by Jayne Hawke
The woman leading the group appeared to be in her mid-thirties with a black bob hanging down to her shoulders. Everything about her seemed to be average, from her pale grey coat to her black jeans and sturdy brown boots. Nothing about her was memorable, and I wondered how hard they had worked to achieve that.
“We can make you great, if you’ll let us. All we ask for is loyalty,” she said.
“I heard that you suffered like I did,” I said.
“We have turned our pain into power. We will help you do the same. Together, we’ll rise through the ranks and enjoy power the likes of which no witch has enjoyed before,” she said.
I allowed myself a broad smile.
“What do I have to do?” I asked.
A woman with long coppery hair approached.
“I am Maeve, the leader of our fine coven. You’re the first I’ve heard of that survived what we went through,” she said.
“I was the only one. They killed the rest of my coven,” I said.
She nodded.
Something changed in her expression. It was subtle at first, a slight pinching her mouth and narrowing of her eyes.
Nothing was said for a long few moments before she finally said, “You are Kit MacGowan.”
Well shit.
The red-headed woman took another step closer to me. I felt the pack tense behind me.
“Your mother is to blame for this.”
“No,” I said reflexively.
“Yes. She could have helped us. She could have reversed this curse that has been laid upon us. Her magical skill was easily the most advanced of any witch on this isle. Her knowledge was second to none, and she turned us away. Why? Because she saw something in us that she didn’t like. Do you know what that feels like? To be turned away because of something someone thought they felt within you?”
I remained silent.
The woman took another step closer.
“You will die as the others did. You will suffer in the place of your mother. She should not have forsaken us.”
“That sounds awful. Why don’t I just kill you now, then no one has to suffer anymore?”
Her face was a portrait in shocked outrage, frozen in time as I wrenched at my war magic, agony shooting up my spine and down my arms as the swords I’d been working on for so long finally extended from the backs of my hands, firmly anchored and all but weightless. I threw a punch that drove the tip of the 18” sword into her right eye and twisted through until it passed out the back of her head, blood running down the shining white blade at an unnatural rate.
She never even had time to react.
I quickly drew on her magic before her coven could react, leaving the blood she’d already spilled magicless and inert and letting the energy sweep through my own magic, cleaning all the kinks out until I was at full strength.
The pack had already spotted it going wrong and rushed the scene, a wave of matte-black weaponry on black-clad warriors, all but Sin who was going for an Aragorn look and a sword that glowed with a faint rainbow iridescence. I was going to have to work on my style.
I made a horizontal slash with both weapons to keep the surviving witches at bay, expecting them half a second behind their sisters, only to find that they had all stopped to open the mechanisms of what appeared to be permanent stainless-lined wounds along each forearm that were gushing blood by the pint. By the feel of it, only a small part of it was theirs. They’d been storing the blood they stole and... what? Waiting to gross me out with it at a critical moment?
If so, it was working.
Sadly, their designs were less prosaic. As the blood covered their forearms, it began to pool in their hands, gravitationally immune spherical globules of dark red blood like something out of a space horror film. I watched in stunned horror as an entire coven of madwomen bled themselves dry and began to form weapons, shields, armour, even familiars out of stolen blood.
A knife flew from one witch’s palm-borne reserve towards my head, and I deflected it with my sword expecting it to be like blocking a squirt gun. Instead, it clunked hard against my weapon and flew off behind me. This was going to be even less fun than it looked. The pack arrived right on cue as the preliminaries ended and the coven of blood witches started applying their strange, horrifying take on the art to visiting on me the sins of my mother.
I advanced a step, swords at the ready, and fielded two more blood knives as I did. Even as the pack advanced, they were focused on me. If I could maintain my defensive, the pack would go through their distracted asses like a reaper’s scythe. I took another step forward, making myself a threat, and continued fending off flying shards of human blood. I couldn’t stop focusing on that fact, and a blade got through my defences as I did, punching a hole directly in my breastbone and lodging there. It was quickly pushed out by my own blood, which began to be pulled out in a stream as our enemy’s grasped onto it to add to their collection.
I pulled back with my own magic, taking the magic from the blood and leaving it to fall, inert, to the ground, the tug of war avoided. I sealed the wound so tight it was probably less permeable than my actual skin and shouted to the rest to avoid wounds of any kind.
Of course, that wouldn’t be hard for them since the witches’ offensive efforts were entirely focused on me. Each had raised a shield of some kind, whether a conventional kite shield, a flying disc, or in one particularly unsettling case a massive force-field bubble out of a Hellraiser nightmare and were fending off the pack the best they could while keeping their attacks focused on me.
I applauded their creativity even as I gladly noted that they hadn’t thought of things like drowning or pore infiltration yet. I took a page from their book and called up a riot shield from my war magic, noting gratefully that it was being unusually helpful for a change. Shining like the pearly gates, it allowed me to remain altogether hidden from them as long as I didn’t mind losing visibility in every direction except straight forward through its viewing window.
Their attacks didn’t let up, hard thud-crack-thud impacts pelting the shield. They quickly realized that a war god’s shield wasn’t something they could smash apart in the timeframe they had and began attacking indirectly, trying to bring their projectiles in through the sides. Their aim was mercifully bad without being able to see me, but it wasn’t long before I started feeling slices along my sides as their aim improved. I dutifully closed the wounds, but it wasn’t a standoff that could last forever. Or even another minute, for that matter.
“Anybody feel like killing some witches today? Not that I’m not enjoying testing out some new toys, you understand, just kind of bleeding more than would be ideal,” I shouted, sarcasm blunting the real message that I was dying, and it was up to them to change that.
A feline snarl answered me followed by the click and scrape of claws on what I could only assume was a mass of magically imbued blood. I turned my view to see Kerry half cat latched onto the force field witch with all four paws, her teeth sunk deep into it but the field holding. The sound of weapons clashing rose in tenor, and the weapons headed my way waned, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to be in this fight, or I was going to be dog food when it was done. I loved my dogs, but they had enough at home.
Pulling up all the strength and rage my father had left me, I roared my pain to the sky and rushed them shield first. Ethan and Cade parted as I reached them, and the women they’d been fighting had only a moment to know what was coming before I struck them, throwing them backwards with their blood orbs splashing to the ground.
“Kill them all!” I shouted in a voice that was barely mine, my vocal cords shearing open as the magic pushed through them.
Blood ran down my face in rivulets and I dropped the shield, pushing to my right into the still-distracted line of four. As I did, I felt a wall of force hit me from behind, knocking me forward into the blade and shield of the nearest witch and knocking the breath out of me in the process. How had I forgotten that there were ten of them to begin with? The origi
nal line was shaken by my declaration but not out of the fight. The witch I was flying towards swept her blade up to catch me in the ribs, but had the weapon knocked aside by one of my packmates. I wasn’t so lucky with her shield, the corner of which caught me in the side of the head and threw me to the side, dazed and nauseated.
She turned towards me, but a scream told me that someone had taken advantage of her inattention to put her down. I had the time I needed to get myself back in order. As she died, the blood she’d drained from our fair city fell like a burst water balloon. I rushed to drain it of magic, needing the power to heal and knowing one of her sisters would add it to their collection almost immediately if they could. It felt sour, almost globular, like fruit juice out of date. The power in it felt like it was as likely to melt through my veins as heal me, and the dust that remained of her weapons was, if anything, worse. As I lay there, trying to sort some pure energy from the morass, I felt three sharp pains strike my back in unison and knew that I could either heal or die.
I grasped onto the whole mass of it in a quick and dirty webwork and soaked it in, my magic almost gagging as I did. I tried to process it, to bring it into line with my life force so that I could heal with it, do anything with it, but everything it touched felt corrupted, like my soul was slimy. I couldn’t purify it, so I had to do something else.
I rolled it around in my arteries for a moment and realized I could bend and dry it the way they did. I wasn’t going to be able to summon blood monsters anytime soon, but if I mixed it just right with war magic that would bond with my skin, I could create some sort of unspeakable magical bandages.
Letting my magic flow on autopilot, I pressed war magic into my veins and wrapped it around the new blood, forcing the mixture into my wounds and hardening it into a silvery-red skin replacement. Every wound hurt like a thousand needles had pierced every edge and corkscrewed its way in, but I moved experimentally and found that I was as good as new apart from that.
I shuddered at the thought, but there was no time to think about what I must look like. I pulled the pain down and made it into rage. They had done this, had made me into this, and they were going to die a death that made their transformations feel like a dream spa day.
I turned to where Ethan was standing, his sword and dagger fending off two witches while a third lay on her back. Cade was down, pinned by a woman coated in blood like a power suit. I wanted to save Ethan first, but Cade needed me. I rushed the lady in red, my weapons forgotten, and lay my hands on her outer shell. Before she had a chance to even notice me, I folded the whole thing inward, her attention entirely on killing my packmate until it was too late. She screamed in agony as her own weapons pierced her skin and crushed her bones, and as she did the pack howled and snarled while Sin laughed maniacally over the din. I looked around to see the tide turning as the pack fought with renewed strength.
Turning, I caught the weapons of the women fighting Ethan and bent them to my will, the weight of my magic enough to still them for more than long enough for Ethan to dispatch the pair. He looked at me, a nod of gratitude faltering as he saw what I’d made of myself. I couldn’t help but imagine what he could see, a mess of shining red blood very obviously not mine criss-crossing my skin a millimetre below the surface. He recovered quickly and we moved into what was left of the fray.
Not long now.
I summoned my sword again, knowing I couldn’t afford to rely on pure power if I wanted to keep my strength up. I rushed an unattended witch who was slowly advancing on me and swept my blade down towards her. She caught it on her kite shield, and the shield cracked in two. As my sword passed through, she folded it around and engulfed the blade, holding it away from her and covering the blade in blunt blood. The weapon was completely dulled, all but useless.
All but.
I summoned up my war gauntlet on my off hand and gripped her sword as it thrust towards my abdomen. I didn’t know whether a blood magic sword would cut through a war magic gauntlet or vice versa, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen soon. I brought down my sword again from above, and this time there was no shield to block it. My blow landed on the crown of her forehead, bashing into the little black widow’s peak that was left in her otherwise grey hair, little chips of red dropping into her hair as I was struck with the sensation of driving an axe into soft wood. She flinched but continued to struggle with her sword, so I did it again. And again. And again. Five strikes in, I heard a loud crack and she fell dead, her sword and shield turning to dust along with the maddening sheath on my own weapon.
I turned to find Sin, Ethan, and Cade with one witch furiously blocking between them, a thousand tiny shields in a whirlwind. She had no chance of fighting back, but her defensive skills were impressive. Equally impressive was the struggle behind her, Kerry still cracking open the semi-transparent blood egg holding our very last enemy.
“Look around you, witch,” Ethan said. “Nothing is left of your coven except you and a weeping bubble. My cat is going to eat your bubble friend very soon, which means that you need a plan to kill an entire pack of death workers. Surrender now, and I can at least promise you’ll get to meet some interesting people before you die.”
The girl was clearly exhausted, her magic drained and her clothes soaked with sweat. She knew there was no way she could win. A snarl of triumph marked Kerry’s entry into the egg, and a wet gurgle marked the end of its occupant. The last witch winced at the sound and raised her hands in surrender, the blood all around her soaking back into her resealable wounds before she shut them once more.
Ethan reached to reopen them, to let her power drain out of her before she stabbed us in the back with it, but she looked up at him with something that wasn’t quite pleading and said, “I’ll die without blood. We all would.”
He satisfied himself by dumping some sort of sealing potion over it that immediately hardened. It wasn’t going to be useful again anytime soon. We walked together back to the cars shoulder to shoulder, Ethan and I at the centre and Sin on the wing looking pleased as punch. We’d just defeated the vampires.
FORTY-EIGHT
A tall olive-skinned elf was leaning against a beautiful pitch-black car with his hands tucked into the pockets of his exquisitely tailored black suit. The fabric had the depth of the night sky woven into it making it the purest of blacks, which made the elf eye-catching, no doubt the point.
Ethan tensed next to me.
“Ryn,” he simply said as he stopped some eight feet in front of the elf.
We all stopped along with Ethan. My god magic was within reach if this went sideways. The exhaustion was sinking into my bones and beginning to turn the edges of my vision dark, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from taking the leader of the Fae Isles down if he started something.
The elf looked at the broken blood witch and smirked.
“You brought me a gift; how kind.”
He pushed off from the car with the grace of a ballet dancer. His movements put Sin to shame. There was no predator that could match Ryn, and he knew it.
I lifted my chin and looked into his green eyes the colour of spring leaves, not sure if I was daring him to mention the patch job that was still all over my skin or politely asking him to ignore it.
“Ethan contacted you to remove the bounty from my head,” I said.
Ryn smiled, a cold predatory expression that sent a shiver down my spine.
“He did. And I’ve thought about it.” He gestured at the blood witch to walk to him. “This little gift has had no impact on my decision.”
The witch shuffled towards him, eyes down. Everyone here knew her fate. Perhaps it would have been kinder to kill her ourselves, but there was a political game afoot. We needed to consider the bigger picture.
“No. I will not remove the bounty. You’re proving to be quite hard to kill, which is useful to me. You are sorting the wheat from the chaff. The weak assassins and hunters do not return from their mission. I do recommend that you complete the bond with Ethan, tho
ugh, for your brother’s sake. Your being the joint alpha of the pack will give Matt far more protection.”
He opened the door and pushed the witch into the car.
“If there comes a time when you prove yourself superior to all of the assassins and hunters, then we will talk again.”
He turned and got into the car.
Ethan’s anger rolled off him in thick syrupy waves. Sin turned to us and grinned.
“So, I’m officially a member of the pack now, correct?”
I had to laugh. His response was so ridiculous and out of place there was nothing else to do but laugh. Everyone joined in after a long heavy moment. There we stood, covered in blood, exhausted, and laughing at the elf that had originally been sent to kill us.
“I suppose you have some uses,” Ethan said grudgingly.
“I do like pancakes,” Cade said with a shrug.
And just like that, everything was back to normal. We continued our walk back to the cars. The blood dried against our skin and my muscles began to stiffen with over exertion. There was a weird happiness to it all. I should have been pissed at Ryn’s decision, but all I could really think about was the wonderful pack around me.
“We’ll move into the pack house tomorrow,” I said softly to Ethan.
He looked at me with happiness shining in his eyes. No more words were needed. We were one.
Copyright Jayne Hawke (2019) ©. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are purely from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is fictionalised and coincidental.
Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
