,” he said, squeezing me against his chest. “It’ll only hurt for a minute. Don’t worry, okay? Trust me.”

  I let out a humorless laugh.

  Turning, about to make some kind of crack at his words...

  ...I jerked when a sharp pain jabbed into my upper arm.

  I looked down to see a black, insect-like slug sticking out of the muscle and flesh. A needle must have protruded from the other end, having gone right through the material of the ankle-length, shapeless dress I still wore for a school I no longer attended.

  Something about seeing that slug there paralyzed me.

  Rather than the pain fading, it grew exponentially worse in the few seconds after the dart hit. I felt pressure under my skin as well, as if something forced its way through my flesh, burrowing deeper and without care for vein or muscle. Within a heart beat, the pain in my arm spread like liquid fire. It hurt like the hells below as it shot down my arm and into my chest––stabbing into me so intensely I couldn’t utter a sound, could barely breathe.

  I gripped onto Donal, but he was gasping too, and I saw an identical slug sticking out of his thigh not far from where my side rested.

  “Don’t fight it, Maia,” he managed. “Don’t fight it...”

  His words were already fading.

  I didn’t try to answer, not even to nod. I held onto him instead as the world around us grew dim and shadowy. Clouds passed by my eyes as I broke out in a sweat. Fleetingly, I wondered if the two of us were back inside the fire temple under the palace lawns.

  I would never again step foot inside the palace gates, though.

  The thought felt so true I gasped sharply, suddenly fighting tears.

  Before I could really go into what that meant, about me and the people and life I’d just left behind, everything around me went from blurry to pitch black.

  Chapter 13

  UNEXPECTED

  A CRACKLING FIRE was the first sound I heard, when I opened my eyes.

  The first thing I smelled were rose petals, burning in a small oil-lamp next to my bed.

  Thick blankets and warm sheets covered my chest and back, snuggled around the rest of me in encapsulating warmth. Below that, a silkier material slid around my body, liquid and cool on my bare legs and arms.

  I don’t know what I expected to wake up to, but none of those things fit the picture my mind expected to form. I’d envisioned a dirt cell perhaps. A stone, windowless room, with me shackled to the wall. A filthy pit filled with sweat and other bodies, where I’d have to fight for my food, fight to even survive as the newcomer who grew up in the palace of their enemies.

  I didn’t wake up to any of that, though.

  Rather, I opened my eyes and found myself looking up at a high ceiling, painted in an elaborate mural of blues and greens and reds. I was so astonished to see it there, I stared up at it for a good few minutes before I raised my head and attempted to assess the wider room.

  Splashed along that high dome, dragons appeared to be fighting alongside men and women in red cloaks. Mechanical vehicles ran alongside them, like the ones still used in some parts of the Capitol, although most were a mess of rusted parts cobbled together from the technologies before the ravagers came.

  I studied the faces of the men and women on the mural, noting one of them that looked very much like Donal, down to the black eyes and dark mane of hair. I saw another that might have been me, only with lighter hair and eyes that were green rather than blue.

  Only then did I look to the other side of the wall to see what the red cloaked people and dragons were fighting.

  Ravagers. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands.

  More than my eyes could count.

  Whole fields teemed with them, covering the scorched ground the artist painted, ripping apart any flesh they encountered. Noting the chilling accuracy of those portraits as I remembered my first meeting with one on the river, I shivered, and finally sat up, blinking my eyes.

  I was definitely in a bed.

  It was a larger and better-dressed bed than the one I’d left behind at the palace, which lived in a dormitory and was modest by custom to mirror modest thoughts.

  This bed could have fit three of those I’d had at my old home.

  Puzzled when I saw no one else in the room, just a fire burning merrily in the black stone grate, I slid over to the side of the thick mattress and let my bare feet touch the floor. My eyes darted to the walls, pausing on a bookshelf filled with old-looking leather spines, then again on a mantle embedded in polished river stones, adorned with an embedded clock.

  Detailed tapestries covered the wall over the headboard, as well as another wall across from where I sat. One depicted a stately unicorn in the forest and struck me as quite old. The other, equally old-looking, depicted a sorceress wearing a red dress, with red fire coming from her hands, which were raised as though in some ancient ritual.

  Only then did I think to look down at myself.

  Someone had dressed me in a silk nightgown, a deep red in color and so form-fitting it might have been made for me. I didn’t wear anything under it, and my feet were bare. I couldn’t help wondering who had dressed me in any of this... and who had bathed me, since I could smell soap and other fragrances in my hair and on my skin.

  I was still fingering the silky material, which was finer than any I’d been allowed to wear in the palace apart from special occasions, when a door I hadn’t noticed on the other side of the fireplace abruptly opened.

  Without preamble, in walked Donal and two other persons.

  Conscious at once of my relative state of undress, I crossed my arms over the front of my body, shifting my weight on my feet as I tried to decide if I should climb back into the bed, or at least pull a blanket around my shoulders.

  Instead I just stood there when I got a good look at Donal, blinking in confusion once I saw his own changed appearance.

  Unlike me, he was fully clothed, but in a way totally unlike how I’d seen him up until then.

  Dark pants and a dark green shirt covered his body on the lower layers. Above those he wore a type of armor that shielded his chest and thighs, as well as weapons holsters at his ribs which contained what must be handguns, if my history texts were accurate.

  A knife hung strapped to his leather belt, and he wore heavy, new-looking boots on his feet, clearly made for some kind
of outdoor work that required difficult terrain. The clothes appeared to be highly functional but they also looked more modern in an old-world kind of way.

  They certainly didn’t mesh with any of the fashions I’d grown up with in the Capitol, most of which hearkened back to times long-prior to the wars that brought on the system of Regents.

  Something in his look both clashed with and strangely complemented the much older-seeming appurtenances of the stone-walled room, which increasingly reminded me of some kind of ancient castle.

  Donal wore his dark hair down so that it hung to his shoulders, and I saw a few new bruises on his face and cuts on his knuckles, but otherwise, he looked significantly fitter than I’d seen him up until then.

  His whole bearing had changed, making him appear much taller and older to me.

  He looked me over in the red shift, then averted his gaze, as if realizing suddenly what he was doing. The other warlock with him––for he had to be a warlock as well, given the power he exuded and the strange light I could see flickering around his form––was a lot more liberal with his staring.

  He was, that is, until Donal smacked him on the side of his head, giving him a threatening glare when the other turned, looking up at him in surprise.

  The witch with them, a curvy-hipped female with long red hair that went nearly to her waist in a series of thick braids, smiled at me when I lastly glanced at her. She, too, gave a pointed glance down my form, lifting an eyebrow in humor when she’d finished.

  Unable to tell if the joke was at my expense or meant to be shared, I looked back at Donal, who at least I knew a little, regardless of my feelings towards him.

  “You should get dressed, Maia,” he said, still looking politely off to the side. “Did you find your clothes yet? They tell me they stocked your wardrobe. Everything should be in your size, but let us know if it is not.” Clearing his throat when I didn’t move at first, or speak, he added, “We’ve come to bring you to the course for training. They’ve been asking after you.”

  I bit my lip, staring around at the three of them.

  Then, clearing my throat, I did my best to sound as calm and composed as I could.

  “I just got up,” I told him. “As far as dress, should I look for clothes that more or less mirror yours and those of your friends?”

  Donal didn’t look over, but nodded.

  “That would be best.” Hesitating, he gave me a bare glance and again I saw his eyes slide down my body in the form-fitting silk shift. “We’ll wait outside,” he said, looking away.

  Seeing his male companion staring at me unabashedly once more, Donal caught hold of him by the back of the neck and began steering him from the room. The female witch lingered for just a beat longer.

  “I’m Yanna,” she said, grinning at me.

  “I’m Maia,” I said back.

  “I know,” she smiled. That time, she winked at me.

  Turning before I could (again) decide if she was mocking me or simply finding this whole situation funny for some reason, she flipped her braid back over her shoulder, following Donal and the other warlock out of the room.

  I didn’t let out my held breath until they were gone.

  Then, I had so many questions my mind didn’t know where to start in turning them over. I didn’t wait on the clothes though, for my mind to catch up.

  Walking to the giant, teak wardrobe I hadn’t really tracked in my brief assessment of the room until Donal mentioned it, I flung open the doors and began looking around inside.

  I ended up bringing a candle over from the mantle to better see the wardrobe’s contents, and after some indecision and rummaging, I found a pair of dark pants that fit like a second skin, a dark blue shirt, socks, boots, and even one of the armored vests the three of them had been wearing. I saw holsters hanging on the inside doors as well, but no guns, so I couldn’t decide if I should bring them or not, especially since I had no idea how to put them on.

  In the end, I decided to bring them.

  My mind continued to spin around the odd conditions here as I dressed.

  Not that I was in any way complaining, but this was definitely not how I pictured “slavery” to look when I heard Donal describe it. Donal and his friends looked like soldiers to me, not slaves, and while I reminded myself that he’d told me from the start that they acted in a quasi-military capacity here, I still hadn’t expected it to manifest quite like this.

  Then again, I couldn’t trust anything Donal had told me prior to now.

  Perhaps he wasn’t a slave at all. Perhaps he was some kind of infiltrator soldier, sent to extract me out of the palace of Krungthoi by my mother.

  More and more, that scenario appeared to fit the facts far better than the one where Donal was imprisoned and subjugated by faceless “handlers.”

  Slinging the leather holsters over my shoulder after I’d finished lacing the heavy boots, I pulled my pant legs down over my ankles and stood. Conscious again that they were waiting for me outside, I marched directly to the door and into the waiting corridor.

  I admit, by then I was borderline excited. Definitely curious.

  Perhaps this would end up being a far more interesting life than the one I’d left behind. Perhaps it might even be one where I would be happy, even if Donal was nothing but a liar who’d helped my mother trick me into giving up the Regent’s throne without an embarrassing struggle or scene.

  Donal wasn’t the only warlock here, after all.

  And that red-haired witch I’d seen with him––who might have been laughing at me or might not have been––would not be the only witch.

  Whatever else Donal might have lied about, I still believed him about the red witch colony and its basic function and purpose. If anything, the clothes of the three witches had supported that, not refuted it, if not in the way I’d expected.

  If he’d been telling even a fraction of the truth on the numbers of red witches in District 6, there’d be a lot of us here. Enough that I could perhaps carve a new life out of my changed circumstances. Enough that perhaps my banishment would be bearable, at least.

  Donal’s eyes widened again when he first saw me after I met them outside that door. He looked me over more openly that time; then, when his eyes traveled back to my face, he smiled.

  “Do you need help with the holsters?” he asked politely.

  Some part of me wanted to roll my eyes with him, with all of his standing on ceremony. He certainly hadn’t bothered being so polite with me before, when he was lying through his teeth about who he was and what he intended with me.

  Or when he was naked and cursing at me from that crate.

  “That would be fine,” I said, just as coolly polite in return. “But if it’s not dire at the moment, we probably should not let it delay us now. I have no weapons for them at this point, after all. And I suspect my unfamiliarity with the clothes here has already caused us enough delay, compared to what would be normal here.”

  When I glanced at the other two, the witch and the warlock, they gaped at me.

  The male turned to Donal, speaking to him instead of me.

  “You weren’t rightly kiddin’ w’ this one, were ye?” he said, his voice incredulous. “She talks just like one o’ those white devils, don’t she? Like a damned queen in ‘er castle.”

  Donal gave him a cold look. “‘Er own mother sold ‘er. Don’t make assumptions, you rotten grub-eater... and mind yer fuckin’ manners. She’s right there. Or is ye blind?”

  I blinking, startled again by the change in Donal’s voice.

  But when he looked at me, the thunderous look I’d seen in his eyes smoothed.

  “Pay ‘em no mind, huntress,” he said. “They can’t help being unlearned in books and narrow in thought. You look well dressed as a red witch,” he added, glancing down me a second time. “I’m sorry for staring, but I’d only ever seen you in that horrible sack they made you wear at the monastery. You look well, indeed.”

  I saw the witch the red hair
raise an eyebrow at Donal, glancing between the two of us with an openly incredulous look on her face.

  Then, looking me over, her eyes cleared.

  “I’m startin’ to understand why ye disobeyed orders, Donal,” she said, her voice mocking, but in a good-natured kind of way. “Damn. How did I not see it before? But I wonder if yer sister will thank ye? For leaving her in that damn’d place for a piece o’ ass, no matter how fancy. Especial’ when they all but promised to spring ‘er for ye, if you just did this one task.”

  “They would’ve killed ‘er,” Donal said, his voice cold as he addressed the red-haired witch. “Her own mother. At least I forced ‘em to bring ‘er back here... and I know the fire temple in the palace exists now. Which means Kaitlin is likely alive.”

  “An’ if they kill yer sister instead o’ yer new friend?”

  “Kaitlin wouldn’t want me to murder another for her,” Donal said, his voice gruffer than before. “She’d never forgive me fer it.”

  “You ‘aven’t seen ‘er since she was a baby,” Yanna countered. “How could you possibly know what she’d want?”

  “She wouldn’t,” he said, his voice just as stubborn. “If she’s related to me, she won’t be that different. None of ourn would want that... certainly not to kill red kin. She’s one of us.” He pointed at me, so I knew he meant me that time, not his sister. “I couldna’ leave her there. Any of you would have done the same as me. Any of you. And if you treat ‘er differen’ than the rest o’ us, or blame ‘er for Kaitlin’s fate, ye’ll answer to me.”

  At that, the woman who called herself Yanna laughed.

  “Good to see yer thinking clearly about it,” she snorted. Giving me another brief once-over, she smiled when she met my gaze. It was a lot more friendly that time, but she still aimed acerbic words at Donal. “...Although I’m still not convinced yer not thinkin’ with ‘nother part of yer body than yer mind, brother hunter. A decided more capricious part, that maybe liked this doe-eyed red witch more than yer admittin’.”

  Donal gave his friend a death stare, but didn’t answer.