Crimson Daggers- The Complete Trilogy

by Emma Savant

  But his face proved her and the other girls right: They were our best possible lure for monsters like this.

  I took a cautious step forward, but it wasn’t cautious enough. The sound of my footstep was enough to alert him.

  “I told you guys to—” he said, and then his eyes narrowed as he saw me. An instant later, he stood straighter and smiled. “Sorry, I thought you were one of my group.” He gestured, waving me through.

  He thought I was just another visitor to the corn maze.

  Well, I could use that to my advantage.

  I smiled brightly at him and continued walking, as if to go past them both. At the last possible moment, I swung around and buried my minuscule weapon in his neck. The hilt of the tiny potion-laced dagger was the only thing preventing the needle from getting lost in his skin.

  The man’s eyes widened before he crumpled to the ground.

  I held out my arms, and Phoenix rushed into them. I squeezed her tightly and rocked her back and forth.

  “You did good,” I whispered into her ear.

  Her breathing was quick and ragged, and it hurt my heart to not be able to stay and comfort her. I pulled back and brushed her hair away from her makeup-covered face. “I’m so proud of you. There’s a group of people around that corner with me, but there’s no one else behind us as far as I know. You run back to the entrance and wait there until the spell breaks, okay?”

  She swallowed and looked up at me, resolve all over her features. She nodded briskly, once, and then I gave her a gentle push and sent her running back down the path.

  Something inside me hardened as I watched her disappear between the corn stalks. The terror on her face had to be a twin to the terror of every other one of the wolves’ victims, and that particular fear wasn’t something I would ever allow again. If I hadn’t had enough of a reason to fight when I’d walked into this maze, I did now.

  I gestured sharply at the rest of my group to keep walking. We were silent but fast. This time, I didn’t creep or try to choke back my own breathing.

  I was coming for the wolves, and it didn't matter if they knew.

  They didn’t have any escape.

  32

  The first sound was a scream—not the kind the teenage Daggers and Wildwoods had been making in an attempt to scare visitors, but a real one that stood my hair on end. It was followed by crashing and pounding footsteps far too heavy to belong to a human. We pressed our backs to the corn stalks and waited, and it wasn’t long before the noises fell to silence. Ragged breathing broke the quiet, followed by footsteps running away. It wasn’t until we’d passed two turns that I saw the limp body lying on the path in front of us.

  “Rose,” I breathed.

  I dropped to my knees and felt frantically for a pulse. It was there, but so was a sickening amount of blood pouring from a gash down her arm and a cut on her head. The blood glinted in the light from a jack-o’-lantern as it pooled around her and stained the ground.

  One of the Wildwoods crouched next to me. He was already pulling gauze from a small pouch on his back. Alejandro was young and had only been with the Wildwoods for a few years, but Brendan told me he showed a lot of promise and was planning to start school next year to become a nurse.

  “Go,” he said. “I’ve got her.”

  I squeezed his shoulder in thanks and led my group forward.

  An enchanted skeleton jumped out at us as we passed, and its bones clinked together as it receded back into the gaps between the stalks. I froze, hoping the sound hadn’t alerted the Burnsides to our presence, but no one was paying attention to us. There was crashing up ahead, and shouting, and it sounded like more than two people were involved.

  “Let’s go,” I called, and we took off running toward the sounds of the battle.

  Alec and the other Wildwoods fell back. An instant later, they sprang ahead, this time in their intimidating wolf forms. I shouted at one of the witches behind me, and she pulled a can of spray paint out of her satchel. She tossed the can to me, and I sprayed streaks of luminescent silver on whatever fur was closest. It was a signal to the other witches, whose sense of smell couldn’t tell one wolf from another: Don’t attack.

  Their paws thundered ahead, and one wolf deep in the maze gave a bloodcurdling howl. Other voices rose with it, but the warning was too late. The Burnside pack was trapped.

  I ran into a clearing in the maze, then immediately skidded to the side to avoid being hit by a giant wolf body. Alec’s huge eye met mine just before he swung his neck around and bit at the throat of a wolf with shaggy black fur.

  I tried to bury one of the tiny daggers into the wolf’s side, but its fur was too thick. Alec snarled at me. It took everything I had to leave him, but there were other Burnsides to fight and other allies to protect. I ran into the next darkened corridor.

  Our organized little group had dissolved into chaos. The wolves were fighting their own battles, and now my sisters ran ahead of me, pulling out their weapons and diverging into different paths whenever the maze offered a choice. In moments, I was alone.

  Almost.

  A Burnside wolf on the path ahead turned and snarled at me. I was too high on adrenaline to feel fear, although my heart thudded in a way I couldn’t pin down to my running.

  I rushed at him, dagger outstretched in one hand and poisoned needle in the other, each ready for the slightest opening. Amid a blur of fur and teeth, I saw it—the wet, glistening skin of the wolf’s nostrils.

  I let him get close enough to take a bite out of me, then punched at his nose with the point of the needle. He let out a yelp, then snuffled and fell to the ground, giant paws twitching.

  He’d torn a gash through Alec’s hoodie, and blood seeped through the fabric of my arm. I shoved my sleeve up; the injury looked worse than it was, so I pushed the fabric into the wound and pressed on ahead. I passed several downed wolf bodies and found Cerise huddled in a corner making a bandage for herself out of corn husks. She shook her head at me when I stopped to help.

  “Get to the center,” she ordered. “Get Brick.”

  I ran.

  33

  Sienna was standing in the large clearing at the middle of the maze, lit by the jack-o’-lanterns floating overhead and flanked by two enormous werewolves that were doing their best to protect her. They snarled and snapped their jaws at my sisters, but one of them was taken down quickly by an arrow shot from somewhere deep in the corn. Sienna screamed as the wolf went down, but it was a scream of anger, not grief.

  That wolf hadn’t been Brick.

  I found him a moment later, on the other side of the clearing and in his lupine form. It was impossible to mistake him for anyone else now that he was in in the light. He was stunning as a wolf, with a silver pelt and sharp black marks around his eyes that framed them like eyeliner.

  I recognized the curve of his body and the lines of tension in his muscles. I’d seen them in the alley beside Straw.

  The other Daggers and I had decided to use our tiny daggers wherever we could. The poisoned needles would only knock the wolves into a deep sleep, not kill them—and leaving the wolves alive meant they could be tried, which meant they might one day testify in a way that would bring Brick’s whole operation to light.

  But it was difficult, looking at Brick himself, to think of anything but killing. I felt the memory of his tongue against my face and the way he’d leaned over me when we’d met outside his club, and I tightened my hand around the hilt of my dagger.

  The second wolf guarding Sienna was closer, though, so I jumped into the fray and slashed at the creature’s legs. It yelped in pain as the wolfsbane on my dagger hit its system. I kept slashing and stabbing at the creature until it fell to the ground with a whine. I was ready with one of the needles and plunged it into the soft skin beside the wolf’s mouth. The monster’s eyes fell closed, and its breathing slowed.

  Sienna’s final protector faded from consciousness. She whirled on me.

  “Glad you could join
the party,” she snapped.

  Her eyes flashed with anger. She paced in front of me, looking for a weakness, and her familiar walk flipped a switch in my brain. I’d sparred with her a million times. I’d been the one to come out on top last time. I knew the way she drew back her punches a hair too far, and the way she favored one side, and the little twitch of her mouth before she tried to do something that might catch me off guard.

  I could take her.

  “Want me to come break your arm again?” I said.

  She sneered. “I thought that was an accident?”

  I smiled sweetly, the gesture a strain on my face. “Let’s see if I can do it on purpose.”

  I didn’t wait for her to attack, like I had so many times previously. I jumped first, dagger clenched in my fist.

  Instantly, she slammed me backwards with a wall of energy that crackled through the air in a series of blinding blue sparks. I fell against the corn husks, and plant debris rained down on my head.

  Before she could attack again, I scrambled to my feet and circled her. She spun a slow circle, keeping me at the center of her gaze, then held up her hands.

  Her fingernails were long and painted in a perfect blood-red manicure.

  The kind of perfect that meant she hadn’t been using her hands much at all tonight.

  The kind that suggested she was going to try to fight me entirely with magic.

  My heart sank. It was only in recent years that I’d been able to spar on her level, but I’d never matched her affinity for spellwork, and I’d be a fool to think she hadn’t been practicing.

  Crooked bolts of lightning sparked around her fingertips. She strode toward me, pushed the energy into a ball of white so bright it hurt my eyes, and launched the magic toward me. I jumped away just in time to avoid being hit, but I couldn’t avoid the painful buzz of the electricity dissolving into the too-close corn stalks. My hair stood on end, and my skin felt as if a thousand tiny insects were skittering across my body.

  I fought through the sensation and ran again straight at Sienna. I managed to grab her by the wrists and twisted them behind her back.

  She freed herself with a violent yank, and then we fell into a blur of blows and kicks and angry screams. It wasn’t long before she sent my dagger flying across the clearing and into the stalks, and I was left with only my fists and the few spells I knew well enough to use without thinking.

  On every side, Daggers and Wildwoods fought similar battles. Their screams filled the air, muffled by the adrenaline that pounded in my ears, and their bodies moved in the corners of my eyes as I fought Sienna.

  She had gotten stronger since I’d last gone against her and seemed to have no trouble alternating physical blows with magical ones. She threw a fireball at my legs, and I dropped to the ground to smother the flames crawling up my clothes.

  Being so low gave me a chance to take her out by the ankles, and I managed to get her on the ground. At that moment, one of the Burnside wolves attacked me from the back. Its teeth sank into my arm and then it let go with a yelp, an arrow sticking out of its neck.

  By the time I got back to Sienna, she was gone. I looked frantically around and realized with a shock that I was one of the only ones left standing. Bodies were strewn across the clearing, wolf and witch alike, and I didn’t have time to check any of them for signs of life.

  In the middle of the space stood Brick’s vast silver form. Sienna shielded herself behind his slowly flicking tail.

  He turned his massive head to me. His giant yellow eyes blinked, slowly, and he walked a slow circle around Sienna. I stood frozen, part of me transfixed at the sight and the other part trying desperately to come up with a plan of attack.

  Brick curled his body around Sienna until she almost disappeared in his fur. He stared at me, and a slow-fanged smile crept across his sharp face. Blood dripped from one of his giant teeth.

  He flicked his tail once more, and then he was gone, replaced by a puff of silver smoke that spiraled and dissipated into the cold night air.

  34

  “It wasn’t Sienna at all,” I said. My voice was low and rapid, and I tried to order myself to slow down to no avail.

  Beside me, Clancy crouched in the dirt of the corn maze, wiping blood off the giant gash that covered Rowan’s forehead. Overhead, jack-o’-lanterns continued shining down on us with their mocking smiles.

  “It was a shade. She had a shade there, and she was good. I drew blood on the cursed thing, and I’m pretty sure it gave me half of these bruises. But she wasn’t there, not really. Neither was Brick.”

  Mom’s jaw clenched. “We got most of their pack, at least.”

  “That wasn’t the point,” I said. “We were supposed to get Brick.”

  He was a magician, and I wanted to kick myself for forgetting it. I knew from his dazzling fashion shows and his reputation that he was skilled in glamours and deceptions. Of course he had the ability to create convincing shadows. Of course he hadn’t been stupid enough to fall into the trap we’d set for him.

  But I’d been stupid enough to believe his lies, and it made me want to scream. I yanked an ear of corn from the nearest stalk and threw it as far as I could. It arced high over the plants around us and thudded to the earth somewhere else in the maze.

  Mom grabbed my arm.

  “Not productive.”

  I swallowed hard. I wanted to rant and storm around the clearing and punch things, but that was the kind of tantrum that belonged to novice Scarlett. As the future Stiletto, as the leader of this whole mission, I had to compose myself and do something.

  “We need to find them,” I said. “If Brick gets away, there’s nothing to stop him from building up his pack again. He’s the disease at the center of all this.”

  “Sienna, too,” Mom said. Her lips were a hard, thin line.

  For the first time, I thought about what Sienna’s betrayal must have meant to Mom. Sienna was Mom’s niece and star pupil, and although I had always envied the closeness they seemed to share on the sparring floor, I imagined that closeness must have made the pain of Sienna’s choices all the sharper.

  “Her, too,” I agreed. “Once we lift the spell on the maze, I’ll take anyone who’s able and we’ll go scour the city. Brick’s probably retreated to one of his clubs, or maybe the House of Brick offices.”

  “He could be anywhere,” Mom said. “You’ll do better with a locating spell. I’ll have some of the Daggers start preparing ingredients. You’ll want a good, strong enchantment that can handle his maneuvering.”

  “I should have realized he wouldn’t fall for something like this.”

  “He fell for it enough to send his pack in,” Mom said. “It’s not a total loss.”

  “It’s not a total win, either.”

  Clancy bandaged up the arm of one of the Wildwoods, Valerie. At least we hadn’t lost anyone, not tonight. Rose had a bad concussion, and Clancy had said it would be a miracle if one of the Wildwoods managed to hold on to his mangled leg, but not one of our lives had been lost.

  I had to cling to that, especially when everything else seemed so dark.

  The exhaustion of the evening hit me as the adrenaline faded, and with the exhaustion came pain. Every inch of my body felt as if it had been bruised or scraped or burned—or, in some places, all three. I winced and sat on the ground. A throbbing headache grew behind my eyes.

  It had been a long time since I’d been this badly beat up, if such a thing had ever happened. I’d certainly never felt this awful after even the roughest weekends of focused sparring.

  “I’ll mix you an elixir when we get home,” Clancy said.

  She was exhausted, too, and I said a silent thank-you to whatever power had kept her alive and intact through the battle. She had a black eye and a long cut down her cheek, but she was alive. We wouldn’t have had a shot at a full recovery without her.

  “I let Grandma know what happened,” Mom said. “She’s staying in place for now. We can’t have her anywhere
Brick might find her, and there’s nowhere safer than the Waterfall Palace.”

  I knew how it must chafe at Grandma, to stay away while all her witches were putting themselves in danger. But she had agreed to let me lead this mission, and I had made her safety my one nonnegotiable condition. Brick could go and start a whole other pack even if his wolves were all destroyed. By the same token, Grandma was the heart at the center of our coven, and I was willing to risk all our limbs if that meant keeping the heart safe.

  “The spell is down,” Mom said, glancing at the stars overhead.

  I hadn’t noticed them in a long time, but their position in the night sky had changed. We’d been in here for hours. The harvest festival was still going on in happy ignorance outside the maze’s sealed confines, but a group of law enforcement sent directly from the palace would be joining us from a back entrance by now to bind the werewolves in unbreakable silver chains and take them away until they could be tried by the queen.

  Clancy stood and stretched. Her eyes were sharp, but the lines around them betrayed her fatigue.

  “Time to round up the rest of the Daggers and Wildwoods,” she said. “We need to get everyone home. Especially you, Scarlett. You need sleep.”

  The necessity of it weighed down my limbs and eyelids, and I suddenly thought how nice it would be to just curl up in the dirt at our feet and close my eyes for a minute.

  She was right, much as I hated to admit it. This could all wait until the morning, or at least until I’d recharged with some coffee and one of Clancy’s healing potions.

  I held out a hand to help Rowan up.

  The ground shook underneath us, and screams sounded from beyond the maze. A thick wall of silver smoke rose over us like a dome, turning every corn stalk a lifeless gray and shading the faces around me with an ashen, colorless hue.

  Rowan clutched my arm as we looked up. Then, so softly it made the hairs on my arms prickle, her words filled the clearing.