Blood Winter

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  “I serve no one,” Shoftiel hissed.

  “Wow. Really? Seems like you’re all about the Last Standers.”

  “They serve me,” he said haughtily, gesturing at Sterling, who fell to his knees, bending until his forehead rested on the angel’s feet. Max couldn’t tell if it was the cult leader’s idea or if Shoftiel had used magic to drag him down.

  “I thought they served God,” Max said. “You’re just another of his servants, right? Doing whatever he tells you. A slave, really.”

  The gold in his wings sparked, casting gleaming showers down around him. Sterling yelped as charred spots speckled his robes and face where they landed, but the man didn’t—or couldn’t—move out of the way.

  Max smiled. “What’s the matter? Did I strike a nerve? Maybe you want to glue my mouth shut again. Truth hurts and all that.”

  “My kind are not slaves. For you to have put your paltry bindings on these two, you must pay. You must be an example to any who think to follow in your footsteps,” he told her. “You have never felt pain like the kind I will inflict upon you.”

  “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “You might be surprised. I’m better at getting tortured than anybody I know. It’s my own special talent. You’ll have to think hard to come up with something that hasn’t already been done to me.”

  His lips peeled from his teeth in a scornful smile. “You underestimate me.” He gestured, and a gob of red smoke flew from his fingers. It grew into a cloud and wrapped around Max. Instantly, she began to itch, just as she had in the angel vault—how many nights ago now? Only two? It seemed impossible.

  Max didn’t let herself react. “Now, that’s what I call a lack of imagination. What are you, a one-trick pony? Besides, I didn’t bind Tutresiel and Xaphan. They bound themselves. This was their choice.”

  His upper lip curled. “No angel would ever willingly submit to a witch.”

  “And yet there they are. You really are stupid,” Max said, trying to provoke him. He wasn’t getting riled up the way she needed him to. She had to find a way to push his buttons. But the itching was getting to her. She was already weak. If this kept up more than a few minutes, it might be the end. She couldn’t let herself fall apart. “I said they bound themselves. Giselle had nothing to do with it. ’Course, I did talk them into it.”

  It occurred to her then to wonder why Shoftiel had chosen her for the target of his ire.

  Shoftiel stiffened, and his wings ruffled and lifted, the smoky red feathers trailing crimson. She was getting to him. She walked up the steps until she was between Tutresiel and Xaphan. Both angels watched her. Tutresiel’s eyes were mere slits, and he looked like he wanted to strangle her. Xaphan flicked his fingers at her. The message was clear from both: don’t piss off Shoftiel. Wait until they recovered.

  Message received and ignored.

  Max reached out and trailed her fingers up each of their thighs and hips. She felt them twitching, their muscles hardening beneath her touch. It wouldn’t be long before they could move. But she couldn’t be sure that they could take Shoftiel out. Her plan was still the best chance of success.

  “They are lovely, aren’t they?” she purred, as well as she could purr, given that termites were chewing every inch of her skin and her vision was starting to haze over with the drain of the amulet and her bleeding chest. The last time he’d hit her with this particular torture, she’d almost died. She would have if Giselle hadn’t saved her. She had to get him to come after her now, if she was going to succeed in taking him into the abyss.

  “You know what I just can’t get enough of? I love telling them what to do, knowing they have to obey. Like little puppets. I pull the strings, and they dance for me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made them crawl on the ground at my feet to lick my boots. I can make them eat shit.” She forced a laugh. “It just never gets old.”

  Shoftiel made a low sound in his throat that quickly grew into a roar. His wings snapped wide, and red smoke swirled up from his feet, circling him in a slow cyclone. His body tensed, his fingers curling into claws. The air shivered with heat and electricity.

  That did it. He was pissed now.

  The Last Standers backed away, some of them starting to break and run. Sterling looked sickly. He was not at all in control of the situation or of Shoftiel, and he clearly knew it. Max wondered whether it was fear or magic that kept him frozen in place.

  “On your knees,” Shoftiel said, and with every word, a swarm of black insects emerged from his mouth. They multiplied until there had to be millions of them. They bunched and ribboned in the air, then the three swarms dove at Max with a buzzing whine.

  They dropped over her like a wriggling, creeping cloth. They crawled into her ears and eyes, up her nose, and inside her open wounds. She shuddered. Bugs. They bit her, and between them and the itching, she wanted to tear her skin off. But she forced herself to remain still and upright. She wouldn’t give Shoftiel the satisfaction of watching her squirm.

  “I said, on your knees!” he shouted, and the sound echoed across the valley. Max’s eardrums ruptured, and she could only hear watery, muffled sounds. She shook her head. Pressure slammed down on her. Her legs wobbled. She locked her knees, leaning on Tutresiel and Xaphan. The latter’s wings scorched her. She almost didn’t mind. The heat cooked the bugs, too, and distracted her from the incessant itching.

  She drew a breath, sucking insects into her mouth. “Come here and make me,” she said hoarsely, then spit and snapped her lips shut. There were still bugs in her mouth. She swallowed them, her stomach lurching. Disgusting.

  The next thing she knew, she was flying through the air. A moment after that, she felt the blow. Shoftiel had punched her in the chest. She landed in snow. She gasped as the air burst out of her. She couldn’t catch her breath. Her ribs were caved in, and her lungs were sprinklers. Her heart felt as if there was a knife driving through it, and it sent pain radiating down her arms and legs. The only good thing was that the bugs and itching had vanished. It was almost worth it.

  She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them again and started to push herself up. But before she could move, Shoftiel was in front of her. He stood between her splayed legs, his foot on her stomach. In his hand was a spear made of red smoke magic. It had two pointed prongs.

  “You are not worthy even to look upon us.”

  “Right, because you are so fucking special,” Max said. “Like herpes and Alzheimer’s. So tell me, what made you get your panties all wadded up about me? I’m no witch. I can’t bind anyone to anything. If you’re all pissy about Tutresiel and Xaphan being bound to Horngate, why come after me? Why not Giselle?”

  He stared down at her, his jaw jutting, his wings gilded smoke. Her hands inched toward his foot on her stomach. She didn’t want him turning into smoke or evaporating before she got a good grip on him. She gathered herself to take him into the abyss.

  Shoftiel bent lower, as if he wanted to share a secret. The scent of him was strong: syrupy-sweet and sharp, like über-hot peppers.

  “They stink of you,” he said. “Like you rubbed yourself all over them.”

  Max blinked. Not the answer she expected. “So you’ve got some jealousy issues?” she asked, her fingers working closer to his foot. She had spent a lot of time with the two angels. She’d leaned on them, hugged them, yelled at them, hit them, begged them to come back. “You got a secret hard on for Xaphan? Or maybe Tutresiel? I gotta say, I don’t see it. Neither one of them would give you the time of day. I think they’re way out of your league, Daffy. Maybe you should find yourself a nice sheep or a goat. They wouldn’t give you much trouble.”

  He thrust down with his leg, and she gasped, tears running down the sides of her face into her hair. Her breath gurgled in her throat, and her stomach was tight. She was bleeding out inside. She wasn’t going to last much longer.

  “You have been judged. You have been found guilty. This is your punishment,” he said, biting off every word
. He drew back the spear.

  “Just like that? A quickie? And here I thought you wanted me to suffer and die a thousand deaths and all that kind of crap. Oh, wait. You can’t keep it up, can you? You’ve got a premature-ejaculation problem, don’t you? You can’t hold your vengeance? You’ve got to spurt it all out in one shot?”

  She laughed. The sound was wet and weak, and it felt as if a lawn-mower blade was spinning inside her chest. “I thought you’d have more stamina than that.”

  The muscles in the angel’s arms and chest bulged as his hands tightened convulsively on the spear. It might look like smoke, but it was solid. He was past pissed off. His mouth opened, but only inarticulate sound came out. He lifted his arm so that he could stab her through with force.

  In that moment, several things happened at once.

  Behind him, light flashed as if a nuclear bomb had gone off. Tutresiel rose in the air, streaming white fire from his feathers. He held an enormous sword in his hands. It glowed with such brilliant witchlight that the sun seemed to dim. His face was a study of rage. His attention was fixed on Shoftiel.

  Good, thought Max dizzily. Once she took out Shoftiel, he’d be able to keep Sterling under control.

  Then Xaphan rose on the other side of Shoftiel. His wings burned with blue-white flames. Max could feel the heat from them. The snow around her softened and melted into water.

  “Let her go, Shoftiel,” Xaphan ordered.

  “She requires punishment. I have judged. I will have justice.”

  “You judged wrong,” Tutresiel said in that soft voice that should have made Shoftiel’s innards turn to Jell-O. “Let her go.”

  Shoftiel turned his head, disbelief written on his face. “You want to protect her?”

  “She belongs to us,” Xaphan said, not quite answering the question.

  “I brought you back from Ledrel,” Shoftiel said. “I want her. That is the price.”

  “No,” Tutresiel said. “We do not agree.”

  “I brought you out of there, and I can send you back,” Shoftiel warned. “You have no choice.”

  Could he really? Max gritted her teeth. Not while she could still do something about it. She’d been caught up in their exchange, but now she started dropping into her fortress.

  She channeled all of her pain into strength, drawing on the spells that had created her. It was enough. Barely. As she started the plunge inside, she clamped her hands around Shoftiel’s ankle and dragged him into the abyss.

  Except that she didn’t. She was too damned tired.

  He looked down at her. “Pathetic.”

  “Get your foot off her,” Tutresiel said, dropping to the ground. He raised his sword, pointing it at the base of Shoftiel’s neck.

  In that moment, Max knew exactly what she had to do. She sat up, forcing her body to obey. She had little strength. She weighed a thousand pounds. If she was lucky, she’d get one shot at this. She just had to time it right.

  “You threaten me?” Shoftiel said. “You should be on your knees thanking me for pulling you out of Ledrel. You could have been stuck there for thousands of years. And for what? Her?”

  He grabbed Max and jerked her to him. Perfect.

  “She is more valuable to me than I can say,” Tutresiel said softly. “Take your hands off her.”

  Shoftiel made a sound of pure fury and shoved Max away, releasing a bolt of fiery magic. Tutresiel knocked it away with his sword. The two turned in a circle, Shoftiel launching more bolts and Tutresiel batting them away.

  Xaphan pulled Max back against him, enfolding her in his wings and pouring healing energy into her.

  “What were you trying to do?” he whispered against her ear.

  “What I’m still trying to do,” she said. “Get rid of your buddy out there.”

  “There is no way. Shoftiel is powerful. Even together, Tutresiel and I can’t beat him.”

  “There has to be something that will hurt him,” Max said. Shoftiel wouldn’t give up on killing her and wiping away Horngate. He was determined before, but now he was humiliated. He would bear that grudge till the end of days.

  Xaphan shook his head, then gave a shrug. “If there is something, then I don’t know what it is.”

  “What happens if Tutresiel skewers Shoftiel on his sword?”

  “I don’t know.” He fell silent a long moment. Max looked up at him. “There’s something you aren’t saying. What is it?”

  “It is a legend from long ago,” he said reluctantly.

  “What legend?”

  “That once, many hundreds of years ago, Shoftiel visited his judgment on a pure soul. The woman’s child forged a blade of blood and bone and drove it through Shoftiel’s heart. He was banished to the Mistlands for five hundred years.”

  “A blade of blood and bone?” she repeated.

  “That is the story.”

  “It’s . . .” An idea was beginning to bloom in Max’s brain. A crazy idea, but if the story was true—“It’s a good story. If you don’t take it too literally.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s okay, I do. Let me go now. It’s time to finish this.”

  Xaphan lifted his wings away. Max felt much stronger, although Shoftiel’s brand still bled on her chest and stomach. Apparently Xaphan’s healing had limits.

  Tutresiel and Shoftiel were still sparring. Max took a breath and marched up beside Tutresiel, putting her hand on his corded forearm. “I got this,” she said, never taking her eyes off Shoftiel. She strode toward him.

  “Let’s be done with this,” Max said, coming to stand a few feet away.

  He raised his brows. “I will say this. You are no coward,” he said. “I admit that it will give me some pain to kill you.”

  “Ain’t that sweet?” she said. “Like a Hallmark card from Charles Manson. Before we go any further, I’d like to know something,” she said, inching forward a little.

  “What is that?”

  “According to you, my crime was to enslave angels and to contemplate harvesting their parts for my depraved and nefarious purposes. Is that about right?”

  “It is.”

  “But now you know I didn’t enslave anyone, and I didn’t put them in comas, and I didn’t play the farmer card, either. So why are you still out to kill me?”

  His expression stilled. “Are you saying you are innocent?”

  “What do you think?”

  He lifted his chin arrogantly. “Your kind is never innocent,” he said. “Perhaps you did not do this thing, but you are not innocent.”

  “Any more than you are, oh, angel of righteousness and justice,” Max said dryly. “But in this case, Daffy, you are wrong.”

  Throughout their conversation, she’d been inching closer, so that by the time she spoke those last words, there was less than a foot between them. She gave no warning of her intention. Quick as a cobra strike, she jerked back her arm, flattening her hand and jabbing it into his chest as hard as she could. Her arm slid through his flesh, a blade of blood and bone.

  In the blink of an eye, the world vanished.

  THE DAY PASSED AGONIZINGLY SLOWLY. ALEXANDER lost track of Max inside the haze of magic surrounding the cult compound. He paced the length of the basement, the pain in his head unrelenting.

  Tyler watched him, sitting cross-legged at the foot of the basement steps. He pinwheeled his knives in his hands, his eyes hooded. He paused every now and again to cut a slice across his palm and watch it heal up. Alexander should have told him not to waste his energy, but Tyler needed an outlet for his boiling emotions. It was that or go chasing after Max in the sun. Cutting was less fatal.

  Thor squatted against the wall, his gaze turned inward. His hands clenched and unclenched, as if he wanted to strangle someone.

  Gregory had fallen into a hard sleep, and the other Blades snatched what rest they could. Oak sat on the steps above Tyler, watching Alexander pace.

  “Waiting sucks,” Nami announced in the silence of the aft
ernoon.

  “Amen,” Tyler said softly. He set his hands on his knees and looked up at the ceiling, then sighed and looked back down again. “She’s got to be okay,” he said to no on in particular. “She has to.”

  No one answered. She did not actually have to be okay, and that was the problem.

  Alexander shied from the thought. It made his head hurt. Max was resilient, smart, stubborn, and strong. She could take care of herself.

  The question was, would she?

  As dusk began to fall, he roused Gregory and ordered everybody to eat all they could from the pantry shelves. Finally, they opened the door and spilled out of the farmhouse. The snow had stopped falling at last. Alexander closed his eyes, pushing his senses outward.

  “Holy Mother of fuck,” he said slowly, using one of Max’s favorite sayings.

  “What?” Tyler said.

  “Tutresiel and Xaphan are awake,” Alexander said, then broke into a run, heading for a knob of ground well above Mansion Heights. Tyler and Thor fell in beside him. Behind them, the others strung out. Steel and Flint trailed farther behind, having loaded Gregory into his kayak sled.

  “Awake?” Thor echoed. He shook his head. “Awake?” he repeated again. “What the hell are they doing here? How did they know?”

  “I could not say. But I am absolutely sure it is them.” He could not mistake their spirit flames—silver fire. “There is also a witch I do not recognize. Probably Sterling. Giselle, Kyle—oh, damn. They have got Tris, Geoff Brewer, Doris Lydman, Liam, and Bambi. How did they get caught?”

  “Are they alive? What about Max?” Tyler said.

  “They are alive. No Max.”

  A crowd of people circled the area where the angels and the witches had collected. There were several thousand of them. Max was not among them.

  “That means she made it into the abyss,” Tyler said, his voice denying any other possibility.

  Alexander did not answer. A shaft of fire burned through his head. His left eye felt as if it was going to pop out of his skull, and his chest felt as if it was going to explode.