Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  “Ah, there she is.” Vivicus pointed.

  “What are you going to do with her?” What was he going to do with us? His Mundus Imperium didn’t exist here.

  “Ordnance,” Vivicus said. He sniffed and patted his shoulder next to Stab’s hilt. “I lifted Stab off your dead body already, Philadelphia Parrish.”

  Confuse them, a whisper in the back of my head said.

  Another soldier pushed Ismene down Mrs. Smith’s driveway. Her hands glowed, but somehow their cuffs didn’t melt, or explode.

  “Ismene called the sword Jab,” I said.

  Was the whisper Maria? The strange voice in the gray? Alt-me? Someone told me to lie.

  Vivicus blinked. I had confused him. I looked over my shoulder at Nax. He squinted as he stared at Stab in Vivicus’s hand, but he, too, seemed to understand that the only way to get away from the soldiers was to distract them.

  Ismene, as well. She opened her mouth as if to yell at me for lying, but then her eyes did the far-away stare that meant she was using her Fate ability.

  Her mouth snapped it shut. Then she grinned like the demon she was.

  Please make a distraction, I thought. Please.

  “Oh my God!” she screamed. “You want to chop me up and lob my parts at dragons!”

  Vivicus stepped ahead of me and threw wide his arms. “Shut her up!” he yelled.

  He took two steps forward. Two steps that fully displayed his magnetic scabbard to me.

  So I did the dumbest thing I could do. Seemed I’d been doing a lot of dumb things lately.

  I grabbed Stab’s hilt.

  Chapter Nine

  I touched my sword and the gray returned.

  Vivicus, in his constraining suit, was a hurricane in a human-shaped bottle. Lines of energy from the implants in his head crisscrossed through his body like drones in a storm. The suit looked like glass—or like that lensing border around Stab through which I’d seen him before, while he mimicked to invisibility—but now that lensing effect took over all my vision.

  Stab was stuck to his glass like a fly on a windshield.

  I planted one foot on Vivicus’s ass and yanked on Stab’s hilt.

  Stab did not move. Neither did Vivicus.

  He looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes at me as if I was a child.

  “Asshole,” I spit.

  His arm swept backward, but I ducked and swung out of the way. Somehow, I managed to keep a grip on my sword.

  Leif looked as if he was about to slap his knee and let loose a good, hearty belly laugh. The other solider, the one next to Ismene, cycled up his suit to invisibility again, though I doubted it did any good when standing next to a future-seeing Burner-Fate demon-goddess.

  It didn’t. Ismene swung her cuffs at his crotch and left an indentation in his armor’s glass-like force lines.

  The soldier buckled over. He staggered a step, and she kicked him in the gut.

  “I’m going to eat your Shifter brain with fava beans and a nice Chianti!” she screamed at Vivicus. “I’m going to make a violin out of your bones and your wiggly guts!”

  Ismene covered the twenty feet between us in a blink of an eye. She sprinted up to Vivicus—and up Vivicus’s front. One foot hit his knee. The next his waist. And crazy-ass Ismene somehow avoided kicking me in the face as she wrapped her legs around his neck like a circus acrobat.

  His face was buried in her belly. She looked down at me, grinned, and hooked her cuffs under the back of his head.

  “We used to date,” she said, and yanked upward. “Hey honeybuns, I liked you better before you sold your soul to The Man,” she said.

  Somehow, during all this, I kept my grip on Stab’s hilt.

  Vivicus pawed at Ismene’s thighs, but held still long enough for me to grab Stab with both hands and plant my feet.

  I yanked on Stab again.

  The magnetic bonds holding her to his back popped. Stab released and we stumbled backward, her sending out one of her weird pings again and me trying to stay upright while not slashing myself or anyone else.

  Ismene laughed. “Look at that!” Then she smashed Vivicus’s head between her thighs. “You never were a conscientious lover, Vicky sweetie.”

  I lurched and danced along the end of my parents’ driveway, doing my best not to impale myself on my magic sword while not paying a huge amount of attention to who or what was around me. I’d survived the end of the world. I’d survived chucking a chunk of Praesagio super-material into a mini-Incursion. Death by stupidity shouldn’t be on the agenda.

  I tripped and fell, but I didn’t hit the ground. I fell directly into the open arms of Leif the caddish Seraphim soldier.

  He flashed a “How ya doin’, baby?” grin and winked his royal violet eye.

  He might smell nice—which for some stupid reason I noticed—and look like a romance-novel-level hottie bad boy with his strong jaw and chin scruff, but he was a cad. A literal Cad. Cads didn’t deserve a Viking warrior name like Leif.

  He caught my sword wrist, but didn’t squeeze the way Vivicus had. “The other version of you knew how to use this thing.”

  “It’ll cut you in half no matter how I swing,” I said.

  “True.” He didn’t let go. “You’re a lot cuter than your Burner-approved version.” He nodded toward Ismene and Vivicus.

  He was taller than Vivicus by a few inches, and maybe taller than Nax. He had Nax-level broad shoulders, too, and a sturdiness to him that most large men didn’t have—there seemed to be a height limit to sturdy men that Cad the Seraphim cad clearly beat. No one was going to move this man if he didn’t want to be moved.

  Vivicus had a slipperiness to the energy around him. This Seraphim had the opposite. Douchebro Leif-Cad with his beautiful violet eyes carried a barrier-like field. He was the ageless immovability of the world personified.

  Or so he seemed. He could be faking all of it, being a Seraphim super-soldier who felt that following Vivicus’s orders was a good idea.

  What kind of man blindly followed the orders of someone they clearly did not like?

  A follower, obviously. He might be handsome, but I doubted he had an original thought in his pretty head.

  He looked around as if trying to find Nax.

  “Are you immortal like Vicky the asshole over there?” I asked. “You some eternal douchebro?”

  Cad’s grip—I would never call him Leif—on my wrist tightened. “That’s no way to—”

  I saw Nax. I saw his fractured bubbles of glamour, and how he’d modulated them in a new way. A way the Seraphim must not have “calibrated” for.

  Nax swung one of my mom’s painted yard gnomes at Cadmus the cad’s head, on the opposite side from the hand he was using to grip my sword wrist.

  Caddy-boy clearly did not see the hit coming. He sensed something, though, and twisted enough that the gnome missed his temple. It smacked one of the disc-plates on his shoulder. He jolted enough that the hand gripping my wrist wrenched to the side—and brought me directly against his front.

  No more flirting. He lifted me up between himself and Nax like I was some sort of disposable shield.

  “Nice try,” Cad said in Nax’s general direction. Then he chuckled at me. “Our version of you sliced the Lesser Emperor clean through. I found the half-bodies,” he said as he squeezed my wrist. “Fun times.”

  Behind us, Vivicus howled and bent forward.

  Ismene’s weight should have yanked him to the ground with her, but he pulled his arms up and over his head. Vivicus’s hands came together, and he slammed his fists down into her chest as she dropped toward the asphalt.

  I don’t know how he got his head out from between her belly and her cuffed hands, but he did. His body changed—morphed—in such a way that he got the upper hand, and dropped her to the ground like a bag of acid-soaked potatoes.

  Ismene quickly scrambled to her feet and launched herself at him again with her cuffed hands out, glowing, and aimed directly for his head.

&n
bsp; He didn’t get his helmet closed fast enough. Ismene clocked him along the jaw with the bar between her cuffs, with one of her open hands on his mouth, and the other along the side of his neck.

  Her hit ate into his flesh like fire burning through paper. His face crackled. Charred meat stink filled the air. I dry-heaved and turned my face toward Cadmus.

  Vivicus snarled and tossed Ismene a good ten feet away—until she stopped as if caught by something invisible.

  The Seraphim she’d kicked in the crotch earlier shimmered into visibility. He gripped her cuffs and held her in a way that would keep her head far enough away she couldn’t bite.

  I looked around. Where was Nax? He’d vanished again.

  Vivicus stood as if his gaping, burned-off jaw was nothing, with his breath curling out of the hole as if having a burned-off face was the most normal part of his day.

  I’d seen wounds before. Bed sores, mostly. I’d seen special effects. But none of those came with the cooked smell, or the sizzle.

  I had to hold it together. Any noise and the soldiers might realize Nax had vanished again.

  Vivicus tapped what had to be a panel on the top of his forearm, then held up his hand.

  The suit of the Seraphim holding Ismene cycled down into a flat, iron gray, as did Cad’s. Vivicus’s suit cycled down into a similar low-gloss matte finish, but kept a purple tinge.

  He gingerly touched the gaping wound on his face. The remaining parts of his face frowned. Then he turned his face toward the sky.

  His flesh filled in. Missing tendons grew. Muscle reformed. And within moments, his face was back to normal.

  He pointed at Ismene. “The Emperor knows we are here.” He pointed at me. “He knows your crimes.” He stretched his neck and shoulders. “We can help you.”

  Ismene sniffed at the Seraphim holding her cuffs. “Morons. You have no idea about this world, do you?” She sniffed at him again. “You’ve been too busy looking for me to check the newsfeeds.”

  Vivicus looked as if he wanted to punch Ismene in the throat.

  She laughed at him. “What do you think I was doing all night? I could have been burning down Denver, but I’m smart! I research, you dumb-as-fuck clay-boy golem. I used my seers! I stole a phone and checked the feeds.”

  Cad turned me so I faced outward and wrapped his arm around my waist to pin my free arm against my side.

  He put his lips right next to my ear. “The Lesser Emperor cannot hide from us,” he said.

  No, he couldn’t anymore. But they didn’t seem to care right now.

  Ismene laughed again. “This is why the Dracae kept your brother as their Second and not you.” She tried to headbutt the soldier holding her, but he moved out of the way. “There’s lots that’s different here! Lots and lots and lots and lots!”

  Vivicus pinched the bridge of his nose again. “Yet you are still a Burner, my dear, and I am still the one holding the Imperium together.”

  A small, almost imperceptible humph escaped Leif-Cadmus’s lips.

  He really did not like his boss.

  I still didn’t like him.

  “Help us,” I said anyway.

  He looked down at me—he had to be the six-four I’d guessed because five-nine me fit nicely against his chest—and raised an eyebrow. “Sure, baby,” he said, and returned his attention to his boss.

  “I hate you,” I spat.

  “I am aware,” he said.

  I still gripped Stab. He hadn’t taken her from me. I held her out and he held me as if we were a pair of ice dancers—me in front, sword arm out, with his other arm wrapped around my middle. I couldn’t move, but I could see all the little gray-world cyclones.

  The field around Cadmus didn’t have any wind or swirls or anything like the weird roiling around Vivicus. This close to him, his looked more like magnetic lines like the ones around Stab’s blade. Now that the suit had powered down, they were clearer than they had been before.

  I glanced back at the wild, popping effervescence around Ismene. Some of it rolled forward, as if touching what was yet to come. Some rolled backward, as if touching what had already happened. It did these things in a way that mapped onto the visuals Stab was feeding me, but in a way that also didn’t make sense.

  Nothing moved, yet Ismene’s Fate abilities seemed to glide along dimensions I shouldn’t be able to see.

  Like Nax, her Fate ability was infested with her Burnerness. But unlike Nax, her two—three, actually—abilities didn’t block each other. She managed to be all things at once.

  What was Caddy-boy, then?

  One of Ismene’s frothy seers snapped outward and touched me.

  Vivicus whipped around as if he, too, saw its trajectory. The soldier holding her flinched, and his attention followed her seer the same way Vivicus’s had, as if he’d responded instinctually, like a cat watching a mouse run by.

  Which was what Ismene wanted. She opened her mouth. And Ismene bit.

  She latched onto her captor’s upper arm. His suit held, but her mouth glowed, and there was no way it could stand against her onslaught much longer.

  “Shit,” Cadmus said. He spun me around and grabbed Stab’s hilt with his free hand. “Get on the bus,” he said.

  His fingers wrapped partially around mine and he pried with his thumb, but I didn’t let go. My fingers cramped. Sharp needles poked every nerve in my wrist. Stab was mine.

  The bit soldier screamed. Ismene ripped away a chunk of his suit—and a chunk of his arm. She spit it into the street. “Venom,” she said. “One of your boys will be my boy in…” she tapped her chin with her cuffed hand. “… thirty seconds?”

  The soldier’s back arched. He vomited.

  “Oh, that’s right. Shifters always die.” Ismene pointed at Vivicus. “Always, you pathetic fuck.”

  Shifters always died? Was the venom in Nax slowly killing him?

  “Let me go!” I yelled right into Cad’s face.

  He glowered and squeezed my wrist hard enough that I screech-yelped.

  He stopped squeezing. The annoyed look released into something that almost looked as if he was sorry for causing me pain.

  Almost. “Give me the goddamned sword.”

  I kicked him in the groin.

  He rolled his eyes. “You aren’t strong enough to cause—”

  He really should not have been ignoring Nax. This time, the gnome made contact with Cad’s temple.

  He released my arm and stumbled backward, then bounced off the bus and fell to his knees with his head in his hands.

  “Bus!” Nax pointed. “Go!”

  Vivicus roared. “I will—”

  Ismene landed a kick into the middle of his gut. He buckled and side-stepped to keep his balance, but she swept a foot between his and knocked him to his knees.

  She raised her cuffed hands over her head. She was going to kill Vivicus. Smash his brains all over the driveway.

  “Ismene!” I yelled. “Don’t!”

  She ignored me. Her hit caved in the side of his skull.

  “He’s fine,” she said, and kicked him in the kidney again, just for good measure.

  He wasn’t moving.

  “Jesus, Ismene,” I said. “You need to stop killing people! This isn’t your world!” I pointed at the unmoving soldier in the street, and the equally unmoving Vivicus. “You don’t have to be the terror you were there! Neither of us needs to be that terror.”

  She walked toward me with her arms out. “Cuffs, please,” she said.

  “Why should I free you?” I asked. “You’ll keep killing and setting fires.”

  She tilted her head to the side at an angle that should have snapped her neck. “My bestie wants to walk a different path?”

  Why was she acting like a child? Probably because it allowed her to be “innocent” and get away with shit.

  Her future-seer rolled out from her. “Japan is lovely this time of year,” she muttered.

  Nax tugged on my arm. “We need to go, before the other
soldier shows up.”

  “Ismene,” I said, “can you pull your venom out of Nax?” Maybe she could remove it.

  She held out her hands again. “Cuffs.”

  “She can’t,” Nax said.

  “Hold still,” I said, and used Stab on the cuffs anyway.

  They fell off her wrists in little pieces. “Pull back venom? You’re the one with the magic sword. You figure it out.”

  An SUV roared around the corner, complete with smoking and screeching tires.

  “Look who’s come to fetch Daddy.” Ismene swung around and kicked Vivicus again. She cracked her knuckles. “Tasty Shifter snacks for me!”

  I set Stab on her scabbard. The moment the little arms clinked closed, and I let go of her hilt, my extra view of the gray vanished.

  Seemed I needed to be in direct skin contact with Stab in order to get the enhanced vision, which was good, because seeing all the little tornadoes was going to make driving difficult.

  “Ismene!” I yelled. “Please. Be good, okay? For me.” The SUV stopped behind the hellhound’s corpse. “You can help the hounds. You can help everyone! Be a person who deserves adoration.” I pointed at Vivicus. “Be better than him.”

  She looked me up and down. “We besties again?”

  “If you do this for me, yes.”

  She shrugged, then picked up a piece of her broken cuffs. “That one,” she pointed at the slowly opening door of the SUV, “has a counterpart here.” She pointed at the moaning Leif-Cadmus. “That one does not.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You’d better go.”

  I looked up at Nax. “We’ll figure out what to do.”

  “Why didn’t your venom kill me?” he asked.

  Ismene’s face bunched up as if she hadn’t even considered whether or not her venom would kill him. “You might be the lesser of all the Emperors, but you were the only one who came down from the mountain to say hello.” She waved us away. “You will need to atone, Pertinax. Remember that.”

  He nodded and pulled me toward the bus.

  The SUV door swung open and a big gun appeared over the window. “On the ground! Now!” A woman’s voice boomed from an invisible place behind the car.