Blood War

by Russell Moon

  I get all the way to my feet, stumble backwards slightly. I scan the area madly, gaze toward the place where I last saw my mother—and see the horses are there. The ropes are there. But she is not.

  “What,” Spence repeats, his voice coming out in a strange, strangled squeal, “is this?”

  I have to look at him, though I do not want to.

  And now it registers. Spence is huge. He is much larger than I have seen him before. His hair, always a remarkable shock of silver, is even more dramatic, long, high, mad, as if he has been riding in an open airplane. His features, somehow, have changed, become more angular, focused and pointed.

  Hawklike.

  He lets out what at first I think is going to be a rant, but it comes out as an inchoate screeching sound. He pounds his own thighs with his fists and walks a furious and terrifying circle around the platform, Eartha, and the standing stone.

  “What did you do?” he says finally.

  He is totally, completely, seriously lost. He believes, I realize, that this was not to happen. That through all the torture and violence and hatred, his most beloved was not to be harmed.

  “She was to be your queen,” he shouts. “Do you not understand? Did you not understand? Everything was going to come together, to be whole again, through you and my precious Eartha. Then everything, for everyone, would have been good again. Do you know, do you even know, how much damage you have done?”

  Of course I know what damage has been done. But I don’t believe I have done it all.

  “Yes,” I say. “But do you—”

  It’s as if he doesn’t even hear me.

  “My familiar, gone. How dare you harm my familiar?”

  “And mine?”

  “Arj. Like my very son.”

  “My father.”

  “And now…Eartha.” He walks to her, puts a hand on her dead hand, then turns to me, great puzzlement once again on his face.

  “My mother,” I say, the first syllable coming out strong because I want to know, the second subdued because I don’t.

  He is furious, his face reddening, highlighting the silver mane of his hair. It is as if he cannot contemplate how my facts have anything to do with his. And this—his incoherent, unreasoning rage—frightens me more than anything yet. Because what has he done because of it? What has he done with her?

  “My mother,” I repeat. I am nearly crying now. “Have you…killed my mother?”

  “Child,” he says contemptuously. He stomps toward me, and with my heart in my throat I realize he has not just grown—he is growing as I watch. When he reaches me he towers over me. His chest is massive and broad, his body tapering toward the hips. He looks less than human. This Spence looks like he would eat the one I knew before. “You have no idea,” he says. He leans way over and down, until his face is almost to mine.

  He opens his mouth. It is huge, and narrow, and I do not understand what in hell he is trying to do.

  Until he opens wider. And wider. I can no longer see the features of his face, only the impossibly stretched and gaping hooked…yes, beak…as he reaches out and snags me before I can react.

  He picks me up and squeezes, biting down as I struggle to get loose. I am almost hysterical. And then I realize he has not only grown but, Christ, he has shrunk me somehow. He has managed to work on me, belittle me, while speaking.

  I squirm, useless. I am back so far from where I was, back in my place of defenseless, confused terror. I am like a rat in his powerful rock-shell beak. He bites down, bites down, piercing, squeezing—making short work of my father’s armor—the protective coating that made me feel so invincible moments ago.

  The hooked tip of his beak makes contact just above my hip and punctures me deeply. And I realize this is how it goes. I will lose. I’ve already lost.

  “Ahhhh,” I hear myself scream as he throws me like a rocket, to smack against a standing stone.

  I crumple to the ground and try to get up, but I crash right back down again. Blood is pooling quickly on the ground under me.

  The wound is impossibly deep, mortal. I can feel my life seeping away. But I am certain he will come to finish me all the same, and when he does I will take him down with me.

  I look up toward him. He is a man. He is a hawklike man, but he is clearly a man. He stands with one hand in the other as he looks down on me and twirls his one ring around his finger. He has got the ring, all right, but I see it is not rooting.

  I wait for him. He goes blurry in my vision. I think he is coming my way. Or is he walking away? I am more than aware of the blood spreading beneath me and out, like a royal red carpet to greet the victor.

  “Where is my mother?” I say, trying to be demanding, sounding weak.

  My eyes are closing now. Closing. I am fighting them, but I am losing. I am dying, or I am dead.

  My eyes are closed, but I still see, and I wonder if I am already gone. I can see everything—Eartha on her altar, Spence—but clearly now. Still, though I try to move, I cannot do anything. It is like I am nothing but disembodied vision.

  I see Spence standing, his back to me.

  I see him walking slowly toward the prone body of Eartha. I see him stand there and just look at her for the longest time.

  It makes me tired. The whole scene makes me tired. The destruction, the hate, the loneliness, and I do not want to fight anymore. I have nothing left to fight for, or if I do, I have forgotten what it is.

  I am tired. I am beaten. I do not wish to wake up. I will not wake up.

  “Marcus,” Eleanor’s voice whispers to me. “Marcus.”

  It’s the only thing I can hear, and it’s coming from where Spence is standing over Eartha. My vision floats toward him; he is doing something with his hands in the tight space between where he stands and where his dead daughter lies on the solid wood platform in front of the largest standing stone.

  I cannot move, I cannot speak. I can only see, but I cannot see what he is doing.

  “Marcus.” The voice is strong, and right where Spence is standing.

  I watch my body flick slightly, and then I am inside of it again, if I have ever left it, and I know this because I am riddled with pain. With my living, blinking eyes I see that Spence is still there in front of the funeral platform.

  I defy myself and what my body thinks I want. I go to stand.

  And crumble immediately, head spinning, legs legless. I fall into the ocean of my own blood. I try to roll over, but my side screams. I grab it in pain.

  And it is nearly instantaneous.

  I feel it, I see it. There is a glow, a high and beautiful lighted heat, radiating from the great gash above my hip.

  Quick as light, quicker than my father ever healed me, quicker than I ever healed him, the bleeding stops. But more—it feels as if the blood has been replaced by something else, beyond. Something clicks impossibly deep inside of me. I feel so strong, so, so strong, beyond strong.

  I stand and my head spins. With the wonder of it. With the possibilities. With boundless energy.

  I have healed myself, changed myself. Gone beyond. It is so, so clear.

  Fear and uncertainty are left in the dirt.

  And I run. Float. Soar to where Spence is, so involved in what he is doing he does not even notice me. I am within range, and I realize that I don’t know what he is doing, but whatever he is doing I will be stopping it.

  I hit him so hard from behind I can actually hear the crunch of vertebrae in his neck jamming together. The two of us pitch forward, into the fire.

  The funeral platform is on fire. He has set it on fire.

  We crash right into the platform, right into the flames, and the size and weight of us topple the platform, send it breaking in half as it hits the great stone, sending wood this way and that, and sending the unfortunate Eartha sailing clear above us.

  And revealing, under the platform, the bound and gagged and petrified form of Eleanor.

  The monster—the evil, soulless monster—was setting m
y mother on fire.

  Spence gets to his feet and hesitates. I see him look at my mother, then at me; I see the way he looks at me. I strike fear. I feel what is in his soul, and it is terror.

  He flinches. He cowers. And, inexplicably, takes his first step toward Eleanor rather than me. As if he can still hold her over me, as if he has a chance.

  Instead, with that step, he has finished a process begun by my father long ago.

  I reach him when he is halfway to her, seize him in both of my hands, and I squeeze until I feel bones begin to crack. We are equal in size now, but I am stronger than him.

  I am stronger in this moment than anyone has ever been. Mine is no longer a body as I have known the human body. There is no boundary that I can feel between where I begin and the natural world of fire and wind and rushing water and flight ends. I will kill him now.

  I raise Spence over my head like a weightlifter and am about to drive him down into the hard earth.

  But he is gone.

  I look up, and he has changed fully, into this great hawk-beast, hanging there in the air above, beating powerful wings hard enough to push me backward. He has talons like banded meat hooks.

  After a few more warning flaps of his mighty wings, he descends on me.

  My first impulse is to make for cover. I turn and run, but after three strides I catch myself. I stop short and spin back, bracing for the attack.

  But he has gone the other way. He is already halfway to Eleanor. His coward’s heart still wants her, still wants vengeance, perhaps.

  I run, faster than a land animal can, faster, obviously, than a creature of the sky can move, because I reach her before he does. I stop. Plant myself right there in front of her.

  And wait for him.

  As I stand, I feel it, my father’s helmet, his torque, his rings, his body armor.

  I feel it tighten around me, as if it is pulling in to guard me closer, to fit me properly, to protect me completely. Unless I am growing to fit it.

  The wind fairly screeches with the force of Spence coming down out of the air.

  I lean into it, into the wind he makes, into him.

  I make sure his eyes catch my eyes, my father’s eyes, before he strikes.

  I reach my mighty hands out to grab him.

  He pulls up at the very last instant. One claw grazes my forehead as he angles upward for escape, but escape won’t do.

  I grab hold before he can get away.

  I hear Eleanor screaming for me through her gag, but I have to hold on. I point back at her, flick a finger, and her bonds melt away. She runs for the cover of the stone.

  Spence himself is screaming, an unearthly, ear-shredding squall, trying to shake me. But I have him hard.

  I twist the mighty talon in my hands and hear it crack; he throws all his weight against me in pain. No matter what he does now, he’s going to be broken.

  We hit the ground hard and separate. Spence lands about twenty yards away from me, near the entrance to a low, damp tunnel. He hobbles for a few steps, but then dives, hits the ground, and somehow changes—he is no longer a hawk but something low and long and dark. Reptilian, for sure. He shoots through the opening like an arrow.

  I run hard, full out, after him, not knowing what I will do to get into that same space. I just accelerate when I get near it and then, swoosh.

  I am in. And I am still chugging. I have no idea what form I have taken. I have no idea even how it has happened. All I know is that wherever Spence goes, I am there. The tunnel narrows and I am there; it goes all circular and I am there. It turns to a slit, it goes bright, it goes dark, and I am there with him and gaining.

  Finally he begins to slow, and I realize now that the game is up for sure.

  I begin slowing too as I see him in the opening ahead, a hunched and winded figure. He appears to me as unspeakably sad. I slow further.

  I meet him there, where this last tunnel opens up into a near paradise of woods. Where the water is crystal and rushing past faster than a train.

  I catch up to him as he stands on the edge of the water, looking down, once again his own witch self.

  I keep my distance.

  “It was all worth it,” he says, staring down as if he is trying to find one stationary speck at the bottom of the raging river. “Because it was right. We were right. What your father did to our people”—he spits into the water with disgust—“was wrong, and he had no business doing it. It was not his place. He should have died. You should die.”

  I don’t care what Spence thinks. But I am still astonished by his ability to believe what he needs to believe.

  That, to me, is more magic than his magical abilities.

  And I do not feel like killing him.

  He takes a step closer to the water and collapses on his shattered leg.

  He lies there looking pathetic, broken, scared. His eyes are wide with fear over what I will do to him.

  I wait a few seconds. All I want to do is leave him here and never hear from him again.

  But before I even try to figure out how to do just that, something occurs to me, and I go to him.

  He is cowering as I stand over him.

  “I need to know something, if you can tell me.”

  He just continues looking up silently.

  “My father spoke of something. A gift from the gods.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” Spence asks.

  “He said they would allow me to do what I could not do.”

  “To undo,” Spence says, “what you must undo.”

  It is my turn to stare silently.

  “Are you going to kill me?” he asks, a bargain being struck.

  I meet his gaze directly. “I will not kill you.”

  I don’t mention that I wouldn’t have killed him anyway.

  “Life…and…death,” he says. “To undo, one time…”

  As if I am standing in front of a speeding train, I see everything. I see it all, right from the beginning, and it is hurtling at me so hard it could kill me. All the events in deadly sequence right back to…

  “Jules,” I say out loud, and I can only just keep from fainting from the rush of it all.

  Jules. Life and death and undoing what must be undone.

  Jules. I am ready to cry, and to thank my father and the gods and even every witch that brought me to this point, to the rightness of this: of bringing back my Jules. She never deserved it, never deserved any of what happened, always deserved so much better, and now, and finally now…

  He is shaking his head, Spence is. He actually looks contrite when he does it, and more than a little frightened.

  “No,” he says. “Not Jules.”

  I feel like I am being dropped from a great height and dashed on the rocks of a rocky shore.

  “You cannot bring back a life you have taken. The gods say no.”

  I don’t move. I can’t move. I am stuck, staring at him. But it wasn’t my fault, I want to say. I didn’t know.

  He looks at me looking at him, then his gaze slides down to the ground beneath him. I say nothing.

  And then my spirit sinks, down beneath the ground, beneath the earth, to hell.

  I almost had her. I almost had her back. For thirty seconds, I almost had my Jules back.

  I wait, watching the water flow past. Wondering, if I jumped in, where it would take me.

  I bend over, seize Spence’s wrist in my hand. A look of horror crosses his face. “You said you wouldn’t kill me,” he says.

  I take my other hand and pull the ring right off him. I shove it in his face.

  “This,” I say, “may be for my child. Or maybe the whole set will just go into the ground with me one day.”

  I drop his hand and walk away, leaving him on the ground by the water. Let him try to stop me. Let him ever try to come near me, ever again.

  When I return to the clearing that is the former seat of the coven’s power, my eyes travel immediately across the open space to find my mother, sitting on t
he ground. I rush to her.

  I come to my knees to meet her, and we hug each other for what is probably three seconds but seems like a year. Because I do not, do not, do not have any inclination to ever let her go. I squeeze her with all my newfound strength.

  “Ouch,” she says, pushing me away and squeezing my upper arms as she does. “You feel good.” She is looking at me strangely, like she is trying to reorient herself—to all of this and to me. “But you look like hell.”

  I just smile. Whatever she wants to say, I just want to smile. She looks as ragged as me, but I won’t be saying that. She looks beautiful all the same.

  She turns to where she has been kneeling.

  Lying there, laid out properly, is Eartha. Eleanor has dragged her over from the spot where she went sprawling. Now she is arranged, hands folded in front of her, her long hair pushed back from her face and straightened a bit. She lies at the foot of a standing stone like it is a giant headstone.

  “It just didn’t seem right,” Eleanor says, “over there, the way she was…”

  I put a hand on her shoulder. My mother’s greatness awes me.

  “She’s lovely,” Eleanor says. Probably the first good word she’s knowingly said about a witch.

  I nod. Even in death, Eartha is lovely.

  “I can see it,” she says.

  I already know.

  She goes on in case I don’t. “What you were talking about. The resemblance. To Jules. I couldn’t see it then, but I can now. It’s beyond uncanny.”

  “Yes it is,” I say, leaning closer now to Eartha’s dead face. And closer. “Beyond uncanny.”

  And closer.

  “Marcus?” Eleanor says. “What are you doing?”

  I take both of my hands and the rings—which are heated up now like red coals—and place my fingers on either side of Eartha’s face. I leave them there, and I can feel it, feel it flowing through me, out of me. It is weakening me, as if the life is coming out of my own personal store.

  I move my hands down, down the sides of her face, until I am holding her neck in my hands. I feel where it is broken.

  I hold my hands there, hold the life there. I feel, with the tiniest cracking, bumping beneath the skin, the neck snap back, the disks realign.