Crimson Wind

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  “How is it that two Prime Shadowblades are ….. working together?”

  Max pulled back, slowly shifting her gaze from Alexander. “Long story. And none of your business. Do you guys know that you stink and you’re covered in blood?”

  Ivy looked down at herself. She touched the dried blood on her jeans, and her throat jerked as she fought against tossing her cookies. “We’ve been sleeping in short shifts and guarding Judith and Gregory. I didn’t even think—” She broke off, her mouth clamping shut.

  Max wondered how old she was. How old all of them were. None of them was trained that well. In the human world, they’d be scary and tough, but in the world of witches, they were pathetic.

  The others returned carrying a pile of weapons. Maple had retrieved the ones from the sickroom and offered Max her .454.

  “Keep it,” Max said. “Start shooting when you see them. Only, for all our sakes, try not to set up a crossfire where you’re sure to hit your team when you shoot. I’d appreciate it especially if you didn’t hit me or Alexander.”

  They all looked vaguely startled and shamefaced.

  “Sorry,” Maple muttered, red-cheeked.

  “Did no one train you?” Max asked.

  The other woman lifted her shoulder in a half-shrug. “Patricia thought we were good enough.”

  “You aren’t. Not by a long shot. If you were mine—” But they weren’t. “Give me the swords.”

  She took them from Oak and turned to Alexander. “Do it,” she said. The others would see what the amulet was, but there was no way to keep it a secret and still get this done.

  Alexander sliced his hand across the palm and smeared the blood over the gold disk front and back. He put it around his neck, sliding it beneath his shirt. And vanished.

  “What the hell?” yelped Oak.

  “How did he do that?” Ivy asked.

  “Where did he go?” Maple said nervously.

  “Here.” Max handed two swords to Alexander. As she hoped, they disappeared like his clothing when he took them. She turned to the others, not bothering to answer the obvious. “When these ice witches come, he’ll cut their heads off. We have to distract them first. Shoot on sight. You’ll stand in ranks. Two of you crouching down, two on your feet, and the last two up on the bed. Don’t shoot each other in the back. Alexander will be behind the door. You’ll face the opposite corner. He’ll be going for their heads, so be aware of him, and don’t shoot in that direction. Keep on target—please tell me you can at least hit what you aim at.”

  They nodded at this last, but none seemed all that confident. Max fought the urge to slap each of them. “I’ll be down on the floor, hopefully keeping their attention on me. I shouldn’t be in your line of fire, but if I am, try not to blow holes in me.”

  A wave of nausea rolled through Max. She felt sick and wobbly. She saw it hit the others. She drew a deep breath. Now or never. “Looks like they’re here. Give me a shield and let’s get in there.”

  She’d already taken two .45s and a sword. Now she led the way inside. These ice queens had the power to just show up wherever they wanted to be. There was nothing saying they would bother with the door.

  Judith looked up, her lips pulling down. She said nothing, but crawled up next to Gregory, holding him in her arms. The Spears and Blades took up their positions. At least they could follow directions. They looked resolute despite their fear and sudden sickness. That was something in their favor. Max took up a station near the closed door.

  “Scrape away the salt on the threshold,” she told the air where Alexander was. Then she smashed the smudge pot nearest her and stamped it out. Oak and Ivy did the same with the rest of them. The salt and smoke might have held the ice queens back or not. But at this point, Max wanted them in the room in her trap. She didn’t want to have to walk into theirs.

  Nausea hit again and a feeling of exhaustion. More than that—it was a sense of futility, that the world was hollow and empty and nothing mattered anymore. It slid over Max like sticky water, pulling her down into despair. She made a face and shook herself, clearing her mind. Her companions froze in place, staring blankly at nothing. Max slapped the back of Oak’s head. “Come on, fight it. You’re stronger than that.” She did the same with Flint and Eagle. They blinked and woke the others from their catatonia.

  The temperature dropped. Max’s breath plumed in the air. She saw where Alexander stood as his breath did the same. She pressed back against the wall, waiting for the door to open. Instead, it crumbled to dust. Parts of the walls on either side also crumbled. The smell of Divine magic washed into the room, and the three ice queens came with it in a triangular formation. They seemed to float rather than walk. They stood more than six feet tall and were exactly as Maple had described them—white hair and skin, with silver-blue robes that shimmered iridescently.

  Max didn’t wait to see more. She started shooting, aiming for their heads. Gunshots exploded in the small room as the others did the same.

  As soon as she pulled the trigger, the room became smothering, and Max wanted nothing more than to slide to the floor and rest. Breathing became almost impossible. Her heart slowed, and she tottered dizzily, the gun sagging in her hand as the witches cast a spell over the room.

  A second later, a sound like nothing she’d ever heard before cut across her mind. It was like a chorus of wails from one of Dante’s hell circles. It filled her head and scrambled her brain. She might have screamed with it. Beside her, she vaguely heard her companions fall to the floor. She smelled blood and something bitter, like burned onion and sulfur. Bile rose in her throat, and she could neither spit it out nor swallow it.

  The sound continued to vibrate through her, shaking the foundations of her reason. A part of her remembered what Maple had said happened the first time the witches visited. First the sound, then the blast of death. Max wasn’t going to allow it. She still had her family to rescue, and these bitches were done killing.

  She pushed one of her feet forward a few inches. Then the other. Her hand spasmed and went slack, and the shield slipped to the floor with a loud clang. Her gun followed as her other hand did the same. Dammit. Max reached for her other gun. Her arms felt dead; she could barely feel them. She fumbled her fingers around the handle and gripped it loosely. Another step. Where was Alexander? She blearily looked around her. One of the ice queens lay on the floor. Or what was left of her. She’d turned to granular bits of white and silver sand. The two remaining ice queens clutched hands, their mouths open wider than should have been possible as they screamed.

  Max edged forward, forcing her legs to move when all she wanted to do was fall down. She wanted to be close enough that she couldn’t miss, even if she couldn’t keep hold of the gun.

  Another four scraping steps put her in position. The ice queens either didn’t notice or were ignoring her. No doubt they figured the racket they were making had incapacitated everyone. She raised the gun. It rattled in her hand. She tightened her grip, forcing her other hand up to help hold it. She thumbed the hammer and held herself firmly, locking her elbows as best she could, her muzzle aimed point-blank at the ear of one of the ice queens. She fired.

  Her hands jerked upward, and the gun went flying. But the ice queen dropped to the floor in a pile of sand. The other one turned to look at Max, rage making her almost ugly. She never stopped screaming. Her hand came up, and she pointed.

  Dust, Max thought. She’s going to turn me into dust.

  Suddenly magic flared along her left arm, burning through her body. She felt a yank, and she was in the web between worlds. It was made of rainbow magic, and it stretched through a black plain as far as she could see. A sleeve of Scooter’s blue-white magic sheathed her forearm. Before she could even think, her body cramped and pain flared along every one of her synapses. She’d known that using Scooter’s gift would hurt, but at the moment, she didn’t mind. It had also saved her butt.

  A second later, she found herself being dragged through the web.
Or, rather, strands of it reached for her, passing her along toward ….. somewhere. When they touched her, it was like being twined with vines of acid. She swallowed the pain out of long habit and just waited. She had a sense of place, of where she’d been. She needed it to hurry up—she had to get back to help Alexander fight. If he was still on his feet. Her heart clenched, and that was a pain that was far more unbearable than the web or anything else.

  Suddenly the strands of the web curled away, and she found herself falling.

  Chapter 15

  THE AIR WHISTLED ALONG THE EDGE OF THE SWORD as Alexander swung it around and chopped through the neck of the first ice queen. Cold forked like lightning through his body, stabbing his heart and lungs. Her head went flying and her body collapsed in a fall of white and blue sand. At the same moment, the other two opened their mouths, and the noise that issued forth was like the cries of tortured demons. He fell back against the wall as the sound filled him, tearing at every sinew. His body went limp, and he wanted nothing more than slide down to the floor.

  He forced himself up, gripping the hilts of the two swords. There was a stench of something dead and spoiled. He looked for Max. She was inching herself forward toward the two screaming ice queens, a harsh mask of grim determination on her face. Her eyes were splotched red with broken blood vessels, and blood dripped from her nose. The other Spears and Blades had collapsed to the floor.

  Alexander told himself to move. If Max took out one of the remaining ice queens, he could finish the last one. His arms were heavy. He did not know if he could force himself to swing a sword with enough speed to kill. He let one fall, putting both hands around the hilt of the other and lifting it high, ready to chop.

  Max reached the shoulder of one of the ice queens. Slowly, her gun came up. She squeezed the trigger. The sound of the blast pounded through his skull, and her hands jerked up with the recoil. The gun went flying as the ice queen dropped in a shower of blue and white sand. The last one turned. Her face hardened, and her mouth pulled into a gaping rictus. She could have swallowed a melon whole. She lifted her hand, pointing.

  No! Alexander surged forward, bringing his sword down with all the strength he could muster. Just as he chopped into the ice queen’s neck, Max disappeared.

  The noise ceased as the last ice queen fell in a heap of sand. But Alexander hardly noticed. His entire body was wrapped in an agony of loss. Sobs lodged in his chest, the pain too deep, too vast, for release.

  He dropped to his knees, reaching blindly for the dust that had been Max. He’d failed. He groped at the stone floor. Nothing. He yanked off the amulet, certain it was interfering with his vision. He scrabbled, looking. No dust. She was—

  “I never thought I’d be saying thank you to Scooter, but the bastard saved my ass big-time,” she said as she walked through the gaping entrance that used to be the door.

  —alive.

  He lunged to his feet and caught her up in his arms, clamping her tightly against him. She hugged him back with fierce strength. He could not speak. The feeling of desperation and loss still clung to him with such force that he hardly knew how to cope with it.

  Max loosened her hold. “Hey, Slick. I missed you, too, but we’ve got a lot of work left to do tonight.”

  He took a deep breath, filling himself with the wild, sweet smell of her, then stepped back, forcing himself to let her go. He could not let her know the depth of his feelings. Not here, not now. He did not want to scare her off. She was already too skittish.

  Max bent, helping Oak to sit up. He wiped the blood from his face, looking halfway to being a ghost. He was even thinner than before the ice queens had arrived, and his skin was ash gray.

  “Everybody still alive?” Max asked.

  There were positive replies all around, including from Judith.

  “What about Gregory?” Maple asked as she lurched to her feet. Alexander steadied her.

  “He’s alive,” the witch said tiredly. “But I don’t know for how much longer. I am nearly depleted.”

  The others stood slowly, none making a sound. They looked lost. Until now, the need to protect Gregory and Judith and get revenge against the ice queens had driven them and kept their grief and loss at bay. Now they had to face their future, and it was very bleak. They were covenless, and one of the two witches they had left was probably dying. Certainly Judith might have the power to form her own coven eventually—she was triangle-strength, after all—but she was looking like she might blow away in the first good wind.

  “Why did they come here? What did they want?” Steel asked, sounding more like a lost child than a Shadowblade.

  “A new home, maybe?” Max said. “A well of power? Who knows for sure? But you can’t stay here. I doubt they’ll stay dead for long. They died way too easily. A bullet shouldn’t have killed them, and probably not beheading. You need to move on.” She glanced down. “Look.”

  The piles of sand were starting to shimmer and shift. Max kicked through them, scattering the grains. She scraped some salt into the mix. The shimmering movement died. Alexander did not think that would last long.

  “Move on? To what? There’s nothing left for us. Just glass statues,” Maple said. Weariness hung on her like a lead coat.

  “And two witches,” Alexander pointed out. “You fought to protect them tonight. They still need you.”

  Maple nodded slowly, then stood straighter. Her lips trembled and then firmed as she took hold of herself. She looked at Max and Alexander. “Thank you. You helped us when you didn’t need to. We owe you. I owe you.”

  “Just don’t make it a waste of our time. Get out of here and survive.”

  “We will.” Strength and purpose were returning to the other woman. “The least we can do to repay you is give you a vehicle. I’ll take you to one. In the meantime, everybody get together what you need to go. We get on the road tonight. Oak, gather weapons.” She looked at the twins. “Steel and Flint, pack up Judith and Gregory’s things. Eagle, search the mansion for money and jewelry—anything of value that we can carry. All of you, collect whatever you can’t live without. We won’t be coming back.”

  The others continued to look shell-shocked for a moment longer, then, like her, they pulled themselves together. Alexander was impressed. They were inexperienced and only half-trained, their coven had just been destroyed, and they were exhausted and wounded, but they were not cowards, and they were not going to give up.

  Maple led the way back outside and they got inside the pickup truck. Neither Max nor Alexander pointed out that she was hardly in any shape to be out in the night. Healthy Spears could handle the dark for a couple of hours, and Maple was nothing close to healthy. Nor was she a child, and she had a right to make her own choices. She drove them around to the rear of the house. A long, three-sided pole barn provided cover for a line of vehicles, from motorcycles to a couple of RVs.

  “Take what you want. The keys are in them,” Maple said. “I’d offer you food, but everything we have is tainted.”

  “The weapons you gave us will be enough, with the car,” Max said. She and Alexander had collected several boxes of shells, two bandoliers of grenades and flash bombs, and the two swords.

  They got out. Max started to walk away, then stopped, closing her eyes. “I am such a sucker,” she murmured with a sigh, then turned. She glared at Alexander. “What are you grinning at?”

  “You. Have you ever passed by a stray in need?”

  “Horngate lost most of our witches and a lot of our Spears and Blades. We need to rebuild quickly, and these people need a home. It’s perfectly reasonable.”

  “Of course it is,” he said sardonically. He could not tear his eyes away from her. It still felt like she could disappear into nothing. He would be having nightmares about that for a while.

  Max made a face at him and leaned back through the open window. “Where will you go?”

  Maple’s expression tightened. “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. What about you? Where ar
e you headed?”

  “My family is in trouble in Winters,” Max said baldly, surprising Alexander with the truth. “We’re going to help them.”

  “Family? Seriously? But you’re—how old are you?”

  “Old enough to know better. But I want to make you an offer. My covenstead is called Horngate. It’s up in Montana.” She opened the door and grabbed a pencil and paper off the console. It was an ad for a big arts fair in Ukiah. She turned it over and wrote down Niko’s number and directions to Horngate. “If you want a place there, call this number and tell them I sent you. If there’s no answer, go to the covenstead. Just you, no one else. Tell them your story, and tell them I sent you.”

  “Why? Why would you help us again after we kidnapped you?”

  “I’ve got my reasons. If you decide to go, take Highway 101 up north. Don’t get mixed up in the magic in the valley.”

  Maple frowned. “Magic in the valley?”

  “You didn’t know? Shasta started erupting last night. It’s spewing wild magic into the valley and it’s very dangerous. Stay out of it.”

  “We haven’t heard anything about it.” She hesitated. “But Winters is in the valley.”

  “If only that was the worst of our problems. Someone attacked the town three days ago.”

  Maple’s eyes widened. “Then you should go. You’re losing night.”

  Max handed her the paper. “Horngate is a good place to go. Better get inside now. You’re turning black.”

  With that, she and Alexander went to select their car. They picked a new Mustang with a light-sealed box built behind the front seats and into the trunk. Alexander got behind the wheel and Max did not argue. They reached the main road and turned east, following the shore of the lake. Neither spoke. Alexander could not help replaying that moment when Max vanished and he thought she had died. The pain of it still pulsed through his body.

  He pressed the gas pedal down, squealing around the curve. He glanced at the dashboard clock. It was just past midnight. They still had time to get to Winters and find out what was going on before the sun came up. They still had time to die tonight. Giselle’s prophecy had not come true, but there was still Magpie’s: You will be Prime.