The Witchkin Murders

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  Kayla barely heard anything more than Ray was still alive. Alive.

  “If we hadn’t been there, he would have been killed,” Raven said. “He has no idea how to use his magic.” She shook her head. “Any witch with even the least bit of training would know how to anchor themselves and deal with the energy from an attack like that.”

  “He really is alive?” Kayla asked, her voice cracking

  “If nothing ate him while we’ve been up here,” Zach said with gallows humor, and then seemed to realize just how distraught Kayla was. He put an arm around her. “He’s really going to be okay.”

  “I want to see him.” Kayla turned blindly and started in the direction of where he’d been blasted from The Mound.

  Zach caught her arm and pulled her back. “You can. But you’ll have to wait. You can’t be seen. There will be too many questions that you’re not going to want to answer. You need to hide until we’re done, and then we can take you out of here.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Have a choice,” Zach finished for her. “It’s what Ray would want. He isn’t going to want to wake up to find you’re being held in a containment facility while the bureaucrats figure out what part you played in all this and if you’re a threat to the city.”

  Her lip curled. “I’d like to see them try.”

  “I’ll remind you that you’re in pretty shitty shape right now, and you’d have to take on cops and technomages. You’d certainly end up killing someone, and I know you don’t want that. Anyhow, you’ll see Ray faster if you do as I say.”

  Kayla hated that he was right. She didn’t want to wait, but she didn’t have much choice. The last thing she wanted to do was start another fight, especially with the good guys.

  “Okay,” she said not particularly coherently. Her brain vibrated like she’d been smashed between two giant cymbals. It was all she could do to keep standing up. “He’s really okay?”

  “He’ll need more healing,” Raven said “but he’s fine. Now you must go. They’ve got technomages clearing the road up The Mound.”

  Kayla became aware of sirens and flashing lights.

  “We’ll be swarmed in a few minutes.” Raven frowned. “You’d be better transforming. That would help your natural healing process, and you’d be more comfortable while you wait for us.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” Kayla said. Her gaze drifted to her Aunt Margaret. “I should talk to her.”

  “Later,” Zach said. “We’ll be putting her in an ambulance. You can see her when you see Ray.”

  “I don’t . . .” Leaving seemed wrong. Shouldn’t she stay and make sure Nietzche-cheese and his buddy didn’t come back? Make sure this Obsidian Butterfly didn’t suddenly bring on the apocalypse?

  “We’ll handle things,” Zach said, exchanging a quick nod with Raven when Kayla asked. “We’ve got it covered. We cut a path you can follow and we’re not far from the main road. There’s a little grocery store in an old gas station about a quarter mile up. You can wait for us there.”

  Though she could hear the sirens coming closer, Kayla still resisted. “What about those dog creatures?”

  “They ran off when the second of those gods went down. We’ll hunt them down later, if they didn’t go back where they came from. Are you done now? Will you please leave?”

  Kayla reluctantly nodded.

  Despite trying several times, she couldn’t transform without the help of water. She’d embraced her other self in her fight, but exhaustion played havoc with her concentration. She couldn’t sort out how to shift. The water spell in her bracelet had gone wonky, probably because of the fight or her initial bonding with the sword, Raven said. Since there was no time to fix it or create a new one, Kayla opted to climb down The Mound.

  But leaving had its own challenges. For one, she had to take the sword. Picking it up sent her brain on another roller-coaster ride. It took a couple minutes until she found equilibrium and could get her legs to start working again. At the edge of The Mound, she was confronted with the bodies of the people the goliaths had sacrificed. They’d begun to smell already, and some had begun to sink into the dirt as if The Mound was claiming them.

  It took all the control she could scrape together to not heave up her stomach contents. The sword flashed incandescent white in her hand as anger and hate at the murders, at the wanton carelessness for life, surged inside her. The red lettering unwound and slithered around the blade in undulating strands.

  She stopped just within the ring of bodies. Once again driven by instinct, she kneeled down and laid the sword across her thighs. She lowered her hands to the ground and dug her fingers in deeply, curling them around fistfuls of soil.

  She pushed downward and out, feeling the grit of minerals on her skin, the damp of the dirt, the many bones of the dead buried beneath, and something else. A pulsing of something that wasn’t life, but gave the impression of sanctuary. Haven. A somber welcoming and a protectiveness, as though the souls buried here mourned the newly dead and offered them comfort.

  Kayla touched that ethereal coalescence, felt it recognize and welcome her. Their Guardian. She pushed out of herself. As had happened with the whirlpool, power flowed out of her, digging roots into The Mound. Those roots rose out of the ground, wrapping each of the dead, pulling them under. Not wanting them to be forgotten, any of them—those who’d died before or now—Kayla invited flowers to grow across the entire Mound. Lilies, roses, lupin, poppies, dahlias—every flower she could remember seeing, some that grew from her imagination.

  In no time at all, the top of The Mound became a lush garden of everblooming flowers. Sweet and spicy floral scent pushed away the stench of rot, mold, and death. Beauty in the heart of horror.

  With nothing else she could do, Kayla slowly drew back into herself. She picked up the sword again and stood.

  “I’ll go now.”

  But getting down was a lot easier said than done. The steep hillside was close to vertical and slippery as hell. In the end, she sat on her butt and half slid, half scooted down.

  By the time she hit the bottom, Kayla was pretty sure her ass was purple with bruises. She’d torn three fingernails completely off and dislocated two fingers when she’d tried to catch herself on a particularly out-of-control part of the descent. Her body ached and throbbed.

  She lay there, too exhausted and sore to even care that she’d landed nearly a foot deep in stinky mold and fungus. She could rest here. Nobody would find her.

  The idea was far more inviting than it should have been. But after a few minutes, the stench and the gooey damp got to her. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. Ew.

  Rolling onto her stomach, she awkwardly pushed herself upright and picked up the sword. It remained pristine and clean. Stupid magic sword.

  She took the trail Zach had mentioned and limped along it, using the sword as a cane.

  She passed through a copse of white-skinned trees. Amorphous dark figures drifted near, collecting around her. They towered, thin gnarled fingers scraping the ground

  Kayla stopped as they surrounded her. She didn’t feel any malice from them. Instead, they seemed curious and maybe a little apprehensive.

  “Hi,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  Funny how that question had become more weighty since she’d found out she was a god, a guardian for these creatures and everybody else in Portland. Now the concept of help meant a lot more. Required a lot more.

  “Is over?”

  A ruffling in the darkness of one of the figures told her who spoke.

  “The fighting? Yes.”

  “All leave? Peace again?”

  “Soon. They are cleaning up the scene, and then everybody will go.”

  “The scar?”

  Kayla frowned. “Scar?”

  Fingers l
ike spidery moon-shadows cast by tree branches pointed at the trail burned in the rot where she stood. They had stayed off it, Kayla realized.

  “I can fix it.” Instinctively she touched a place within herself, a series of dark strands connecting her to the trail. A visible tremor ran through the darkness of each of the figures in response.

  “Now?” It was more plea than question.

  It would make getting out a lot more difficult, but the touch to the strands had told her they suffered. She couldn’t refuse.

  She just hoped she could actually do it.

  Hunkering down, she laid the sword aside and dug her hands into the soil as she had up on The Mound. This time, instead of an outward push of power, she stroked inner fingers over the darkened strands connecting her to the place, calling them to heal.

  Violent tremors rolled through the figures, and they made a moaning sound. It didn’t sound particularly happy.

  She stopped. She could grow flowers like she had on The Mound, but doubted that’s what these guys were looking for.

  Kayla leaned over and scooped up a handful of moldy sludge-rot from beside the path. Maybe she could clone it somehow. Concentrating, she searched inside her again. It took her a while, but she finally found a microscopic thread connecting her to the handful in her hand. Actually, it was more like several dozen, so thin and fine that they almost weren’t there.

  She uprooted them from their anchorage and twined them around the dark threads, then pushed at them. The threads merged and hummed, then the darkness developed a tangible shine, if that was a thing. Kayla couldn’t see it, but she could feel it.

  Letting go, she opened her eyes. The trail was covered in a layer of plant sludge. It breathed and bubbled, growing as she watched. Yuck.

  She dropped the slimy handful of gunk and wiped her hand on her pants as she stood.

  The dark creatures swayed and echoed the hum from the merged threads.

  Well, then. A good deed done. Kayla gave a lethargic smile through the dragging net of exhaustion that flung itself over her. Two good deeds, if she counted the flowers. Maybe being a god wasn’t so bad.

  The creatures didn’t seem to be interested in talking anymore, so she slipped past them.

  The slog back to the road was harder than she’d expected. The mold and rot covered the ground, giving it a deceptively even look. She’d gone maybe a half mile when she stepped into a hole and fell into a shallow pond. She went under. Slime coated her skin and she swallowed water that tasted like sewage.

  She didn’t even think about transformation. It came over her in seconds, and she welcomed the armor of her scales. Thrashing, she clawed her way up the gooey clay-mud bank. The sword had vanished with her clothing. Hopefully it would come back when she transformed again. She was too tired to worry about it, and continued on her way, her other self unfazed by the uneven terrain or the heaped rot and mold.

  At the road, she simply kept going. No point waiting for Zach and Raven. They didn’t need her, and she didn’t need a ride home.

  She found a creek and followed it back to the river, swimming up to Poet’s Beach. The water refreshed her, and when she climbed out around eight a.m., she wasn’t quite as tired. She ignored the pedestrians and morning boat traffic, and started toward home. She didn’t have time to bother with avoiding notice. Besides, her race to the river the day before guaranteed her secret was out.

  That didn’t stop her from trying to transform back to human. She was three quarters up SW Harrison when she dried enough to summon the shift. She staggered against a bas-relief of trees carved in a brick wall, catching herself before she whacked her head. She wasn’t sure whether she was happy or not to see that the sword had returned with the rest of her belongings.

  From there, she caught a Pink Lady cab home. On the way, she couldn’t stop thinking of Ray, of the battle with the gods, of this Obsidian Butterfly person, and the question of what she’d do next.

  Scavenge? It made her a living and she enjoyed it. But after working a case again—no matter how informally—she realized how much she’d missed it, and how much the witchkin needed her. Not that she could go back to the force. They weren’t going to have her, and she wasn’t going to be able to follow their “humans are the only people” policy.

  She could be a private investigator. That would let her help people, and she wouldn’t have to charge clients much if they didn’t have much. She could keep scavenging on the side. It wasn’t like she needed a lot of money. In her other form, she could live entirely off fish if necessary. That just left buying coffee and a few other necessities that she couldn’t scavenge, and those weren’t many.

  Definitely a possibility worth thinking about.

  She wondered how Ray’s captain would treat him now, knowing he was a witch. Would he lose his job? But then again, Ray’d helped stop a major magical threat, and Zach would probably get the technomages to rally behind him. He might catch a lot of flak from his fellow cops, but he’d keep his job, though whether it would be worth keeping with all the shit that was going to be running downhill to bury him was another question entirely.

  Once at home, she put the sword in the umbrella stand and went straight to the kitchen to put on coffee. She grabbed some wheat bread and spread it liberally with butter and honey and wolfed it down. It barely put a dent in her hunger. She made another, considering whether or not she should try to shower.

  She was filthy, and her hair felt both greasy and crunchy. The idea of a cold shower made her shudder, which is what she’d get using the camp-shower setup in the backyard. Did she want to risk transforming in her bathroom?

  Screw it.

  Resolutely she went upstairs. In the bathroom she started the hot water and then stripped. She kicked her clothes aside. Steam already filmed the mirror when she stepped under the spray.

  Deciding she was not only going to get her hair cleaned and conditioned before she transformed, but she was also going to enjoy the lovely hot spray, Kayla squirted shampoo into her hand and went about lathering her hair.

  She felt the beast inside her rising and pushing at her thin control. You just swam in the river. Give me a freaking break, she muttered to it as she rinsed her hair. Deciding it needed another scrub, she lathered up again, then took a scrubby and washed the rest of herself. The urge to transform had steadied, and though it pushed, she continued to hold it off.

  With building confidence, Kayla rinsed her hair and applied conditioner. Since the beast seemed inclined to let her stay in human form for once, she decided she’d shave her legs. Not that anybody would see them. Not that she’d be wrapping them around anybody any time soon—

  Her mind flashed to Ray when she’d lifted the covers to check on him after her near-death experience. The memory of his sculpted body, the rippling planes of muscle, the deliciously lickable tawny skin.

  Her entire body went hot, and aches kicked up in places that had no business aching when it came to him. She drew a breath and turned the shower to cold, letting the chilly water cool her imagination and her body’s fevered response.

  After her shower, she dried off and blew out her hair. No sense playing with fire.

  She considered her wardrobe, which mostly consisted of jeans. She didn’t have a lot of cause to dress up these days, but it would be nice to not look ratty when she went to see Ray.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn a dress. Or heels. Or makeup. Or done anything more than put her hair in a ponytail or braid. She wasn’t the girly-girl type, but when had she turned into a frump?

  When she had decided she’d rather be invisible. Only now she wanted to be noticed. Or at least, not cause people to wince when they saw her. They. Who was she fooling? Ray. She wanted Ray to notice her. Wanted him to find her attractive.

  God but she was an idiot.

 
In the end, she pulled on a pair of jeans, a pale-blue blouse, and a pair of strappy sandals, and then pulled her hair up into a messy bun. She called a cab to take her to the hospital, drinking coffee while she waited.

  As they wound up the hill between the children’s hospital and the big lower parking garage on their way to the main hospital campus, Kayla smiled at the reaching vines of the watchful roses that had grown up over the parking garage and across the skybridge. The flowers were nosey and protective of patients and staff. They made for great security.

  The cab dropped her at the main entrance of OHSU. Just inside, Kayla stopped at the reception desk. It was surrounded by bulletproof glass layered with wards. All the entrances into the hospital required staff to open the doors for you. During the Witchwar, there’d been a lot of attacks here, trying to get at wounded technomages when they were down.

  She stood in line behind a gray-haired man with a quality beer gut and a young couple holding hands. Ten minutes later it was her turn.

  “Can I help you?” The receptionist eyed Kayla with cool assessment, the kind snipers use before choosing a target.

  “I’m here to see Ray Garza. He was brought in early this morning.”

  “Name?”

  “Kayla Reese.”

  The receptionist’s fingers flew over the keyboard, and then she looked back up at Kayla.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

  Worry clutched Kayla’s stomach. “Why? Is something wrong? Is Ray okay?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” the woman repeated, her eyes narrowing slightly. “I must ask you to leave now.”

  Kayla stepped forward, putting her hands on the glass. “What’s going on? Why can’t I see him?”

  “Ma’am. I’ll ask again. Please exit the premises or I’ll have to ask security to escort you.”