by S. M. Reine
“You’re both dead , that’s what I’m doing.”
Malcolm laughed. It was the sound of insanity escaping his lips. “Oh, you called the Union. You called the Union! Just brilliant . Do you think that they’re going to let you get off before they kill Jim and me?”
“They wouldn’t shoot me down,” St. Vil said.
James looked like he couldn’t decide if he’d rather choke St. Vil or Malcolm. His face twisted with anger, the muscles on his neck stood rigid, and he opened his mouth as if to yell—but his face went slack when he looked out the window.
“What’s that?” James asked, slipping into the copilot’s seat. He stared out the front window.
There were lights approaching in the dark clouds. It was hard to get any sense of perspective up in the air—everything seemed so much smaller than it was on the ground. But the lights seemed to be moving in fast.
“I think they found us,” Malcolm said. “Thanks, Zane.”
St. Vil swung a fist. Malcolm ducked under it, driving a shoulder into his gut. The pilot fell into his chair.
Lights flashed in the clouds—a lot like the flare of a gun’s muzzle.
The plane gave a hard jerk.
Malcolm fell against the wall. St. Vil dived for him again. The plane pitched at the same time, making the clouds swirl dizzyingly outside the window, and St. Vil stumbled against the console instead.
A fighter plane roared over them, swooping low enough that it looked like they might collide. James launched himself out of the copilot’s chair just in time.
Gunfire rained through the cabin. A bullet punched through the window, and St. Vil took a shot in the face.
His skull bounced against the wall. Crimson splattered behind him.
James shoved Malcolm out of the cockpit. Another rain of bullets pounded into the chair that he had vacated.
The entire windshield shattered. Wind rushed through the plane like the angry fist of God, and Malcolm gripped the wall to keep from getting sucked out.
They dipped under the clouds quickly—much too quickly. Adrenaline raced through Malcolm and a grin spread over his face.
Some thrills were even better than getting drunk.
The nose of the plane pitched forward. Malcolm had to brace his hands against the seats to climb back to the door, and the tilt only got worse with every step. They were falling fast .
More gunfire. The plane shook harder.
Malcolm grabbed a sack off of the wall. There should have been enough for each person that the plane had the capacity to carry, but he was only able to locate one. Well, the Union had been undergoing budget cuts lately.
“Two guys, one parachute,” Malcolm shouted over the whipping wind. “Thumb war?”
James ripped the parachute out of his hands. “We’ll share.” He sounded remarkably calm, considering that the nearest window was now filled with a view of the trees hundreds of feet below. Malcolm hadn’t even noticed that the plane was rolling.
The witch donned the parachute, strapped the buckles, and grabbed the door.
“Hugs?” Malcolm asked, opening his arms.
James looked like he was briefly tempted to leave Malcolm behind, but then wrapped his arms around his midsection.
The plane pitched again as bullets ripped through the side, opening a jagged gash that looked like teeth. Malcolm’s feet slipped out from underneath him. His weight slammed into James, and the wind sucked them out the door.
Then they were in open air.
The plane rushed above them, and Malcolm had a perfect view of it as another barrage of bullets severed it in half.
The wind sucked all the moisture from his eyeballs and left him squinting into blurry darkness. There was no room for worries while plummeting toward the forest. There was nothing but the wind, the air, and the beating of his heart.
He dug his fingers into James’s back and thought, This wouldn’t be the worst way to die.
The parachute unfurled, catching the wind. The ropes snapped tight. Their downward momentum was instantly halted, and the powerful jerk almost tossed Malcolm free.
“Hang on,” James grunted, eyelids squeezed shut against the wind.
The black line of trees was still coming at them too quickly. They had jumped close to the ground, and the parachute didn’t have enough time to slow their descent.
Malcolm had two seconds to think about how pretty the forest looked before they hit.
The trees tore into him. His arms lost their grip around James, and they separated.
A branch drove into Malcolm’s midsection like a baseball bat to the ribs. Pine needles jabbed at his face, scraped his clothes, drove into his skin.
He hit another branch, and another. Then his back struck the ground.
Malcolm lay flat on the forest floor, stunned and dizzy. The flaming remains of their plane disappeared over the line of the trees. There was a distant thudding. A flare of fire.
The jets buzzed past without stopping.
Every time he tried to draw in breath, it felt like being stabbed in the ribs with a pencil. He panted, forcing oxygen into his lungs, and breathing became easier second by second.
He finally managed to draw in a lungful of air that didn’t feel like dying, and it was better than women, better than akvavit , better than orgasms.
Almost.
A body crashed through the branches nearby. James was tangled in his parachute cables. It took a few minutes of ungainly struggling to unhook his harness.
Once he freed himself, he joined Malcolm at the bottom of the hill.
“Are you alive?” James asked, bracing his hands on his knees.
“No,” Malcolm groaned.
“Great.”
James flopped onto the ground beside him, and neither of them moved for quite some time.
Getting hit by a forest was even better for a drunk-like buzz than getting punched by James. Several blissful minutes passed before Malcolm could order his thoughts again.
Though his body was one big bruise, his mind had gone into blessed shock. Instead of thinking about how much the Union wanted to kill them, all he thought about was the moment of blissful zero gravity that he had enjoyed as they fell.
James seemed to lack the same appreciation for the profound stillness that followed a near-death situation. He was the first to sit up, muddy and covered in pine needles. “Did you see where the plane crashed? Where’s the Union going to be searching for us?”
Malcolm pushed himself into a sitting position. His head was starting to clear again. Too bad. “I think they must be up that way,” he said, waving vaguely in the direction of the mountains.
“All right. If we don’t know where the plane is, then where are we ?”
“Trees,” Malcolm said helpfully.
James didn’t acknowledge that he had spoken. “Let’s find out.” He pulled up the hem of his shirt, baring a patch of skin near his navel that was marked with brown ink. He pressed a finger to it.
“What’s that? You didn’t used to be inked.”
“It’s not a tattoo—it’s a spell. A beacon, to be precise.” James let his shirt drop again. “We shouldn’t be far from Boulder, so I sent a flare that my son should be able to see. Hopefully, Nathaniel will find us before a Union witch does.”
“Hopefully,” Malcolm said with a snort. “So you’re covered in spells. Where’s the spell that makes me feel like I didn’t get trampled by stampeding demons?”
“I can’t heal you. This magic is different from what I normally do, and I couldn’t figure out how to make a healing spell in this style that wouldn’t kill me.”
“How practical.”
James grunted in response.
The witch had managed to rescue the map from the airplane. He spread it out in the dirt and clicked his pen. “This is a locater spell,” he explained as he began drawing. “I’ll make a few anchor points, then animate the map so that we can find the Haven.”
“Don’t you need supplies f
or that kind of ritual? Like…herbs and voodoo dolls?”
“I used to need supplies,” James said. “Herbs, anyway. I’ve been finding workarounds. Good thing, too, because it seems the Union’s catching up with me.”
Malcolm gave a weak grin. “I was wondering if you’d notice that.”
“It would have been impossible to miss. How did the Union get written magic?”
“Some bitch named Allyson Whatley picked it up in the ethereal ruins over Reno. There were these ribbons, she deconstructed the symbols, started designing new magic. All of a sudden, we don’t need rituals to cast spells.”
“So she got it from Alain Daladier,” James said, scowling.
“Most of it’s useless, if that helps,” Malcolm said. “Allyson’s not much of a witch. She doesn’t have the first idea of what to do with that stuff. Not like you do.”
“Did you help them figure it out?”
“Nah. I wouldn’t have known what to tell them anyway. ‘I once saw a guy set paper on fire and kill demons with it’? It didn’t come up before my conviction. Oh, and did I tell you about that? Funny story! Apparently, I helped Elise escape custody—never mind that I was the one to arrest her in the first place.”
“Sounds like you made someone angry,” James said. “I find that so hard to believe.”
“Zettel set me up. He wanted his job back.” Malcolm sat back against the rock and waved a hand dismissively. “It’s all his. I don’t care. It’s easier to get liquor outside of the Union anyway.”
James continued to draw until the tiny symbols covered the map. Malcolm watched in silence for several minutes.
Maybe it was the fading adrenaline rush, maybe it was the calm of the forest, or maybe it was a twinkle of maturity that Malcolm preferred not to have, but he suddenly felt much more serious.
“What really happened to Elise?” he asked softly.
James stopped drawing. Drummed the pen on his knee. “You know about me, don’t you?”
“The whole Union knows about you. We found your blood on record in Dis. What we don’t know is how you could also be a witch when you practically bleed silver.”
“Perfect,” James said. “Just perfect.”
“What’s that got to do with Elise? Are you saying she doesn’t know?”
He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “No. She didn’t know.”
Malcolm heard a muffled thump . The trees shook, raining pine needles over the spell on the ground.
Wind gusted, and he threw up a hand to shield his eyes.
“The Union!” he yelled, struggling to his feet.
Before he managed to get upright, the wind had died again. Malcolm dropped his hand—and there was suddenly another person with them.
It wasn’t someone from the Union. A boy with shaggy black hair, square glasses, and muddy hiking boots stood in front of them. The air around him shimmered, as though with a mirage of heat.
Malcolm was surprised to recognize him. He had picked this boy up at the same time he arrested Elise and never realized that he was on the Union’s most wanted list.
“Nathaniel,” James said, abandoning his spell and standing up. “You noticed the beacon.”
“Me and, like, every other witch in the United States. Way to broadcast.” Nathaniel glanced around the forest. “What are you guys doing here? And where exactly is ‘here,’ anyway?”
“We’re on the run from certain death,” Malcolm said brightly.
James sighed. “I’m hoping that we’re in Colorado, somewhere close to Boulder. How did you get here? When did you learn to do that?”
The look that Nathaniel gave James couldn’t be mistaken for anything but disdainful preteen hostility. “You’re not the only one that writes his own spells.” He pulled out his cell phone and started tapping away. “I’ll find out where we are. I’ve got GPS.”
Malcolm glanced back at the locater spell that James had been drawing into the earth. It looked like it was still no more than half-complete. Ah, the wonders of modern technology.
Within a few seconds, Nathaniel said, “Oh. Only ten miles. Okay, that’s closer than I expected.” He turned around and started walking.
“Can’t you zap us?” Malcolm asked. “Ten miles might not be much for a springy little sprite like you, but I just fell out of an airplane.”
That question earned another disdainful look. “Sure, I can ‘zap’ you, if you want to wait a few hours for me to cast the spell. It’s a lot harder moving multiple people.”
“So that’s why Hannah didn’t come,” James said. “Because of the spell.”
“No,” Nathaniel said. “She actually didn’t come because she’s with Ariane.”
James’s eyes widened. “Ariane? Ariane Kavanagh? Is she okay?”
“You’ll see.”
9
James’s parents’ house hadn’t changed since his childhood. The piano was still beside the bay window, with a couch that must have been reupholstered a dozen times on the opposite wall. They even had the same heavy gold drapes that James used to hang off of as a toddler.
The only difference was that the house lacked the smell of his mother’s baking, his dad’s belly laughter, the sound of a visiting friend banging on the piano. He stepped through the front door, and his mother didn’t appear to yell at him for wearing shoes on her wood floors. He took them off anyway.
A soft murmur of voices drifted from the kitchen.
“Hello?” James called, setting his shoes on the rack before stepping through the doorway.
Hannah and Ariane sat at the dining nook. Seeing the two of them together in his parents’ house was enough to send him rushing back to his childhood—the days when Elise had only existed as an idea in Metaraon’s mind.
“James,” Ariane said warmly, reaching out to him.
He took her hand. Her skin was as smooth as it had ever been. “I thought that the Union arrested you.”
“They did, but I committed no crime.” She was beautiful, fresh-faced, and young—almost glowing. “They weren’t interested in recruiting me once they recognized my medical condition.”
“What condition?”
Ariane used James’s hand to pull herself to her feet. It took effort; she was unbalanced by a stomach the size of a basketball.
The ground suddenly felt unstable beneath his feet. “Isaac?”
“No,” Ariane replied with a coy smile. “But it’s better that way.”
She glided into the living room, where Nathaniel and Malcolm were talking. James hadn’t even realized that they had stayed behind.
He looked askance at Hannah.
“Ariane won’t tell me who the father is, so don’t bother.” Her mug was only half-filled with tea, but it almost spilled when she lifted it with trembling hands. Hannah hadn’t even taken the teabag out before drinking. “Ariane and Landon, she…”
“What about Landon? Did he see you?” James asked sharply.
“He met us at Pamela’s house. He must have found out we were coming, because your parents aren’t even in Colorado right now. Landon told them that the Grand Rapids coven needed them.”
So James had accidentally sent Hannah and Nathaniel into a trap. “Where’s Landon now?”
“Dead,” Hannah said. “Ariane stabbed him. She told me that she wants to go into hiding with us.”
“My God,” James said.
He leaned around the refrigerator so he could see through the doorway. Malcolm was kissing Ariane’s hand, being as charming as he could with a scarred face and missing eye.
“She probably saved us—Landon was acting so strange when he found us.” Hannah set down the mug, folding her arms tightly across her chest. “I think Metaraon is looking for us.”
“Then we’ll have to move fast,” he said. “Are you ready?”
Hannah didn’t hesitate to say, “Yes.”
James told the others that he needed to get supplies for a spell, then slipped out of the house.
The White Ash Cov
en had lived in a neighborhood outside of Boulder for over a century. Landon’s house was just a short walk down the road from the place where James had grown up, and he arrived within minutes, finding it uninhabited.
There was a note on the front door. It said that Landon was out of town to visit family, and that the coven should call someone named Brianna if they needed help.
James wadded the note into a ball, chucked it into the bushes, and stepped inside.
The living room was devoid of furniture and smelled of cleaning chemicals. James peeked into the bathroom to find the water turned off and plastic wrapped around the toilet.
“Must be a long trip,” he muttered.
Landon seemed to have been planning to sell the house before Ariane killed him. But why run? The coven never left Boulder—especially its high priest—and these homes had belonged to the Faulkner family for generations. Though they were occasionally updated, rebuilt, or shuffled between members of the coven, they were never sold.
James found a screwdriver in the kitchen and used it to break the lock on Landon’s office door. The curtain that had blocked the stairs behind the desk was gone.
He took the stairs to the basement, igniting a spell for light so he could see. The room was empty aside from the door set into the wall. It should have lit up as soon as James approached, bathing the room in gray light—it had always responded to his presence, as though having a Faulkner nearby made it awaken. He dreaded that glow as much as he anticipated it.
But there was no light this time.
Cracks radiated from the center of the door, like a mirror shattered by a fist. James ran his free hand along the break. It was deep enough to bare a blank cave wall on the other side.
Someone had destroyed the door, and all of its ethereal magic.
James stepped back, cradling the light to his chest. Its warmth didn’t comfort him at all.
He had been hoping that he would be able to open that door for Elise—offering her a quick escape from her prison, once the deed was done. But there was no way to repair that crack. The door would be closed forevermore.
He moved to extinguish the light, but a pale shape on the floor caught his eye. James picked it up. It was a feather the length of his hand with a hard rib down the center. Flecks of gold shimmered when James spun it between his finger and thumb.