Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  All of a sudden I was keenly aware of how much Maria wanted her ring. Of how she’d been silent around the Seraphim because they might be able to track her. And that she had an agenda.

  Part of that agenda was protecting her medium. But mostly it was getting her ring.

  “Who is the ghost?” Cad asked.

  “She’s Alternate-me,” I lied. “She came through at the same time as Ismene.”

  Cad took a step forward. “You’re lying. Our world’s version of you got her neck snapped. She was tossed onto the fire.”

  Probably by Vivicus. “Your boss, who claims he’s not the asshole Nax said this world’s Vivicus is, sure does seem to get creative and cavalier with his killing.”

  Cad closed his eyes. “No wonder you figured out how to hijack the Dragonslayer.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I yelled. All the outside-world stuff—all of Nax’s imperial social connections, all the talk of Cad’s family, even Mrs. K’s understanding of the Legion that they all kept on about—it was real. The world out there—beyond the trees and Ismene’s marauding hellhounds and me and my blade—was huge.

  And I was alone and outside the networks working to keep us all alive. I was just some aimless college dropout with no agenda of my own other than getting up every morning and doing my best to take care of the oldsters at Paradise Homes.

  My family had vanished. I might have Stab and some sort of weird-ass connection to the gray, but all they did was add to my isolation. They made me a target. They gave me a headache.

  Made me insane.

  “What did Alt-me do?” I asked. Ismene hadn’t told me. Stab’s memory-images weren’t clear. Vivicus pontificated but never actually said.

  Somewhere out there, on the curlicues of time and space, a version of me had gone evil, and I had no idea what that meant.

  “Let me take you in,” Cad said. “Okay? Prove, now, to Praesagio and the Emperor—to Vivicus—that you won’t become her. Let’s get in that bus and drive your friends to Portland. Let’s get Pertinax a healer and Mrs. Karanova a warm meal.”

  He held out his hands as if he was approaching a tiger.

  He was such a liar. “Tell me what I did.”

  Cad took another step closer. “You’re not her. That’s obvious.” He nodded toward the bus. “You didn’t have your friends where I come from. You didn’t have a new-space ghost protecting you.” He waved his hand around as if swatting at Maria again. “None of us had anyone.”

  “You have your Seraphim buddies.” He was in a fucking super-suited cult.

  He shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Of course it’s not.” Why would it be? “Please just tell me what I did.”

  Cad looked around at the trees lining the road. “It’s against protocol.”

  I threw my arms wide, Stab included. “Why?”

  “Because you might get ideas.”

  How fucking patronizing. “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

  Cad stared out at the trees. A breeze moved through, and the branches rustled. He shivered ever so slightly, and danced a little on his naked feet.

  We’d been out here in the cold long enough that a normal person’s toes would have frozen to the pavement. He looked cold, but his exposed skin was still the same warm olive tone it was when we stripped him bare.

  The super-soldier in front of me was proof I was in over my head. Hell, Nax and Mrs. K were proof. I knew nothing. I’d already run away from Paradise Homes and Vivicus. I had no idea how to even hold my sword properly, much less any other applicable skills.

  I suppose what I mostly brought to the table was a big mouth and a dumbass need to run into fires.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it is.” He pointed at his feet. “Can we go back on the bus? I promise I won’t touch the old lady.”

  Was he softening? Maybe he was more human than he liked to pretend.

  But he was going to promise to not touch me, too. And Nax. “Tell me first.”

  He looked up at the bright blue morning sky. “Fine,” he said, then sighed.

  “Well?”

  Cad stared at the one lone cloud in the sky. “You and your sword hijacked the Dragonslayer and destroyed our last chance at taking out the invaders’ capitol Nest in Tokyo.”

  Like that made any more sense than any of the other things he’d talked about. “I didn’t understand anything you just said.”

  I didn’t. The Dragonslayer? Was that some sort of mega-weapon? And he said the word “Nest” like he meant “nation.”

  I’d fucked up some sort of major planetary special ops.

  But it was just more of that science-magic bullshit. Terrorist science-magic bullshit, but still circumstances from out there, from the wider world that swirled around me just as much as the eddies of power swirled around Cad in the gray.

  He covered his face with his hand. Cadmus the Seraphim douchebro, this asshole who’d threatened Mrs. K, covered his face as if a sob was about to break loose from his chest.

  Slowly, he inhaled, and even more slowly, he exhaled. Under his knuckles and fingertips, under his large hand with its rough, masculine skin and his tough callouses, his face twitched.

  He wanted me to see, otherwise he would have turned away, but he didn’t want me to see, because we weren’t connected. We weren’t of the same world, or the same network. He was a superhuman. I was his target, the random woman who had a sword she didn’t deserve.

  How was I supposed to respond? How was I supposed to know if he was playing me? Because that’s what a douchebro would do. Play me.

  But deep down, like so many other things that had happened, or were happening, or honestly might yet happen, I knew the truth. He wasn’t playing. He was just as lost as me.

  “I…” He looked up at the sky. “I just want to know if my family survived here. Antonius knows by now. Vivicus sent him and most of our tech with the Fate who found us when we came through the ground Incursion.” He looked down at his naked feet. “He sent Antonius because he’s a better diplomat and we need to prove ourselves to the Emperor.” He shook his head and drew a toe across the cold pavement. “I’m good at punching.”

  Was he still playing me? He was going to freeze to death out here.

  “Cad, look—”

  “My name is Leif Ladonson,” he said. “My mother wanted to name me Cadmus, because she believed I would go forth and do great deeds.” He swept a naked toe over the cold pavement. “She died giving birth to me. My father and I moved north to live with the Norse. We stayed for three centuries. They named me Leif, and it’s the name I have kept.”

  I had no idea what it meant to have lived so long. To know the centuries and to see the people around you grow old and die. To fight in war after war after war. Or to be different enough that you could stand barefoot on freezing pavement and not suffer consequences.

  And here I’d been whining about being the isolated one.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. Leif.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “We need to figure this out.” I needed to figure this out. I had no idea whether I could trust him, or really anyone other than Nax and Mrs. K.

  He nodded. “We do.”

  “You can’t have my sword.” Stab chose me. The least I could do was listen to the blade.

  “I know.” He took another step closer.

  He really did have beautiful eyes. Out here, in the sun, they had a hint of a metallic shimmer under their violet color.

  “Promise you won’t attack me, or Nax, or Mrs. K,” I said.

  “I promise.” He stepped closer again.

  “And you help me understand, okay? I need to understand what Stab wants, and why I’m hearing calls from the gray, and what all this means for Maria.”

  “Your ghost’s name is Maria?” He looked around. “We did not have ghosts named Maria.”

  “She is a problem, our Maria.” It just slipped out, my smartass Rogers
and Hammerstein comment.

  A momentary flash of confusion contorted Leif’s face until he made the connection. He bowed not only to me, but to the generalized world, and presumably Maria. “I am here to help solve all applicable problems.” He leaned toward me. “Please ask her not to fry me for my impudence.”

  I chuckled. “It’s nice to see that you had the same musicals.”

  He shrugged. “I hunted Nazis.” He said it as if it was nothing special, or something that everyone with abilities like his did.

  “We don’t have super-soldiers named Leif Ladonson,” I responded.

  Leif grinned. His shoulders relaxed. “True. This world is different.” He pointed at the sky. “You know, we may have a chance this time.”

  “We do. I promise.” We had to have a chance this time. Why else would we all be here?

  Leif’s grin turned into a smile. “Good.”

  I held up Stab, not to menace Leif, or to look at the gray, but to point at the bus. “Let’s get your boots—”

  Something about how I held Stab, about her orientation to both the real world and the gray, allowed her pinging to become a signal. Stab, the magical artifact that was more an antenna than anything else, reached out into the gray like a phone looking for wifi.

  She reached, and a new artifact answered.

  They called, greeted each other, and shook hands. Protocols transferred. Parallels set. Processing shared.

  “Whoa,” I said, and swung Stab to orient her with the eastbound road.

  A big man in clothes not all that different from Maria’s manifested directly in front of me. Right there, right between Leif and me, a man I had never seen before flickered like some lurching horror movie crash-cut ghost.

  He came with no sound or smell, and he floated just enough off the ground I noticed—like a hologram or a projection.

  “Tell me you see him,” I said.

  The new ghost looked right at me—no, past me—and said something I could not hear.

  “Who?” Leif spread his arms in his tiger-taming pose again. He couldn’t see the ghost, but he either felt his presence or believed me enough to react.

  The ghost mumbled. I could read the ghost’s lips, though. This time, we save everyone, he said, then he plunged his hand into a wavering, spitting, crackling mirage that looked to be built more out of its underlying mathematics than from real or tangible objects.

  He twisted the math around his ghost-hand—the math that appeared the same way as all the other weirdness in the gray appeared, coiled around itself. It exploded upward. And it turned and formed a tight, dazzling tornado.

  “Who are you?” I asked the male ghost.

  He didn’t notice me. I wasn’t in his part in all this.

  Nearby in the real world, up the road and around the curve just ahead of us, real-world brakes squealed.

  Leif whipped around and held out his hand as if to protect me from the oncoming threat. “SUV!”

  This time, we save everyone, the male ghost said. Or the distant voice said. Or maybe it was the gray itself. Hold the connection, Del! Hold—

  The vision popped. The gray vanished and I was left standing with my sword in the cold under a morning sun.

  Brakes squealed. Tires skidded. An SUV crashed.

  And Maria wanted me to run.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I squinted. Beyond a slope in the road, probably about half a mile away, a puff of smoke or vapor mushroomed over the top of the little hill.

  I couldn’t see the vehicle, but Maria knew. She shoved me, trying to get me to run toward the accident.

  She wanted me to run from one brain-fire into another.

  I swatted at the air the same way Leif had swatted at her when she pushed him off the bus. “Stop!” I swatted again. “Give me a second!” I’d just seen another, non-Maria ghost. “Something big is happening.”

  Leif moved closer and peered at my eyes. He extended his hand. “You need to disconnect from new-space. It’s causing confusion. Give me the sword. Your mind needs a chance to settle.” He pointed at the wreck. “You need to be able to help.”

  No! the voice from the gray yelled.

  The voice didn’t want me to hand over Stab. Maria didn’t seem to care, and continued to push me toward the wreck. And the male ghost had completely vanished.

  I rubbed at my eyes and my ear. “How do you know what’s confusing and what’s not?”

  Leif stared in the direction of the wreck. “Super-soldier, remember?” He glanced at me and extended his hand again. “At least put it back on its scabbard so we can drive down there.”

  He had a point. I looked down at my fist. Let go, I willed at my fingers. Please just let go.

  Nothing happened.

  “Damn it, Stab,” I muttered. She showed me a new ghost doing some random something somewhere I could not identify and now she’d glued herself to my hand?

  Leif touched my back. “Del?”

  I looked up at his face just as a glint of sun hit the implant tattoo over his right ear. I squinted again and looked away.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Nax walked down the bus’s steps. “Touch her again and I snap your neck.”

  Leif held out his hands. “Calm down, Emperor,” he said.

  The men were taking up more space than they should with their macho posturing, and it only added to the swimming feeling the ghosts pushed onto me.

  I had more important things to think about. “Rein it in. Both of you.”

  Leif threw me one of his handsome boy grins. Nax huffed. But the extra sense of pushing energy rolled back.

  “Stab networked to…” I didn’t finish my sentence. Something about having a Seraphim within earshot—even Leif—put me off. “I saw another ghost, but he didn’t see me.” I pointed at the bus. “Mrs. K might know.”

  This time, we save everyone.

  “That’s it.” I swung Stab over my back and onto her scabbard. The last time she’d filled my head with her extra special sauce, it had stopped when I removed skin contact. The scabbard’s little fingers closed over the blade.

  My hand would not let go. “I can’t help whoever is in that SUV if I’m holding a sword!”

  Maria did something. What, I couldn’t tell, but the extra sensing recalibrated, and my fingers loosened. The extra awareness decreased. The mosh-pit jostling of all the energy dropped to a crowded dance floor.

  This time, we save everyone.

  I turned my face toward the bright sky and let out an animalistic yell worthy of every werewolf howling at the moon.

  Maria once again pushed me toward the wreck.

  I’d been sucked into something bigger than me. Something huge. And the people in the crash were also tangled with the voice and the visions. And Maria.

  I had to go. I had to. And it wasn’t just Maria pushing me down the road. If running into fires was the only thing I truly had to offer this world, than damn it, into the fire I’d go.

  “They need help.” I pointed up the road.

  “I need my suit,” Leif said.

  “No!” Nax said. He leaned against the side of the bus and didn’t look well enough to fight off Mrs. K, much less Leif.

  “You are in no shape to help,” I said.

  Nax shook his head. “This is a mistake.” But he walked back onto the bus without any more arguing.

  I patted my pocket for the bus key. “No armor,” I said. “Suit only.”

  He nodded and turned toward the bus.

  I grabbed his arm. “I mean it, Leif. I have to trust you.” I nodded toward the bus, then pointed down the road.

  A version of what the fuck appeared on his face again, but this time it seemed pointed inward, instead of outward at me. Leif had just realized how untrustworthy he was. How, in this version of the world, he wasn’t the good guy he wanted to be.

  All the chasing and the threats and it finally sunk in. “Please,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
/>
  “Good.” Could I actually trust this man? But somehow, in all the stuff I somehow knew, I recognized that trustworthiness was a tenet of some part of his life. An old part. A part he missed.

  “Leif,” I said, “Try to take Stab from me.”

  He clasped his hands behind his back. He clearly thought grabbing Stab went against his newfound trustworthiness. “Why?”

  “Because I think something happened to my connection to her when I saw the other ghost.” I stepped toward him.

  He twisted. One foot came forward, the other swung behind, and Leif the six-four Seraphim reached around my ear for the sword on my back.

  I don’t know how my body knew what to do, or how it did it, but I dropped into a crouch and punched him in the nuts at the same time as he swung.

  He grimaced but managed to not buckle over. “You didn’t have to do that,” he said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “That wasn’t me.” I don’t know who it was, or why it happened, but my body was accessing memories it didn’t have. Memories that my body used as if they were tailored specifically for it. Alt-me memories.

  Maybe the connection wasn’t just sword-to-ring. Maybe it was me-to-Alt-me.

  I wasn’t going to think about it, because if I did, I’d drop to the cold ground and start rocking with my head in my hands while screaming “Why is this happening to me!” Because this was a full-on what the fuck terrifying moment.

  We had wounded. Time to think about someone other than myself. I ran up the bus steps.

  Leif followed. “You have to come in, Del. You’re seeing ghosts and you shouldn’t be accessing someone else’s procedural memory.”

  I stopped. “Looks like I got an upgrade.” I now had an open channel to some sort of network.

  “Pertinax needs a healer, and honestly, I think you do, too.” Leif waited until I’d dropped into the driver’s seat before stepping into the bus’s aisle. “There are people who will help. You don’t need to become my timeline’s you. Praesagio Industries has an entire Special Medical division.”

  Maybe, I thought. Maybe the channel would shut down once we helped the people in the vehicle. Or maybe I was about to literally become Alt-me.

  Because who else’s procedural memory could I be accessing? I was networked to Alt-me.