Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  “You’re riding around inside your murderer? For real?” Of all the wacky bullshit I’d had to internalize with the Fates, Shifters, and time-traveling super-soldiers, for some reason Daniel inhabiting his murderer seemed so... unbelievable.

  “How the hell does that even work?” Not that I wanted to know. Or would retain his explanation. He could go on and on about new-this and space-that, equations, engineering, and “maths” because Daniel here seemed like the kind of guy who would favor saying “maths” instead of the just plain old “math” like there was more than one way to add up numbers.

  “I suspect if we understood how I’m here, we’d be able to control all of this.” He held out his hands, palm up, in more of a what? gesture than an indication that he was referring to the universe as a whole.

  “Whatever.” I said it more out of self-preservation against more science jargon than because I didn’t care.

  He smoothed his hair back toward the ponytail he shared with Addy. “She’s ranting about her brothers.”

  “She has brothers?” I pointed at the now-stirring Marcus and the handsome tall guy named Harold. “I thought those two were your brothers.”

  “We were triplets. Marcus and I are identical. Timothy is dead.” Daniel balled up his bloody fist. “Harold is Marcus’s husband.”

  “Ah,” I said. “And Addy?”

  “Her brothers Metus and Timor are not men you wish to meet. She thinks they’re coming to rescue her.”

  “Great,” I said. “Should I be worried?” Because more psycho Fates seemed to be how this was going.

  “You have the Tsar’s ring. It functions much like the shards and Stab. It interferes with seers. It is hiding us from other Fates.” He tipped his head as if listening. “It does its job.”

  “You say that like it’s not doing a good job.” Great, I thought again, then pointed at his hand. “I have a first aid kit on the bus,” I said.

  He looked down at his fist. “I need stitches.”

  “I can’t help you with that.” Stitches weren’t in my oldster-aide repertoire.

  He got to his knees and wrapped his arms around his chest. “Harold can do it.” A shiver ran through his body. “We need to start that bus and warm up.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Can I call the Russians now?” Maybe the Russians would want to give Mrs. K a decent burial.

  Daniel slowly stood. “Daisy Pavlovich isn’t ‘the Russians,’ Del.”

  I held out my phone. “Her father is.”

  He slowly limped toward Marcus and Harold. “What do you think Dmitri is going to do? Troll the invaders’ social media accounts? Because I don’t think that’s going to work.”

  “No,” I said. “Of course not.” Which was true. I’d been hoping he’d nuke the ship in the sky.

  Daniel helped his brother sit up. “No seeing for you, understand? You have a concussion.” He felt along his brother’s arm. “And a sprained shoulder. We’ll pull some anti-nausea meds from the kit.”

  Marcus slowly groaned. “We had a visitor while we were unconscious.” He looked to be in his mid-fifties with salt-and-pepper hair, and obviously had arthritis or some other issue.

  Daniel sighed. “No seeing, Marcus.”

  His brother pinched his eyes closed.

  “Marko,” I said. “He was a guard at Paradise Homes. I thought he was a Shifter. He told us he was a Shifter. Nax thought he was, too. Turned out he was ‘modulating my seers to mimic a third-rate Shifter ability.’” I air-quoted the last words. “Just how powerful are you Fates? How come he could fake being a Shifter?”

  Marcus’s eyes and mouth all rounded to perfect circles. “Shit,” he said.

  Harold groaned and sat up. “Where’d they go?” He rubbed his shoulder. Harold had a strong, wiry precision to him that wasn’t all that different from Daniel’s host, and he was probably only slightly shorter than Leif. He was also good looking with a nice jaw and expressive eyes, but not particularly memorable. Harold had the look of a good thief—easy in, easy out, everyone at ease, and no one notices when the diamonds disappear.

  Daniel’s face did not change from his normal flat expression, but I was pretty sure he was arguing with Addy again.

  “Harold!” Marcus tried to stand. “We need to leave.” He waved his hand at the bus.

  “Okay.” Harold staggered over.

  “The Seraphim called him the Judicial High Commander, so his alt-self was someone powerful,” I said. “He knew how to run one of their suits. He took Stab. Said it was his ‘talisman.’ Said you Fates all need one. Then he said he’d kill my family and the Dracae if he even got a whiff of Legion involvement.” I held out my phone. “That’s why I was going to call the Russians. I figured the new Tsar couldn’t possibly be part of this Legion everyone keeps talking about.” I pointed at Mrs. K. “Plus she used to talk to Maria Romanova. I figured that might mean something special to them, anyway.”

  “Wait,” Harold said. “Marko took Stab because it’s his talisman?” For a man with a head injury, he sure looked as if he was about to panic. He turned toward the brothers. “The Midnight Blade is his fucking talisman?”

  “Yeah, he stole my sword!” I yelled. “He let Vivicus kill an old lady! He stole Nax and Leif because he said something about there being five of them last time, but four would do, unless he brought along that other Seraphim, Penny.”

  Marcus looked as if he wanted to throw up.

  “He wants to activate something called the Final Protocols. What the hell does that mean? He’s going up there!” I pointed at the sky. “To that manipulative motherfucking spaceship that I helped move into orbit!”

  I was breathing too fast.

  So was Daniel.

  “No one has seen him for a thousand years,” Marcus muttered.

  “Well, he was right here!” I stomped my foot. “So can I please call the guy who all the remaining news sites are saying is the new Tsar of the Russian Empire? Because I got the distinct impression from Marko the uber-Fate that if I called anyone on this continent who might be able to help, we’d all be dead before I entered the number!”

  Daniel all but pushed his brother toward the bus door. “Get on the bus! Harold! Get it started. We need to go.” Then to me, “Give me the ring.”

  “Why?” I shouted. “It’s the only thing left that might help me find Stab! Or Maria. Or save me from you crazy-ass Fates. Or, or…”

  A hot wind blasted around the bus. One that did not match the Colorado winter cold.

  “What the…?” I whipped around and looked down the road. Nothing. No noise. No glow. Just a hot, August-like wind.

  “On the bus!” Daniel pushed me toward the door. Harold helped Marcus and got him up the steps just as Daniel and I reached the door.

  The hot wind rocked the bus, but Marcus managed to climb the steps and drop into the front seat where Mrs. K used to sit.

  Daniel gave me a shove. “Get down below the windows and stay still,” he said. “Don’t trust that just because you’re not looking out it can’t see you. They see differently than humans.”

  Oh, no, I thought. I’d missed my chance to call for help. There was nothing anyone—Russian or otherwise—could do now. And we’d left Mrs. K’s body out there.

  I ducked below the lip of the window just as the dragon ship decloaked.

  Chapter Three

  The ship wasn’t much bigger than a medium-sized helicopter. It hung in the air above the crash site like a helicopter, too, but without the noise. Just the hot wind, which forced its way through the cracks and into the bus’s interior.

  Daniel dropped into the same row as I did. We were directly behind Marcus and in the seat where Nax used to sit.

  Daniel inched toward the window and slowly placed his bloody hand just below the glass, at the seam, as if feeling for the heat. His face tensed in concentration, and when I opened my mouth to speak, he put his finger to his lips.

  He leaned toward me. “We don’t know if they feel seers,
and I cannot see the world if I stop using my present-seer.”

  He used it like radar, or sonar, or whatever. I’d seen it, when I had Stab.

  I inched closer. “Keep a hand on my arm.”

  Daniel slipped down to the floor between the seats. He patted along the cushion until he felt my knee.

  “Close enough,” I whispered.

  I glanced over the seat back. Harold was on the floor in the middle of the back of the bus, between the bench seat and the last rows with the coolers and the supplies. He held Leif’s big gun and rolled it over a couple of times as if looking for the ON switch.

  “Harold!” I whisper-called.

  He looked up.

  “Sunlight Morocco Sweet Baby Jesus,” I said.

  He frowned.

  “Password,” I said.

  Ah, he mouthed, and rolled it back around so the keypad was up. He tapped away and the gun came to life, thankfully without a whine.

  He gave me a thumbs-up.

  I looked around the seat at Marcus, who was lying still with his head on Mrs. K’s throw. “Don’t move. No seer,” I said.

  He fluttered his hand to indicate he understood.

  I returned to the window and moved so the support beam hid most of my head but I could still see out of the window’s corner, then picked up Daniel’s hand and placed it back on my knee.

  The craft hung in the air about two stories above the crash site like some sort of silver-ish egg-shaped tear of a dragon god.

  The silver color danced, and immediately blued as if picking up the sky above.

  “It’s still cloaking,” I whispered. “It’s as if it’s switched from invisible to camouflaged, like it’s a mecha-hellhound or something.”

  “They’re like cephalopods in that they mimic and communicate with their skin.” Daniel squeezed my knee. “They’ve based their technology on those same principles.”

  Several stabilizing wings extended from the seamless—and windowless—hull, more like dolphin fins than anything I’d ever seen on an aircraft. No engines obviously whirred. No doors showed.

  The wind ceased, and the craft slowly descended to the roadbed between the bus and Daniel’s overturned SUV. The camo changed as it descended, too, taking on more of the woods behind it than the sky.

  No landing gear appeared, though the craft did a little bounce as if touching down.

  It might be visible, but it was still obviously cloaking parts of itself. No door appeared, no ramp, nothing. It sat there like some fat, mirrored blowfish for a good three minutes not doing anything at all—until its pilot manifested out of thin air no more than ten feet from the bus.

  I almost yipped. Daniel squeezed my knee. In the back of the bus, Harold readied Leif’s gun.

  Perhaps I didn’t see the dragon because its personal camo, combined with the tint on the window, was enough to hide it from view. Or perhaps the damned thing had been as fully invisible as its ship. But I saw it now.

  Like the dead hellhound, it was about the size of a bison, but unlike the rhino-plus-bear-like hound, it was lower to the ground and had a strange iguana-plus-wolf-like stance. It also had a longish neck, like a Komodo dragon, and a thick, strong tail it held off the ground the way artists portray dinosaurs.

  Two cat-like pupils watched from forward-facing eyes set between a crest-like plate, which extended down between its eyes and about halfway to its also-iguana-like snout. The crest curved back over the top of its head and broke apart into a series of bumps and ridges that ran its entire spine to its powerful tail, the tip of which glowed an electric pink, like some pastel warning light.

  Like everything else I’d seen from their world, it shimmered with dancing colors. Unlike the hounds, though, its colors weren’t as saturated; it was as if I was looking at the dragon’s winter phase, leaning more toward icy blues and greens than the clear yellows and soft oranges that were mixed in. If cuttlefish lived in the Arctic snow, I’d expect them to have colors like the ones playing along this dragon’s sides.

  The dragon seemed to have a reason to its hide’s patterns. What, I did not know, but the patterns flowing from its head to the tip of its tail signaled “intelligent.”

  Some type of clear armor covered its head, crest, neck, and chest. More armor covered its limbs. The armored gloves on its front-limb “hands” appeared thicker and somehow extra articulated, like Leif’s armor.

  The dragon wiggled its shoulders and sighed in what looked like a very human gesture of boredom, then pushed back onto its haunches so it could lift its front limbs off the ground. It reached into an invisible pocket in its chest armor and pulled out some type of flat, wand-like device.

  The dragon rolled the device through its six huge, weird fingers like a magician flipping a quarter between his knuckles. It held out the wand and a pattern of red and blue squiggles moved down its arm, onto the wand, then off onto the hull of the ship, which flashed the pattern twice before returning to its default camo state.

  Then the dragon tucked the wand back into the pocket and walked toward the dead hellhound.

  “It’s here for the hound,” I whispered to Daniel.

  He nodded.

  The dragon stood next to the dead hound for a moment before another shrug-like wave of color moved down its side. It pulled out the wand again and passed it over the hound. Then it held out the device as if reading it, and a new wave of red and blue squiggles moved from the instrument to its arm.

  It looked at the hound, then at the device, then back at the hound as if confused. It passed the wand over the dead hound again.

  Again, the same response, but this time, the pattern also flashed on the hull of the craft.

  Ismene’s hounds must read differently on its instruments than the hounds it was used to.

  “I think it just realized that this hound isn’t from the invasion.”

  Daniel nodded again.

  The dragon pulled a disc from a different pocket. It finger-twirled it in much the same way as the wand, then slapped it onto the dead hound’s head.

  Corrupted red, blue, and yellow circles flowed outward from the disc, stopped, flashed three times, then contracted back to the new device. The dragon pulled off the disc, looked it over, then pivoted on its back legs so it faced the craft.

  The dragon whipped the disc Frisbee-style at its ship.

  The disc hit the hull edge-on. It stopped where it was, perpendicular to the camo-hull, and flashed the red, blue, and yellow circles again.

  The full hull of the craft mimicked the pattern.

  “I think it just uploaded the info and told all its buddies,” I whispered.

  “Damn it,” Daniel whispered.

  Three smaller dragon-god-tears appeared over the main craft, each about the size of the dragon’s head, and vanished into the open sky.

  “It just sent out drones,” I whispered.

  Daniel didn’t respond.

  The dragon rolled its shoulders and sighed once more, as if the little fun it’d had with the dead hound wasn’t enough to lift its invader’s ennui. It sat back on its haunches again and looked around the crash site. A talon extended from one of its weird, massive fingers, and the dragon scratched an itch between the plates of armor on its other hand.

  “It’s like some bored college kid out cleaning up dog poo for Dad,” I whispered. “It really doesn’t seem to care that it’s part of an invading force that just murdered half our planet.”

  Daniel rubbed at his temple. “The dragons we know are more sensitive than that.”

  I glanced down at the man in the blind woman’s body. “You know dragons?” There were already dragons here for him to know? Dragons who weren’t genocidal? Because I would hope that these Fates wouldn’t associate with genocidal anyone, human or dragon.

  “The Dracae, Del.” Then he put his finger to his lips again.

  Leif’s family was dragons? But he was one hundred percent premium human manliness.

  The dragon raised its head and sniff
ed at the air.

  Oh no, I thought. Had it heard me?

  It walked toward the bus.

  I squeezed Daniel’s hand and ducked lower. “It’s coming this way.” The damned thing had heard me.

  The dragon stopped just outside the bus. Its back was right at the same level as the bottom of the windows and the hexagonal articulation of its armor was clearly visible.

  Had the people of alt-Earth reverse-engineered dragon tech for the suits? Not that I would blame them. The world’s remaining scientists were probably, right now, dissecting not just dead hounds and dragons, but all their gear, too.

  It did another of its bored sighs and sniffed at Mrs. K. My dead friend. The woman who, like me, had been swept up in some sort of last-ditch time-travel effort to stop the end of humanity. The little old lady who, if they hadn’t destroyed our world, would be having her morning tea with all the other little old types at Paradise Homes.

  And right then, right there, my curiosity and need to gather information was submerged under a need to kill the invader. To just point at Harold and have him use Leif’s massive gun to blow this dragon into bits and pieces of alien steak.

  “Leave her alone,” I whispered even though I knew I needed to be very, very quiet.

  The dragon raised its head.

  It sniffed at the bus and peered directly at me with one of its big cat eyes.

  “Oh God,” I muttered. Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut?

  Daniel was up and between me and the dragon outside before I could mutter another word. He leaned forward and slapped both hands—bloody and clean—against the window.

  He did something. What, I couldn’t tell without Stab, but Daniel the ghost Fate did something that the dragon outside felt or saw because the invader took three steps back.

  And then the dragon did something that made no sense. Something it should not have been able to do. Something that was not, at all, possible.

  The dragon raised its hands. It retracted its talons. And the invading dragon who had dropped out of a blister in the sky pointed at the window.

  Then the dragon finger-spelled in American Sign Language.

  Fate, it said, and gestured for us to come out.