by S. A. Hunt
“Nothing is a good idea, except in hindsight.” Heinrich stepped into another circle, scuffing the diagram again. “Every decision we make is a Schrödinger’s Box. D’you know what that is, Robin Hood?”
“Sure. Yeah. The cat in the box.”
“The cat in the closed box, both alive and dead until you open it and find out which it is. Every decision we make is a Schrödinger’s Box—both good and bad. We never know which until after we make it.”
The woman’s breathing came quick and fast, blowing streamers of her hair out in front of her face, huff huff huff huff like birthing breaths in a Lamaze class. She laughed under her breath, casting all pretense aside. “You’re a pretty little one,” she croaked, her cheek meeting her shoulder in a bashful sort of way. “A little older than I like, but that just means I’ll have to cook you a little longer. You’re still ripe.”
“Cook me?”
“Yeah, Robin Hood,” said Heinrich. “They eat virgins, remember? They’re pedophages? Didn’t your mother ever read you the story of Hansel and Gretel?”
“You mean that’s real?”
“Yeah, it’s real. We been reading the same books up there in that tower, ain’t we?” The man took another step into a smaller circle, dragging his foot through the salt symbols. “Remember that one I made you read about witches in medieval Russia?”
She winced. “I’m sorry. It was long-winded as shit and really badly translated. I only made it about halfway through.”
Dust shook out of the witch’s clothes, hanging in the sunbeams coming through the hayloft, as she thrashed violently in her bindings. Rope bound her wrists and elbows behind the pole; rope kept her neck pinned. “It’s been so long since I’ve eaten,” said Tilda, grinning with those gnarly brown teeth.
“Anyway, who the hell said I was a virgin?” asked the teenager.
Halfway through scuffing another of the circles, Heinrich shot her an incredulous look. “You were involuntarily committed in your sophomore year, and you’ve been in there ever since. Your mother was about as religious as you can get in the South without mailing your paycheck to Billy Graham. You trying to tell me you got laid in the nuthouse?”
“Well, you did just call it the ‘nut’ house.”
If he’d been wearing glasses, he would have peered over them at her.
“No, I didn’t get laid.” Robin scowled. “I was too busy going through the Ludovico technique, sleeping through HGTV reruns, and eating spaghetti with a plastic spoon to care about sexual intercourse. Besides, antidepressants make it hard to orgasm, apparently.”
“TMI, kiddo.”
At this point, the man was only a few feet away from the witch. Her mouth opened, and kept opening, and her tongue uncoiled, fattening, lolling from between her teeth like a purple python. Lengthening, sharpening, Tilda’s teeth bristled in her cavernous mouth. “Come a little closer, Heinie,” she said, grinning.
“Heinie?”
Despite herself, Robin couldn’t help but laugh.
The man stepped inside the last circle, a ring of runes some six feet across. Reaching out with her serpentine tongue, Tilda could almost reach him—close enough, in fact, for Heinrich to lean backward to avoid getting licked in the face. As he did, he moved around the witch, sidling around the inside of the innermost rune ring.
“What are you doing?” asked Robin.
“Oh, nothing.” Heinrich’s hands rose in that don’t mind me way.
The witch watched him, her tongue curling around her own upper arm. “What are you doing?” she asked, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing either.
Then Tilda looked down at her feet. Robin looked down as well, and realized the Icelandic containment circle had been disturbed in a straight line from her own toes to directly in front of the witch. The witch’s eyes came back up to Robin’s face, grin widening. In one swift motion, Heinrich slid the combat knife out of its sheath and cut the ropes.
Looking back and forth between the two of them, Tilda seemed to be indecisive about who to go after first, but she turned toward Robin and lunged forward, reaching—
—the teenager flinched in terror, falling—
—but Tilda was immediately halted by the silver dagger in her chest, doubling over around it. “Gurk—!”
“What the hell, dude?” said Robin, sitting on her ass in the dirt. She reached behind her back and pulled out the flare gun he’d given her earlier, pointing it at Tilda.
“The Osdathregar.” Heinrich stepped away from the witch, standing by the innermost rune ring. “In the Vatican Archives, documents call it the Godsdagger. Secret verses of ancient Hindu texts refer to it as the Ratna Maru.” Tilda reached up and grasped the hilt of the Osdathregar, trying to wrench it loose. The man paced around the perimeter of the ring, his hands clasped behind his back. “Nobody knows who made it; nobody knows where it came from. All we know is that it’s powerful enough to stop a witch cold in her tracks.”
Hollywood had conditioned Robin to expect the eldritch and the ornate: a wavy flambergé with a pewter-skull hilt, cord-wrapped handle, and a spike for a pommel, a Gil Hibben monstrosity from a mall kiosk. But the real Osdathregar was a simple main gauche with a gently tapering blade a little wider than a stiletto. The guard was a diamond shape, the handle was wrapped in leather, and the pommel was only an unadorned onion bulb. The diamond of the guard contained a small hollow, and engraved inside the hollow was a sinuous scribble.
“See that symbol there?” Heinrich pointed at the hilt. “That means purifier in Enochian, the language of the angels. Regardless of where it came from, this is a holy weapon. Which means even if it can’t outright kill a witch, she can’t remove it from where it’s embedded. Deep magic, baby. You stake her into the floor, or a wall, wherever, she’ll be there until the end of time, or until you come along and pull it out.”
With the flare gun’s muzzle, the teenager gestured to the diagram that filled the barn floor. “What about this, then? And the ropes?”
Heinrich shrugged. “In my line of work, I’ve learned to appreciate redundancy.”
“What can kill a witch, then?”
A wry smirk. “Come on, Robin Hood. That’s Mickey Mouse kindergarten shit. You know what kills a witch.”
“… Fire?”
“Ding ding ding!” cried Heinrich. “We have a winner! Now, listen—I’ve brought the anger out in you, Robin. Made a fighter out of you. You finally cut me. Now I need to get rid of the fear. A knife ain’t nothin’ but a worthless piece of steel unless you’re willing to use it!”
With that, he pulled out the dagger.
Now nothing stood between them.
“Guns can’t stop me, child,” said the witch, marching resolutely through the gaps in the ward and out of the barn. In broad daylight, she was even more disgusting, a crusty ghost wrapped in shit and rotten fabric. Blood running down her chin looked like hot black tar, dribbling all over the ground. Her fingernails were yellowed spades. Her hair was the woolly, filthy mane of a lion, and her eyes were fiery red and yellow, with pinprick pupils.
A shout from the man in the barn: “Fire, you idiot!”
The flare gun in her hand. Robin pointed it at the witch and pulled the trigger, but the safety was on.
Tilda didn’t even flinch. “Nice shootin’, Tex,” she cackled, and charged, tongue snaking, harpy talons extended.
“Fuck!”
Panic made a live wire out of every nerve in Robin’s body. Stones dug into her knees. She aimed the flare gun with both hands and fired. The flare hit center mass.
Waves of incredible heat washed over the little barnyard as the creature erupted into flames ten feet tall, a tornado of smoke and light. Tilda shrieked madly, staggering toward the teenager, flaming hands outstretched.
“Grain alcohol,” said Heinrich, coming outside to join them.
Blackened fingers combed through dim orange whorls of light, cupping and clawing, searching. The rest of her was obscured by the column
of fire. The teenager shuffled sideways along the fence, trying to keep the flaming witch from grabbing her. “I see you burning, Robin Martine,” gurgled the thing in the flames. Collapsing on her knees, and then kneeling prostrate in the shade of the giant bur oak, Tilda laughed through a mouthful of fire. “One day, your enemies will trap you, and you will burn just like me.” She fell over and lay motionless, a black wraith shrouded in light. “You will burn,” she said in a strained hiss. “You will die.”
The last syllable seemed to stretch on forever, becoming the soft rustle of the bur oak’s leaves, until it faded into silence, broken only by the warp and woof of the flames biting at the wind.
They stood there and watched her burn until she was a coal sculpture, twisted into a fetal position in the dust.
“That wasn’t pleasant,” said Heinrich.
“Wasn’t a fucking birthday party, that’s for sure.”
He looked over at her, genuinely surprised. “It’s your birthday?”
“Yeah,” said the teenager, and she walked away, still gripping the flare gun in one trembling hand.
“Happy birthday,” he called after her.
“Stick it up your ass.”
ALSO BY S. A. HUNT
Burn the Dark
About the Author
S. A. HUNT is the author of the award-winning Outlaw King fantasy series. In 2005, they joined the army and served as military police, where they were awarded a Joint Service Achievement Medal for their efforts in Afghanistan. They currently live in Petoskey, Michigan.
Visit her online at sahuntbooks.com, or sign up for email updates here.
Twitter: @authorsahunt
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Then
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Acknowledgments
Excerpt: The Hellion
Also by S. A. Hunt
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
I COME WITH KNIVES
Copyright © 2020 by S. A. Hunt
All rights reserved.
Cover art and design by Leo Nicholls
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-30646-3 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-30645-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-30644-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250306449
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First Edition: May 2020
