Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Someone, somewhere, had just broken the hellhound in a way similar to how I’d broken the mini-Incursion outside of Paradise Homes.

  Maybe we didn’t all have to die. Maybe we could break a few more apocalyptic blisters.

  And that someone, somewhere, gave me hope.

  Chapter Six

  I might have opened my eyes again just as the first rays of the rising sun added a shimmer to the eastern horizon. Or I might have dreamed. Either way, I couldn’t feel my nose.

  I coughed and patted at my face, but stayed bundled in my double layer of sleeping bags. I dared not move. An ominous, salmon-colored shimmer swirled on the horizon.

  Storm, I thought. Bad storms looked both thick and ghostly at the same time, like someone stirred a witch’s cauldron.

  The edge of impossibility sat on the horizon. It roiled and it pulsed, and the salmon color divided into its components—red, yellow, blue.

  Was I dreaming? Was this the end? Ismene had said the big blister in the sky did two passes over the Earth before it closed.

  And I’d fallen asleep outside, in the January cold, under the stars, because part of me… what? Wanted to die? Wanted to see the real end of the world with my own eyes? Didn’t care anymore?

  Or all the adrenaline that had been driving me since Paradise Homes had run out and I’d done something stupid and now I was half-frozen to the top of a mini-bus maybe-dreaming the death of my planet.

  I was alive, though. I had Stab and her scabbard pressed against my chest. And I had dreamed that a hellhound had sniffed my breath. I’d dreamed shimmers and a ghostly land not all that different from the “storm” on the horizon.

  Or the whole fucking thing had been a frozen delusion. All of it. Stab glowing. The unshakable awareness of the space between the curlicues. The voices.

  The sense of hope.

  “Fuck,” I muttered as if it was the only word left that correctly summed up humanity’s past, present, and future. “Fuck!” I tightened the sleeping bag around my head and face.

  Stab pulsed. I looked down at my chest.

  Light poured out from under the sleeping bags. My sword wasn’t hot, but she was throwing off some type of energy. “Whoa!” I said, and pushed her away from my body as best I could all wrapped up in the sleeping bags.

  I looked back at the gunshot wound floating above the world.

  A column of fire rose from somewhere northeast of Denver. A thread of power leaped skyward, so bright it looked as if it had been ripped from the sun itself.

  It blasted right into the center of the blister and it hit with enough intensity to pop that evil clown balloon.

  Stab’s light washed out everything—the end of The Incursion, the top of the bus, me. I squinted and looked away, and covered my ears against the imaginary-yet-real buzz that came with the overwhelming glare.

  I rolled over and looked up at what should have been the brightening sky. The world had turned a roiling gray.

  My throat did a semi-stuck choke, as if it knew I shouldn’t be able to breathe in this “place.” But I still inhaled, and my heart still pounded against my breastbone. The cold of the bus’s metal roof still pressed against my back.

  I’d seen this gray before. It had flooded in after I closed the blister outside of Paradise Homes. Whirlwinds of energy danced through this place.

  Somewhere, out in the distance, people yelled orders. Machines hummed and whined.

  Save our people echoed farther out there in the shimmering mists.

  Was I between the curlicues that made up time and space? Were the people and machines survivors of The Incursion and the invaders?

  A whirlwind twisted up the gray next to my head. It concentrated down into a tiny tornado, one no bigger than my hand, and danced away along the shimmery surface of the bus’s roof.

  Then it dropped off the side into the opening maw of empty space.

  I looked up again at the writhing, roiling gray—yet it wasn’t the gray anymore, and I was no longer on my back. Dawn spread over Aurora. No cars moved, yet people screamed. Shots echoed between the houses as pops between the howls of the wind.

  The wind picked up ice pellets and slammed them against my skin. I cupped my hand over the side of my face to shield my eyes from the whipping snow.

  The glare here, too, buzzed-screeched in my ears. But this was the way of the world, now. Too much noise. Too much light. Too many colors. Sometimes—all the time, for me—separating the true calls from the static took concentration. It took willpower and the strength to listen for what no one else heard no matter the spikes of pain it rammed into my temples.

  I had the blade, and I heard the commands from out there, in the place no one else saw or heard. Me, alone.

  I had to be the hero the voices needed me to be….

  Someone shook my shoulders.

  “Del!”

  I groaned.

  “Why didn’t you come in last night?” Nax called to me from below where I lay on top of the bus. In the real world.

  He wasn’t the person shaking my shoulders. That person was still in the whipping gray.

  Maria, I thought. The ghost touched my cheek and gripped my shoulders because I did something stupid and fell asleep outside in the cold.

  And listened to the voices. Only a crazy version of me would listen to voices.

  “Why are you on the top of the bus?” Nax called.

  Maria wasn’t the only ghost here, though she was the most spirit-like. There were seven more ghost-images on that edge of open space. Seven humans who resonated enough with Stab that she felt them cross over. Seven soldiers who had stepped through from the other side.

  And they felt me as much as I felt them.

  The gray vanished and I sat up faster than I should have. My eyes blurred and I rubbed at my face. My heartrate thankfully slowed, but I was still all too aware of my jolted stomach and my cinched-up back.

  And I was still outside, on the roof of the bus, tucked between the luggage rack side rails, with a sleeping bag wrapped around my body and a glowing sword pressed against my chest.

  “Nax!” I called.

  “Will you come down, please?”

  I leaned over the rack’s edge. Nax had found one of Dad’s jackets, and an extra pair of gloves.

  He looked steady, even if he was still pale. He pointed at the sky. “It’s gone.”

  I hadn’t dreamed the end of The Incursion. Wisps of sparkly color spread out along the sky just above the rising sun, like someone had broken open a bottle of glitter paint and splattered it onto the clouds. “Someone closed it.” Closed it and leveled-up Stab.

  “Probably the military,” he said. Like me, he just stared.

  Why wasn’t I dancing on the roof of the bus? The blister in the sky was now nothing but wispy aurora-like energy trails. I should be happy. Was it really gone? Were the invaders still destroying cities?

  Stab still glowed, as if I needed proof that the end of the world wasn’t over. It might have slowed down, but civilization continued to burn.

  I pushed off the sleeping bags and held out my sword for Nax to see. “Do you see the light?” I asked.

  “It’s the same black it’s always been.” Nax frowned. “I think the cold froze your corneas.”

  “She’s giving off a light like one of those snap glowsticks, but not green.” I actually couldn’t tell what color the light was, other than it felt gray, connected, and drawing war-moths to its flame.

  “You need to stop,” I said to the sword.

  The light that only I could see continued to twinkle along Stab’s blade. “Maria!” I semi-yelled. The pitch of my voice was creeping up. “Tell her to stop glowing!”

  The “space” around Stab stirred as if one of those mini-tornados from my dream had danced over the blade.

  Something changed. Not on or around my sword, not in her glow or the eddies of power curling in the gray around her blade. But I knew why she glowed.

  The knowing thing—my
inability to remember how I came to the knowledge about Stab’s world, or her operation, or even how Shifters and Fates functioned—it frightened me as much as the glow around her blade. These were things that only affected me, and even in a weird world full of weird, powered people, being singled out for an otherwise unknown ability felt as if I was being set up. Or trapped. Or made into prey.

  Nothing brought out the seekers of uniqueness like something utterly unique. And I knew that the seekers looking for my particular unique connection to Stab were more asshole-big-game-hunters than wide-eyed photo-taking tourists.

  And I knew that the ground Incursion at Paradise Homes had reopened while I was on top of the bus. Someone on the other side had forced it open long enough for travelers to come through.

  Travelers, not hellhounds.

  “This is bad, Nax,” I said.

  Travelers who knew more about me than I knew about them.

  “We need to go.” I threw the sleeping bags off the side of the bus.

  Nax shook his head. He pointed at the sky. “It’s over. You need to warm up and to eat.”

  “It’s not over. We need to go! Now.” I shook out my numb hand and fiddled with the strap on Stab’s scabbard. I got it over my shoulder and the sword against my back, even though I was beginning to wonder if sleeping outside had done some real damage to my achy, stiff body.

  I climbed down the ladder and tossed the two sleeping bags into the bus. “The mini-Incursion we closed at Paradise Homes?” I said. “It opened again.”

  Nax looked southwest as if we could see his former home from here. “Is it still open?”

  At least he didn’t argue. He might be a jackass about a lot of things, but with all things related to Stab and Maria, he deferred to me and Mrs. K without any imperial posturing.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. I didn’t think any Incursion could have stood against the blast that closed the big one in the sky.

  “More hellhounds?” he asked.

  I stared out at the wispy remains on the horizon. “Humans came through,” I said. People. Soldiers.

  “Seraphim?” he asked.

  That voice, the one I’d heard after we closed the ground Incursion, wanted me to run from angels, and I was pretty sure Stab agreed.

  “They’re not your Seraphim,” I said. “They’re from the same fallen version of the world as Ismene.”

  “Are you getting this information from Maria?” Nax pointed at the house. “All I’ve been able to get from Irena is that she wishes to have a ham and cheese sandwich.”

  So Mrs. K wasn’t fully with us this morning.

  Mrs. K, who needed the most care, wasn’t with us enough to at least help by giving me Maria-based understanding. And Nax still looked pale.

  My entire body throbbed. My knees. My head. The still-cold tip of my nose. The hands I used to scrub up vomit and to drive and to make food for people who could not feed themselves.

  Part of me wanted to just up and leave and let this new threat come riding in, let them flip out their other-side badges like time-traveling marshals and take care of the two old people I couldn’t care for anymore.

  Couldn’t or wouldn’t? Nax had saved me at Paradise Homes. One could make a pretty good argument that Maria and Mrs. K were big parts of that saving.

  Leaving them to the hounds—hell or human—would be running away.

  Cowards run away.

  “Stab’s talking to me. Glowing at me. I don’t know.”

  Nax crossed his arms. He watched as if scanning me for copying, but stopped suddenly and looked over his shoulder.

  The interior and exterior lights of the house burst on. I looked down the street just as the entire neighborhood winked awake. A constant low-level electric buzz propagated down the street as everyone’s alarm and heating systems started up again.

  Aurora came back to life.

  Stab pinged like radar. I blinked once and glanced over my shoulder at her hilt. Nothing. No change. I touched my forehead. And I looked back at Nax.

  He wasn’t there. He was, but I wasn’t seeing him.

  The house was gone. Burned to the ground, and a long time ago, from the looks of the ruins. The entire neighborhood was gone. Cracks and weeds riddled what was left of the street. No local pollution added a sour scent to the air, though the world smelled of dust and soot.

  Hellhounds moved between the bushes, some wearing collars marking them as trained. A tree with massive purple leaves stood in what used to be my parents’ driveway. Small, weird, bell-shaped weeds choked what had been the porch. Something that looked like a hell-mouse vanished into the rubble of the house’s foundations.

  I gasped.

  The vision vanished.

  Nax’s big hands wrapped around my shoulders. “Del! Look at me.”

  I scrunched my eyes, rubbed my face, and did my damnedest to focus.

  Everything was what it was supposed to be. No weird plants. No hellish ecosystem. No dust and soot in the air.

  “I’ve spent enough time with Fates to know an overwhelming vision when I see one.” He looked around. “Most Fates’ seers don’t override the real world. A seer is another sensory channel. An augmentation that’s often both auditory and visual.” He let go of my arms. “But you’re not a Fate.”

  I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know what I was seeing, or hallucinating. Stab’s energy could be causing brain damage for all I knew.

  Nax pointed at the top of Stab’s hilt where it stuck up over my shoulder. “Is the sword showing you glimpses of the other side?”

  “I don’t think it’s the other side,” I said. “I’m seeing glimpses of a future no one wants.” No one but the invaders—and maybe Ismene. I certainly didn’t want it.

  I patted over my shoulder at my impossibly glowing sword. “Are you showing me glimpses of your version of the future?” Stab actually talking to me was better than my brain melting out of my ears.

  She was definitely telling me that others with an other-side signature were nearby.

  Not just nearby—moving toward us. Fast.

  “Get Mrs. K!” I pushed past Nax and toward the house. “We need to go now.”

  We had no time to figure out anything. No time to rest or to eat or to gather more supplies.

  He looked around. “You go. Is there a car in the garage? I’ll—”

  “Nax!” I yelled. “You’re sick. Mrs. K is our conduit to Maria.” I wasn’t going to abandon them. “I can’t stand against soldiers alone. They’re from a devastated future!” I jogged toward the house. “And probably teched-up like Snow White’s Seven Macho Mega-killers.” Tatted-up, scruffy, wrap-around-sunglass wearing, military-precise men from a place where life really sucked. Not sucked like my boring, suburban, can’t-finish-college life, but end-of-the-world sucked.

  These were not people I wanted to mess with.

  Nax sniffed, and his lips bunched up. “Valid,” he said. “Get as many supplies as you can. I’ll carry Irena out to the bus.”

  I looked him over. “Do you feel up to it?”

  He shook his head. “Does it matter?”

  He, too, had a valid point. I nodded and reached for the door handle.

  Down the street and around one of the curves near the outer edge of the neighborhood, three or maybe four blocks away, a house exploded. A boom blasted around us. I cringed, yet managed to look at the fireball mushrooming over the trees.

  Stab screamed in lights and vibrations.

  Chapter Seven

  A house exploded and Stab was glowing so brightly I could barely make out the smoke filling the sky. “What are you doing?”

  I tugged up-out-up on her hilt and the scabbard released with a clink and a clatter.

  The non-light around my sword shifted into a magnetic-field-like pattern that flowed outward from the central line of her blade as millions of individual loops. Each loop hooked around and returned to the blade along its edges.

  “Nax,” I said.

 
He peered at my face as if reading my deepest secrets, then gave the sword the same intense scrutiny. “I see only the black metal of the blade.” He shook his head and returned to watching the flames dance above the treetops. “Ismene?” he asked.

  Someone whispered yes. Was it Maria? Stab? I couldn’t tell, other than I had an answer.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He looked pale again, but this time, more out of concern than due to his wounds. “I will get Irena.” He pushed by and entered the house.

  “Your glowing is distracting,” I said to Stab. Nor was she keeping me calm. My head throbbed, too. “Is the headache from you or from sleeping in the cold?” The ache in my legs was from the cold. But Stab had me squinting.

  And now, once again, we had Ismene to worry about. Nothing like a super-Burner to add just the right dash of acid-soaked terror on top of all the other layers of crazy.

  I wasn’t surprised she’d found her way to my parents’ home. Honestly, I was surprised she’d waited until dawn to start burning down the neighborhood.

  Hopefully, the house she’d ignited was empty. But there would be people in need, no matter what.

  Maybe we should stay. Maybe I could convince her to help Nax. Maybe I could convince the soldiers coming this way to help too, and not attack.

  But something told me I wouldn’t be so lucky.

  Or maybe I really was a coward.

  Across the street and one house down, Mrs. Smith stepped outside onto her porch, probably one of the few people in the neighborhood who had sheltered in place. My brothers took turns mowing her lawn. She didn’t really have anyone, since her son and his family moved to Washington D.C. a few years back.

  “Mrs. Smith!” I yelled. I set Stab back in her scabbard and ran down to the end of the driveway. “Go back inside! Stay there, okay?”

  She pulled her sweater tighter around her body. Then she waved and nodded, and went back in.

  Thank you, I thought. I didn’t know if I could deal with another headstrong old lady right now.