Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

  Marie’s lips parted as Nessa stood before her, and she struggled to speak. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

  “Say it,” Marie whispered.

  “King Arthur is dead, and the Round Table isn’t hiring. So tell me, Marie…would you like to become my knight?”

  Marie’s hands cradled Nessa’s hips and slid down her legs slowly, as she knelt before her lover. Her fingertips dropped to touch the golden carpet. Marie’s forehead rested against Nessa’s knee.

  “I swear my sword to you.” Marie’s voice trembled, on the edge of breaking. “I swear my heart to you.”

  “Yes,” Nessa said. Her fingers ran through Marie’s ragged hair, stroking her head.

  A single joyous teardrop fell, splashing on the toe of Nessa’s shoe.

  “I swear my life to you,” Marie breathed.

  “Yes,” Nessa said.

  Her fingers curled in Marie’s hair. Holding on tight, as the rain thundered down.

  Fifty-Two

  The storm raged.

  A silver Rolls Royce prowled through the streets of Manhattan. The antique limousine circled the block as its sole passenger, the Lady in Red, reclined in the back seat. She stared out at the rain as it pounded a staccato beat against the windows.

  A makeup compact, inlaid with vintage pearl, nestled in her palm. She flipped it open. Mercury shadows danced in the mirror’s depths.

  “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” she murmured. “You’ve done well, my daughters.”

  Dora’s voice echoed from the mirror. “Did I just feel what I think I felt?”

  “Nessa and Marie have embraced their natures.”

  “Meaning,” the Mourner’s voice slithered from the foggy glass, “without knowing it, they have turned the hourglass. And when the sand runs out…they die.”

  “Normally, yes,” said the Lady. “This may be their one and only chance to break the cycle. As it stands, all of the pieces are on the board. I believe their first doom already approaches.”

  “You gonna help ’em out?” Dora asked.

  “No. Nessa and Marie need to learn what they’re capable of. To explore their own depths. If I intervened to save them now, they’d never have a chance against the greater perils ahead. They’ll stand on their own two feet, or die.”

  “Our enemies,” the Mourner hissed, “have no such qualms. They’ll do whatever it takes to destroy them.”

  The Lady chuckled. A dark, melodic sound.

  “Then our newborn witch and her servant will be tested and tempered, won’t they?”

  * * *

  On the edge of Bloomington, Illinois, another storm brewed over a lonely cornfield. Carolyn Saunders—not knowing she was due to be abducted not once but twice in the near future—sat behind her old, bulky monitor in the office of her cluttered ranch house. She worked away on her latest pulp-fantasy potboiler. A fresh mug of coffee steamed beside her right hand, alongside a half-empty bottle of Jameson whiskey.

  Ghouls! she typed. Donatello Faustus had faced defilers of the living, the blood-drinking fiends of Nefada, but these were no mere vampires. The cave was filled with shambling half-human nightmares, and their fangs tore into the bloody, chained limbs of a fresh victim. The master thief’s blade snicker-snacked from his—

  She stopped typing. Jesus, she thought. Sticking in a random Lewis Carroll reference for no reason? Hack much, Carolyn? Maybe I should go back and—

  She froze. Rain was lashing the office window. Last she’d noticed, the storm had been off on the horizon.

  Also, it was dark out.

  She checked the time. It was nine in the evening. Her coffee, untouched, sat cold as a stone at her side. The day was just gone, hours lost in the blink of an eye. Then she looked to the screen. She’d been busy. She scrolled up and read what she’d written in her fugue.

  “This shit again,” she muttered under her breath.

  She shoved her chair back and trundled over to the wall behind it, curling her arthritic fingers around the edge of the cheap wood paneling. The panel popped loose, exposing the closet-sized nook concealed behind it. And her paranoid’s wall, a map of Post-it notes and photographs, news clippings and maps, all linked with colored lines of string. A spiderweb of conspiracies, connections, suspicions.

  She ran her finger down a list of titles, like cards in an alien tarot. The Paladin, the Enemy, the Scribe, the Thief. And halfway down: the Witch and her Knight.

  Beside the words, she scribbled “IN PLAY” and pushed a blue thumbtack into Manhattan.

  She carried her mug and her bottle into the kitchen. Cold coffee splashed into the sink over a pile of unwashed dishes. She used the empty mug to pour herself three fingers of Jameson, neat. Then she raised her drink to the kitchen window, to the rain, in a wry salute.

  “Here’s to reunions, short-lived as they may be. Good luck, kids. You’re going to need it.”

  * * *

  Lightning crackled outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of Richard’s office. Savannah rose from the dead man’s desk, striding to a table where Richard’s plastic models had been replaced by machines. One long steel box screeched with static, the death shriek of an electronic beast, as a needle scribbled wild lines across a rolling sheet of graph paper.

  “This is exceptional,” she gushed. “Absolutely exceptional.”

  Scottie shook his head. The readout might as well have been written in hieroglyphics.

  “What is?”

  “When the subjects came together, the energy output spiked. I think…yes, I think we’re ready for the next phase of the experiment. Call your people watching the Iroquois and tell them to follow Marie once she leaves. I want to take the two of them separately. Safety concerns, after all. I’m still not sure what they are.”

  “I’ll have my guys grab her and bring her to the zoo.”

  Savannah fluttered her fingertips at him, shooing him away. Her heels clicked on the marble floor as she returned to Richard’s desk.

  “Unnecessary,” she said. “I want to get up close and see what she’s capable of.”

  She put on her VR headset. Her gloved hands plucked at the air, pressing invisible buttons. As one, her pale and dead-eyed minions snapped to attention.

  “I’ll be capturing her personally.”

  * * *

  A crosstown train rumbled through dark winding tunnels, making its way back to Queens. Marie sat alone at the edge of a nearly empty subway car, hugging herself, smiling like a loon at her reflection in the scratched-up window.

  She was a little scratched up herself, under her cold and rain-drenched clothes, and aching in all the right ways. Nessa hadn’t let go of her hair when she knelt—tugging her to her hands and knees and then over to the bed—and their second time had been better than the first. They were more confident now, more certain of each other’s bodies.

  “Do you have a safeword?” Nessa asked her.

  She giggled, nervous, as the stroke of Nessa’s hand sent ripples of pleasure down her spine. “Do I need one?”

  “Mm-hmm. For instance, if things got too intense for you, or if I were to do this—”

  Her fingernails pinched. Marie tossed her head back with a sudden gasp, a spike of pain mingling with the waves of delight. Transforming the sensation.

  “—or something like that, and you didn’t like it, I would know to stop.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Marie whispered.

  Nessa’s giddy laughter filled the room. The sound wrapped around her like silken chains.

  “Your safeword,” Nessa said, “is symmachy. A word I’m fond of. It means ‘fighting together against a common enemy.’”

  “Symmachy,” Marie echoed.

  For a while the world had faded and there was nothing but the sound of the rainstorm and their bodies. Marie hovered in the afterglow now, cherishing every second of the memory, even as reality dampened her bliss. She was still facing the end of her career. Still facing the threat of an indictment.


  And Nessa, her lover, her liege, was thinking about killing Alton Roth. Maybe it was just the cocktail talking. Was Nessa really capable of committing premeditated murder?

  If Nessa asked her to, was she?

  This train of thought led her down tunnels darker than the subway, and she didn’t notice the new arrivals making their way into the car. Not until they filled the aisles to her left and right, cutting off both of the doorways. Marie glanced from side to side. Six of them in all. An elderly woman, a construction worker, a skinny teenager—just a random crowd from a random street. All they had in common was bloodless skin and pale, unblinking eyes. Eyes fixed on her.

  “Can I help you?” Marie asked.

  The six, moving as one, lifted their left feet and lurched one step closer.

  Marie smiled. “This is a flash-mob thing, right? Lemme guess, you’re all about to start dancing.”

  Now their right feet. One more step toward her, penning her in.

  “Okay,” Marie said, her amusement fading. “You’re starting to weird me out a little. Whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish here, you might want to know that I’m a cop. You know. Just take that into account.”

  The teenager’s jaw slowly yawned open, and he wriggled the root of his severed tongue at her.

  One by one, like a rolling wave, the other five did the same.

  Marie jumped to her feet. She whipped the black steel handle of the ASP from under her coat. With a flick of her wrist, the tactical baton snapped out to its full length. She held up her other hand.

  “You need to move back. Now.”

  They charged.

  The kid was first, hurling himself at her. She dropped low, ducking under his hand and unleashing a pinpoint strike to his kneecap. His knee shattered under the steel and his leg fell out from under him. He went down like a puppet with its strings cut, in utter silence. A man in a red checkered shirt was already moving in, too fast, and his fist slammed against Marie’s left eye. She staggered backward. Another man behind her got his arms under her elbows, trying to restrain her. Marie raised her leg and drove her heel down onto the arch of his foot. He lost his grip. She shoved away from him and lunged, the steel baton whistling through the air.

  It connected with the construction worker’s skull and crushed it like an eggshell.

  His skin and bone ruptured, collapsing inward, half of his head turned to confetti and one eye dangling from a dried out optical nerve. His exposed brain was a gnarled lump of gray tissue the size of a baby’s fist, wildly pulsing as he grabbed her by the shoulders.

  Marie swept her arm around, breaking his grip and shoving him aside. Then the elderly woman jumped her from behind. An arm curled around her throat, squeezing tight, cutting off her air. As spots flared in her vision and her heart pounded, Marie threw an elbow into the woman’s ribs. Then another, feeling the brittle bone shatter under the impact, loosening her grip.

  She’d carved an opening. The aisle to the right was clear, even as the downed teenager was silently pulling his way toward her. He dragged himself on his shattered kneecap, clawing at the air, still in the fight. Marie jumped over him and ran. She threw open the door at the end of the subway car, then the next, barreling up the length of the train.

  The brakes squealed as the train slowed down, rumbling into the next station. The pneumatic doors hissed open. Marie leaped out, running, her feet pounding the platform stairs as she raced for open air. She didn’t even know where she was, hadn’t registered the announcement.

  She’d just seen the impossible, and she wanted to get as far away from it as she could.

  Fifty-Three

  Back at home, Nessa had taken the Oberlin Glass up to her workroom. The antique mirror, with its face painted jet black, perplexed her—she had no idea who had sent it, and nobody at the auction house was answering the phone—but it wasn’t long before she saw the possibilities. When she’d tried her scrying experiment with Marie, her bowl of ink had shattered under the strain. Whatever the message was, the magical recording warning her of danger, her simple tools hadn’t been able to handle that level of power.

  The glass, though…that might do the trick. From the carvings hidden along its ornate wooden frame, it had clearly been intended for some kind of witchcraft.

  “Why not mine?” she asked the empty room and lit a black candle.

  By the flickering candlelight she opened her book to the pages of “A Game for Conjuring Distant Sights.” The now-familiar chant slithered across her tongue. Her face faded from the glass. Then came the fall of shadowed snow, like rippling static, and there was…Marie. Making a mad dash through the rain, her eyes wide with panic, in the clothes she’d worn earlier that night.

  The sight jarred Nessa’s concentration. The spell broke, the image dissolving into nothingness. She was already snatching up her phone and dialing.

  “Nessa,” Marie gasped in her ear. “I was on the subway. They…fuck, I don’t even know who they—I got away.”

  Nessa’s back muscles clenched and she squeezed the phone until her knuckles turned white. “What happened? Are you safe now? Are you hurt?”

  “Nessa, they weren’t—they weren’t human. I know how crazy this sounds, but they weren’t human.”

  “Come to me. My house. Now.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Marie said. “The police are watching you, remember? If they see us together—”

  “Chance worth taking. Come to the back door. Be quick and clever.”

  Weren’t human. Nessa mulled it over as she glided down to the kitchen, putting on a kettle of hot water. She knew magic was real, obviously. And she had anticipated almost every way her father-in-law might seek revenge for his son’s death…everything but that one.

  She was almost amused as she rummaged through a cabinet, digging for her stash of tea bags. Do you have pretensions to occult power, Alton? she thought. Did you conjure something up to punish my lover, keeping your hands distant and clean?

  What a dreadful mistake.

  As the kettle whistled, Nessa turned her head. There came a soft knocking at the kitchen door. She ushered Marie inside fast and shut the door against the storm.

  “Had to take the back alley,” Marie said, holding up her dripping arms. “Sorry, I look like a drowned rat.”

  “I’ll get some towels,” Nessa called over her shoulder as she swept from the room. “Tea on the counter—it’s chamomile. Pour a cup for me, too.”

  Later, with two mugs of steaming tea and a fluffy towel wrapped like a turban around Marie’s head, she told Nessa her story. Nessa took it in, frowning as she listened.

  “These creatures don’t match anything I can remember from my books,” she said. “I see only one option. You remember our little experiment with the ink and water?”

  Marie cast a nervous glance upward, toward the workroom. “The message. You sent yourself a message from the future, saying you were in danger.”

  “Mm-hmm. We need to hear the rest of it. We need to know the truth.”

  “Do…do I need to be there?”

  Nessa reached out and touched her arm, rubbing softly.

  “I’m admittedly going on instinct,” she said, “but I think it needs both of us to unlock it. I understand that you’re nervous. You’ve seen things—the first time you scried with me, the subway tonight—that most people don’t believe are real. You didn’t believe. And seeing, well…that changes your world forever.”

  “I just keep wondering,” Marie said, shaking her head as her gaze went distant. “Wondering how deep this goes, you know? It’s like I’ve spent my whole life standing on the tip of an iceberg, and I’m just getting my first glimpse below the waters.”

  “Magic is real,” Nessa said, her eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “You can choose to embrace it. Let it in. Starting right now. Besides, there’s a practical consideration to think about here.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  Nessa reached up with one finger and lightly
bopped the tip of Marie’s nose.

  “You’re the servant of a witch. I’ll handle the magic, but you’d best not be gun-shy around it, or your job’s going to be a difficult one.”

  They finished their tea and went upstairs.

  They sat cross-legged side by side, their knees and hands touching. Nessa framed the mirror with a pair of black candles. The shimmering lights swam in the dark of the glass.

  “I’ll lead the chant,” Nessa told her. “You just breathe deeply. Four seconds in, four seconds out. Try to empty your mind of everything but your breath. Fall into the vision. Surrender to it.”

  Her fingers stroked the nape of Marie’s neck.

  “Surrender to me.”

  The words of the chant seemed to take on form and weight, spiraling around the glass in spidery lines as the candles blazed higher. The flames turned a vivid orange, and then a deep midnight blue.

  Within the black mirror, a figure emerged. Nessa. But not quite her: her face was a little different, the angles off. She sat cross-legged too, hovering in the air with her open hands on her knees. Her wrists had been cut. Blood wreathed from her arms and twisted around her in twin streamers, like a scarlet DNA helix. This Nessa’s eyes were blots of solid crimson, marbles of wet blood.

  She was in a stone chamber, dark, hard to see. A few feet away, a girl—maybe fourteen, with a heart-shaped face and a worried look in her eyes—held a heavy book open.

  “My name is Nessa Fieri,” the mirror-Nessa said. “Maybe yours is, too. I’m—I’m not certain how all this works. But if you’re receiving this, then listen and understand: you are in terrible danger.”

  Another figure had emerged from the shadows, creeping up to witness the ritual. Marie— again, not exactly her, but close enough to be her sister—in a rough linen shift. Mirror-Nessa’s head swiveled around like an owl’s.

  “Marie. Go back to sleep.”