Blood Winter

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  “We, my friend, are your friendly local nine-one-one responders,” answered Tyler, much to Max’s surprise. “We’ve come to pull your asses out of the fire. You can stop shooting anytime, by the way. You’re wasting bullets. Lead doesn’t bother them.”

  “It does when it blows off their heads,” someone said.

  Max scanned the clearing, looking for Tyler. “Where are you?”

  “North and west in the trees.”

  In fact, he was halfway up a tree, crouching on a branch and wearing a set of headphones.

  “What have you done with my men?” demanded the first voice.

  “Nothing they can’t recover from,” Max said. “You didn’t kill yours, did you, Tyler?”

  “He’ll live. But my Blades are up the hill. Blind as bats.”

  “Same here. We have to shut down the noise,” she said. “Think you and I can get in there and kill that thing?”

  “Do we have a choice?” came Tyler’s reply.

  “Just one fucking second. Who the hell are you?”

  “We own this land. You’re trespassers,” Max said.

  “Kiss my ass. This is Frank Bryce’s land,” someone said.

  “Seal those lips, Foster,” snapped the leader. Then, “He’s right. This land doesn’t belong to you.”

  “By the laws of magic, it does. Which means you need to cease fire. If you shoot me, I’m going to be seriously annoyed,” Max warned.

  “Laws of magic?” Max could almost hear his lip curl, and she did hear him spit.

  “That’s right. It’s a new world. Get used to it. Now, Tyler and I are going in. Don’t get in our way, and quit shooting, and you just might survive the day.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. The soldier was starting to twitch and moan. Oak was edging down the slope behind her. Farther up, she could see the others trailing down, arms outstretched as they moved toward her voice.

  “Did you hear?” she asked Oak. His eyes were now glassy white.

  “Yep. You can see?” At least, that’s what she thought he said. She wasn’t exactly a lip reader.

  “Earphones,” she said by way of explanation. “Wait here. Once the noise stops, your eyes should heal up.”

  He lifted two fingers to his brow in a casual salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Bite me,” she said with a grin, and focused back on the clearing.

  “How do you want to handle this?” Tyler asked. “Ask them politely to leave?”

  “Think they’ll listen?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “But not likely. Still, should let us get close enough to attack. I don’t think the snow is thick enough to give us cover. And there’s no sneaking in on our stomachs below the mist. It will probably eat our faces off. As it is, my boots are half gone,” Max said. “But watch out—they are Divine.”

  “Bullshit. There ain’t nothing holy about them but maybe what we shot through them,” a man’s voice growled into her ears.

  It irritated her. “I didn’t say holy, Ace. I said Divine. Better learn the difference, or you’re going to end up dead. I might even kill you myself.”

  The demons—Max was sure they were demons, though of what variety she had no idea—turned to watch her as she strode across the clearing. They could see her perfectly, since as soon as she set foot on the floor of the canyon, the snow drew back to the tree line, clearing the entire bottom of the canyon. Definitely not natural.

  She drew her sword with her right hand and kept her left on the shotgun. This was likely to go south quickly.

  Tyler slunk through the mist on the other side of the creek. A few demons eyed him but didn’t seem to think he was a threat. They didn’t like running water—most demon kind didn’t. Most couldn’t cross it without a bridge or transportation, and even then, it was horrifically painful, if not fatal. Maybe they thought he couldn’t cross, either, and therefore wasn’t all that threatening.

  Max stopped just out of reach of the three that came to meet her. They stank like a landfill on a hot and humid day. It was enough to make her eyes water and her throat burn.

  “You’re trespassing,” she said. She held the sword casually, but she could chop through all three of them before they’d be able to grab her.

  “Puny human. We eat you.” The creature’s voice was like boulders grinding together. It didn’t wait for Max to answer but darted its long arms out at her.

  It moved faster than she expected. She jerked her sword up and around, chopping through its wrists. She whirled in a circle, ducking low to avoid the swiping hands of the other two. Hands? They were more like rakes with hooked talons.

  She slammed into one, knocking it sideways, then hacked through the neck of the other. Purplish blood fountained, and her skin erupted in blisters and burns wherever it splashed. She felt poison leaching into her flesh and veins. Claws ripped down her thigh, shredding her pants and cutting deep. She kicked and wove in a desperate dance as the full company of demons descended on her. She blasted them with the shotgun, but even though the blasts tore holes in them and took off one demon’s head, they kept coming.

  “Destroy that thing fast,” she gritted through the radio to Tyler. “I won’t hold out long.”

  But instead of going after the giant Hefty bag of bloodcurdling screams, he was suddenly at her side. He had knives in both fists and moved with liquid grace as he sliced and cut, ducking and lunging.

  “What are you doing?” Max demanded. She dropped her shotgun. It was empty, and she had no time to reload. Now it was just getting in the way.

  “What does it look like?”

  He grunted and doubled over as a demon leg smashed into his ribs. He jammed a knife deep into the leg and jerked away before the gout of blood could drench him. Jaws snapped next to Max’s ear. One of them grabbed her ankle and yanked, dangling her in the air.

  Twisting, she levered up from the waist and chopped through its arm with her sword. The limb separated, and she fell hard on her back. She rolled away, grunting as the creature’s tail lashed across her back. Her headphones twisted, and the screaming wail instantly drilled into her skull. Max’s eyes glazed gray. She wrenched away from an eviscerating slash at her gut and leaped to her feet, hooking her headphones back into place.

  Voices crackled through the radio, offering a storm of advice. She ignored them. Suddenly, the leader’s voice blasted through.

  “Cut the jaw-jacking!”

  Instant silence. Max could have kissed him.

  She dove back into the fray, standing back-to-back with Tyler. Bit by bit, they chipped away at their enemies. Literally. A few fingers here, a hand there, a head, a leg, a foot, a tail. Blood and gore slicked the ground beneath them. The falling temperature was swiftly turning the wet to ice, making footing that much more difficult.

  Suddenly, Tyler went down, falling beneath the level of the mist. Two demons dove on top of him, their jaws snapping. Without thinking, Max abandoned her own battle. She snatched one of the beasts by the shoulder and pulled it up, smashing her knee into its face. Its blood spurted, and it grabbed her thigh with both claws. Its bony fingers skewered her flesh. Talons scraped bone. Max clenched her teeth, biting back a yelp of pain. She clubbed the creature in the head with the hilt of the sword before it could strip the meat from her leg.

  Its skull caved in, and the demon fell backward. Its fingers gouged through Max’s thigh, turning it to hamburger. She kicked it away as best she could, but her leg was next to useless.

  Something struck her from behind, knocking her flying. She flew over Tyler and bounced on the ground. Her forehead banged against a sharp rock. She rolled onto her back just as a demon closed on her. She managed to get her good leg up between them and kicked it off. She’d lost her sword. She yanked a knife from the sheath on her arm and slashed at the demon’s throat as it launched itself at her again.

  Hot blood splashed over her face, filling her eyes and spurting into her nose and mouth. It burned, and Max gagged and gasped
. She twisted as the creature fell across her, knuckling at her eyes to clear them. She squirmed out from under it and staggered to her feet.

  She turned just as another demon lunged for her. Before it could connect, two shots rang out, and its skull exploded. It dropped like a sack of onions. It twitched and convulsed and then went limp.

  “Thanks,” Max said into the microphone.

  “Oorah,” came the leader’s gravelly voice in reply.

  All of the demons were dead or incapacitated. For now. She wasn’t sure if they were going to stay dead. Demons didn’t die easy.

  Tyler was on his hands and knees. He slowly clambered to his feet. Demon blood and gore drenched him from head to foot. It mixed with bright crimson ribbons that ran from his own flesh. His clothing hung in tattered shreds, and his entire body was a patchwork quilt of clawed skin.

  He grinned at her raggedly. “That was fun.”

  “I thought I told you to go after that thing,” she said, jerking her chin at the billowing sack. She kicked through the mist-covered debris on the ground, trying to find her sword.

  He shrugged. “You couldn’t take them alone. Besides, Alexander would’ve had my ass if I let anything happen to you,” Tyler added. “He’s almost as scary as you are.”

  “Right,” Max said. “If that’s what you think, I’ve been seriously slacking. So what do you want to do about the giant Hefty bag?”

  “It’s probably a birthing sac.”

  “Two points for Mr. Obvious.”

  He ignored her. “It’s big enough to hold a couple of dozen of the bastards. The way they’re kicking around, it looks like they’re in a hurry to get out and get acquainted,” Tyler said. “They’ll be hungry. Babies always are. They’re going to think we look pretty tasty.”

  She ran her fingers through her sticky, matted hair and made a face. Disgusting. “We could cut a hole in it and see if that forces them to come out one at a time.”

  “Might work.” He stretched and cracked his back. “Only one way to find out.”

  “Would a grenade help?” came the rasping voice of the leader of the soldiers through the headphones.

  “You’ve got grenades, Chief?” Max asked. “Any reason you didn’t mention that ten or fifteen minutes ago?”

  “I’ve got one left,” he corrected. “We tried the others a little north of here, but they didn’t take.”

  “Which means they aren’t going to stay down,” Max said to Tyler. “How long before they resurrect, Chief?”

  “Maybe ten minutes, give or take.”

  Max grimaced and reached for her cell. She had to push the headphones aside, and her head instantly vibrated with the wailing cry. It was louder, if anything, and sharper. She lost her vision, and blood started to run out of her nose.

  She punched in the speed dial, and Giselle answered on the first ring. “How bad is it?” she asked without preamble.

  “Better get out here quick. We’ve got a demon infestation.”

  One thing about Giselle was that she didn’t waste time asking a lot of stupid questions. “On my way.”

  The phone went dead. Max tucked it back into her vest and readjusted her headphones. It took longer for her vision to clear this time.

  “It’ll take her a little bit to get here. Couldn’t hurt to blow them to bits before that. It would stop that noise, anyhow. Give our Blades a chance to recover and help once the demons start pulling themselves back together.”

  Max turned to scan the canyon behind them. The team of human hunters began sifting out of the trees. They were all wearing fatigues and carrying submachine guns slung over their shoulders. They wore camo paints and helmets, and they looked the worse for wear. Most were bandaged, and all had torn and bloody clothes.

  Their leader marched out in front. He looked to be around thirty years old and was a bit more than six feet tall. Fox-colored stubble covered a stubborn jaw, and his eyes were blue, like glacier ice, and just as ruthless and cold. His skin was tanned, and he had white crow’s feet around his eyes. He came to stand a few feet away from Max. His men hung back in a loose semicircle, the barrels of their guns pointing downward, but it would only take a flick of the wrist to raise them.

  The leader looked Max up and down and then did the same to Tyler before turning back to Max.

  “Name’s Liam,” he said by way of introduction.

  “Max,” she said. “This is Tyler.”

  He held out a grenade. “It’s the last one. Know how to use it?”

  “Pull the pin and get out of the way.”

  “That’s about it.”

  She took it. “Thanks.”

  “I want these motherfuckers dead. If you can do it, I’ll give you anything you want.”

  “Careful,” Tyler said. “Shouldn’t say things like that if you don’t mean them. Magic is very literal.”

  The other man eyed him, his eyes narrowing. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. Do the two of you want some help?”

  “We’ll manage,” Max said. She motioned for Tyler to join her, and they headed for the sac.

  “Who did you just call?” Liam asked suddenly.

  Max glanced back at him and grinned. “The Wicked Witch of the West. Who else?”

  THE GRIMS WERE NOT EASY TO FOLLOW. IF NOT for Alexander’s extended spirit senses, he and Thor would have lost them more than once. The snow deadened smells and covered tracks. Not that the truck could go where the Grims could. They were traveling across the mountains in a straight line toward—

  Somewhere.

  They could be going to New York or Florida for all Alexander knew. Or even Antarctica. He did not doubt that the beasts could easily travel across the ocean. Spike, however, might slow them down.

  Colored flickers marking living creatures danced across the landscape, which spread out from Alexander in a ghostly overlay of reality. What he saw in his mindscape went miles farther than he could actually see with his eyes. He tried to distract himself with the play of colors, but he could not forget about Max.

  “You want to talk about it?” Thor asked as they drove through Hamilton toward Salmon.

  Alexander stilled his hands. He had been tapping his fingers restlessly since they left Horngate. His Prime was on edge. “Talk about what?” he asked, feigning confusion.

  His friend eyed him sideways. “You know, old son, it don’t take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep,” he said. “What’s going on with you and Max?”

  Just like Thor to drive a blade right into the heart of the matter. Alexander went back to tapping. “Nothing a frontal lobotomy would not cure,” he growled.

  “That good, eh?” Thor shrugged. “Well, nothing worth having comes easy, and Max definitely ain’t easy. Question is if you think she’s worth the trouble.”

  “I am beginning to wonder,” Alexander said, staring out the window. He felt Thor’s startled stare like a slap.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  His lips curved slightly. “Maybe. Probably.” He dragged his fingers over his scalp.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “She keeps pushing me away. Only time she seems to want me around is in bed, and then it seems like all she is trying to do is forget about Niko and the angels. I could be anybody.”

  “But you aren’t. She picked you.” Thor was silent a moment. “She’ll figure it out and come around. You just have to be patient and wait.”

  “For how long?”

  “The way you feel about her, forever might be just long enough,” Thor said.

  Alexander rolled down the window and leaned his arm on the sill. The air was back to being unseasonably warm. Drizzle dampened his skin. Forever. That was a hell of a long time to wait.

  JUST BEFORE CROSSING INTO IDAHO, THOR TURNED EAST toward the Big Hole, following the path of the Grims. They kept their lights off, and thanks to magic, they made no sound at all. The truck’s engine had been replaced with a tangle of gold filaments wrapping a chunk of silver. The wh
ole thing was no bigger than Alexander’s fist. It was held suspended in the middle of the engine compartment by lengths of plastic twine. Its magic was strong enough to overcome the magic-smothering effect of the truck’s steel body.

  Driving silently kept them from the notice of human predators. It did not, however, keep them safe from rock trolls, as it turned out.

  The road ribboned through a series of small valleys and meadows following a swift-flowing river. Although Alexander could see spirit flames for both animals and magical creatures, they were largely left alone. Right up until they started dropping down into the Big Hole—an enormous flat valley in the northern Rockies.

  The road exploded in front of them. Concrete, blacktop, and dirt spewed up into the air. Thor swerved and slammed on the brakes. They skidded and spun in a circle, stopping sideways on the road, road debris hailing down on them. The windshield shattered, raining down bits of safety glass. The roof dented inward as a massive chunk of concrete bounced off it.

  There was now a crater more than twenty feet across where the road had been. Inside it stood a rock troll. It stood tall as a house at the shoulder, with great hulking shoulders and what appeared to be a boulder for a head. The beast looked as if it had been rudely molded out of still-warm rock and left to harden, and then someone had jabbed holes in its face for eyes and stuck bits of jagged quartz in its mouth for teeth. Its chest was bigger than their truck and each hand and foot could have crushed them with one blow.

  “This could get ugly,” Thor said, tipping his straw hat back on his head.

  “It could,” Alexander said, opening his door. “But maybe it will be fun.”

  “Now you sound like Max. Can’t we go around it?”

  “They are faster than they look. It can run more than eighty miles an hour for short bursts. We will not get far.”

  “And the news keeps getting better. Since you know so much, how do we kill it?”

  “I have no idea. Explosives might work. Or they could just make it mad.”

  “It already looks plenty pissed.”

  “See what you can rig. I will distract it,” Alexander said, moving away from the truck and down toward the open field and the river below. Maybe the rock troll would not like running water. He should be so lucky.