Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  No. I wouldn’t be her. I wouldn’t be crazy like Ismene. “We’ll figure that out after we deal with the wounded.”

  Leif nodded. “Emperor!” he said. “Do you feel up to testing your glamouring? They will likely need medical attention and I need to bring my suit up to power.”

  Nax stood between Leif and the back of the bus. “No one here put you in charge, Seraphim.”

  Leif ignored Nax, dropped into the seat across from Mrs. K, and immediately rubbed at his naked feet. “Howdy, Mrs. K,” he said.

  “Don’t try to charm me.” She set Leif’s suit and Reginald on her lap. “I liked you better naked.”

  “I will refrain from the obvious that’s what she said joke,” Leif said.

  I chuckled as I started the bus.

  Mrs. K humphed. “Fates.” She pointed up the road.

  I pulled the bus back onto the road. Maria must be sharing information with Mrs. K again.

  “You can tell from here?” Leif asked.

  She looked away and refused to answer.

  “Don’t trust a Fate until you have history.” Leif pulled off the jacket and yanked his suit’s undershirt over his head. “And even then, you should be careful, especially with future-seers.”

  Nax zipped his own jacket. “True.”

  These Fates had Maria’s ring, but we didn’t know why, or how it came to be in their possession. They might be good. They might be bad.

  Or, if the little extra understanding that seemed to come with Stab was correct, literally both.

  “What are we looking at for injuries?” I asked. Maybe Maria gave her some extra insight. All I was getting at the moment was the push to drive.

  This time, we save everyone, the voice echoed yet again. It was part of crazy Alt-me’s world. It wasn’t telling me anything, or helping with the wounded, and I needed to ignore it no matter how “loud” or distracting it was.

  Mrs. K patted the gnome. “Maria is not here. I cannot ask about injuries, dear.”

  Leif gently extended his hand. “I need my suit, Mrs. K,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I saw your father once, from a distance. I did not see his dragon.”

  Leif didn’t answer. He looked away again and continued rubbing his foot.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “He can help.”

  “Suit only. No armor. No weapons,” Nax said. He must have hidden Leif’s gun while we were still outside because it wasn’t obvious in the back of the bus anymore. Not that hiding it would stop Leif from finding it if he wanted to.

  “Irena,” Nax said to Mrs. K. “He won’t hurt you. Will you?” Threat rumbled through his baritone. Nax was pulling deeply from his imperial well.

  “Of course not,” Leif said.

  I slowed as the bus topped the little slope hiding the crash.

  The SUV had flipped onto its side. It wasn’t a huge vehicle, just a regular gray-beige SUV like half the cars owned by Aurora suburbanites, and was probably a rental. They must have hit something big—the front end was damaged—but I saw no other vehicle or animal in the road. Whatever happened, the driver must have swerved too hard and sent them skidding on their passenger side windows.

  Nax stared out the front window at the smoking SUV. “You harm no one. Do you understand, son of Ladon? I wish your family no ill will, but I will not allow you to threaten either woman.” He nodded toward the car. “Or those who need our help.”

  Mrs. K snorted. “If only I were sixty years younger.” Yet she handed over Leif’s underclothes and his suit. The armor, she continued to hold under the gnome.

  Leif flashed another of his what the fuck, old lady looks, though this time he seemed to be expecting one of her obnoxious comments. He glanced at me in the mirror as if asking for help. I shrugged.

  “I already promised Del that I wouldn’t suit up in my armor,” Leif said.

  “Good,” Nax said, then to Mrs. K, “Keep the gnome close.”

  She rubbed her neck. “Rostislav,” she said.

  Nax peered at the wreck. “Fates,” he muttered.

  He was going to glamour so they couldn’t see him. Should I argue? The little Burner fires in Nax’s energy spit and hissed. At least they hadn’t gotten worse. “Do you feel up to doing this?” I asked. Not that he’d listen.

  He turned toward the door. “I’m fine.” Nax vanished, then reappeared. “You are lucky, Seraphim, that your blockers did not cause permanent damage.”

  Leif opened his mouth to respond, but closed his lips and shook his head and instead focused on changing into his suit.

  Nax wasn’t fine, and now that the blockers were not blocking, how long could he fake “fine” in front of our guest?

  “We don’t know who is in there.” Nax stepped off the bus and held out his hand to help me down.

  Mrs. K set her hand on the gnome’s painted-on hat and stared out the window.

  “Okay,” I said, and stepped out into the cold, bright morning sun.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Out here, away from the suburban houses, the air smelled both cleaner and more full of the ashes of the East Coast.

  This part of Colorado, with the winter trees and the low brush, was alive with the smell of death.

  I sniffed again. Ash wasn’t the only smell in the air. “Gasoline,” I said, and ran for the vehicle.

  The SUV sat on its side with the passenger-side windows against the concrete roadbed. It knocked and popped as it cooled, but was still giving off heat. A puddle of gas had formed around the wheel against the pavement.

  I pulled Stab and peered around her through the windshield.

  The driver hung sideways, suspended by his seatbelt. He showed no visible blood and he breathed, but he was unconscious. Nothing in the gray around him suggested a Fate or Shifter, though he did have a subtle aura.

  Another man who looked to be in his mid-fifties sprawled out over the shattered but somehow still-intact passenger window. He, too, was unconscious, and miraculously not bleeding.

  Something in the backseat pushed out wave after wave of pressure that jostled all the little whirlwinds and weather in the gray. Whatever it was, it added in a randomness that made my view of the gray blurry, yet I could still see the passenger’s abilities. A strong wind moved backward away from his body.

  “The passenger is a past-seer,” I said. “A powerful one, too.” I set Stab back on her scabbard.

  Nax nodded, and promptly disappeared only to be replaced by an image of the bear-like hellhound the Seraphim had killed.

  He wasn’t going to take any chances. Not until we knew who we were dealing with.

  I cupped my hand over my eyes and tried to make out the shadows in the backseat. “There’s a woman in the back,” I said. “Nax! I need to get inside.”

  The hellhound version of Nax gripped the edge of the twisted windshield frame and yanked. The glass flew into the trees.

  I crawled in. Both the driver’s and passenger’s pulses felt strong. “They’re alive.” I looked over my shoulder. “We have injured!” I called, so Leif would know what was happening.

  The woman moaned. She was thin, with an angular, severe face and a long, thick, dirty-blonde ponytail that she’d wrapped top to bottom with black leather. A nasty-looking, new-but-not-fresh scar ran from her ear, across her cheek, and then down toward the corner of her mouth.

  “Hey!” I crawled through the windshield and into the back seat. “Hey, hey, look at me.” I touched her face.

  The woman opened her eyes. She stared out through clouded corneas.

  I pulled back. “You’re blind. Sorry.”

  Maria pushed against me. Mrs. K said she’d left the bus, and I guess I’d found her—she’d already crawled into the SUV, and was excited.

  I glanced up and to the side the way Mrs. K did when she talked to Maria, not because I could see or hear her, but because that seemed to be what one did when talking to a ghost.

  She didn’t seem to have a problem with the Fates. I
didn’t know if she had the history Leif spoke of, but they’d brought her the ring, and her excitement suggested she trusted them.

  A present-seer erupted from the woman. It swept through the gray, across me, Nax, and the bus, like radar.

  “You’re using a present-seer to read the environment, aren’t you?” I asked the woman. The best thing to do was to keep her engaged. “Mrs. Karanova sent us to get you.” I touched her face and neck again. “Actually, the ghost of Maria Romanova sent us. She ‘wants her ring.’ Said you have it. Whatever that means.” I probably shouldn’t be talking so much. “Mrs. K’s Maria’s medium. I used to think it was all stories but then that thing appeared in the sky and I found this.”

  The woman spaced out for a second, and I leaned closer, to keep her attention. The last thing we needed was an unconscious Fate in the back of an overturned SUV.

  I patted the scabbard. “Mrs. K says the sword’s called Stab. Can you believe that? Who names a sword Stab?”

  The woman rubbed at her neck. “A Burner,” she said.

  The man in front mumbled something unintelligible.

  I backed up and checked his pulse again. He mumbled some more, and slowly blinked.

  We needed to get them out of the SUV and into the bus where it was warm. “We need to get you three out of here. It’s not safe.” I pointed out the windshield. “Too many feral hellhounds.”

  The driver groaned. “Who…” He coughed. “Who are you?”

  I backed out of the windshield. “My name’s Philadelphia Parrish,” I said as I stood and looked around for Nax before ducking my head back into the vehicle. “Call me Del.”

  “Hello, Del,” the woman said. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”

  Yeah, we do, I thought.

  “Nax, they have Maria’s ring,” I said into the shadows. Where had he gone?

  He manifested as his big burly self directly in front of the windshield. The driver waved his hand. “Enthraller!” he yelled.

  “He’s with me.” I leaned through the hole again and unbuckled the mumbling passenger. “You’re safe.”

  Nax did not look good. He groaned and closed his eyes for a moment as if nauseated.

  “I can get them out,” I said. “Go get Leif.”

  He shook his head. “So you’re no longer calling him Cad?”

  “Nax,” I said, doing my best to ignore his catty remark. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He nodded.

  The man was going to kill himself and leave me with a bus full of the injured, infirm, and asshole-ish.

  In the SUV, the driver reached for the other man. “Marcus…”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Harold,” the driver said. “Harold Demshire.” He touched the passenger’s arm. “His name is Marcus Drake. He’s my husband. I think we hit a hellhound. It was mimicking and I didn’t see it. The person in the back is—”

  Two seers rolled off the woman in the back, the sweeping present-seer, and another, forward-pushing wave.

  She had a future-seer, too, like Ismene.

  “Addy,” she interrupted. “Call me Addy.”

  Harold closed his mouth, obviously deferring to the Fate with the future-seer. She clearly saw some reason to not tell us the full truth.

  I didn’t push it. We had a guest in the bus and the less he knew, the better. “Okay. Addy it is. Do any of you have internal injuries we should know about?”

  Addy’s seers rolled out again. “We’re bruised. Nothing’s broken. No internal bleeding.” Her seers did another sweep. “Marcus has a concussion.”

  I unhooked Marcus’s seatbelt. “Are you okay to walk?”

  He groaned but slowly crawled out of the SUV.

  I pulled back and Nax moved in. “Unhook your belt,” he said to the driver. “I’ll catch you.”

  Harold fell into Nax’s arms, and the two men moved out of the SUV. Nax carefully helped both Marcus and Harold to their feet. The three men leaned into each other—the Fate with the concussion, the guy who looked mostly-normal in the gray, and the big imperial Shifter with the broken glamour ability.

  Addy patted along the window, then stuck her hand into the compartment of the down-facing door.

  She pulled out a pair of dark sunglasses and placed them on her face. “We will do our best to help you.” She looked out at the trees, even if she wasn’t really looking. “I think that’s why we are here.”

  “Help would be a welcome change.”

  Addy rubbed at her cheek and gingerly touched one of the two necklaces she wore—the first was a weird, bent-metal choker with a big red stone that sat right over the center of her throat.

  The second was a little dragon of gold and silver. A little dragon that looked sort of like the two entwined dragons on the emblem Erik Erikson had handed Mrs. K at Paradise Homes.

  Addy gripped the little dragon. “You are the Witch of the Midnight Blade,” she said.

  I frowned.

  Addy gripped my arm and leaned against me as if her leg hurt. “I’m not completely blind.”

  She was lying about something. Not really lying so much as withholding. I glanced back at the bus. Nax, Harold, and Marcus huddled at the door as if the process of figuring out who got on first was the most arduous task any of them had ever taken on.

  Addy dug in her pocket. She held out a huge, gold, gaudy ring with some sort of crest and a big ruby, and her seers did a sweep over the ring, me, and the area right around us.

  The moment her seer vanished, the circuit connection that Stab had made when I saw the male ghost re-established. They shook hands. They shared protocols—and connected in a blink of an eye.

  “Maria Romanova, if you can, take it now,” Addy said.

  Maria probably tried to take the ring. She probably tried to reach through the torrent of energy moving between Stab and her bauble, and to connect to it the way she’d connected to Leif’s wetwear. Or maybe the shock of the now-unfettered circuit pushed her away.

  Static danced up my arms to my chest and neck. It coiled around my head and coated my tongue with a metallic sting. My throat contracted. My lips numbed as if the circuit had shot my entire face full of lidocaine.

  Addy rubbed her cheek again. “You can’t blame me for hoping that this once, something would be easy, huh?”

  She didn’t reach out with her seer again. She knew where I was, but she wasn’t looking at me, not in the present or in the future.

  “Perhaps your Mrs. K will know what to do.” She dropped the ring into my hand without using her Fate abilities to look at the possible consequences.

  Addy wavered, but not in the real. I might not be touching Stab, but the gray held me, and for a microsecond, a brief moment, I could have sworn I saw two people.

  Addy, and a man.

  This time, we save everyone.

  I must have twitched because Addy gripped my shoulders. “Del, what are you seeing?” she asked.

  I wasn’t talking to the woman. I knew I was talking to the man in the same way I knew about the curlicues. “Who—”

  Stab and the ring formed a bubble around me—a bubble that pushed me away from the wreck and Addy, and into the clear area between us and the men standing in front of the bus.

  I stumbled backward, but kept my footing more because my body knew what to do than I did. My hand swung over my head. My grip latched onto Stab’s hilt.

  And my body made sure I was fully aware of what that connection wanted me to see.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The distortion around Stab—the lensing effect around her blade that let me see the underlying power around me—expanded outward like a bubble until I was standing in the center of a sphere about twelve feet across.

  Energy danced along its surface. Primary colors wiggled, combined, and separated like oil in water. And I wasn’t in the real anymore.

  “Nax?” I yelled. Could he see me? Was I inside a new Incursion? “Leif!”

  No no no, I thought.
“No new Incursions, Stab!” I shrieked.

  Nax, Harold, and Marcus all turned around. None of them spoke, but their expressions screamed terror.

  “Philadelphia!” Addy yelled. She stuck her hand through the membrane—and her wrist blazed so brightly I covered my eyes.

  She snatched back her hand and shook it like she’d touched a livewire. “My present-seer is only reading a slight distortion, but you are definitely in a bubble of new-space.” She shook her hand again. “I felt it.”

  Maria Romanova was right there, right next to me again in her old-timey clothes and her massive pile of brown hair.

  She extended her hand for the ring.

  Was this why Stab and the ring built their circuit? So that they could pump enough energy out of the gray to release Maria?

  That had to be why. “Maria! I think the bubble is for you. I think Stab and the ring are building it so that you can leave the gray.” I took a step toward her. “I mean new-space. That’s what Leif called it. New-space.”

  Maria Romanova kept her hand out to me, but looked up at the sky.

  “Take the ring!” I tried to release it from my non-sword-holding hand. I tried to set it on her palm, but just like with Stab, my hand wouldn’t cooperate.

  “This is why we’re here!” I yelled at the gray. I shook my wrist. “It’s her ring.” I didn’t need to be inside the circuit.

  Nothing happened.

  I shook my hand again. “Oh for the love of—”

  Maria gaped at roiling gray above us, and…

  I wasn’t me. I was me, but my hands, my body, my perception became Alt-me. The other version of me, the crazy version who’d decided that Ismene was the closest thing to family she’d ever know again—she’d made a bubble like the one Stab and the ring were now generating around me.

  Leif had said something about twenty-three years of wartime technology we did not have—but Alt-me did. She’d had two-plus decades to learn how to use Stab. Two decades of hearing voices from and figuring out how to trigger interactions with the gray of new-space. Of living with a crazy Burner. Of stealing and fighting and trying to do the right thing.