Bloodbath

  She shrugs a black cloak off her shoulders and hands it to me. It’s softer and thicker than my regular coat, but still comfortingly heavy to wrap around myself.

  “Whoever puts on that cloak is disguised as the last wearer. For you, that would be me.”

  I stare at my hands, at the weird double vision of Bautista’s wrinkled skin overlapping mine. “Holy shit.” I nearly startle at hearing the sentence come out in Bautista’s rasp.

  “It’s ancient magic; don’t lose it,” Bautista continues. The conversation sounds so strange now, a jaded old woman talking to herself. “Do you have any other resources? Hexes, potions, wards, a gun…?”

  “Uh, I’m not very good at guns. Shot myself in the foot first time I held one. Aim’s been shit ever since.” The toes of my right foot twitch and flex in painful remembrance. I hold up my crowbar where it’s hooked over my belt loop. “But I have this? I had some magic cupcakes too, but they’re all gone…”

  “Ay, Dios mío,” Bautista mutters. “Don’t worry, I can help you with that, too.” She pulls a silver flask out of her crocheted shoulder bag. “Drink this. When push comes to shove, it will quicken the processes of your mind, allowing you to study your surroundings with precision and react to danger more quickly. It only lasts half an hour, so be careful not to trigger it until you truly need it.”

  “How do I trigger it?”

  “It will remain dormant until mixed with adrenaline. Pay attention to the time; your body will eject its poison at the end of the half-hour, right before it kills you.”

  “Oh, cool."

  She pops open the flask and hands it to me. I take a hearty swig, then immediately double over with my throat convulsing around the viscous, foreign lump. I struggle not to vomit for another minute, thumping my chest to try to get it down. “What the fuck is in this thing?” I sputter.

  “I come from an old school of witches. You don’t want to know.”

  I cough and gag until my eyes water. “Listen—hckk—lady, I spent eight months in Berlin destroying my gag reflex beyond all recognition. If I can’t swallow something you give me, that’s a godsdamned accomplishment.”

  She chuckles, but the sound is empty. “Find Joy, Lee. Do what I couldn’t do, and bring her back home.”

  Entering the gate, I get a good look at Nádasdy’s mansion—it’s huge. I expected it to look kind of like a castle, but the front is dome-like with Grecian ivory columns. I’m forced to keep looking at it as I march up the paved path cutting through the impossibly big front lawn. I see no gardener or employee tending to the grass or the sky-high hedges surrounding it. Instead, there are guards after guards after guards in gray, dotting the hedges like particularly organized flies, all trying not to meet my eyes. Oh, wait, they’re watching the illusion of Bautista’s face fixed around the level of my chest. Height differences are weird when you factor in illusion potions.

  I have to round an enormous fountain to get to the building itself, and the statue of a twisting, hissing snake with four heads at its summit glares at me as I pass. Statues of roaring lions with eagle wings flank me as I take the steps up to the entrance. I shuffle slowly, partially to imitate Bautista’s unassuming, hobbling gait, and partially so as not to trip over the cloak. Jax is waiting for me at the entrance to the mansion, black shirt and black pants neatly ironed, hands cordially held behind his back, no weapons in sight.

  “Good evening, Madam Bautista,” he says, dipping his head without a hint of disrespect or sarcasm. It’s very classy, in a Hannibal Lecter-ish way. “You are here to see the mistress of the house?”

  “You’re damn right I am,” I say, taking full advantage of my grumpy old woman voice. “Where is she?”

  “In the library. I will escort you.” He leads me through the giant white double doors.

  The inside of the place is a nice pastel blue, like a nursery, with golden accents on the ceiling and furniture. I notice again: no servants. Only guards. This place is enormous, and I doubt Nádasdy is the type to do all her cleaning herself. As I pass by the staircase, I swipe a discreet hand over the bannister; my fingertips come away dusty. So it’s not just today that the cleaning crew’s been missing. I wish I didn’t have such a clear idea of what happened to them.

  Jax and I get into an elevator. It’s as swanky and shiny as a hotel elevator, just a bit smaller. As it glides upward, Jax winces, then rolls his shoulder and squeezes it with his other hand. I remember seeing him do that in the clinic, while talking to Lisa.

  “Old injury?” I ask.

  Jax grunts. “New one, actually. A maniac came out of nowhere and stabbed me in a parking garage.”

  Something about that is pinging all my alarm bells, but I can’t process why—when I try, my brain loops the sound of a gunshot, the dead ginger’s back slamming into the kiosk door, gunshot, slamming into the kiosk door—and I have to tamp down my growing anger in case it activates Bautista’s potion. “Did you catch him?”

  “No, bastard was quick. And all my men were on a lunch break, damn them.”

  The elevator doors open at the third floor. This area is colored a combination of beige and maroon, creating a much darker atmosphere that suits Nádasdy better than the cutesy first floor did. The hallway is a sort of extended balcony, with doors on one side and an open railing on the other where you can lean over and see what’s going on below. The spiral staircase directly extends from this balcony-hallway; I catalog it in my mind as my emergency escape route. It’s not a great escape route, given that it’s narrow, easily blocked, and open to gunfire from literally every single angle, but it’s there.

  There are no guards on this floor, and at the end of the hall is a dark oak door. Jax pushes it open to reveal a gorgeous, wood-paneled library. The shelves are architectural feats, stretching up to the ceiling like pillars patterned with book spines. They bulge from the walls to the left and right, and on the wall directly facing me is an enormous, diamond-shaped window with its glass cut to imitate an actual jewel, throwing dazzling morning light onto the center of the room. Basking in that light is a long, luxurious couch with velvet cushions, flanked on either side by mahogany side tables. Nádasdy is sitting up against one arm of the couch. She’s in a comfortable black jersey dress with her long, raven hair loose over one shoulder, and she has a closed book held against her stomach. Her heeled slippers twinkle their golden embroidery at me from the carpet. She’s slow to turn to Jax and me, even though there’s no way she wasn’t told of my arrival.

  The grace of the presentation shatters as Nádasdy’s upper lip curls, and the look she’s throwing at me sours like old milk.

  “Bautista,” she sneers, “What are you doing here?”

  Jax leaves the room, closing the door behind him. I know he hasn’t really left; he’ll probably stay behind the door, listening for a commotion. Still, I ask, “Are we alone?”

  “As alone as we’ll ever be, I suppose. What do you want?”

  I glance around the library. There’s a polished wooden rocking chair in the corner with intricate swirls carved into the arms. I shuffle over and grab hold of it. “How’s it going with the bodies?” I say, dragging it across the floor. Nádasdy glowers at the twin furrows I’m creating in the carpet. “Have you found any clue as to the identity of our mass murderer?”

  “It’s being taken care of. If you’re here to pry for details, you won’t get any out of me.” She reaches over to a side table to set down her book, moving calmly, betraying no tension. She’s got acting chops, I’ll give her that.

  I settle into the chair with proper old lady noisiness. “Tell me, Katlin, what would you have to gain from killing half the Council?”

  “I could ask the same of you.” Damn, she didn’t miss a beat. Her eyebrow is arched, and again, she shows no hint of nervousness.

  I scoff, shoving my feet against the floor to make the chair lurch. “Please, what would the deaths of Danovich and Sifri do for me? Bolster the zero assets I hold from my little hut in the woods
? My only stake in this is my apprentice.”

  Nádasdy’s pinched face opens up with surprise. She swings her legs off the couch to face me directly. “The trailer trash? You expect me to believe this is about her?”

  I stop rocking my chair. I’m suddenly incredibly self-conscious, both on Bautista and Joy’s behalves. “Why wouldn’t it be about her?”

  Nádasdy’s Prussian blue eyes pierce mine. “Because you’re a bloodthirsty bitch, Bautista. You can hide behind that harmless facade all you want, but I remember what you did to Cain Meresti—what I helped you do to him.” My ears prick up like a dog’s. Figuratively. Physically, I maintain a stony face. “I sent him to you, gift-wrapped in zipties and duct tape, because back then I respected you. I respected how fiercely you protected what was yours—when I thought you were protecting something worthwhile. But the girl turned out soft, and you never pushed her to be anything more once you rescued her. What was the point of that, old crow?”

  Nádasdy looks… genuinely puzzled. Disappointed, even. I…I don’t know what to do with this. What would Bautista say? I don’t know, so I speak my own mind.

  “You had a child. You loved your child. How could you not understand?”

  Nádasdy all but rolls her eyes, her posture slumping backward as her tone turns snappish. “I loved my child because he was a piece of me. He was a perfect genetic combination of my strengths, malleable, able to be built into a legacy. Your apprentice was none of that. That’s your problem, Bautista. You’re in love with weakness. You were the runt of the litter and so you love other defective products, and you would give up your own ambitions just to be old and soft for their benefit. Women like you disgust me.”

  I’m bristling on Bautista’s behalf now. No wonder Castitae hates Nádasdy so much; she’s an ass to everybody. I know I really, really, really need to stay in character—but the words tumble from my lips.

  “If Miklos was so perfect, how do you justify murdering him?”

  Nádasdy goes rigid, her face a perfect, blank mask. On that plastic mask, the eyes narrow by the barest fraction of an inch. “Now, where did you get that idea?”

  I tilt my head, matching the lack of expression on her face. “A little bird told me.”

  She snarls low, the sound like an approaching tornado. “And you would believe the word of a useless demon over everything you have ever known about me? You would believe I killed my son?”

  Something—something’s not right. I mean, obviously, nothing right now is right, but—why would Nádasdy deny killing Miklos while admitting knowledge of Castitae in the same breath? And what the Hell is that emotion on her face, the one that’s pulling the corners of her mouth down and back in that trembling, tight grimace? This isn’t the crack in the wall I was looking for, but I keep picking at it anyway.

  “Katlin, why lie to me, of all people? You know what I am capable of. We have history. You are the last person whose mind I want to force open. It doesn’t have to go that way, if you just tell me the truth and admit that you killed—”

  She swarms out of her seat and backhands me. I’m so stunned by the utterly normal, utterly physical attack that I just sit there, digesting the sting.

  “You don’t get to judge me!” she’s screaming, looming over my seated form. Her face is curved like a bow, shaking with the effort of her resentment, lines forming under her eyes and on her chin like gouges in wood. “Not you! You couldn’t protect yours, either! You failed, too! You are not a better mother than me!”

  As I exhale, my breath tickles the re-opened split in my lower lip. I breathe slowly, deliberately, feeling the way my chest tightens and my lungs refuse to deflate in regular intervals. Fear. Anticipation. Adrenaline. “Katlin,” I whisper. I’m getting that slimy feeling again, the one where I’m coming to understand things against my will. “It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  She screams a gut-wrenching, animalistic, pinned-prey scream and winds her arm back—and with the THUD of my heartbeat, the world slows. I see two individual tears drip from Nádasdy’s eyes to crawl down her cheeks, hear the strange scraping of her fingernails lengthening into talons. Icy sparks snap and crack on her palm like the frozen surface of a lake. Her hair floats as though suspended in water, and the light in her eyes shatters into facets, like the glittering diamond window above us.

  I’d be transfixed by the sight, if I weren’t trapped between the arms of the rocking chair and Nádasdy’s frenzied attack. And I’m still scared, and kind of dumb. So I ram my forehead into her nose.

  Blood spray in slow motion is so, so red. Nádasdy stumbles back, and I’m marvelously aware of how my chair rocks as I push off of it, my muscles working just a half-second faster, just a quick-twitch more efficiently. I get my cloak out of the way by flaring it out behind me, plant a foot on Nádasdy’s stomach, and shove.

  Time speeds back up as she doubles over, a wheeze escaping her throat as she rockets back into the couch. Her momentum sends the couch tipping back—and dumps her onto the floor with her feet flying up, a kicked slipper flipping past like a cheerful dolphin. I’m almost too busy stifling my laughter to get my crowbar out. Then she surges back up with a screech, slamming her arms into the couch to send it sliding toward a bookshelf.

  Her next lunge is accompanied by the sound of smashing wood and heavy books toppling to the floor. I swipe my hand upward, a shield forming in its wake; she sidesteps it neatly and swings a claw-like hand. My mind traces the trajectory of her arm like a red, dotted line. I raise my crowbar to meet it, and the impact of bone on steel vibrates all the way down to my biceps.

  I hear the click of a step outside—Jax. I didn’t see a gun on him, but he no doubt has one. How do I keep him from shooting me the second that door opens? A shield would only protect me from one or two shots, and it would leave me vulnerable to Nádasdy’s attacks. My thrown shards can’t travel as fast as a bullet. Bautista’s potion affords me time to think, and I come up with a brilliant, absolute dick of a move.

  I tear the cloak off my shoulders and toss it over Nádasdy’s head. As she struggles, I dive for the wall beside the doorway.

  The door bursts open. “Katlin!” Jax shouts. With me hidden behind the open door, all he sees is Harrietta Lee, Hell-touched, excommunicated failure of a blood witch, trying so violently to rip off a black cloak that she’s tearing out her own hair.

  Nádasdy manages to lose the cloak just as Jax pulls the trigger. She rears up in all her homicidal glory, shrieking bloody murder, a seeping hole showing an inch below her collarbone. Jax’s eyes widen, and I step low around the doorway and smash my crowbar into his kneecap.

  His leg buckles and he stumbles, but doesn’t go down. I bring the crowbar down onto the back of his head. He falls to one knee and his gun goes off—once, twice, three times. Three times can’t be an accident, and I know for sure it’s not when I hear shouts coming from downstairs. Nothing summons a private army faster than gunshots.

  I leap over his arm and over to Nádasdy, snatching the cloak off her writhing form. Jax is already getting back up; I won’t be able to get past him. There’s a door at the end of the room and I run for that instead, the cloak tucked under my arm.

  The door leads to a smaller library with downsized shelves, blue walls, a tiny rocking chair. Oh gods, it’s a kid’s library. This is where little Miklos learned how to read. I tear my eyes away, instead identifying the door that’ll take me back into the hallway and barreling through that.

  I exit into the hallway at the same time as Jax—staggering, he sees me, and I see him. A dozen booted feet thumpthumpthump up the stairs right below us. He raises his gun, and I raise a shield; the bullet ricochets harmlessly into the wall.

  “Kill the blood witch!” he roars as I race for the spiraling stairs. I tug the cloak onto my shoulders just as the first armed guard turns the bend. Only the guard’s eyes are visible under the brim of his helmet and the top of his balaclava, and I see the whites of them widen as he comes face-to-face with me—
or rather, the image of his boss superimposed on me by the cloak.

  “Move, idiot,” I hiss in Nádasdy’s nasally tone.

  He throws himself to the side so hard he nearly launches himself over the railing.

  The rest of the guards give me a similarly wide berth, and I scurry down the steps so fast the cloak flares out behind me. I reach the foyer and keep power-walking, taking paranoid glances behind my back to watch for Jax and Nádasdy.

  Think, think, think. Where is Nádasdy keeping the sacrifices? I do not sense the pressure of water and stone upon us, is what Castitae said. Water and stone. Where’s the last time I saw water and stone in this godsforsaken murder mansion?

  Snake fountain.

  I shuffle out into the courtyard, not liking how conspicuous I am in the black cloak among all this stupid green grass. I keep to the edges of the yard, and the few guards who see me only give passing glances. It almost feels like I’m hiding from the gaze of the four-headed snake statue, even though it remains inanimate on top of the churning fountain.

  That’s when I see it: a tiny tool shed in the corner of the courtyard, nicely blended into the fence and just big enough to house, say, a staircase heading downward, or an elevator to an underground lair. My suspicions are supported by the complex passcode lock on the door. I creep over to it and see that it not only has keys with numbers, but all the letters of the alphabet as well. There’s no way a freaking tool shed has this much security.

  My fingers hover uncertainly over the keys. I type in M-I-K-L-O-S—the panel beeps angrily and flashes red. I try L-E-G-A-C-Y. No dice. A wave of inspiration strikes me; with a flourish, I punch in G-O-L-D-F-I-S-H.

  The panel tells me to fuck off.

  “We’re almost there,” I hear Jax say, his voice floating over from the direction of the mansion. I don’t even look, I just dive into the nearest hedge—ow, ow, cut branches scraping my face, leaves up my nose, ow—and get in a position where I can see Jax and Nádasdy approaching through the small gaps between the leaves. Jax has Nádasdy’s arm pulled over his shoulders, and though he’s limping, he’s supporting Nádasdy as they painfully make their way across the grass. Nádasdy looks more pissed than in pain, and blood from her bullet wound is making the neckline of her dress hang heavy and dark. They stop. Nádasdy sinks to the grass as Jax goes to the tool shed—then walks right past it to the fence, where he clears away some brush to reveal a triangular sigil. He presses his hand to it and speaks the sentence, “Wear these bright jewels, beloved Beowulf,” in clear syllables. The dirt shifts and the grass sinks in a perfect square, revealing a staircase leading down into darkness. Nádasdy minces her way down first and Jax follows, letting her put her arm around him again, and the grass rises up to conceal the doorway once more.