by P. N. Elrod
“Mac,” I said. “Mac, we need help . . . there are kids . . . they’re in cages. . . .” I managed to spit out the whole story. I don’t know how long it was before Mac and a bunch of squad cars and ambulances and other official vehicles showed up. . . . I sat down on the curb and drifted, shock finally crashing over me. I’d almost died. I’d come within a handspan of it. But I wasn’t—I was here, exhausted and dirty in a dress that was too big for me.
A pair of feet in combat boots came to an abrupt halt in front of me. “Sunny?” Luna choked, dropping her paper cup of coffee onto the pavement.
“Luna!” There was chaos around us, officers carrying out the children, more of them searching the house, radios and sirens filling up the morning like electric birdcalls. Madison looked at me as a paramedic carried her to his ambulance, but she was too weak to do more than stare.
I needed to forget about the night under the ground, the dull hopelessness on the kids’ faces. I went to hug my cousin, and then froze.
I was standing a few feet behind her.
Trying to describe seeing yourself staring back at is like trying to describe a visit to Willy Wonka’s factory—nothing you say will ever do the moment justice.
“Luna,” I heard myself say urgently. “Who’s that?”
“You bitch!” I launched myself at her. “You glamour-wearing bitch!”
Luna held us apart as fake-me cowered and I spat invective that I had learned from Luna but never had the occasion to use.
“I don’t know what’s going on!” Fake-Sunny cried, cowering.
“Luna, it’s a blood witch glamour!” I screamed. “She’s not me!”
“Everybody shut the hell up!” Luna bellowed. She leaned over to me, back to the fake Sunny, and took a deep sniff. Her eyes widened, gold creeping in around the edges. “You need a shower, Sun,” she whispered to me. “But I’ll take it over the stinky perfume you came back with.”
“I’ve been in a freaking cage all night,” I muttered. “Give me a break.”
“What the fuck is that thing I’ve been having coffee with down at the precinct?”
“A witch using my blood.”
I was prepared for Luna to turn around and beat seven kinds of hell out of the fake me, but I wasn’t prepared for Not-Sunny to grab Luna’s sidearm out of holster and aim it. At us.
“Nobody move!” he/she ordered. Luna shook her head, rubbing her temples.
“This is the weirdest gods-damned morning I’ve ever had.”
“We’re all going to get in the car and drive out of here nice and calm,” said Not-Sunny, “and nobody is going to be hurt.”
“Oh, dude, somebody is hurting for this,” Luna assured it. “The therapy alone is going to take months.”
A shadow loomed up behind Not-Sunny, from around the corner of an ambulance but I kept my eyes on it.
“Get real,” I snapped, to keep her . . . its? . . . whatever, eyes on me. “You’re in the middle of a damn police raid. Where are we gonna go?”
Troy materialized, holding a portable fire extinguisher. He said, “Excuse me.”
Not-Sunny spun, and he whammed her across the temple with the metal cylinder.
Luna let out a breath. “Took you long enough, Mac.”
I stood over the glamour, looking at my slack face. “How’d you know that wasn’t me, Mac?”
“Maybe because you’d never go insane and grab my gun?” Luna snorted. “You’re way too mild.”
Troy put his hand on my shoulder. “Sunny wouldn’t need a gun. She’s too stylish for that.” He winked at me, and then called the paramedics over. “Treat her and cuff her. Make sure she goes to the prison ward at the hospital.”
Luna sat me on the hood of her car and got me a water bottle, although I think we both wished it was a glass of scotch. “So Nielsen stole your blood from the courthouse, made that thing look like you and sent her back here, while entrapping you and using a bunch of kidnapped kids to raise her power for . . . what?” She shook her head. “You damn witches never make a lick of sense. Why does she have such a hard-on for you?”
“They turned into Trotter, his attorney, and a prison guard,” I recited. I was tired of telling the story, and remembering the sick, twisted-up magick that Nielsen commanded. And remembering how useless I’d been. I curled my fists in my lap. “Maybe . . . after the courthouse . . . they wanted me out of the way.” It couldn’t be because I was a real threat. I was nothing next to Nielsen’s skill. It galled me.
“At least now we know how every witch trying to replace O’Halloran is getting picked off,” Luna muttered. “ASA Batshit has access to all of his case files and known associates. Soon there won’t be any competition. Just her.”
My head snapped up. “Luna.” I had it, the flash and the tumbling of dominoes that comes when everything that’s been whirling around your brain suddenly clicks together. It was sort of a rush. Also, sort of nauseating.
Luna blinked at me. “What? You look like you just swallowed a marble.”
“If there’s just her, she won’t have a hope of cementing control over the city,” I rushed. “Nobody even knows she’s a witch. She hides it with this big green emerald thing.”
“How very Indiana Jones,” Luna said dryly. I waved her quiet and went on.
“But if she gets Trotter on board, then she has a mouthpiece,” I cried. “He’s the last of the O’Halloran circle.”
“He’d never do it,” said Luna. “And anyway, he’s going to prison.”
Her face lost color as she arrived at the same station as my train of thought. “Hex me.”
“Trotter wouldn’t do it, but the glamour would,” I said. “And thanks to that explosion-happy idiot in court, Nielsen will get a mistrial.”
“She’d have to pop the real Trotter.” Luna’s finger drummed against her desk. “Prison guard, you said?”
“Yes . . . ,” I started, but she was already in the car. I followed her, and we fishtailed onto the street and the freeway in the direction of the Los Altos federal prison.
WE DROVE NORTHWEST through sunrise, and into morning, Luna in grim silence, me in a slightly panicked one. My stomach twisted. What could I do against Nielsen? She’d wipe the floor with me.
Los Altos is a clump of gray at the top of gray cliffs with the blue Pacific washing the bottom. Bolted to the bedrock, it has a reputation of being nearly escape-proof. That is, if you weren’t being set upon by a couple of witches bent on your death.
The guard at the outside wall didn’t want to let me in, but Luna snarled at him until he relented.
We ran through a maze of industrial-lit hallways until we came to the ad-sec block. Luna fetched up against the desk, panting. “You got a Nathan Trotter in custody?”
“Yeah,” said the guard, “but you’re going to have to wait your turn, Detective. He’s meeting with the state’s attorney.”
Luna hit the desk. “Shit.”
“Open the door,” I said. “It’s an emergency.”
The guard yawned. She looked like she was waiting to get her nails done. “Give me one good reason.”
“The state’s attorney is a witch bent on taking over Nocturne City and instigating a new reign of magickal warfare. She’s here to kill Trotter and replace him with a bespelled blood witch. Oh, and she locked me in a cage.”
The guard blinked. She looked to Luna, “An emergency, you said?”
“Lady, just open the gods-damn door!” I bellowed, making both Luna and the guard jump.
“Okay, fine,” she grumbled, buzzing us in. Luna jerked her sidearm out of holster, shoved it at the guard, and stormed through the gate. “Nocturne City cops,” the guard said under her breath, the way you’d say Donkey-licking bondage freaks.
Luna ran ahead of me down the hall to the visitor’s room. Through the wire-mesh door, we could see Bentley and Nielsen sitting with Trotter, who was pushed as far back against the wall as he could get.
The guard outside the door was familiar.
“He’s the glamour,” I gasped at Luna. She locked on to the guy like a Titan missile.
The guard turned his head, had enough time to say “What?” and went down like a sack full of nails. Luna shook her fist out, knuckle bones popping back into place.
“What was that?” Nielsen said from behind the door.
Bentley stuck his head out. Luna wrapped her hands around his throat before he could say or see anything other than her face. “Lock my cousin in a cage?” she growled, and then threw him back into the visitor’s room, where he bounced off the table and into the wall with a clang.
Nielsen stood up, reaching for her necklace clasp. Bentley drew his knife and Luna grabbed for it, the two of them wrestling. Trotter looked at the four of us, eyes wide.
“Don’t,” I said to Nielsen.
Her lips curved up. “Don’t what, Sunny? Don’t kill you? Don’t take out one of the few witches who could be a problem to me while I have such a perfect chance?”
“Don’t kill him,” I said, pointing at Trotter. Nielsen moved her hands away from the clasp of her necklace.
“You know, considering how tricky you are when your magick is up, I think we’ll do this the old-fashioned way.” She picked up Bentley’s knife from where Luna had beaten it out of his hand and advanced on Trotter.
I froze, watching the scene play out in my mind. Blood spatter, Trotter twitching in his cuffs, the glamour coming to take his place . . .
Nielsen put the knife to Trotter’s throat. “Do something!” he screamed at me.
I’ve been in exactly two fights in my life: with Joey Grant, an odious boy who threw my sandwich into the sandbox in first grade, and Mary-Anne Price, the girl in middle school who started calling me “Blood-freak.” She was a lot bigger than me, and she won. I got a black eye and would have gotten worse if Luna hadn’t pulled her off me and broken her nose.
Luna and Bentley were still fighting, he powered by blood and she by rage. I was on my own.
This sucked.
I had no magick, and all I could hear was my heart beating. Nielsen pulled Trotter’s hair back and put the knife to his throat. And she smiled at me, like she knew I had no hope of winning.
Something inside me snapped. I lunged for Nielsen and caught her around the waist, knocking her away from Trotter. She fought me off, long manicured nails scratching for my face, and I balled up my fist and hit her, right in the eye.
“Ow!” Nielsen shrieked. “That hurt!”
My fist twinged and there was blood on my knuckles. Luna made that look so easy.
I grabbed Nielsen’s necklace and pulled. “That’s the idea.”
The cord snapped, and I felt the magick flood back over the room. I’d let Nielsen’s power free, but my magick came back to me, hot and white with the adrenaline in my blood. I looked at Trotter. “Do you want to die?”
“No!” he yelled.
“Then you better help me,” I ordered, and reached for my caster.
Nielsen’s power came up at the same time, and it was like standing under a thirty-foot wave. I threw up a shield, a wall of pure energy, and I felt Trotter’s join me. He wasn’t very strong, but he had precise control.
Nielsen laughed. “This is great. You really think you’re going to hold me off until what? The cavalry comes? ASA Nielsen can make you all look like a bunch of crooked cops and crazy witches, and Ginger will make sure that if that doesn’t work, your bodies will never be identified.”
She pushed again, and I staggered, feeling blood come from my nose. Nielsen was laughing. Trotter and Luna were screaming at me, but I couldn’t hear them.
Nielsen could beat me. She could beat me easily and she knew it. I gasped, going to one knee, and let my shield crack, just a little.
“Gods!” Trotter yelped. “What’s going on?”
I watched Nielsen through my lashes as she closed on me. “She’s weak, is what,” Nielsen said. “And you’re next. Ginger can’t be stopped.”
I gathered my magick to me, in a tight, hot ball of shield. I was going to get only one shot at this.
“Ginger is going to kill you, Sunny Swann,” Nielsen singsonged. “How do you feel about that?”
I met her eyes. “Bitch, please. We all know that’s not your natural color.”
My magick flew from my caster, singing through the air and spreading like a battering ram, catching Nielsen’s burgeoning shield. It threw her backwards into the wall, smoke coming off her caster and her hands. I kept pushing her until there was nothing left and I fell on the floor, for real.
The next thing I remember is seeing Luna standing over me, blood running from her cut lip, grinning.
THE PRISON DOCTOR patched us up and declared us fit to leave. Luna radioed for someone to collect Nielsen and Bentley, who looked like he’d been slammed repeatedly into the grille of a Mack truck, and the U.S. Marshals to move Trotter to a different prison. He barely looked at me as we went by his holding cell, and I sniffed, “You’re welcome.”
“You did good, Sun,” Luna said when she came over to the car. I was sitting on the hood, letting the sun warm me. I ached all over from the fight with Nielsen, and my head buzzed as my drained reservoir of power echoed inside.
“I learned from you,” I said. Luna waved it off.
“No. You’ve got a lot of spine, kid. You should let it out more often.”
“Luna?” I said, sliding off the hood and opening the passenger door. “It’s been fun, foiling a magick conspiracy and all, but if you ever hear me suggest that I should do something like this again, do me a favor?”
She dug in the glove compartment for a pair of sunglasses. “What?”
“Shoot me before I can say yes.”
“Fair enough.”
I settled back against the seat and shut my eyes. “I did pretty much kick ass, though, didn’t I?”
Luna laughed as she started the motor and pulled onto the highway. “You want some tights to go with that cape and cowl?”
“Oh, Hex you.”
“Hey, I’m just saying . . .”
I let her talk while we drove back toward my real life, mundane and magickal only in ways that didn’t hurt. I wasn’t going to start running around protecting the weak, but the small warm thought grew in my mind that I’d used my magick down and dirty, gotten into a fight, and felt the euphoria of life-or-death.
And I gotta admit, I kind of liked it.
Caitlin Kittredge is the author of the Nocturne City series, featuring werewolf detective Luna Wilder, and the Black London series, featuring mage Jack Winter. She lives in Olympia, Washington, with two pushy cats, and wears a lot of black, thus fulfilling two writer clichés at once. She maintains a popular blog about writing, films, and life at www.caitlinkittredge.com.
DARK SINS
JENNA MACLAINE
VENICE, 1818
MY BODY HIT the wooden floor with a loud thud. I’m not sure if it was the fall that knocked my breath from my chest, or the naked man who landed on top of me. Either way, I was left lying on the cold floor, blinking up at the ceiling, and trying to drag some air back into my lungs. I don’t have to breathe, you understand, but it’s one of those human quirks, like a love for whiskey and chocolate, that being dead just doesn’t change. You see, I’m a vampire.
“And a very bad witch,” I muttered, trying to push Michael’s body off of mine.
He groaned and rolled to one side. “You are not a bad witch, love. But I think you might have dislocated my knee that time.”
I gave him an arch look. “Where the hell are our clothes?” I asked.
We both sat up and looked back at the bed. Sure enough, there were our clothes, lying on the sheets as if our bodies had simply vanished from them. Which they had.
“Oh, damn,” I spat. “We were supposed to end up naked in the bed, and the clothes were supposed to end up on the floor!”
Michael smiled at me indulgently, his blue eyes twinkling. “Yes, dear, I know. You’re getting better, though. We
were just a few feet away this time.”
I growled in frustration as he stood, scooped me up, and tossed me on the bed. He started at my right ankle and began slowly kissing his way up the inside of my leg.
“I am a bad witch,” I said. “I’ve spent the last three summers in Inverness with my aunt Maggie, who hates me, and the best we’ve accomplished is to give me enough control over my magic so that things don’t blow up or burst into flames anymore. Even Maggie thinks I’m a bad witch. And possibly evil.”
“She doesn’t hate you, darling. She’s just afraid of what you are, and I think she’s also a bit jealous.”
“Of me? For the love of the Goddess, why? She’s got more magic in her little finger than I could even think about calling.”
He stopped kissing the side of my knee and looked up at me. In the candlelight, his cheekbones stood out in sharp relief, making his beautiful face look more than a little dangerous.
“Not more magic,” he said, “and not better magic. I’ve seen your magic, Cin, and your aunt cannot even come close to it. She’s just better at working with what she has than you are. Be patient, love. You’ll find your way. I believe in you.”
I smiled and reached down, pushing a lock of dark blond hair off his forehead. “But what if I never figure it out, Michael?” I asked softly. “I have all this power, I can feel it inside me, but I just can’t seem to get it to work the way it’s supposed to. My spells are a disaster and only work a fraction of the time. The rest of the time I have to be careful that I don’t accidentally . . .”
“Turn someone into a weasel?” he asked.
And, yes, I had done that once. I groaned and flopped down against the pillows.
“Cin, sweetheart, love of my undead life,” Michael said as he trailed kisses up the inside of my thigh, “it’s only been three years. You’re the first witch anyone’s ever heard of who’s been turned into a vampire and still kept her powers. We have eternity ahead of us. Have some patience, and it will come to you.”
I snorted. “You know very well that I’m the least patient person—”
