Long Witch Night: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 2)

by Sami Valentine

  “Cut the cryptic! Why are we back here?”

  Juniper glanced at the narrow hall behind her shoulder. “Because you need to know.”

  Red followed the line of sight, gawking at a third version of herself. It was Juniper. Not the one who had stood in gothic splendor at the side of the horned man as hell walked on earth. That Juniper had disappeared.

  The Juniper who remained was held between two orderlies in leather aprons and flat hats. Two circular bruises marked her temples. Frizzy tendrils trembled around her tense face, escaping her pulled-back hairstyle. She wore a shapeless gray dress. It was the same one that Maxwell had conjured up for Red to wear in his torture room. The modest neckline couldn’t hide all the bite scars.

  Red had never seen anyone with such torment in their eyes.

  “You don’t know who you are working for!” Dragged past by her elbows, Juniper hobbled to keep up. The electric lights cast long shadows behind the trio. Her whisper sounded strained, as if she held an ocean’s worth of warning back. “You don’t know what he is!”

  “Do you want to see Doctor B again?” The orderly asked in a thick Scottish accent. “Then stop squawking about him!”

  Juniper snapped her teeth shut.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Striding up the three, Red demanded. Instinct at the sight of a person in trouble pushed away her confusion. “Who are they?”

  This Juniper didn’t answer, only stared at the closed door at the hallway’s end like the devil was waiting for her.

  “Look smart. Your family has come.” The other orderly patted Juniper on the shoulder, a perfunctory kindness in his voice. “You’re leaving the asylum.”

  Juniper closed her eyes, and it was as if a veil had come over her face. Her tight features eased to a wary blankness. Only the tension in her neck betrayed the corralled worry and fear. Shoulders straightening, she nodded with the acceptance of a resigned prisoner on the scaffold and walked forward.

  The orderly opened the door.

  “Apologies. I am not prepared outside business hours. It’s rather late…” A white-coated doctor sat at an oak desk. He bent over the papers spread over the green ink blotter. His fountain pen raced over the patient record. Bronze script displayed his name on a wooden block—Doctor Goode.

  The door opened wider to reveal a black suited Lucas sitting across from the doctor. Selene sat beside him in a lilac dress that would make Queen Victoria swoon.

  “What the hell are you two doing here?” Red asked the room, long accustomed to not getting an answer. Walking inside, she circled Lucas. She shook her head as if that would dislodge whatever weird hallucination this was.

  The vampire looked far from the punk rock, motorcycle riding defender of the innocent that he would become in the present day. Instead of tousled locks flopping into his eyes, his short dark hair was neatly parted in the middle. A black and midnight blue aura, darker than in the future, hovered over his expensive suit and embroidered waistcoat. His fingers flexed out of a clenched fist before he adjusted his crimson necktie. “Our lawyer wanted to attend, but I assured him that we could settle this quietly. Quickly.”

  “Yes, of course. No need for lawyers.” The doctor coughed and wrote faster.

  Stomach clenching, Red stopped by the door, scanning Lucas as if expecting a leather jacket to appear. “This is… strange.”

  Juniper stepped into the room between her guards.

  “There she is.” Selene pointed to them, grinning wildly and clapped her hands. “How perfectly strange indeed.”

  Juniper focused on Lucas like a rat watching a terrier, hand on her heart. Her cuffs slipped. Bruises and cuts circled her wrists. She tugged her arm down as if covering a tell in a poker tournament.

  Red knew it was a tell because she had done it too. Seeing Lucas in the past was tripping her out. Especially since the Downton Abbey look was working for him.

  His chilly gray eyes narrowed in restrained frustration. None of the empathy or guilt from his soul shone through. He didn’t have one. Composed with the arrogance of a lord to the unsuspecting humans, a flash of amber appeared in his irises if you knew to look. This was Lucas in his ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’ phase.

  Red stepped in front of Juniper, fingers instinctively curling as if around an invisible stake. She looked back at her doppelgänger and into those green eyes so familiar to her own. She could have drowned in the fear.

  Chin raised, Juniper hid her shaking hands in the folds of her skirt. Her gaze darted between the doctor and the vampires.

  “My colleague recommends more electricity treatments for your ward,” Doctor Goode said, lifting a document and blowing on the record’s wet ink.

  “Doctor B likes to shock ‘em sane.” The rougher orderly guffawed. His coworker elbowed him, dipping his hat in silent apology.

  Doctor Goode glared at the two. “Carnegie. McCloud. Out.”

  They tipped their hats, bumping shoulders as they left and closed the door.

  The doctor rustled his papers as he apologized rapidly. He wrote quicker as if phantom lawyers chased his pen. “That is uncouth talk from a simpleton. Let me just finish this record…”

  Fangs peeked out from under his top lip. Lucas discreetly pressed his palm to his mouth to jam them back in. The predatory glow lingered on the closed door.

  Red could tell that Lucas had memorized the orderlies’ names and faces. She crossed her arms and called after them. “He is so killing you two!”

  “Yes, tonight or tomorrow, it’s hard to tell when one begins or ends.” Selene clasped her hands, leaning forward like a gossiper with a juicy secret.

  Red jumped back, half passing through the door, gawking at the vampiress. This was supposed to be a flashback, not an interactive scene. Where Maxwell was hiding. Whose flashback was this? How could Selene see her? They said she was a seer, but this was more than 20/20. She stomped forward and waved her hands in front of Selene’s face. “You can see me? Are you in the Dreamland?”

  “I’m everywhere at once. Some memories, some futures, your mind or mine. Dreams too.” Selene pouted with a delicate half shrug. “It’s confusing at the best of times, I must say.”

  “Pardon me?” The doctor glanced up from his papers, startled by what must have sounded like a nonsensical outburst.

  Lucas smiled at the vampiress and rested his hand on hers to calm her. “The madness hadn’t shown when we first wed, but like her cousin…well, it strikes them late in my wife’s family.” A lie sounded as smooth as the truth coming from his mouth. His expression soured as if offended to have to explain such personal business more.

  The doctor coughed, scrutinizing Selene over his round spectacles. “You have the patience of a saint.”

  Lucas dipped his head in feigned acknowledgement to hide the amusement twitching at his lips. He played the role of wellborn gentlemen to perfection, wielding implication and social mores as a swift shield to further questions. “Let’s get to signing these papers so I can return our dear cousin to the family estate where she can be cared for in greater comfort.”

  Juniper’s jaw clenched.

  “Excuse me, I must return to the file room. I seem to be missing a form.” The doctor shuffled through his papers before pushing back his chair and standing. He walked through Red to the exit.

  Lucas slouched farther back in his chair, but the illusion of relaxation was broken by the tension in his muscles. Amber flashed in his gaze even as worry puckered at his lips. “Blast it, Juniper, why the devil did you get yourself locked up here?”

  “It wasn’t on purpose.” She sounded hollow, yet a low fire threaded through her tone.

  “You sent us on a goddamn chase through the British Isles. I had to box Quinn to do this my way. The Black Libertine had darker plans for your punishment.” Lucas glared. In a flash, he was in front of Juniper’s, stroking her cheek. “You could have died. Electricity treatments? You call me a monster, but that quack has probably tortured more people than I
have.”

  Red held her breath. He was impulsive even with a soul holding him back in the future. Did she want to know what he was like without one? Reading a demonology text was different than seeing it in real life.

  Lucas tilted Juniper’s chin as he examined the marks on her face. His ferocity softened into confusion. “Bloody hell, kitten. You have beautiful dresses, shining jewels, and all the books you can read. Why run?”

  “I couldn’t close my eyes to the killing anymore.”

  Lucas spun, groaning in disgust before flopping into his chair. “That tender bleeding heart of yours.”

  “Always such a curse,” Selene said, pityingly in a girlish voice. She pointed to the doppelgangers before switching hands, staring puzzled at her own fingertips.

  Maxwell’s energy signature approached, yet it resonated differently from the one that had been hounding her. Red looked out the windowpane.

  The warlock walked from the long driveway lined with trees and sprawling lawns to the building. In a long white coat and black hat, he looked like any other Victorian doctor about to take residence on the asylum night shift. He tipped his hat to passing nurses. It wasn’t the spirit that haunted her in the Dreamland, but the living man he must have been.

  Pleading, Red pointed at the window. “It’s him! Doctor B! You need to get her out of here, because he won’t let her leave.”

  Selene nodded. Lucidity came over her big eyes, and she tilted her head. Compassion tinged her voice. “You always did want to go home. Did you ever find it, in the end?”

  “I—" The flickering sanity in the mad seer’s gaze unsettled her. Chewing on her lip, she didn’t know how to give an answer to the past when she didn’t know it in the present. A knock on the door cut off her reply.

  The orderly came in and took off his hat. “Begging your pardon. Doctor B will want you to stay.”

  “Go to your Doctor B. Do whatever you must to distract him. Release a patient.” Selene stood and stared into the orderly’s eyes. She patted the top of his head and watched him go, then winked at Red.

  “Er, what are you doing, princess?” Lucas raised an eyebrow. “Mesmerizing the help?”

  “The man with the eyes full of lies is coming for our red witch. Sparks shoot from his hands into her brain.” Walking over to the human, Selene traced her fingers over Juniper’s temples. Pulling away, her fangs jutted out from under ruby-tinted lips. The pixie notes in her light Scottish accent disappeared. “She is his favorite to torment.”

  “Now I have another wanker to kill. Brilliant plan, Juniper. At least three bloody Scots down.” Lucas gritted his teeth. “Close your eyes to that.”

  “He deserves it.” Red retorted even if he couldn’t hear. “Maxwell trapped me here.”

  Selene cocked her head as if listening to a third unheard conversation, giggling. Her rolling eyes flipped back to Red as if confessing freshly heard gossip. “You know he is scared of you.”

  “No, he isn’t,” Juniper whispered.

  “No, I’m not.” Lucas glowered.

  “Oh, hush, not you two.” Selene shook her head before smiling sheepishly to Red as if apologizing to company for unruly children. “Always interrupting.”

  “Maxwell doesn’t act like it.” Red shifted on her feet under the expectant gaze, feeling awkward, not knowing what to do with her hands. It was off the charts bizarre to talk to the vampire seer in some flashback gone off the tracks. She was meeting Lucas’s ex, and it wasn’t entirely unpleasant considering the circumstances. This wasn’t the weirdest part of her technicolor satanic Christmas dream voyage, but it was up there.

  “Men are arrogant like that.” Selene said, flapping a dismissive hand. “Spatulas, spoons, they don’t expect the humble. He wouldn’t hide behind a star if he weren’t afraid with good reason.”

  “Who are you talking to, princess?” Lucas asked, taking Selene’s hand, and guiding her to the chair.

  “You have to go now.” Selene waved looking down, finger at her pursed lips. “Or maybe, we do?”

  Red blinked and the room was empty even the electric lighting. Only the eerie light of the moon on the bare floor remained. Malignant auras hung in the corners. The murk crawled down the walls like a horde of spiders, skittering closer.

  Maxwell had found her again.

  17

  December 23rd, 12:16AM, Dreamland, The Asylum

  Red fled down the asylum hall, spectral feet only yards from the scurrying darkness chasing her. Pushing the double doors open, she ran into a stairwell. The light faded behind her. She only just kept ahead of the shadow’s edge.

  Bursting out of the front exit, she spilled out onto the lawn. The lush greenery she had seen through the windows in the odd flashback was replaced by brittle gray grass. She bolted farther down the private driveway, but the ground grew spongy at her feet like black quicksand, her ankles slipped under.

  Maxwell materialized in front of her. Shadows curled around his purple velvet suit like coiling snakes.

  Nevaeh emerged from the gloom, sparks marched up her arms, glimmering on the black sequins of her dress. Her irises went from blue to onyx, the black leeching into the whites of her eyes.

  The asylum crumbled.

  It reformed into a broken medieval longhouse attached to a tower pocked with holes as big as dragon bites. A flickering flame in the shadows grew in her peripheral vision. It spread up a pile of logs attached to a tall wooden pole—a stake to burn witches on.

  Red pumped her legs through the quicksand, wishing to be in a flower filled meadow instead. The dark warlock and witch closed in as fire sprouted up higher. The Dreamland didn’t obey her wish. It obeyed power.

  Maxwell had more.

  Nevaeh’s form blinked, then solidified yards forward, toeing the quicksand’s line. Lunging, she grabbed Red by the upper arms, fingers grew into claws and tossed the other witch.

  Red landed on solid ground by the pyre, protecting her head. Just the proximity to the smoke and flames heated her face. She sprung to her feet.

  Nevaeh stepped forward, grinning. She even seemed taller, augmented by the surreal power of the Dreamland, holding an orb of light. “Not so tough, hunter skank, without your friends around, huh?”

  “She never was.” Maxwell smiled at the stake as if it were an old college friend. “Juniper should have burned in the shadows of this old watchtower. Regrettably that vampire saved her.”

  Red sprinted to the side to the collapsed gates of the mysterious tower.

  “Can’t run if you don’t have legs.” Nevaeh raised her claws. “I had a doll that had hair like you once. I liked her better.”

  Red fell forward, heart skipping. Her feet clinked together. Below her knees, her legs had been replaced by porcelain—shiny white with black saddle shoes. She wanted to throw up even as she marveled at the power that Nevaeh seem to wield in the Dreamland. Who knew what the two of them would do together when they had no one to oppose them? Anger pulsed through her. She focused her intention on turning her legs back into flesh.

  The Dreamland obeyed her will. Maxwell didn’t hold all the cards. Finally. She popped back up and wished for a baseball bat. It appeared in her hand and she swung it up.

  Nevaeh caught it and smirked. “I was all-state varsity on the softball team.”

  Red punched her in the face. “How's about taking an asskicking, were you all-state in that?”

  “Is that how ladies should behave?” He teleported beside Nevaeh. “Enough.”

  Red flew backwards, landing beside the burning pile. She stumbled but regained her footing.

  “Even if all you share with Juniper St. James is her face, that is one connection too many.” Maxwell raised his palm. Tarnished gray energy rippled from his fingers. “You have seen why I came back. That was a courtesy to your damnable curiosity, wife.”

  Yanked airborne, Red hovered above the flames. The heat simmered against her back. The bat didn’t reappear in her hand. Her brief rally was broken as he bro
ught the full force of his intention to bear. His power surrounded her.

  “This is the time that I finally finish you off.” Maxwell flicked his finger, sending the energy tumbling forward like eager young hounds.

  Red flew back onto the stake, leather straps pinning her tightly. The rubber soles of her boots bubbled from the heat. Guts churning, she kicked her heels at the wood.

  “We should get marshmallows.” Nevaeh grinned. A toasting fork, adorned with fluffy marshmallows, materialized in her clawed hands.

  “I told you, ladies first.” Maxwell smirked at Red. “This is like old times, except there are no pesky witch hunters trying to burn me too. I prefer this.”

  Heart racing and ears buzzing, ghostly goosebumps chilled her skin despite the flames. Red tried to remember the power of wishing. She tried to remember the strength of intention. She tried to remember that she possessed magic. All she felt was the fire. The flames licked at her boots, causing the leather to crinkle. Even in Dreamland, her pain receptors screamed. If it were an illusion, how could it hurt so damn badly?

  Red bit back the first screech, but she couldn’t stop the rest.

  Had her protection spell failed? Was she burning in the hospital room? Was a mage doctor trying frantically to put her out as she spontaneously combusted? She hoped Vic wouldn’t have to see her die. He had already lost so much. What could they do? She wasn't burning from anything on the physical plane. Mystical flames were consuming her from the inside out.

  Maxwell and Nevaeh watched her with the engrossed interest of spectators at a play. Were they going to pull out Milk Duds next?

  Voice turned hoarse, Red tried to pull herself together before the flames turned her to ash. The only thing that came to mind was a spell from an old grimoire she had found in an abandoned house after a hunt. Vic had taken it away, saying she shouldn't read it before she passed the Hunter’s Challenge. Yet she had never forgotten the brief passage that she had read—a death curse.

  They were short and bitter. When you needed to use one, you usually didn't have much time to spit it out. Why did that passage stick in her mind? Maybe somehow, she knew it would come down to this. Maxwell spoke of destiny. Was this hers?