Twilight Magic (Rune Witch Book 6)

by Jennifer Willis

  But there weren’t any more others, were there? Maksim squeezed his eyes shut but he couldn’t stop seeing his parents lying on the floor, unmoving. He’d seen death before, when the neighbor dog Maro got into a bag of rat poison thinking it was kibble. But no one knew about it until a few days after Maro became sluggish. Then he didn’t want any of the bread Maksim tried to feed him over the fence. Within days, Maro was dead. Internal bleeding, the adults said, from the poison. But Maksim’s parents hadn’t eaten poison. They’d been struck down by his uncle Emilian, and now Emilian was gone, too.

  Sometimes Maksim cried, as much from fatigue and the strangeness of the world he’d been thrust into as from real grief. Other times he just sat by himself and didn’t feel much of anything. They’d made him eat, and now the oatmeal was a cold, shifting weight in his stomach.

  He turned his face to watch the snow falling outside the window and wished Magnus was here at the Lodge, so they could sneak out into the woods together to play and have adventures in the trees, and maybe they’d never come back. But Magnus was back in the city at the neighbor lady’s house. Maksim sniffed and tried not to start crying again. He was so tired of crying.

  “Everything will be all right, Maksim.” Vesha settled onto the mattress behind him and wrapped her arms around him. She smoothed down his hair and rested a yellow-haired doll in a silver suit on the blanket. He hoped she didn’t expect him to play with it.

  “You don’t have to lie to me.” He shifted so he could see her face. Her eyes were brown, like liquid pools of the darkest chocolate, and her face was gentle. Her mouth curved into a sad smile, and he felt like a warm cloak had been pulled around them, shutting out the noisy confusion and sharp voices from downstairs.

  “Maksim, you said your parents called to me?”

  There was a stab in his gut at the mention of his parents, but he didn’t cry. Sitting so close to her, Maksim smelled the warm scents of dill and caraway, just like the breads his mother used to bake at home. Vesha even looked like the people from the neighborhood where he’d grown up. Before the tunnels. And she’d been a captive, too. He hoped there would be a time later when she could explain everything to him.

  Maksim nodded, but he didn’t understand her question. How could she not know? He’d heard his mother whisper her pleas to Vesha every night for protection and deliverance. Hadn’t Vesha heard her?

  Vesha’s gaze was steady and present as she traced the bridge of his nose with her finger. “I’m sorry. I do not remember that. I wish . . .” Her smile faltered, but then her warmth returned. “But I am here with you now, Maksim. I cannot undo what has been done. But all of us in this house will do right by you. You have my pledge.”

  Maksim clasped his hands together, tight. His heart pounded in his chest with the thoughts that arose. The goddess Vesha couldn’t bring his parents back. The god Thor and his family downstairs couldn’t change anything that his uncle or the other bad men had done, either. He glanced at the light-haired doll and thought he understood what it was for.

  “Your sister is coming.”

  “Yes, but we’ll protect you.” Vesha smiled again, but it looked false, too bright, even after he’d insisted that she didn’t need to lie to him.

  “Maybe you should just give me to them.” His mouth went dry with his words. He wanted to sound brave, even if he didn’t feel it. “Maybe I can go to them and this will all be over. If the magick is bad, I’ll give it away to them and no one else has to get hurt.”

  And if they kill me, too, I will be with my parents again.

  Vesha must have read the thoughts on his face. She didn’t try to mask her sharp intake of breath. She gripped him by the shoulders so hard that it almost hurt. The tears started rolling down his cheeks again, and he couldn’t make them stop. His eyes and his head ached from so much crying.

  “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.” His breath hitched as he tried to keep himself from sobbing. Snot ran down into his mouth and he wiped his face with the hem of his borrowed shirt, careful not to get any on the quilt.

  Vesha did not pull him close and crush him against her chest, the way his mother and grandmother did when he was upset. She didn’t bark orders at him to get control of himself, either, the way some of the men in the tunnel had before they threatened beatings. She grasped him firmly by the shoulders and held him steady with her brown-eyed gaze.

  “Let me tell you something, young one.” He heard the tremble in her voice, but he wasn’t sure if she was sad or angry. “I know what it is to be kept in the dark. I have spent long centuries underground, like your people in the tunnel. I have contained my magick, or maybe I was being contained. I don’t clearly recall the details, and maybe I never will.”

  “But you’re not in the dark anymore,” Maksim suggested. Something fierce burned in her eyes now, and it made him uneasy.

  “I am the dark, little Maksim.”

  He tried to squirm away, but she held him in place. “And the dark is nothing to be afraid of! You think the light is inherently good and right? My sister has gone mad in the light!”

  Maksim glanced again at the doll. He knew there would be more death soon, even inside this house. He wiped at his eyes. “Maybe you should take my magick, then. I don’t want it.”

  Vesha shook her head and almost laughed, but not in a way that made Maksim feel foolish. “Child, magick isn’t good or bad. Consider those with magick in this very house. Sally the Rune Witch and Freya the Norse goddess, who both seek constructive outlets to do real good and keep their loved ones safe.”

  “But your sister’s magick is bad.” Maksim saw his parents lying on the chamber floor again and shuddered.

  “The only bad magick is magick done by those with bad intentions.” She gripped his chin with one hand and peered into his face. Maksim didn’t dare look away. “You have this magick. Whether it’s a blessing or a curse is up to you. Some day soon you’ll have to choose what kind of wielder of magick you want to be.”

  Maksim heard Thor yelling downstairs and the sounds of hammers and clanging metal. They were preparing to go to war over him, and all he knew how to do was to make light.

  Now Vesha did pull him close and she soothed him with easy strokes over the quilt on his back. “But not this night, and not this coming day. There are forces at work here, Maksim, that care little about either of the two of us.”

  Sally thought she was going to be sick. She sat inside the cab of Thor’s pickup truck and drummed her fingers on the cold steering wheel to distract her from her churning stomach, but it was little use. Opal was trapped in limbo somewhere between the realms. Sally didn’t think Opal was being actively tortured, but that was small comfort. Her friend was alive but given the circumstances, maybe she would be better off dead.

  And it was pretty much at that point in the strategic discussions that Sally had not so discreetly exited the Lodge. Of course no one wanted to kill Opal, but nothing was off the table when it came to stopping Utra and Ragnarok.

  Ragnarok. She almost laughed at the word. She’d heard it thrown around so many times over the years she’d circulated among the members of the Lodge that it had lost its meaning. Almost. Now she felt the weight of it pressing down. Every one of them, from Thor to Freya to the Rune Witch herself had something—everything—on the line. Even Loki.

  Sally turned the keys in the ignition only far enough to engage the battery and turn on the radio. She’d already learned through frustrated trial and error that the heater didn’t work unless the engine was running, but there was no point in wasting fuel. She could go back inside if she got too cold out in the truck. But going back inside meant facing the battle planning and preparations. She surveyed the stations coming through the truck’s radio. Reception wasn’t great this far from the nearest town, and the twenty-four-hour programming featured little more than a few tired pop-music hits, an even more tired oldies station, and two replays of the same conservative talkshow.

  She turned off the ra
dio and jumped when the passenger door opened. She bristled at the cold air but offered the best smile she could muster. Zach slid into the seat next to her and closed the door.

  They sat in silence for two full minutes. Sally knew she should be the one to speak first, but she wouldn’t insult him with trivialities. He was her boyfriend—rather, she was supposed to be his girlfriend, and she’d done a poor job of it. She was always too busy training with Loki or avoiding Loki, or generally being angry and feeling sorry for herself. After all of those angsty months of fretting that she’d never get to have a normal life, she’d done little to nothing to invest herself in the biggest and most normal thing that had come her way.

  “Hey,” Zach said.

  She turned to him, her words pouring out of her like a mountain waterfall after a heavy rain. “Zach, I am so sorry and you have every right to be furious—”

  “They’re going to try really hard not to kill her.” He nodded toward the massive front doors of the Lodge. “And Freyr and Freya think they’ve put together some of the pieces of the puzzle. It’s all about Loki.”

  Sally rested her palms on the steering wheel. “Of course it is.”

  “But it’s not his fault. He’s been, I don’t know, leaking magick?” Zach shrugged and Sally gestured for him to continue. He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know, but she hadn’t really thought through the larger world consequences before. Loki’s magick was coming unmoored. As personally inconvenient as that was for Sally, it was even worse for the world at large.

  “So this secret society, Suleiman’s Spiral?”

  Sally rolled her eyes. Thor was right. It was a stupid name.

  “Freyr thinks they’ve convinced themselves that they’re doing a good thing by trying to contain his magick before it escapes and does real damage.” Zach shrugged again and turned to look out the window. “That’s what he gathered anyway. And they tracked Loki here.”

  Sally turned on the radio again, listened to a sentence and a half from the talkshow host about the moral perils of sanctuary cities, and snapped it off. She didn’t have to ask how Suleiman’s Spiral had found Loki in the Pacific Northwest. If that secret society or whatever they were styling themselves to be really had the ability to track Loki’s magick, then her own training, successes, and even misfires would have drawn them out this way, too. And it just proved what Loki had been trying to tell her and what she’d been too obstinate to accept—that Loki was the anchor of magick, and maybe not just in Midgard.

  “And they want Maksim, and those like him, his family, because they have an affinity for that same magick.” Sally ran her hands over her face. She just wanted this long night to be over.

  “It wasn’t Utra’s idea. The people in Suleiman’s Spiral were using her, but now I guess she’s using them.”

  “That’s usually how it works.” Sally turned on the fan again, but without the engine running it just blew more cold air. She pulled the key out of the ignition to save the battery and shoved her hands into her pockets. “But none of this tells us how to prevent or fend off what’s coming next.”

  “Yeah. Ragnarok.”

  Sally turned to face him and rested her hand on his elbow. When he kept staring out the window, she grabbed a fistful of his coat’s fabric and yanked hard.

  “What?”

  She met his gaze and swallowed hard. Her stomach sank when she realized it had been his birthday last week. She’d missed it. She’d missed everything.

  “Get out of here.” She tossed the car keys at him, but they fell to the floor of the passenger-side footwell. “Just take the truck and drive away. Far away.”

  “Why?” His brows knitted together above his green eyes, and Sally felt an uncomfortable squeeze in her chest.

  “You don’t have to be here for this!” she screeched. “You shouldn’t have to be here for any of this. It’s not just Loki. Utra’s coming for me, too. For your own protection, you need to go.”

  Zach smiled, and it stopped her cold.

  “Don’t you think I know that, Sally?”

  She gritted her teeth and punched him in the arm. It was the only thing she could think to do. “I don’t want any heroics! You can’t save me. You can’t stop this from happening.” She took a breath. She didn’t want to be cruel, but she would be if it meant saving his life. “I don’t even love you anyway.”

  Zach laughed. “I know that, too.”

  “What? Then, why?” She stammered and shoved her hands back into her pockets. “But I thought . . .”

  “I really like you, Sally. That’s been true from the start. But in getting dragged down to Helheim, and everything that followed . . .” He nodded toward the Lodge again. “This is bigger than me. It’s bigger than you, even. What’s happening here is important, and I just want to play my part, no matter how small.”

  “Okay, but you know there’s no guarantee . . .” She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say next. There was no guarantee the Lodge would smile upon him and grant him a share of the immortality-granting apples that might soon be coming into harvest? Or the starker reality that there was no guarantee there would even be any trees left in a few hours, much less anyone left standing to enjoy their fruit?

  Zach reached down to pick up the keys. He handed them back to Sally.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m good. I think I’ll stick around.”

  Sally blew out a long breath between her teeth. When the new histories were written down, whoever was left to do the recording would have to make note of a new character—the Rune Witch’s stubbornly idealistic pseudo-boyfriend.

  Loki poured out the blend of salts and herbs in a broad, slow circle around the base of the Yggdrasil. The mixture of nasal wash and ingredients from Maggie’s kitchen melted quickly through the snow to the ground beneath. The effect was a deep ring of protection carved into the snow, and he stepped inside just before he came around again to the start and closed the circle. He tossed the empty plastic container to the ground and pulled his new utility knife from his back pocket.

  A quick glance to the warm glow on the horizon reminded him that he didn’t have much time. He wasn’t sure why he assumed the attack would come at dawn; maybe he’d been watching too many old cowboy movies. But there was a glimmer of golden pink beneath the lightening blue on the horizon, and Loki didn’t waste a second before he sliced into his left wrist.

  Dark blood welled up quickly and poured out through the clean cut. It stung worse than a hive of autumn wasps, but he bit back his curses and pressed his open wrist against the bark of the living Yggdrasil. He dragged his blood across the Tree’s trunk and ignored the pain when the bark snagged his skin.

  Behind him, Sally shrieked his name and then cursed like a seasoned sailor when she smacked against the barrier of his protective circle.

  “Loki!” she shouted at him from outside the ring. “What are you doing?! Are you trying to freaking kill yourself?”

  He held his wrist steady against the trunk of the World Tree and turned to face her. He worked at keeping his expression impassive as his wrist throbbed and his blood poured out. “Not as such, no.”

  There wasn’t any pattern to his offering to the Yggdrasil, and his blood glowed in a messy white-gold scrawl on the bark surface. The few drops that fell to the ground sizzled in the snow.

  Sally planted her fists on her hips but the desperation remained clear in her eyes. “Then would you mind enlightening me on what the blazes you’re doing? Everyone else is inside gearing up and placing wards and I don’t know what all else, and you’re out here bleeding on the Tree.”

  Loki tried not to laugh. The pain had subsided to a dull thud in his left arm, but he could still feel his own life force leaving him. “I am doing my part to prepare, not merely for the coming battle but for your future as well.”

  “By bleeding on everything?” Sally kicked at the snow, and it bounced off of his invisible barrier. He hadn’t meant to keep her out, specifically, but it w
as likely a happy accident that she was prevented from crossing. The look on her face telegraphed that she’d have no problem interrupting his work, thinking that she would be saving him.

  “They are coming, Sally. I cannot fend them off when they set their sights on me.” He felt an answering pulse of energy from the Yggdrasil as it began to actively draw the blood from his open vein. “They’ll have a harder time stealing from the Tree than they would from me.”

  Sally froze, and her eyes grew wide. “You’re sacrificing yourself?” Her voice was small and frightened and so unlike the fierce witch he’d come to know. She made a move to enter the circle again, slapping her hands on the invisible barrier. “You’re giving up before it’s even started!”

  “Because the battle is already lost!” Loki hissed.

  Sally reeled back, and he felt a momentary pang of guilt for losing his cool. It soon passed. He looked again to the sky and weighed the blade in his right hand. A coldness started to settle over him, and he didn’t know if it was from the blood loss or the coming dawn and the battle it would bring. “The Tree will be your first anchor, as it was for me.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it quickly. Smart girl. He watched the thoughts churn behind her eyes and waited for her to come to the wisdom he’d been leading her toward.

  “That’s why the Tree is here, in the New World.” Her astonished smile brightened her face. “Because it’s where you are.”

  The blood flow slowed as the cut on his wrist began to heal. It was a good thing he’d not drunk any of the ridiculous apple-leaf tea Freya had tried to force on him. He needed to infuse the Yggdrasil with as much of his magick as it could hold. He pulled his left hand away from the bark and sliced into his flesh again with the utility knife. It felt like ice cutting under his skin. He pressed his wrist against the Tree again and watched his blood, sparkling with gold, dribble down the bark.