Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Two. Hold the connection.

  His nostrils flared, and he held out his hand. “It makes no difference how, I suspect, in the long run,” he said. “She became visible to me this morning.” He closed his eyes and inhaled like an addict getting his first hit in weeks. “Return my sword.”

  He saw Stab, but he hadn’t read Alt-me’s reason for standing out in the middle of a dead field in the middle of the night. Out here, under the moon, and directly under the Dragonslayer.

  If he had figured it out, he would have brought a sniper and picked her off from a mile away.

  “Give me my talisman, Del Parrish. Give me the means by which I can save what remains of our world.” He didn’t want to kill her. He just wanted control.

  He would kill her anyway.

  “No!” I screamed under the Colorado morning sun. No more death. I wasn’t Alt-me. I wouldn’t go to my end silently.

  Not for the man who came for Alt-me, nor would I allow Vivicus to take everyone I cared about.

  “How dare you.” The High Commander placed his hand on the new-space web around Alt-me’s hand and—

  All sense of Alt-me vanished. I flipped fully back under the cold Colorado sun and into myself.

  Mrs. K hit the side of the bus with a dull thud. Vivicus swung at Leif. Nax convulsed. They were going to die because Maria wanted a ring that was, right now, conspiring with Stab to do the bidding of a force called Dragonslayer.

  Magic artifacts released magic into the universe and all I could do was let it pass through me because somehow, some way, this was how we saved everyone. No understanding came with this knowledge, not like most of the other times I knew things. Just a sense that I needed to shut up and do my part.

  So I did. I held open the door in the new-space gray, the one through which all the power moved. I held it open but I wasn’t going to be passive. Not this time.

  Because saving everyone needed to happen, otherwise I’d go insane.

  I muttered a string of words that sounded much like Sunlight Morocco Sweet Baby Jesus into new-space, but were a completely different incantation. Words I didn’t know, but Alt-me did. Words the Dragonslayer had deemed available to me.

  The new-space webbing around my wrist—the webbing that had been as much around Alt-me’s hand as it was around mine—exploded off my skin.

  Folding now.

  The Dragonslayer reshaped herself. She pushed. And the Dragonslayer slid into our world.

  And all I wanted to do was cry.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I knew the moment Mrs. Carmichael brought the shard into Paradise Homes,” said a familiar voice. The same voice that had demanded Stab from Alt-me. The man who—in the horrible future from which Stab, and Leif, and that murderer Vivicus came from—called himself the Judicial High Commander of the Mundus Imperium.

  “It took considerable willpower not to suffocate her in her sleep and take it,” he said. “But it whispered to let it do its job. Something huge was about to happen. So I waited.”

  He was just a security guard here.

  “All lines must start somewhere,” he said, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

  He was clearly so, so much more than a mere guard.

  “Did Erik survive?” I mumbled. At least we could have that one bright moment in all this.

  He snapped his fingers. “Yes. The point of all this is to save everyone, isn’t it?”

  I was on my side, facing away from the bus. The sun warmed my cheek, even in the cold, and its glare off the Fates’ wreck cut through much of what my eyes perceived.

  I’d been out long enough for the sun to move high over the tree line to hit the road and the vehicles directly.

  I blinked, but the gray of new-space twirled and whirled and little eddies of power danced along my cheeks and into my eyes. I swatted at them, the little power ants, and rubbed at my face.

  They vanished as if they had been nothing more than a dream.

  The SUV no longer clicked and settled. The bus did its own clicking and settling farther away. Gasoline and dead hound smell mixed, but the breeze thankfully pushed most of it toward the trees.

  A new SUV, this one a big red behemoth, waited about twenty feet away, up the road and crosswise, as if marking the accident site.

  Slowly, carefully, I sat up. Not too far away, on the edge of the tree line, the dead hellhound shimmered in the sun like a bloated mound of meat covered by a sheet of that iridescent pink and blue crinkly plastic filler people put in gift bags.

  Nax lay sprawled out on the cold pavement not too far from the also-unconscious Marcus and Harold. Mrs. K, still in Leif’s armor, rested against the side of the bus. Rostislav the gnome, now in three pieces, circled her feet. The three Seraphim—Vivicus, Penny, and Leif—were scattered between the dead hound and the bus. Addy-Daniel lay flat on her back about five feet to my right.

  The power surge must have dislodged Stab. She wasn’t in my hand, nor was she anywhere nearby. The ring, though, was still hooked around my thumb.

  “Mrs. K!” I groaned. I needed to get up. I would deal with Stab in a minute, but I needed to check on Mrs. K and Nax now. Vivicus had tossed her against the windows, and Nax hadn’t been responding prior to the surge.

  My entire body throbbed like a new bruise.

  “She’s dead,” the voice said. “Vivicus has never been the smartest of Dunn’s children, no matter how he enjoys pontificating.” A shadow moved behind me and blocked the sunlight. “Vick’s always been a bully. This version might be on the right side of the law, but the morpher brain in that skull is still top-shelf asshole.” The buckles on my scabbard clicked.

  I patted my belly. The scabbard was gone.

  “I checked everyone,” the voice said. “Only Irena Karanova and the hound walked into the afterlife.” The voice paused. “May you rest well, Madam of Mother Russia and true friend of the Monarchy. Take this hound as your protection on your journey.”

  I pushed myself to sitting. The throbbing in my head pulsed down my neck and made it difficult to twist my head.

  The speaker stepped around me and quickly squatted so he could look into my eyes. “You have performed a miracle, Philadelphia Parrish,” he said. “You have moved to this world the means by which we will stop the unending cycles of death and destruction.”

  Marko, the guard from Paradise Homes, squatted between me and my friends.

  “I sent your family north, by the way. I called from Paradise Homes. Told them I was a high-ranking Praesagio Fate, did a little past- and future-seeing, and sent them somewhere they’d be safe and easy to find.”

  He wore a super-suit with a ripped-up arm, complete with the hound-ending discs, but no huge gun. He also carried my scabbard and sword on his back.

  “Don’t contact them again until Daniel says it’s okay.” He looked off down the road. “You’re welcome, by the way.” He looked down at me again. “It was the least I could do to thank you.”

  He was still bald, and still smaller than the rest of the men here. In the bright sunlight, the phantom Celtic tattoos coiling around his cheeks and across his scalp intensified into actual lines.

  I rubbed at my temple. Somewhere off in the trees, three or four birds chirped. But no one moaned, and no one screamed.

  And no voices poked me to do things. The world was eerily quiet.

  Marko patted my arm. “You are one remarkable young woman.”

  The suit didn’t look as if it fit well, and I suspected he’d stolen it off a Seraphim even though all three over by the hellhound wore theirs. He hadn’t fully zipped it yet, and the armor and my scabbard needed adjustment.

  “Give me back my sword,” I said.

  Half his face crunched up as if part of him wanted to help, and the other part didn’t know how to explain that he wanted to hinder.

  He slapped his thigh and stood up. “Stab, as you call her, is not yours.” He zipped up the suit around his neck, then adjusted the armor. “She’s mine.”


  “That’s not true,” I said.

  He reached over his shoulder to pat her hilt. “Back when I was still me, before I became me, the Judicial me spoke of the swords from his version of the end of the world.” He nodded as if what he’d just said made sense. “He said his Praesagio made Thrust and Jab, not Poke and Stab.” He shrugged. “No matter. They’re all Midnight Blades.”

  I pushed myself to kneeling, but my head swirled and I flopped back onto my butt. “She chose me.”

  Marko adjusted the scabbard. “Well, yes, for a task.” He pointed at the sky. “Which you completed. Swimmingly, too, I might add. Good work.” He extended his hands. “Here. Allow me to help you.”

  I waved him off. “You took that suit.”

  He adjusted the waist and legs. “I took it off a dead Shifter named Kai. Then I came straight here.” He rolled his shoulders. “It’s primitive, but it has most of the functionality I remember.”

  He held out his arm. The armor pulsed. Rings of blues, reds, and yellows moved up and down between his wrist and his elbow.

  The arm rips pulled together as if healing. He shook his arm again. “I’m still figuring out how to tell it to resize itself.” He winked.

  He knew how to drive a super-suit. “How…”

  Marko leaned close. “You don’t really believe Mr. Impossible Son and Vivicus Two-Point-Oh over there are the only time travelers, do you?”

  “But…” He’d been working at Paradise Homes for a good five years before I’d started.

  He nodded knowingly, rubbed his ear, and stepped back at the same time his hand pulled up-out-up on Stab’s hilt.

  He crouched like a man who understood sword fighting. He rolled her around his wrist, then spun her in circles, and with one fast, smooth motion, set her back onto her scabbard.

  His stance changed. He inhaled deeply as he looked over his shoulder at the Seraphim. “There were five of us,” he said. “The Australian. The German. The son of a Wyoming cop and the daughter of a Russian Admiral.” He looked back to me. “And me, ‘that South African asshole.’” He air-quoted South African asshole. “We had a mission.” He frowned as if his memories were fuzzy.

  “What mission?” I asked. Did the voice send him back, too? “What’s all this about?”

  I still didn’t understand. The voice told me to hold open some goddamned door and I did, or I didn’t. How could I possibly know? I’d never know.

  The Fates said they’d explain everything to me, but they were knocked out on the cold ground. And here I was with yet another someone who was clearly a long immortal, and like every single long immortal who’d deemed me worthy of inclusion, didn’t really think me worthy of the full truth.

  Because all these people, every single one of the other humans scattered around the road, had been part of this curlicue’s doings from the very beginning. They were the players on the field. They’d trained together. They’d loved and lost, and they shared a past.

  And me? I was just a cog in the wheel of their machine. I happened to have a magical sword and I happened to know a few details here and there. I’d walked into their cocktail party while it was in full swing. Some of them were happy to get me a drink and to welcome me into a conversation. Some of them just wanted me to get out of their way.

  Not one of them had taken the time—or had the time, to be honest—to introduce me around.

  Marko stared at Vivicus. “Four will work just as well.” He waved his hand at the Seraphim. “Unless we take Penny.” He shrugged. “She tends to get left out a lot.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. Part of me wondered whether it mattered if I did.

  He chuckled. “You are a plucky one, aren’t you?” He grabbed my hand and pulled me to standing.

  I wavered. He held me up. “Careful.”

  Part of me just wanted to make sure Mrs. K got a respectful burial, and Nax got handed off to someone who could actually help him, so I could take a nap.

  Marko’s eyes did the staring at the inside of his corneas thing the other Fates did when they used their abilities. “No one has explained talismans to you.” He looked up at the sky. “You’ve been running around with the Lesser Emperor and he hasn’t explained Fates to you?”

  “No one’s explained shit to me, Marko,” I said.

  He peered at me again. “Not true. I explained Shifters before you closed the ground Incursion.”

  Now I shrugged. “Just give me back my sword.”

  “Fates need their talismans.” He said it in an offhanded, everyone-knows-that kind of way.

  “But you’re a Shifter.” He’d told everyone that he was a Shifter.

  He scratched his chin. “The Dragonslayer zapped you good, didn’t it? You’re usually more on the ball than that this.”

  Behind him, Vivicus’s hand twitched, as did Leif’s. “Leif!” I hollered.

  Marko grabbed me by the arms but looked over his shoulder. His hands dropped to my elbows. “Do you feel steady enough to walk on your own?”

  And here I was at this long immortal cocktail party, with a party crasher who seemed to think that being nice to me would show all the rest of the demi-gods that he didn’t mean to be “that asshole” from… where? South Africa.

  “You sound like you’re from California, not South Africa,” I said.

  He shrugged.

  Vivicus groaned, but it was Leif who sat up first. “Del?” he asked.

  “Hmmm,” Marko said. “The Impossible Son is crushing on you just a wee bit.” He held up his finger and thumb with about an inch gap between them.

  Marko was never this much of an asshole at Paradise Homes. Or maybe he was, but not around me. He wouldn’t be the first guy who waited to show his true colors until he thought he had a little bit of power.

  Marko had all the power right now. He had my sword, and he had a suit he knew how to use. All I had left was a painful concussion that made the bright sun hurt and my brain not care enough about this situation to figure out how to make it better for everyone.

  Because that was what I was supposed to do. Make it better for the residents. Make it better for Nax. Make Leif’s mental boo-boos go away. Carry around a fucking sword that made me see things for the sole purpose of making everyone else’s shit better.

  Marko patted my arm. “It’s fine. It is, Del. You did your part. You can leave the rest of the war to those of us with the correct training.”

  Leif jumped up to a squat. He, like me, wavered, but unlike me, Leif was Seraphim, and had his body under control.

  Marko gripped my shoulders. “The Impossible Son will not want to cooperate. Neither will the Lesser Emperor.” He frowned. “I will kill you right here, right now, in front of them if I have to.” His expression turned pained and constricted. “Which you do not deserve. You’re the reason what we are about to do is possible. You should be venerated.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Leif yelled. He kicked Vivicus in the shoulder, then Penny. “We have a pretend—”

  His mouth slammed shut the moment Marko turned around.

  “Commander!” Leif said.

  Marko saluted. He turned back to me. “Time is of the essence. I need cooperation from my boys, and a promise from you that you will not interfere.”

  “I…” He’d just threatened to kill me.

  He nodded as if sufficiently satisfied with my terror.

  Marko’s armor burst on as brightly as the glare off the bus’s windows. I cringed and pulled away, which he let me do, and I staggered toward Nax and Mrs. K.

  The surprised and protective stance Leif had taken when he first stood tightened. His entire body—and his suit—hummed.

  A real-yet-faint powering-up hum permeated the rustling trees and bird tweets.

  I looked between the men. The hum lifted off both of them.

  Vivicus sat up. He looked around, first at me, then at the still-unconscious around the bus, then at Leif and the stirring Penny.

 
He, too, stood. His gaze landed on Marko. He blinked. His mouth rounded. And he broke into a hysterical laugh. “Cadmus, son, you realize who that is, don’t you?” he asked.

  Leif looked as if he wanted to punch not only Marko, but Vivicus. “I fucking well do know who he is,” he growled.

  “Great!” Marko said. “We leave now, my friends.” He stretched out his arms and wiggled his new suit. “The faster we accomplish our task, the faster we stop all this unnecessary new-space travel.” He rubbed at the top of his head. “There’s always a risk.” He adjusted my scabbard. “And the inevitable random element.”

  I stumbled toward Mrs. K first. She was still warm. “Mrs. K?” Warm, but not breathing. No pulse, either. And the way she was slumped against the tire meant something important had broken when Vivicus slammed her against the bus. “Oh, Mrs. K,” I said, then looked over my shoulder and yelled, “You killed an old lady!”

  Vivicus shrugged it off. “I apologize. I thought she was the Lesser Emperor.” He tossed out an I’m busy hand wave and returned to speaking to Marko.

  Leif threw an angry what the fuck look at his boss. Leif’s default response to the world seemed to be what the fuck. Maybe I should follow his lead.

  “You evil motherfucker!” I yelled.

  Vivicus snarled and for a moment, all of his attention focused down onto one spot on my chest, just above my heart.

  He, too, was thinking about killing me. I didn’t know the way I knew when I carried Stab, but the truth was obvious in his expression and his stance.

  I shrank down against the bus. I pulled away from a terror because deep down, I knew Vivicus could—and would—kill me if he got the chance.

  He came from a world where he killed invaders and hellhounds. He’d supposedly spent centuries acting as a leader among a group of super-types who maybe—probably—were good people. I didn’t know for sure, but if they were like Leif, golden hearts must have been everywhere.

  So killing a “threat” like me must be a special kind of treat for a bully like Vivicus.