Come, Seeling Night

by Daniel Humphreys

  Valentine leveled one of his pistols at her head and muttered, “Sorry, darlin’. Your sweet little voice doesn’t work on me.”

  “It’s a long story,” I added. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  She sniffed in disdain and waved a hand. Valentine had time for a grunt of surprise as an invisible fist knocked him off his feet, but it was more than enough for him to pull the trigger. He flew back across the field and into the woods. The ricochet of his shot off the invisible shield surrounding Mother made for an odd accompaniment to the sound of cracking wood.

  I winced. That’s a new trick.

  “You got this, kid?” Eliot growled. He edged onto the parking lot. His voice was edging back toward normal—green?—though he’d maintained the physical aspects of his transformation.

  So help me God, I didn’t hesitate.

  I snapped both palms toward Mother. Frost lances poured out to take her in the chest, but the ice shattered on an invisible barrier outside of the tent.

  Shit. Before I could open my mouth to use the push myself, Mother’s face darkened, and she snapped, “Stand down, or the boys will start pulling parts off of your sweetheart.”

  The three of them shuffled out from behind one of the Humvees, and it took everything I had not to move. The lightning soldiers stood on either side of Cassie. Each had hold of an arm, gripping it by the bicep and wrist. Mother wasn’t the bluffing type, and so far as I knew she didn’t even have to speak to direct the reanimated bodyguards.

  Mother rolled her eyes and shook her head. “All the years in prison—what do you think I was doing? Quilting? Even if it was in my head, I planned for this moment day and night. There’s nothing you, your pet monsters, or Cassie can do to stop what I’ve put in motion.”

  Behind Mother, a strange smile crossed Cassie’s face. The confusion must have shown on my expression because Mother turned to stare at her hostage.

  “There’s just one problem,” Cassie informed her.

  I frowned—something about her voice was off, though the timbre was familiar. Where have I heard that voice before?

  “I’m not Cassie.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Cassie—Wednesday afternoon

  Randolph, Maine

  When Cassie learned the truth spell, the sensation had been something like bubbles in her head—like a drink of champagne that tickled your palate.

  Whatever Roxanne was doing burned.

  You need this, girlfriend. If you don’t learn to tap, the first time you use the balefyr you’ll pass out and be no good to anyone, and we’re running out of time!

  Tears welled in her eyes as she gritted her teeth.

  The abrupt chaos that had led her pair of bodyguards to pull her around the back of one of the military trucks trailed off into silence, and she heard Helen’s voice.

  “Paxton, you naughty boy—you weren’t supposed to bring any friends!”

  Cassie resisted the urge to cry out in joy—the burning sensation of power coursing through died down to a more manageable trickle as she got a grasp on the spell. Compared to the truth spell and the fire spell Roxanne had passed onto her, the tap felt like trying to handle a fire hose solo, and something told her she wouldn’t like the answer if she asked just where all that juice was coming from. But the reply from the other side of the parking lot pushed that concern away for another day.

  “I must have missed that stipulation. You should call more often.”

  “Oh, hell, yes,” she whispered under her breath. Roxanne crowed victory in her head, distracting her from hearing the rest of the conversation until Helen cried out.

  “Stand down, or the boys will start pulling parts off of your sweetheart.”

  Jerking out of their patient stillness, her guards tightened their grip on her arms and dragged her around to take in the scene. Paxton was there, strangely clothed in black clothes similar to the ones the National Guardsmen wore, only without any insignia or name tape. Another figure, hulking and movie monster ugly stood nearby, wearing the same uniform. That, she supposed, meant that he was on the good guy side, even if he didn’t look the part.

  If she’d had any lingering doubts about the truth of Helen’s time travel claims, Pax’s appearance laid them to rest. When she’d last seen him, he’d shown the aftereffects of his mystical overexertion when he’d healed her. Now, he looked as though he’d put on a good thirty pounds, most of it muscle.

  In front of her, Helen shook her head. “All the years in prison—what do you think I was doing? Quilting? Even if it was in my head, I planned for this moment day and night. There’s nothing you, your pet monsters, or Cassie can do to stop what I’ve put in motion.”

  Inside, Roxanne giggled, and Cassie let herself smile.

  Let me break it to her?

  Go for it.

  Roxanne took control of her mouth, and if the sensation of the ghost girl controlling her limbs had been an odd one, this put that to shame. “There’s just one problem. I’m not Cassie.”

  Now, Cassie—let’s do it.

  Power surged inside of her. Helen’s command to stay still extended to being able to look down, but she got the vague impression of a sudden glow down by her hands. Roxanne twisted her forearms around and grabbed hold of the reanimated soldier standing on either side of them.

  Do you like Five Finger Death Punch, Cassie?

  I’m more of a Breaking Benjamin gal.

  Well, as the song goes—

  Roxanne opened their lips and screamed, “Burn, motherfucker!”

  The glow of her hands turned blinding in the cloud-shrouded darkness. The guards tried to pull away, but they couldn’t outrun what Roxanne had taught her.

  Under control now, she had the vague sensation of the fire hose pouring power into her stomach, proceeding up through her chest and down along her arms. The pain was gone, the fire inside warming her against the unearthly chill. She bared her teeth, the expression a hybrid of a smile and snarl, unsure which expression belonged to her and which her guest.

  White-hot fire poured from her palms, flowing more like a viscous fluid than fire, sinking into the bodies of her guards at the point where she’d grabbed hold. They screamed in stereo, smoke pouring out of their mouths as molten death coursed through them.

  Cassie cringed at the stench of scorched flesh. Roxanne took two steps forward, leaving a pile of still-smoldering remains behind, and raised her hands to aim them in the other witch’s direction.

  “You were saying, Helen?”

  Paxton—Wednesday afternoon

  Randolph, Maine

  What do you say when you haven’t seen your girlfriend in months, and she’s turned into a bit of a bad-ass in the meantime?

  “Hey, Cass.”

  She kept her hands pointing at Mother, but she flashed a smile and replied, “Hey, Pax.”

  Thunder rumbled in the sky, and when I looked, the clouds seemed closer, somehow. Eliot followed my eyes and cursed.

  “We’re getting closer to culmination.”

  I glanced at Mother, but she just smiled at me, serene.

  “I’m a little out of ideas on how to crack that open,” I admitted. From what Morgan had said earlier, I didn’t know if I should. “What do you think?”

  Eliot pressed a hand to his ear. “The others are coming. We’ll see what Morgan thinks.” He cocked his head, then turned to look back the way we’d come in. Valentine limped out of the woods, cradling his left arm to his chest. He’d zip-tied his wrist to one of the straps, and even at this distance, I could see the unnatural bend in his forearm. “About time you woke up!” Eliot called out.

  Another peal of thunder drowned out the reply, but I could guess as to the content. Behind us, Mother gave an exaggerated sigh.

  “Your friends won’t arrive in time, Paxton. Time runs short. We need to complete the ritual.”

  “Not happening,” I scoffed. “You’re insane. And short a sacrifice, it looks like.” I shrugged. “Sorry to
ruin your plans for world domination.”

  The few times in my life I’d mustered up the courage to lay sarcasm on Mother, she’d reacted in one way—anger. The last thing I expected now was the obvious shock on her face.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  I hesitated, then said, “The grimoire showed me, Mother. It showed me what you’d make of the world. You can’t seriously think—”

  “You don’t get it!” she shrieked, cutting me off. “It’s not about me. Earth is a happy little paradise in a sea of torment. There are things outside of our existence that would consume our universe for a snack. That’s what the grimoire showed me. Things like the Edimmu slip through the cracks and keep a low profile. If something like the Void ever held sway here, it would be catastrophic. That’s what I have to stop, you damn fool.”

  “The Void,” I repeated. “They’re already here.”

  “Scouts,” she scoffed. “Slipping through the cracks in reality. I can’t keep them out, but I can ‘seel the night’—I can blind the darkness to our presence.” She shrugged. “What they can’t find, they can’t invade.”

  Valentine stepped forward, opening his mouth to interject, but Mother waved a hand. The air pulsed around her circle, thickening. It felt as though she’d plunged me in mud up to my neck, and the sound around me turned garbled and muffled.

  “You can’t trust the word of an ancient Sumerian demon, Mother. Why would it help you?”

  “The enemy of my enemy,” she said, her voice clear as day. “It sustained itself on ghosts. No people, no ghosts, no food. Why wouldn’t it want humanity to survive?”

  God help me, I understood.

  The vision the book showed me wasn’t an event or result Mother wanted to bring about. It was something, absent intervention, that could happen.

  What could drive a woman to kill her own husband and countless others without the barest hint of shame? A sincerely-held belief that it was all to fulfill a greater good. If that vision came to pass, every person she killed was dead already.

  That wasn’t to say she was right. Your average—sane—person would fight against that sort of reasoning with everything they had. Most of us aren’t logical when it comes to life and death. We react with stubborn emotion to the cold logic of the grave.

  Mother always had been the sort to sneer at that quaint rejection of reality.

  Which made sense—for her to take the path she had, she needed to be a few degrees out of true. The magic served only to push her over the edge after showing her and I visions of apocalyptic nightmares.

  The mistake that myself and the others had fallen into was to believe that stereotypical motivations were what moved Mother. There was nothing personal in the ritual murder of my father, no malice in her kidnapping of Cassie and luring of me to this place and time. We were all mere tools, things to be used for a particular purpose. Cold, logical—and, if she was telling the truth, for the greater good.

  To be honest, I didn’t know if that was better or worse than the alternative.

  “The cost is betrayal?” I called out.

  “Not to me,” she replied. “Otherwise, I might have had to sacrifice a department chair.” Her laugh was out of place, but I couldn’t help but shake my head and smile darkly. Yeah, things would have been quite a bit different had that been the case.

  “I’ll be your sacrifice,” I said. Cassie gasped, and I thought I heard Valentine or Eliot try to scream something, but Mother’s spell hadn’t weakened one whit. “Cassie means nothing to you. And yeah, killing someone your son loves qualifies, but it pales in comparison to killing my dad, doesn’t it?” Pity swelled in me as I considered that she was broken on such a fundamental level that she couldn’t measure the relative morality of her own actions. “Filicide is pretty heinous. Betrayals don’t get much worse than that, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I suppose not,” she said. For a moment, it seemed like she wanted to say more, but she settled for waving her hand. The pressure around me eased, and I stepped forward. The circle protecting her from bullets and magic turned out to be no obstacle at all, though the space beneath the tent seemed suddenly confining.

  We stared at each other in silence, the entire situation as strange as it was awkward. What did you say, at a time like this? She’d never been much of a hugger—that was all dad. Mother was more the omnipresent sword of Damocles looming over our household than she was the June Cleaver type.

  I settled for, “What now?”

  The weapon she drew from a sheath at her waistband wasn’t the same one that she killed dad with. It didn’t compare at all, really—ten years ago, she’d used one of our kitchen knives. This had a cruel, military look to it, and I wondered if she’d brought it with or taken it from one of the soldiers. The former meant that she’d indeed planned this out whereas the latter meant—what, exactly?

  It’s not like it matters. Dead is dead. What am I doing?

  There was a catch in her throat, but she pushed past it. “Turn around,” she said. “On your knees.”

  Following her instructions, I was both relieved and disappointed that the resulting position put Cassie to my back. I didn’t want her to see this. I would have given anything to see her face one more time. “Don’t watch, Cass,” I said. Considering, I added, “Don’t let her watch, Roxanne.”

  We weren’t to be entirely without an audience, though. Eliot and Valentine remained, stuck in the mystical morass, and past its border, I saw the survivors of Agent Andrews’ strike team. The runes on Georgie’s massive combat suit shone bright red, the system nearing its energy capacity. Between the helicopter crash and the rest of the lightning soldiers, he must have taken a hell of a beating. Morgan stood beside him, a trio of faint scratches running down one cheek, but I didn’t think that was the reason why her face went pale.

  It would have been a good time for a farewell speech, but I didn’t think Mother would spare the time for that. For some reason, that didn’t bother me as much as I thought it should have. Blinking slowly, I took note of the strange lethargy that taken over my limbs. I’ve faced death more than once, and terror has always been the common thread.

  Death had kindly stopped for me, and this time, the most I could muster was a mild curiosity. Through thick lips, I mumbled, “What comes next, Mother? Once you save the world, what happens then?”

  “Oh,” she said, her tone breathy. “I hadn’t thought much about that. I suppose—well, I’ll be in a position to provide guidance, won’t I? And it’s not like anyone will be able to turn me down. They’ll be better off, and isn’t that a good thing?”

  I closed my eyes and tried not to sigh.

  Two visions, both horrific in their own way—an empty world at peace, and one burning in flames. Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

  Either way, it was the same outcome. The only difference was the architect of each apocalypse. I leaned my head back, focused on the clouds above through unexpected tears, and said, “I forgive you, mom.” The glint of the blade broke through my line of sight.

  Her hand froze on its descent, the knife stopping inches from my chest. “What—what did you say?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. She shrieked then, the cry wordless and full of despair.

  Above, the clouds boiled, and the intermittent flashes of lightning turned staccato. I could barely hear the screams of my friends through the peals of thunder. Asphalt and chunks of sod burst into the air as the red lightning hammered the ground around us.

  The strange sensation departed, and I pivoted as Mother staggered back. The knife and grimoire tumbled from her hands. I reached out by sheer reflex and snagged the book before it hit the ground. The motion drew her attention, and she lunged toward me with outstretched hands.

  The bolt of lightning speared her through the chest, hanging in the air for so long that I almost thought it something solid. Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly as she herself fell—and kept falling. The pavement under her fe
et had turned molten, and her scream turned into one of agony.

  Another figure rushed through the circle and tackled me. The impact carried me out of the circle, and as I hit the ground, I realized that the interior of the area Mother had shielded was a good thirty degrees hotter than the outside.

  “Move your ass, Pax!” Cassie screamed in my ear. It wasn’t the time for it, but I had a big, stupid grin on my face as I scrambled to my feet and rushed away. More and more lightning slammed into the ground behind us. When I looked back, I saw that it had all hit within Mother’s shielded area. The tent was no more, the aluminum legs drooping in the heat and leaning toward what looked, for all the world, like a pool of lava in the middle of a parking lot in suburban Maine.

  A final bolt struck, and the ground shook. I hit the ground again, alongside Cassie. By the time I looked up, the dark clouds in the sky were fading away, cut through by traces of actual sunlight.

  In the parking lot, blackened, twisted bone and metal stood as a monument to Mother’s hubris in the center of a cooling circle of molten asphalt. I stared at it and eventually decided that I couldn’t tell where the tent ended and her remains began. I forced myself to look away.

  Cassie’s smiling face was a far more pleasant sight.

  I hesitated, then said, “Is Roxanne still in there?”

  “No, why?”

  “Good.” I reached out, cradled her face with both hands, and drew her in for a long-delayed kiss. I’d screwed up our first and done a little better on the second.

  Our third was this side of perfect.

  Coming up for air, I realized we had an audience around us. Morgan had her arms crossed with a stern look on her face. Valentine, in something close to a miracle, seemed to be holding back laughter. Eliot had shifted back to normal, and he looked more tired than usual.

  “Hey, guys,” I said. “Go us. We won, right?”