Black Dawn

by L. J. Smith

  “Shut him up,” Hunter said, almost bellowing it.

  And this time he seemed to be saying it to a specific person. Maggie followed his gaze and saw Sylvia near them.

  “Some beasts have to be muzzled before they can be hunted,” Hunter said, looking straight at Sylvia. “So take care of it now. The hunt is about to begin.”

  Sylvia stepped closer to Delos, a little uneasily. He stared back at her levelly, as if daring her to wonder what he’d do when she got nearer.

  “Guards!” Hunter Redfern said, sounding tired.

  The guards moved in. They had two different kinds of lances, a distant part of Maggie’s mind noted. One tipped with metal—that must be for humans and witches—and one tipped with wood.

  For vampires, she thought. If Delos wasn’t careful, he might get skewered in the heart before the hunt even began.

  “Now shut his lying mouth,” Hunter Redfern said.

  Sylvia took her basket off her arm.

  “In the new order after the millennium, we’ll have hunts like this every day,” Hunter Redfern was saying, trying to undo the damage that his great-grandson had done. “Each of us will have a city of humans to hunt. A city of throats to cut, a city of flesh to eat.”

  Sylvia was fishing in her basket, not afraid to stand close to the vampire prince since he was surrounded by a forest of lances.

  “Sylvia,” Aradia said quietly.

  Sylvia looked up, startled. Maggie saw her eyes, the color of violets.

  “Each of us will be a prince—” Hunter Redfern was saying.

  “Sylvia Weald,” Aradia said.

  Sylvia looked down. “Don’t talk to me,” she whispered. “You’re not—I’m not one of you anymore.”

  “All you have to do is follow me,” Hunter was saying.

  “Sylvia Weald,” Aradia said. “You were born a witch. Your name means the greenwood, the sacred grove. You are a daughter of Hellewise, and you will be until you die. You are my sister.”

  “I am not,” Sylvia spat.

  “You can’t help it. Nothing can break the bond. In your deepest heart you know that. And as Maiden of all the witches, and in the name of Hellewise Hearth-Woman, I adjure you: remove your spell from this boy.”

  It was the strangest thing—but it didn’t seem to be Aradia who said it. Oh, it was Aradia’s voice, all right, Maggie thought, and it was Aradia standing there. But at that moment she seemed to be fused with another form—a sort of shining aura all around her. Someone who was part of her, but more than she was.

  It looked, Maggie thought dizzily, like a tall woman with hair as pale as Sylvia’s and large brown eyes.

  Sylvia gasped out, “Hellewise . . .” Her own violet eyes were huge and frightened.

  Then she just stood frozen.

  Hunter was ranting on. Maggie could hear him vaguely, but all she could see was Sylvia, the shudders that ran through Sylvia’s frame, the heaving of Sylvia’s chest.

  Appeal to their true hearts, Maggie thought.

  “Sylvia,” she said. “I believe in you.”

  The violet eyes turned toward her, amazed.

  “I don’t care what you did to Miles,” Maggie said. “I know you’re confused—I know you were unhappy. But now you have a chance to make up for it. You can do something—something important here. Something that will change the world.”

  “Rivers of blood,” Hunter was raving. “And no one to stop us. We won’t stop with enslaving the humans. The witches are our enemies now. Think of the power you’ll feel when you drink their lives!”

  “If you let this Wild Power be killed, you’ll be responsible for the darkness coming,” Maggie said. “Only you. Because you’re the only one who can stop it right now.”

  Sylvia put a trembling hand to her cheek. She looked as if she were about to faint

  “Do you really want to go down in history as the one who destroyed the world?” Maggie said.

  “As Maiden of all the witches . . . ,” Aradia said.

  And another, deeper voice seemed to follow on hers like an echo, As Mother of all the witches . . .

  “And in the name of Hellewise . . .”

  And in the name of my children . . .

  “As you are a Hearth-Woman . . .”

  As you are my own daughter, a true Hearth-Woman . . .

  “I adjure you!” Aradia said, and her voice rang out in double tones so clearly that it actually stopped Hunter in mid-tirade.

  It stopped everyone. For an instant there was absolutely no sound in the courtyard. Everyone was looking around to see where the voice had come from.

  Sylvia was simply staring at Aradia.

  Then the violet eyes shut and her entire body shivered in a sigh.

  When she spoke it was on the barest whisper of breath, and only someone as close as Maggie was could have heard her.

  “As a daughter of Hellewise, I obey.”

  And then she was reaching for Delos’s arm, and Delos was reaching toward her. And Hunter was shouting wildly, but Maggie couldn’t make out the words. She couldn’t make out Sylvia’s words, either, but she saw her lips move, and she saw the slender pale fingers clasp Delos’s wrist.

  And saw the lance coming just before it pierced Sylvia’s heart.

  Then, as if everything came into focus at once, she realized what Hunter had been shouting in a voice so distorted it was barely recognizable.

  “Kill her! Kill her!”

  And that’s just what they’d done, Maggie thought, her mind oddly clear, even as a wave of horror and pity seemed to engulf her body. The lance went right through Sylvia. It knocked her backward, away from Delos, and blood spurted all over the front of Sylvia’s beautiful green dress.

  And Sylvia looked toward Hunter Redfern and smiled. This time Maggie could read the words on her lips.

  “Too late.”

  Delos turned. There was red blood on his white shirt—his own, Maggie realized. He’d tried to get in the way of the guard’s killing Sylvia. But now he had eyes only for his great-grandfather.

  “It stops here!”

  She had seen the blue fire before, but never like this. The blast was like a nuclear explosion. It struck where Hunter Redfern was standing with his most loyal nobles around him, and then it shot up into the sky in a pillar of electric blue. And it went on and on, from sky to earth and back again, as if the sun were falling in front of the castle.

  CHAPTER 20

  Maggie held Sylvia gently. Or at least, she knelt by her and tried to hold her as best she could without disturbing the piece of broken spear that was still lodged in Sylvia’s body.

  It was all over. Where Hunter Redfern and his most trusted nobles had been, there was a large scorched crater in the earth. Maggie vaguely recalled seeing a few people running for the hills—Gavin the slave trader had been among them. But Hunter hadn’t been one of them. He had been at ground zero when the blue fire struck, and now there wasn’t even a wisp of red hair to show that he had existed.

  Except for Delos, there weren’t any Night People left in the courtyard at all.

  The slaves were just barely peeking out again from their huts.

  “It’s all right,” Jeanne was yelling. “Yeah, you heard me—it’s all right! Delos isn’t dangerous. Not to us, anyway. Come on, you, get out of there—what are you doing hiding behind that pig?”

  “She’s good at this,” a grim voice murmured.

  Maggie looked up and saw a tall, gaunt figure, with a very small girl clasped to her side.

  “Laundress!” she said. “Oh, and P.J.—I’m so glad you’re all right. But, Laundress, please . . .”

  The healing woman knelt. But even as she did, a look passed between her and Sylvia. Sylvia’s face was a strange, chalky color, with shadows that looked like bruises under her eyes. There was a little blood at the corner of her mouth.

  “It’s no good,” she said thickly.

  “She’s right,” Laundress said bluntly. “There’s nothing you can do t
o help this one, Deliverer, and nothing I can do, either.”

  “I’m not anybody’s Deliverer,” Maggie said. Tears prickled behind her eyes.

  “You could have fooled me,” Laundress said, and got up again. “I see you sitting here, and I see all the slaves over there, free. You came and it happened—the prophecies were fulfilled. If you didn’t do it, it’s a strange coincidence.”

  The look in her dark eyes, although as unsentimental as ever, made Maggie’s cheeks burn suddenly. She looked back down at Sylvia.

  “But she’s the one who saved us,” she said, hardly aware that she was speaking out loud. “She deserves some kind of dignity. . . .”

  “She’s not the only one who saved us,” a voice said quietly, and Maggie looked up gratefully at Delos.

  “No, you did, too.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, and knelt where Laundress had. One of his hands touched Maggie’s shoulder lightly, but the other one went to Sylvia’s.

  “There’s only one thing I can do to help you,” he said. “Do you want it?”

  “To become a vampire?” Sylvia’s head moved slightly in a negative. “No. And since there’s wood next to my heart right now, I don’t think it would work anyway.”

  Maggie gulped and looked at the spear, which had cracked in the confusion when the guards ran. “We could take it out—”

  “I wouldn’t live through it. Give up for once, will you?” Sylvia’s head moved slightly again in disgust. Maggie had to admire her; even dying, she still had the strength to be nasty. Witches were tough.

  “Listen,” Sylvia said, staring at her. “There’s something I want to tell you.” She drew a painful breath. “About your brother.”

  Maggie swallowed, braced to hear the terrible details. “Yes.”

  “It really bugged me, you know? I would put on my nicest clothes, do my hair, we would go out . . . and then he’d talk about you.”

  Maggie blinked, utterly nonplussed. This wasn’t at all what she had expected. “He would?”

  “About his sister. How brave she was. How smart she was. How stubborn she was.”

  Maggie kept blinking. She’d heard Miles accuse her of lots of things, but never of being smart. She felt her eyelids prickle again and her throat swell painfully.

  “He couldn’t stand to hear a bad word about you,” Sylvia was saying. Her purple-shadowed eyes narrowed suddenly, the color of bittersweet nightshade. “And I hated you for that. But him . . . I liked him.”

  Her voice was getting much weaker. Aradia knelt on her other side and touched the shimmering silvery hair.

  “You don’t have long,” she said quietly, as if giving a warning.

  Sylvia’s eyes blinked once, as if to say she understood. Then she turned her eyes on Maggie.

  “I told Delos I killed him,” she whispered. “But . . . I lied.”

  Maggie felt her eyes fly open. Then all at once her heart was beating so hard that it shook her entire body.

  “You didn’t kill him? He’s alive?”

  “I wanted to punish him . . . but I wanted him near me, too. . . .”

  A wave of dizziness broke over Maggie. She bent over Sylvia, trying not to clutch at the slender shoulders. All she could see was Sylvia’s pale face.

  “Please tell me what you did,” she whispered with passionate intensity. “Please tell me.”

  “I had him . . . changed.” The musical voice was only a distant murmur now. “Made him a shapeshifter . . . and added a spell. So he wouldn’t be human again until I wanted . . .”

  “What kind of spell?” Aradia prompted quietly.

  Sylvia made a sound like the most faraway of sighs. “Not anything that you need to deal with, Maiden. . . . Just take the leather band off his leg. He’ll always be a shapeshifter . . . but he won’t be lost to you. . . .”

  Suddenly her voice swelled up a little stronger, and Maggie realized that the bruised eyes were looking at her with something like Sylvia’s old malice.

  “You’re so smart . . . I’m sure you can figure out which animal . . .”

  After that a strange sound came out of her throat, one that Maggie had never heard before. Somehow she knew without being told that it meant Sylvia was dying—right then.

  The body in the green dress arched up once and went still. Sylvia’s head fell back. Her eyes, the color of tear-drenched violets, were open, staring up at the sky, but they seemed oddly flat.

  Aradia put a slender dark hand on the pale forehead.

  “Goddess of Life, receive this daughter of Hellewise,” she said in her soft, ageless voice. “Guide her to the other world.” She added, in a whisper, “She takes with her the blessing of all the witches.”

  Maggie looked up almost fearfully to see if the shining figure who had surrounded Aradia like an aura would come back. But all she saw was Aradia’s beautiful face, with its smooth skin the color of coffee with cream and its compassionate blind gaze.

  Then Aradia gently moved her hand down to shut Sylvia’s eyes.

  Maggie clenched her teeth, but it was no use. She gasped once, and then somehow she was in the middle of sobbing violently, unable to stop it. But Delos’s arms were around her, and she buried her face in his neck, and that helped. When she got control of herself a few minutes later, she realized that in his arms she felt almost what she had in her dream, that inexpressible sense of peace and security. Of belonging, utterly.

  As long as her soulmate was alive, and they were together, she would be all right.

  Then she noticed that P.J. was pressed up against her, too, and she let go of Delos to put one arm around the small shaking body.

  “You okay, kiddo?” she whispered.

  P.J. sniffed. “Yeah. I am now. It’s been pretty scary, but I’m glad it’s over.”

  “And you know,” Jeanne said, looking down at Sylvia with her hands on her hips, “that’s how I want to go. Taking my own way out . . . and totally pissing everybody off at the end.”

  Maggie glanced up, startled, and choked. Then she gurgled. Then she shook her head, and knew that her crying spell was over. “I don’t even know why I’m like this about her. She wasn’t a nice person. I wanted to kill her myself.”

  “She was a person,” Delos said.

  Which, Maggie decided, was about the best summing-up anybody could provide.

  She realized that Jeanne and Laundress and Delos were looking at her intently, and that Aradia’s face was turned her way.

  “Well?” Jeanne said. “Do you know? Which animal your brother is?”

  “Oh,” Maggie said. “I think so.”

  She looked at Delos. “Do you happen to know what the name Gavin means? For a shapeshifter? Does it mean falcon?”

  His black-lashed golden eyes met hers. “Hawk or falcon. Yes.”

  Warm pleasure filled Maggie.

  “Then I know,” she said simply. She stood up, and Delos came with her as if he belonged by her. “How can we find the falcon she had with her that first day we met? When you were out with the hunting party?”

  “It should be in the mews,” Delos said.

  A fascinated crowd gathered behind them as they went. Maggie recognized Old Mender, smiling and cackling, and Soaker, not looking frightened anymore, and Chamber-pot Emptier . . .

  “We really need to get you guys some new names,” she muttered. “Can you just pick one or something?”

  The big girl with the moon face and the gentle eyes smiled at her shyly. “I heard of a noble named Hortense once. . . .”

  “That’s good,” Maggie said, after just the slightest pause. “Yeah, that’s great. I mean, comparatively.”

  They reached the mews, which was a dark little room near the stable, with perches all over the walls. The falcons were upset and distracted, and the air was full of flapping wings. They all looked alike to Maggie.

  “It would be a new bird,” Delos said. “I think maybe that one. Is the falconer here?”

  While everyone milled ar
ound looking for him, Jeanne edged close to Maggie.

  “What I want to know is how you know. How did you even know Gavin was a shapeshifter at all?”

  “I didn’t—but it was sort of logical. After all, Bern was one. They both seemed to have the same kind of senses. And Aradia said that Sylvia took care of Miles down at her apartment, and Bern and Gavin were both there. So it seemed natural that maybe she made one of them pass the curse along to Miles.”

  “But why did you figure Gavin was a falcon?”

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said slowly, “I just—well, he looked a little bit like one. Sort of thin and golden. But it was more things that happened—he got away from Delos and over to the hunting party too fast to have gone by ground. I didn’t really think about it much then, but it must have stuck at the back of my mind.”

  Jeanne gave her a narrow sideways glance. “Still doesn’t sound like enough.”

  “No—but mostly, it was that Miles just had to be a falcon. It had to be something small—Sylvia would hardly be carrying a pig or a tiger or a bear around with her up the mountain. And I saw her with a falcon that first day. It was something she could keep near her, something that she could control. Something that was an—accessory. It just all made sense.”

  Jeanne made a sound like hmph. “I still don’t think you’re a rocket scientist. I think you lucked out.”

  Maggie turned as the crowd brought a little man with a lean, shrewd face to her—Falconer. “Well, we don’t know yet,” she murmured fervently. “But I sure hope so.”

  The little man held up a bird. “This is the new one. Lady Sylvia said never to take the green band off his leg—but I’ve got a knife. Would you like to do it?”

  Maggie held her breath. She tried to keep her hand steady as she carefully cut through the emerald green leather band, but her fingers trembled.

  The leather tie fell free—and for a moment her heart stood still, because nothing happened.

  And then she saw it. The rippling change as the bird’s wings outstretched and thickened and the feathers merged and swam . . . and then Falconer was moving back, and a human form was taking shape. . . .

  And then Miles was standing there, with his auburn hair shining red gold and his handsome, wicked smile.