Badlands Witch: A Cormac and Amelia Story

by Carrie Vaughn

  Amelia skirted around her captor’s mind. This was not an orderly collection of thoughts. Cormac was perhaps not entirely stable, but he had structure, order. A predictable set of strategies by which he interacted with the world. He could converse.

  This mind had none of that. It was all panic, all hate. But she learned what she could, watching at a distance.

  This was a woman, not young but not old. Privileged, she was used to living in comfort. Used to doing what she needed to keep herself safe, usually under the protection of others. But she had nothing now. She felt herself wronged. The details of it weren’t clear. But knowing Cormac, Amelia could make a guess.

  This woman, her nemesis, would destroy herself to take revenge on him.

  Now, how could Amelia use that? Goad her into some kind of rash action? She almost relished the challenge. The woman kept the clay pot, Amelia’s prison, close. Her wild mind was never far away. Amelia could brush it. Breathe the equivalent of a soft sigh upon it. Her captor would feel it as a nagging instinct. That voice that tells you there’s something under the bed. Something hiding in the closet. It could just be a branch, knocking against the window. Or is it something else? Something dangerous? Her stomach would clench, her heart would race.

  Amelia and Cormac had their place, their meadow, beautiful and calm, where she had first been able to speak with him. Approach him. Befriend him. This mind had no calm space, no safe refuge where Amelia might have a sensible conversation with her. How did this mind see itself? There had to be some kind of self-awareness, even if it had no visual component. Amelia needed to understand her, but however much she probed, she couldn’t find a center.

  I am your friend, Amelia prompted, not hoping to be believed. She did not need to be believed. She merely needed a space where this mind might listen to her, if only for a moment.

  Who are you? Show me. Take a breath. Picture yourself in the place you feel safe. What is under your feet, what is over your head? When you put out your hands, what do they touch? Build me this picture. Show me where you go when you need peace.

  The reply came, There is no peace.

  In spite of herself the woman showed her an image of which she was mostly unaware, rising out of her hindbrain. They were in a stone room with no adornment. A cobbled floor, narrow windows close to the ceiling, the dank smell of a cave. Amelia would have called it a dungeon, but it was a modern American’s imagined version of a dungeon, too wide and clean for its truly medieval predecessor. Amelia was not there, could not picture herself there, but she saw her captor.

  She was a girl dressed in a froth of lace. Like the room, an adolescent conception of a historic romantic aesthetic. She was slim, long brown hair brushed to a soft sheen. Her hands were folded before her, and her head was bowed, contrite. She did not move, she did not speak. She might have been a statue.

  “This is how you see yourself?” Amelia asked.

  This is how I am for him. It was a thought, not vocalized. As if she had no voice, not even in her own mind.

  “But how do you see yourself?”

  I don’t.

  Amelia sensed the captor had the experience and bitterness that only came with age. Something had happened to her, and her sense of self had not grown past this place, the prison. This was where the woman’s rage came from. She did not see herself without her master. She was doing what she believed her master wanted of her.

  Oh Cormac, you would be able to tell me where this comes from, how it happens that someone so buries themselves within another. I do not understand. Amelia ought to try to help her. To free her. But she couldn’t afford to. She had to look after herself.

  “What will you do, after you have taken your revenge.”

  It doesn’t matter.

  “Do you think. . .you might ever break free of this place?”

  It’s too late. I killed her.

  “Who—”

  I have killed. I will kill again, to do what I must. The figure in the stone room never moved.

  Amelia was missing information.

  She had to get out of here.

  Cormac got back to the motel for another hot shower and another sleepless night.

  In the morning, he went back to looking for Durant’s car. Checked the rearview mirror frequently—and yes, as soon as he left town he had a tail, an unmarked car. Two men sat in front, one of them talking on a phone most of the time. Cormac stayed five under the speed limit just to annoy them.

  He had a couple of spots left on his map and took his time with them. Some of it was rangeland, some of it out-of-the-way forgotten places with trailers and junked cars around. Cormac searched for the tan SUV. The cops kept their distance—letting Cormac do their work for them.

  On a forested road in the choppy foothills, he found Durant’s car, seemingly abandoned. Parking some ways behind it, he got out, approached cautiously. It had been recently washed, so any evidence of the hit and run was erased. A forensics team might be able to get something. The inside was empty. Even the usual detritus that collected inside most cars—coffee cups and food wrappers—had been cleared out.

  Another dead end. Well. Nothing to do but turn around and find the next road. He walked away without touching anything and called Nielson.

  “You can tell the officers you’ve got following me that I found Durant’s car,” he said. “It’s been washed and looks abandoned. No idea where she could have gone.”

  “Damn,” Nielson muttered. “I suppose you expect that calling me gives you points in your favor?”

  “Naw, the fact you’ve got me doing your leg work is all the points I need. I’ll talk to you later, I’m sure—”

  “Mr. Bennett.”

  He hesitated. He could pretend he hadn’t heard and just hang up. But he answered. “Yeah?”

  “If you find her, call me. Don’t confront her.”

  “I’ll talk to you later, Detective,” he said and hung up.

  He’d talk to her after he confronted Durant on his own terms, to get Amelia back.

  Amelia could not save her captor. She should not need to. She wanted her body back. To do this she had to get the woman, the cage where she was keeping Amelia’s consciousness, and Cormac all in the same place. And she had to do it with no body of her own and no voice. By mere mental persuasion. She had to lay out a path and hope this woman followed it.

  And then hope Cormac anticipated her. How well did the man know her, really?

  Her captor had to sleep. No matter who she was, how mad she was, she had panicked herself to exhaustion and had to rest. This made her vulnerable, and Amelia came to her in dreams.

  Tauntingly, Amelia’s mind whispered to hers, “You want him, not me. So how are you going to get him? Draw him out. Try your spell again—”

  Too hard, too hard.

  “Ah yes, a very dangerous, difficult spell. Where did you learn it? Very few who know such spells would dare to teach it.”

  Paid. I paid.

  Which meant somewhere in the world was a dangerous, unscrupulous magician selling their knowledge, unmindful of the risk. A problem for another time. “You might think of trying. You’ve come too far to give up, don’t you think? You would need to make a new vessel from scratch, enchant it, arrange another meeting it, get him to pick it up, except that he’ll be ready this time, cautious. On the other hand. . .”

  What?

  “You wouldn’t need to work the spell from scratch, perhaps. Perhaps. . .”

  What? What?

  “Oh that would never work,” Amelia thought slyly, prodding, withdrawing, pulling her captor closer.

  What?!

  “You could simply swap us out. Send me out and take him. It wouldn’t even be hard. I could show you.”

  Her captor’s mind settled into something like planning. Strategizing.

  “Lure him,” Amelia urged, gently as she could, trying to mask her own urgency. They both wanted the same thing, didn’t they? They both wanted her out of here. And to find Corma
c, though Amelia didn’t know where he was, what he was doing. Her captor didn’t offer any argument so this must have been possible. Cormac was still out there. He must still be out there. He wouldn’t just leave Amelia here.

  Would he?

  “Set a trap.”

  How?

  “Send a message.” Amelia knew exactly what would get his attention, what would bring him into the open without raising her captor’s suspicions. “Tell him. . .”

  Cormac had to eat, but he wasn’t happy about it. He was living on fast food because it was convenient. He ate better, with Amelia around. With Ben and Kitty looking after him. With friends. He wasn’t used to thinking of himself as a man who had friends. Especially not when all his meals for the last few days had been eaten in parking lots, in the front seat of his Jeep. Better off by himself, then no one got hurt, no one got killed because they just happened to be standing in the way—

  His phone rang. Caller ID said Gregory from the tea shop. He shoved the burger wrapper aside and answered. “Yeah?”

  “Hi, Cormac? Can you get over here?” His voice was on edge. The man always had an edge to him, watchful, as if always solving puzzles. This was different—anxious.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I got a message.”

  And wasn’t this interesting? “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  Back in Deadwood he parked a couple of blocks down from the main street. The shop’s sign was turned to “closed,” but the door was unlocked so Cormac went in. Gregory was sitting at the table in back, the Deadwood Tarot squared neatly on the table, a small piece of paper resting on the felt in front of him, along with a steaming cup of tea. He glanced up at Cormac’s approach and frowned.

  “What happened?” Cormac asked, pulling out the seat across from the magician.

  “Isabelle Durant came in. Threatened to burn the place down if I called the cops on her. I told her that’d be a little extreme, when all she did the last time she was here was throw a chair. But I take it something’s happened since then.”

  “You could say that.”

  Gregory waited for Cormac to explain, but he declined to. The man glared. “I’m going to have a word with Judi Scanlon about bringing you and this mess down on me.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what all’s going on?” Folks who worked in the shadows like this loved a good mystery. Or even a bad one. “What did Durant do?”

  “Said to give you this. What did you do to her to piss her off so bad? She wants to kill you.” He slid the folded paper across to Cormac.

  “Yeah, I know. I—” He wasn’t sure how to put it. She had been a servant to vampires, guilt by association. But Gregory might not see it that way. “She lost her job because of me.”

  “That must have been some job.”

  “Yeah.” He read the message, written in sloppy cursive.

  I can tell you how your father died. Be here, in the street, at midnight.

  Why was it always midnight? These jokers never had any imagination. The rest of it confused him for a moment. He knew exactly how his father died—he’d been there, he’d witnessed it when the werewolf they’d been hunting mauled him to death. Cormac had killed the monster; it had been his first kill. He’d been sixteen.

  But Durant. . .Durant didn’t know how Cormac’s father died. It would seem like a good mystery, wouldn’t it? Something sure to draw him out, if she believed that Cormac didn’t know and that he would want to.

  Amelia. Amelia had given Durant that clue as a lure. It would fire up Durant, but Cormac would know it was fake. Amelia had somehow got a hook into Durant, and she had a plan. He crumpled the page in his hand and chuckled. For the first time since losing her, he felt back in control.

  “What’s it mean?” Gregory asked.

  “You read it?”

  “Yeah. I mean, clearly she’s trying to set a trap for you. Do you really need to know how your father died that badly? Maybe you should just let it go.”

  “Oh, it’s a trap all right, but not for me.” Cormac turned the deck over, intending to fan them out to find the card he wanted. But it turned out she was sitting right on top. The Queen of Swords. He tapped his finger on it. “She set the trap. I just have to spring it.”

  Gregory stared at him, nonplussed, and Cormac relished his confusion. “Can I watch?” he asked finally.

  “Yeah. I might need your help.” He went outside to make his next call, to Detective Nielson.

  “Mr. Bennett?” she answered.

  “Do you trust me, Detective?”

  A pause, then, “I can’t say that I do.”

  “I can give you Durant. But you have to promise to wait until I give the signal. I have some business with her first.”

  “You can give her to me now, or I’ll charge you with obstructing justice,” she said evenly.

  Yeah, he should have expected that. “She has something of mine.”

  “We can get it from her once we know where to serve the search warrant.”

  “It’s not. . .it’s not really a thing, it’s. . .it’s not really tangible. It’s weird, it’s crazy, I can’t explain it. But I just need a little time before you swoop in. Can you give that to me?”

  “If what you say about her is true, Isabelle Durant is a very dangerous woman. And you’re just going to, what—ask her nicely?”

  Not nicely. More nicely than he wanted, for sure. “We’ll see if that works.”

  “If you’re having one over on me, there’ll be consequences. I know that means something to you.”

  “Yes ma’am, it does. You know where Tea on the Range is, in the old part of Deadwood?”

  She groaned. “For the love of God please don’t tell me you’re arranging a standoff on the streets of Deadwood.”

  “Durant will be there out front.” He made a guess. Took a risk. “Ten minutes after midnight.” He had no doubt Nielson and her people would be there long before. He just had to hope that gave him enough time with Durant.

  “Well, what have I got to lose, right?”

  “You? Nothing. Thanks, Detective.” He hung up.

  Gregory was waiting just inside the door, leaning close enough to the glass that Cormac was sure he’d been eavesdropping. His gaze had narrowed and turned appraising. “Are you sure you’re the one setting the trap?”

  “I’m the one who knows where all the pieces are. Now, we just have to wait until midnight. I’ll be back around ten till.” He started walk away, when Gregory put up a hand to stop him. He held two cards. The Queen of Swords, and the Ace.

  “Take them. For luck.”

  More than luck, they might have been a lifeline. Magic was all about symbols and thought. Cormac might need a focus, and that card, the woman with the black hair and determined expression, weapon of choice in her hand, might do it.

  His familiar valley was dark, overcast, only the milky light of the moon bleeding through. He could sense trees, imagine wind rustling the leaves. But the image, the scene that was so familiar and so comforting to him, was indistinct. He was losing it. He called out; the sound should have echoed. But his voice fell flat, as if the space had become small. Dead.

  He was a better person with Amelia. His mind was a better place. This would work.

  The night was warm, dry and sharp, smelling of smoke. Maybe campfires somewhere, or maybe a wildfire was burning up in the hills. It felt dangerous. Or maybe he was projecting.

  A couple of old-fashioned streetlamps lit up the corners, that was it. The casinos further up the street were still jumping, but this part of town rolled up the sidewalks after dark. They had the block to themselves.

  Gregory spent the last hour before Durant’s arrival walking three circles around his shop and marking all the doors and windows with runes.

  “It’s me she’s after,” Cormac said. He was trying for reassuring but it came out sarcastic.

  “Can’t be too careful,” Gregory replied.

  He wasn’t wrong. The
pockets of Cormac’s jeans were filled with talismans and charms, so it wasn’t like he was one to talk. But they hadn’t done much to protect him the last time Durant confronted him.

  “I still don’t know who this is a trap for,” Gregory said, coming up alongside Cormac where he stood on the sidewalk outside the shop. The night had turned cold; the magician rubbed his hands together. “Do you trust this Queen of Swords?”

  Amelia could be ruthless. She gathered power to her. She had driven men mad, she had made them kill themselves. She had a hundred years of history he knew very little about. But they were partners. A team. She’d said so herself.

  He chuckled. “We’ll find out, I guess.”

  Shortly before midnight a figure emerged from darkness. Like a vampire, it seemed to move in the shadows, hiding until it came into the circle of a light, then it marched toward them, up the middle of the street. Isabelle Durant, looking elegant in silk slacks and a tailored suit jacket. Her hair was loose but still perfectly styled, her makeup expensive. She looked so out of place here. Cormac might have taken everything from her when he killed her Master, but she didn’t have to look like it.

  She held something cradled in her arms, covered with a woven, patterned scarf.

  A mad glaze in her eyes, she caught sight of Cormac and gave him a weirdly flirting smile, looking him up and down like he was on a shelf at a store. She believed she had the power here.

  “You came,” she said, haughty and condescending. “I wasn’t sure a man like you could be lured by such an emotional appeal.”

  That she could be so wrong and so right at the same time. A harder man would not have been swayed by emotion and would have walked away from Amelia. Cormac was going soft, and maybe he didn’t mind so much after all.

  When he didn’t answer, her smile turned brittle. “Well, aren’t you going to ask how your father died? Aren’t you going to ask how I know such a thing?”

  Cormac said, “My father died when a werewolf ripped his throat out. I watched it happen. I’m not here for that. I want what you’re carrying there.”

  Her expression crashed into hard, stony hate. She’d been tricked; that had to sting. But she still had what he wanted. Question was, what was she going to do about it.