War Witch

by Layla Nash

  His lips thinned at he watched me, the debate clear in his eyes, but he finally shook his head and headed back to the car. “I’m serious, Lily. An hour, tops. Be here.”

  I waved him off and didn’t look back as his car started up and peeled out, not quite burning rubber but also not dawdling to watch me walk up the stairs. My feet dragged with fatigue as I navigated the cracked sidewalk and the dark stairs, muttering under my breath at the lack of light. Another broken bulb and the landlord too cheap to replace it. Flies, too, buzzed in a cloud near the landing, probably having migrated from something disgusting in the dumpster.

  The witching hour played tricks with the moonlight on the walls as I dug for my keys. At first I thought they were only shadows on my door, smearing in long streaks and puddling around the welcome mat.

  It wasn’t until I was a few feet away that I realized it wasn’t. The smell gave it away, cloying but too familiar.

  Blood.

  Chapter 16

  A bloody handprint marked my door, and others smeared along the jamb and adjacent wall. The blood gleamed dully in the moonlight, congealed but not dry. A fly buzzed closer, bumping into my cheek, and I flinched.

  My feet stuck to the landing as I stared at the door. Someone left bloody marks all over my home. Someone found me. Someone who had a grudge or a reason to hurt me. Maybe Chompers, maybe Anne Marie, maybe the dark witch. Maybe a half dozen others I’d managed to avoid for the past five years. I took a shaky breath as my heart started to drum against my ribs. I’d faced more frightening things, but I’d never much cared what happened to me until after the war. It was far easier to charge into chaos when it didn’t really matter if you survived. Wanting to live made things a little more difficult.

  Irritation gathered over the dread as I looked down. I had to buy another welcome mat.

  I pressed my shaking hands together and dredged up power as fatigue weighed me down. Smart witches didn’t walk through bloody doors without powerful weapons to meet whatever lurked on the other side. I closed my eyes as the world shimmered around me, and for a moment I teetered on the edge of passing out. I rocked back on my heels and might have tumbled into darkness if I hadn’t caught a whiff of Leif’s cologne, lingering from before.

  The cold magic crawled through me as I stared at the door and considered calling Leif. I didn’t want to go inside alone, and he would never make me. I would never have to see what waited inside, would never face what left bloody handprints on my door, if I called him. Then I shook myself back to reality and reached for the Morrigan, the unflinching persona who’d laid waste to entire cities. I was not a coward. It was my home. I’d never called for help before, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to start then.

  The cold indifference of magic helped. Rosa’s mantra steadied the world as I repeated it under my breath, over and over until I could ignore the flies and the sickly smell of old blood. I forgot about his past and my present, let the magic have me, fill me up. Make me invincible. I cut away Lily and Leif and Tracy and fear, until there was only Lilja.

  Lilja, who exacted a terrible price when wronged. Who still hunted the dark witches who stole from her after seven years. Who tames the Northern Lights and wrote her name in the sky. Anger flared red in the periphery of the magic, waiting for an opportunity to release hell, and I pushed it away as Mother’s ghost whispered in my ear about that damnable Viking temper.

  I opened the door with a whisper of air. The wards, damaged by Leif’s artless entry the day before and broken again by whoever left the bloody handprints, flared weakly as I stepped over the threshold. I followed the trail of blood into my apartment, feeling nothing as I noted more smears on the walls, like someone dragged bloody fingers over the shoddy paint as they walked.

  I breathed through my nose and avoided pools of blood, trying to sort out the myriad magical trails, and stopped in the living room as shock reached through the magic to steal feeling from my legs. Saints above and below. Whoever broke in didn’t like me very much, although the blood was a pretty good indicator of that. A who’s-there spell confirmed I alone occupied the apartment, although that didn’t make me feel any better. I’d rather have found something to punish for wrecking my stuff and invading my home.

  They’d eviscerated Moriah’s old couch, spilling its cottony guts in clumps around the room. My beautiful camphorwood box was reduced to splinters on the shattered coffee table, its trinkets crushed under someone’s heel. The fake leather chair smoldered in a melted black meteorite in the corner. Strong magic, tinged with something dark, curled throughout the apartment, coating nearly every surface in a greasy layer.

  I blinked, trying to clear my vision as I catalogued the damage. Curtains bunched on the floor in tatters, soaked with something nasty, and blood spattered every wall. I stood over a pile of my books, most of them split down the spine and the pages fluttering loose. I toed through the mess, looking for a few specific titles that I wouldn’t want anyone else to have. All three were gone.

  My throat constricted until I couldn’t breathe. No telling who had them. No telling what they’d use them for.

  But I had to worry about that later. I picked through the mess to the bedroom, trying not to notice in too much detail what had been done to some of the knickknacks I’d collected, and felt only emptiness as I peeked at the destruction inside. The wards on my bedroom hadn’t been broken accidentally, like the door wards, so doubtless the strength of the solid wards surprised the intruders. The War Witch smiled a little. Maybe I’d inflicted a little damage of my own.

  The damaged wards rippled around me as I paused in the doorway and let the magic boost my reserves. My mattress had been thrown against the window and slashed open. Goose down from the torn pillows made a mockery of snow on every surface. The odor of stale urine from a pile of clothes dragged out of the dresser made me doubt I would ever wear them again.

  It wasn’t a garden-variety robbery. Normal thieves selected easier targets, and carried bootleg magic detectors to check for wards. They wouldn’t have picked my apartment to rob, regardless of how drug-addled or desperate they were. And they would have stolen everything, not destroyed it.

  I leaned against the only non-bloody patch of wall I could find to formulate a plan. The disaster in front of me blurred as I blinked and tried not to see too much of it. It hurt more deeply than I’d expected, as the objectivity within powerful magic weighed how much I valued some possessions. I’d let a lot of my memories grow around things, and without those things... Maybe the memories would disappear as well.

  I shook off the growing sense of grief and instead focused on the next step. I couldn’t stay in the apartment, waiting for Leif’s people to pick me up or whoever destroyed my apartment to return to finish things off. And I wouldn’t sleep among burnt feathers and strange magic, and I sure as hell wouldn’t rest anywhere without wards.

  No wards protected Moriah’s house, despite my frequent offers to set them up, so even though I knew she would offer me a place, I couldn’t stay there. Shifters were strong, but they weren’t a good defense against whatever destroyed my stuff. The only other option wasn’t a difficult decision, though I checked the clock before I dialed. It was past the witching hour and I hadn’t felt the expected explosion of magic from the Skein, so maybe Anne Marie had taken my warning to heart and called off the cast. I dialed Tracy’s number as I pinched the bridge of my nose, wondering what to say when she answered. I did you a stupid favor and it nearly got me arrested, so let me sleep on your couch?

  After the phone went to voicemail, I hung up and chewed my lip. The coven meeting definitely should have ended. But it didn’t mean anything that she didn’t answer. I tapped the phone as I returned to the living room and searched for hints of the intruders’ identities. A deep breath brought more of the strong magic, dark enough to turn my stomach. Sulfur tickled my nose.

  The phone landed with a squish on the blood-soaked carpet as my hands went numb. I didn’t bother retrieving it as I
turned widdershins.

  A witch wouldn’t have left a mess like that. But a demon would have.

  Recognition snapped into place as brimstone curled into my brain: the magic from the Skein. Someone from the coven loosed a demon in my apartment.

  I turned another slow circle. Even Anne Marie couldn’t hate me so much. No true witch would unleash a demon in another’s home. Dread settled like a stone in my stomach and weighed me down until I crouched, just a moment away from kneeling in the blood. I wiped off the phone as best I could before hitting redial.

  It rang once, twice. I crossed my fingers, an old habit from childhood but a useless gesture. By the fourth ring, I started praying. Not a real habit but probably just as useless.

  Five rings. Then a click. Instead of Tracy’s cheerful voicemail, a deep voice I would recognize anywhere in the world. “Who is this?”

  Soren. Warbringer and Peacemaker. I nearly hung up.

  As I hesitated, his voice gained an edge. “Who is this?”

  I cleared my throat, forcing the words out. “I’m trying to reach my friend. Why do you have her phone?”

  My heart pounded staccato beats against my ribs. I struggled to draw measured breaths. Hyperventilating would not help Tracy. Or me.

  Loud voices drowned out his reply; he moved and it became quiet enough to hear. “What’s your name? When did you last hear from her?”

  My vision swam, even with the cold dispassion of magic. I desperately wanted to sit but I couldn’t find a clean surface no matter where I turned.

  Another familiar voice carried through the background noise, and Leif said, “There’s a lot of blood for only two bodies. Whose arm is that?”

  I shuddered. Saints protect them. “Why do you have her phone?”

  “There was an emergency. We can’t find her.”

  My knees buckled and I sank the rest of the way to the sticky, ruined carpet.

  Soren went on, oblivious as my world started to collapse. “We need to know what you know. Where are you? Someone will pick you up.”

  That was not a good idea, with everything else that had happened. I stared down at my bloody hands. Too many things I couldn’t explain and didn’t understand yet. I needed to figure out what the hell happened. My stomach rebelled at the sickly sweet smell, the iron tang filling my nostrils until I tasted blood on my teeth.

  Maybe I sat in Tracy’s blood.

  He kept talking, using his reassuring leader tone, but I hung up. I rose, brain out of sync as I wobbled on unsteady legs, and stumbled to the door. It was time to act, not listen. If Tracy lived, she didn’t have long. I gazed around the apartment and the ruins of that life before forcing myself to move down the hall. I could mourn what deserved to be missed later.

  I retrieved a few treasures from their hiding places, including the half dozen dangerous books I’d hidden better than the ones on the shelf, and drifted out of the apartment, not looking back. The War Witch took over, just so I could keep moving. Something violated where I lived, but I walked away unscathed. I took what I valued and left, one step ahead of whatever wanted to kill me. I didn’t bother to shut the door behind me. It would save whoever came to investigate the effort of breaking it down.

  I stared up as the stars wheeled overhead and the night grew more dangerous. Tracy was only missing, and missing wasn’t dead. She could be with the rest of the coven, deep in a cast, or maybe meditating and beyond my reach. I could find her. I would find her, and whoever destroyed my home and hers would pay.

  They would meet the War Witch, and very few people lived to tell that tale.

  Chapter 17

  In the hall outside my apartment, I looked at the new door that protected Amber’s apartment, and hoped she was okay. Nothing stirred. But the witch who lived at the end of the hall, the one who conveniently hadn’t seen anything when I hexed Leif, had stacked killing hexes into her wards. She’d never done that before.

  I considered asking her what happened, if she’d seen anything, but abandoned the idea. She didn’t want to be involved, otherwise she would have come out to help me before I walked into the destroyed apartment. The shock of the intruders breaking my wards would have woken her from a dead sleep if she was home, and I couldn’t blame her for protecting herself first. I glanced around the landing at the other doors, then straightened my shoulders and headed for the stairs. “It’s okay. I don’t blame you for staying out of it.”

  And I hoped at least the witch heard me.

  I’d barely staggered to the sidewalk, still holding onto the magic like a protective blanket despite the growing cost, when the chunky External jumped out of the shadows and grabbed my shoulders. I swore and lurched back, nearly shoving a hex in his face, as he said, “Where the hell have you been?”

  “What?” I shook off his hands and some of the terror that set my heart out of rhythm, and tried to back away in the darkness, away from the uncertain clarity of a security light. “What the hell are you doing here? What’s wrong with you?”

  A siren rose in the distance. Eric caught my arm and dragged me toward a car idling on the street. “We have to get out of here before someone sees you.”

  I wrenched away, keeping a tight hold on my bag, and figured I might have to hex him anyway. He’d survived the last one, but I didn’t make the same mistakes twice. I’d been a fool about many things, and I needed to stop adding to the list. Eventually luck ran out. “What is going on?”

  “Those Alliance witches destroyed your apartment,” he said slowly, like I had trouble understanding. Maybe he thought I did.

  “That’s bullshit.” I didn’t want to believe it, even if part of me knew that Anne Marie was capable of all that, and much worse besides. “That’s not possible. It was someone else. There was demon shit in there, and—”

  “We can’t stay here.” He tried again to take my arm and pull me toward the street. “Stefan and the others are on their way.”

  “How the hell do you know it was them?” I shook my head, a knot forming in my throat. Damn it. Anne Marie, and the saints only knew who else, stalked the night and looked for me. Maybe she’d killed Tracy, too. Maybe that was why the coven didn’t cast—the others figured it out, and Rosa and Joanne and Tracy would never have gone along with it. Maybe they were sacrificed. I should have been there to help, but instead I’d been breaking into Anne Marie’s house to make a point.

  “No one makes a mess like that except witches,” he said, his lip curled as he flung his arm in the general direction of my ruined apartment. “There’s a trail of magic right to your door.”

  “Trail? From where?” The sirens grew louder and closer, multiplying. I wondered if it was Leif, on his way to arrest me, or the Externals.

  “Across the city.” He pointed in the general direction of the sirens and Tracy’s house. Under the flickering lights, the glamour or whatever obscured his face slipped again and showed a young woman with a ski-jump nose instead. The world realigned itself and I tried to see what it was that changed his appearance. Her appearance? Saints above.

  Eric shrugged out of his overcoat and held it out to me. “Put this on.”

  “Why?” I didn’t take it.

  “You’re covered in blood. If anyone sees you, you’re screwed. You have to get out of here.” He tossed the houndstooth coat at me and I caught it out of reflex, almost dropping the books I carried.

  “Why are you doing this? Who the hell are you?” I backed away more, debating where I could hide for the night. I didn’t want to bring more trouble to Moriah’s door, particularly if dark witches or demons chased me.

  “We’re alike, you and I, but there’s no time to explain. I’ll drive you wherever you want to go, Lily, but we have to leave now. Stefan will be here any minute.”

  “Why do you care? You’re an External. You’re the enemy. We’ll never be alike.” I started walking, shaking my head. There was one sanctuary in the city that I rarely used unless it was a last resort, but Mother’s wards still held in t
he house where we lived before the Breaking. It would be safe to scry for Tracy and the rest of the coven from there. Then I could figure out what to do next. If Leif didn’t find me first.

  “You’ll be arrested,” he said. His voice lacked inflection, as though he only repeated the weather forecast. “The Bureau is following the magic from the witch’s house here, to your doorstep and no farther. With the dark magic in the neighborhood earlier, both crimes become yours. Add in Stefan’s grudge over what happened at the restaurant, and you don’t have a chance. You’ll be executed within the week, if they bother to wait for the Judge.”

  More sirens broke the calm. I stopped in my tracks, staring into the night. What he said felt like truth. And Soren was already at Tracy’s house, answering her phone. “How do you know what happened?”

  “Our people watch every strong witch in the Alliance,” he said. “I saw a disturbance at the residence. I can explain more later. You have to get far away from here before they see you.”

  “Where are the witches?”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t blink.

  “I don’t believe you.” I stared over his shoulder into the undisturbed silence down the block. One place alone promised safety. None but the foolhardy dared go there. The humans weren’t allowed in after dark, and Others avoided it unless no alternatives existed. The trick was to get there unnoticed.

  “Fine. Don’t. Just…lie low for a couple of weeks. Get out of the city. I’ll call when it’s safe to come back.” He glanced at his phone as the screen lit up, then headed for his car. “Seriously. Get moving, or let me drop you off somewhere. They’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

  “What did you see? At the witch’s house.” I didn’t want to know. I really didn’t want to know.

  He didn’t look away from the screen, though his shoulders tensed. “Not much. The beast and his people showed up just as I did, so I couldn’t get close.”