Blood Winter

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  Sterling watched the mayhem with a smile. Occasionally, he pointed out fleeing people or launched a fireball from his palm. Alexander could only watch. The men holding Kyle dropped him onto the ground and found two more poles for Carrie and Tory.

  Tory was talking to her father, begging him to wake up, to no avail. Sterling’s followers silently roped her to a post and did the same to Carrie. Then they waited, watching the carnage behind Alexander with obvious delight, occasionally calling out encouragement.

  Eventually, Sterling was satisfied. He summoned his people back to him.

  “Children, you have done well. These people will be an example for all of God’s rage and glory. Soon others will see what we have done, and they will turn to God and join our crusade. Then we will eradicate the devil from this valley. We will gather our army of the exalted and march out to cleanse the world. If you stay strong, if you believe in me—the right hand of God—then we cannot fail. We will not fail,” he said, his voice rising and his yellow corona brightening.

  “Now, bring these others. We will make an example of them. Evil must be taught to crawl back into hell where it came from. We will flay the skin from their flesh and stake them out where all can see and hear their torment and know that God’s will has been done.”

  They began singing again as they lifted Kyle, Tory, and Carrie and carried them out of sight, leaving behind the churned-up, blood-colored snow.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the dust rose in a liquid cloud, leaving the snow pristine. The cloud turned in a slow circle, currents within it eddying and coiling. It hung between the dreamers before slowly expanding to encompass them. Inside it, a multitude of voices whispered. Alexander could not make sense of them. They spun away from him, leaving only fragments of words.

  He concentrated. After a few minutes, bits of sound started to slide together like the teeth of a thousand gears, all spinning together to make one message.

  “I am waiting, children of the damned. Come to me and fight. Or bow down, and I will rip your spines from your bodies. Choose and die.” This was followed by slow laughter that built in mirth.

  The world exploded. Alexander was fragmented into a thousand bits. The next moment, he fell back into his body. He lay there paralyzed. Slowly, the pieces of himself fit back together, the echoing laughter still ringing in his ears.

  HOURS PASSED BEFORE HE WAS ABLE TO BLINK AND flick the tips of his fingers. It was another two hours before he was able to force his body to obey him. He sat up and turned to Thor, who was staring wildly at him, his body practically humming with the tension of his attempts to move.

  Alexander reached over and propped him upright before grabbing his phone. His dream had been no dream.

  He hit the speed dial for Max. The phone rang and rang, but she did not pick up. His heart clenched, but he would have known if she had died. He would have felt her spirit flame die.

  He punched Tyler’s number into his phone and got no answer. Could they all be paralyzed still? Surely, Max would have come to herself if he had?

  He tried Giselle, then Magpie and a dozen others. No one answered. He looked down at his phone and wondered if it was even working. It worked on magic and communicated only with other magically enabled phones. Maybe Sterling had disabled them.

  He tossed his cell onto the floor and stretched and flexed to work off the last of the numbness

  “Was . . . that . . . for real?” Thor gasped out.

  “Depends,” Alexander said. “If you had a dream about watching Sterling take out Kyle, Tory, and Carrie Lydman, then I would give it good odds.”

  “Was afraid . . . of that.” Thor’s face looked as if he had been Botoxed. Nothing moved. “Feel like a corpse.”

  “It will get better soon.”

  “Good. Sterling needs killing. Sooner the better.”

  “You got that right.”

  Unfortunately, the preacher witch was not going to go down easily. If at all.

  MAX CAME OUT OF THE DREAM WITH THE sound of Sterling’s laughter chasing after her. She wanted to scream and swear, but she was frozen solid. It took long hours for her body to respond. When it finally did, she dragged herself off the bed and crashed to the floor. She crawled out to her front door and into the corridor. Nami lay at the foot of the stairs, her legs twisted. She was breathing.

  Flint’s door was open, and Max could see his feet, as if he’d tumbled flat on his face as soon as he walked in. She crawled to the steps and around Nami, straightening the other woman’s legs. Nami stared at her, a streak of red running over her eyebrow. “It’ll wear off soon,” Max told her. “In the meantime, I’ve got to borrow your phone,” she said, fishing it out of Nami’s pocket.

  She clumsily punched in Giselle’s number and waited. It rang, but there was no answer. She tried Tyler and Oz, then Gregory, Judith, and Magpie. No one picked up. They were probably still defrosting. At least, she hoped so.

  Max crawled up the stairs. She’d left almost everyone back at the angel vault. They might still be there.

  She’d managed to climb to her feet and made her way through the fortress by leaning on the walls. She felt like rubber. Her body was clumsy and uncoordinated. Not that many people littered the halls. It had been near dawn when Sterling had struck. Most had still been in bed.

  A sudden thought struck her, and she turned. She broke into a stumbling run as she headed for the dining commons and the kitchen. Magpie was already up early cooking. If she’d fallen onto a grill or a knife, she could be dead or close to it.

  The water was running in the kitchen, and smoke billowed from the oven and the pots on the stove. Magpie lay facedown in a pond of milk on the floor by the refrigerator. Her kitchen help were sprawled in the aisles. None seem particularly injured, although they were still unconscious.

  Max turned Magpie over. The Circle witch’s eyes were open and sparking with fury. She blinked at Max but was otherwise stiff as a board. Milk crusted her face and gummed in her hair, but she looked no worse for wear. A streak of red ran along her cheek like war paint. Max picked her up and laid her on the wide prep table running down the center of the kitchen.

  “I’m going to find Giselle,” Max told her. “You’ll be fine.”

  She turned off the stove and the oven and checked all of the kitchen aides before hustling away. Each one was marked with a splash of red. She grabbed a pot and examined her own face in the distorted reflection on the side. A smear of red ran from her forehead to her cheek.

  Max tossed the pot aside with an echoing clatter and rammed out of the swinging doors. Fury boiled inside her. She was going to kill Sterling. Tear his heart out and feed it to him.

  Her body was becoming hers again. She broke into a jog, not yet trusting her balance to go faster. The corridor outside the angel vault was empty. Max went inside. Tyler was slumped over on the floor near Simon’s body, which was covered in a white sheet. Tyler was starting to kick and twitch. Giselle was leaning heavily against Xaphan’s table. Her cheek and chin were bruised. The red streak ran across her lips and curled down under her jaw.

  “You saw it all?” she asked, bracing her arms on the stone table. “We have to go find them. Get them back. I didn’t know they were gone. When did they go? How?”

  “I don’t know. Tory was pissed at me for telling her our little trip was postponed. Maybe she talked Kyle into going anyway.”

  “That girl needs a cage.”

  “She’d pick the lock.”

  “I hope she plays this smart and waits for us,” Giselle said, but she didn’t sound very optimistic.

  Max snorted. Unlikely. Tory had gone down fighting Sterling’s minions with every fiber of her being. She’d rather fight and die than wait for anybody to rescue her. Max could sympathize. Her niece might be a giant pain in the ass, but she was tough. Max had to respect her for that, even while she wanted to strangle her.

  “Everybody’s down,” she said, changing the subject. She couldn’t let herself think a
bout Tory, Carrie, and Kyle. She had to stay focused on rescuing them. Emotion would only get in the way. “It will be at least a few hours until everyone recovers.”

  “That’s too long. We need to get going after them now. Before—”

  Before Sterling follows through on his bloodthirsty promises.

  “I won’t let him get that far,” Max said, although whether she was trying to convince Giselle or herself, she wasn’t sure.

  “This isn’t right,” the witch said, rubbing her forehead. “Tyler and I came into the vault for Simon. . . . The next thing I know, I’m yanked out of my body and down into the River Market with the rest of Horngate. But that was at dawn, and the business down there was later, well after the sun was up. What happened to us all in between?” She frowned, then dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. “It’s not important right now. Did you call Alexander to check on him?”

  Max shook her head. She’d been avoiding him. She was really good at it. “He and Thor should be fine. They’d call us if there was a problem.”

  “You didn’t see them?” Giselle asked in surprise. “They were at the market, too.”

  “What?”

  “They weren’t far from you, along the same side of the circle. We should find out if they are all right. If they weren’t in the light-sealed box when Sterling took them . . .” She trailed off.

  Max felt her face go white. Her hand clenched around Nami’s phone, but she didn’t try to call. She didn’t want any witnesses when she did. “They might still be waking up and not able to get in touch. I’ll try in a little while.”

  Giselle gave her a sharp look that Max ignored.

  “Once Tyler is awake, he and I can go into town and see what we can find out,” Max said. “The two of us ought to be able to avoid attention.”

  “Fine,” Giselle said. “You can take Gregory, too.”

  “No. Horngate needs every one of its witches here defending the covenstead.”

  “I doubt it would matter. You heard Sterling—he means for us to die. He’s got power, Max. A lot of it. I’m not sure we can stop him.”

  Max’s mouth fell open. She had never before heard Giselle speak of defeat. Even when she took on the Guardians and a pair of angels. “We have the Fury Seed. That should be plenty to smash him flat,” she said.

  “Before today, I’d have agreed. But that trick with pulling all of us out of our bodies was extraordinary all by itself. Then he was levitating at the same time. Either one is beyond anything I can do. Together—” She shook her head slowly. “I don’t have any idea what he’s capable of. He has powers far greater than even a mage or a sorcerer. I still don’t know how he got inside Horngate without tripping the wards.”

  “You sound like you’re giving up,” Max said in surprise and no little anger.

  Giselle’s head jerked up, her cheeks flushing. “Give up? Never. No fucking way. I’m just saying we are going to need to finesse this. We don’t have the brute force to win; Sterling does. So we have to find his Achilles’ heel. To do that, we can’t hold anybody back here. We have to take the fight to him. We can’t waste any time.”

  Max considered that and nodded. “All right. I’ll take Tyler and Gregory. When everyone else stirs, you can bring backup. You can decide what witches you think will be useful. Make sure my Blades and the Spears calorie-load. They’ll need it.”

  “I will.” Giselle started to say something else but then frowned and started scratching her right arm. Then her left and her legs, torso, and head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I feel like I’ve suddenly developed a bad case of poison ivy.” She scratched harder, her nails raising red welts on her skin. She shimmied and twisted, then stumbled as her still-clumsy body gave way. She landed on her shoulder, still scrabbling at her calf and then clawing up under her shirt.

  Max bent and lifted her back to her feet. “What can I do?”

  Giselle jerked her head. “I don’t know . . .” She scratched her cheeks and scraped her fingers roughly back and forth over her scalp. “It’s like acid on my nerves.”

  At that moment, the light in the vault took on a red cast, and the trickling fall of water turned milky instead of clear. Max squatted down to get a closer look. It still smelled like water. She reached out and dipped her hand in it. Usually frigid, the liquid was warm now, and there was a faint oily slickness to it. She touched it to her tongue. It stung, like licking a nine-volt battery. The taste was sweet like syrup but with a bite. It made her lips numb. There was no feel of magic from it.

  So what the hell is it?

  “Could it be natural?” she asked, knowing already what the answer would be.

  Giselle’s movements were growing more frenzied, and the welts hashing her skin were starting to turn bloody. “Like what? A milk truck dumped its load and leaked down into the mountain?” The witch snorted. “It’s definitely not natural. You can bet Sterling is behind it, and whatever it is, it’s giving me fucking hives.”

  “It’s not magic. Not a hex or anything like that?”

  “Not any kind I’ve encountered.”

  “Then how is it doing this to you?”

  “I don’t fucking know,” Giselle snapped, and she gave a little scream of fury as she clawed her stomach and rubbed her hip against the stone table. “It’s getting worse.”

  Max watched her for a long moment. At the rate Giselle’s torment was increasing, it wouldn’t be long before she tore her own skin off. Part of Max—the old part that still hated Giselle for betraying her and for suggesting that the angels were fodder for harvest—was eager to watch it happen. The new Max was working on forgiveness.

  “Can you fight it?”

  “I can’t—I can’t think.” Giselle growled and clawed at her legs, jumping up and down and scraping her back against the rough wall. Her teeth ground together, and she made a sound of frustration. “Maybe if I could concentrate for half a second, I could do something.” She began jerking at her hair. “It feels like I’m being eaten alive by termites.” She caught a hard breath, and her body spasmed. “Oh, shit. Make that rats. Or maybe feral cats.”

  She moaned and gouged herself harder. Blood rose along the scrapes and trickled down her arms. Max grabbed Giselle’s wrists, easily keeping her from jerking away.

  “Let go of me!” Giselle wailed as she twisted, fury and desperation flickering through her eyes.

  “And have you rip your own face off? As entertaining as that sounds, I think everybody is better off if you keep whole. You’ve got to give the pain to me,” she told Giselle. “Do it now before you shred yourself to pieces.”

  “I—no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. It isn’t—”

  “Isn’t what?” Max demanded in exasperation. “Just give me your pain, and you’ll be able to concentrate on kicking Sterling’s ass. You designed me for this.”

  Giselle’s face contorted, and she wrenched backward. Max didn’t give an inch. Threads of magic curled over the witch’s flushed skin. Ordinarily, it flowed in a graceful embroidery of danger and threat. But this time, it was knotted and tangled, matting together in flat patches that stuck like tar.

  “Quit wasting time,” Max said. “Give me your pain now before you take a permanent ride on the loony bus.”

  “I—”

  For a moment, Max thought she was going to have to pull Giselle into the abyss, far away from any attack. Then, suddenly, an ugly grinding sensation flowed through her wrists, followed by a sadistic, unholy itching. It chewed its way up her arms and sank into her bones. The feeling was relentless. It gnawed in places she couldn’t reach. Her fingers curled, her nails digging hard into Giselle’s wrists. Giselle made a high-pitched sound that instantly cut off. It was all Max could do not to let go and scrape at the merciless sensations enveloping her. But if she did, Giselle wouldn’t be able to concentrate.

  “Fix this,” Max hissed. She’d suffered plenty before—pain of every kind. But
this was different. It found places she’d not realized existed, and it inflamed them with a violent itch. She want to rip herself apart to get at it.

  Giselle’s face hardened into a mask of cold fury. Her magic lost its tangled, matted look and became elegant, roping around her in muscular vines. She wrenched one hand free and gripped Max’s wrist with the other. Giselle towed her to the wall with sharp, determined strides and slapped one hand flat to the stone.

  “Get the fuck out of my house!”

  Magic forked across the vault. The mountain trembled and shook. The floor bucked, and cracks spread across it.

  Max staggered sideways and crashed hard to her knees. Giselle’s hold on her wrist slipped. Max’s hand twisted and clamped down on Giselle’s forearm. She knew she was holding too hard. She felt Giselle’s bones compressing and bending beneath her fingers. But the demonic itch had burrowed deeper inside and intensified. She could barely think anymore. It was worse than pain; she didn’t know how long she could continue to endure it without clawing herself to pieces. Sterling could teach Giselle a thing or two about torture, and the witch-bitch was an expert.

  Magic cascaded over her like wet cement. Unfriendly magic. Red magic. She struggled to stand but couldn’t move.

  She heard Giselle swearing, a flat string of words running from her lips like an incantation. Maybe it was.

  Max couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t blink. Her heart stopped, and her body went numb. For that, she was grateful. With the numbness came relief from the raging itch.

  Roaring filled her ears, and she couldn’t tell if the sound was in her head or something she was actually hearing. Her body began to ache. It was a dull pain, as if her muscles were starving for air. Globs of yellow and orange and red spotted her vision. She was going to pass out.

  Before she could, she pushed down inside herself, searching for her fortress and the door into the abyss. She fumbled blindly, unable to find it. She was lost inside her own body.