The Crimson Brand

by Brian Knight

  “You’re lying,” Susan said, moving in front of the girls and herding them behind her body with a backward sweep of her arms.

  His grin widened, and he nodded.

  “Probably I am,” he said, “that’s what I do best. But you’re going to do as I say anyhow.”

  Susan backed away from him as he stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind him.

  “Go back up to your room,” she whispered back to them. “Don’t come down for anything.”

  “Not at all,” Morgan said. “It would be downright unsociable to leave these little ladies out of the conversation.”

  Beside her, Penny felt Zoe shift, and saw her uncovering the handle of her wand. Penny grasped her mirror even tighter and whispered so low that not even Zoe could hear her. She only hoped it would work.

  “Kat.”

  “Into the sitting room,” Morgan directed them, emphasizing his directions with a wave of his gun, and when they were inside he motioned them to the couch.

  “Why are you doing this, Mr. Duke?” Penny spoke loudly, and her shaking voice betrayed her fear. “We never did anything to you.”

  Morgan simply regarded her for a moment. When he did speak, all of the false good cheer had left his voice.

  “Oh, but you did. You and Miss Taylor.” He motioned toward Zoe with the barrel of his gun. “Even your little friend here. You did everything to me.”

  He backed toward Susan’s recliner and settled his bulk into it with obvious relief. Penny noticed now that Morgan Duke looked bad, thinner somehow, the normally healthy russet of his well-tanned bald head and face paler, almost jaundiced; and there were dark patches beneath his bloodshot eyes. He caressed his left forearm and winced in pain, but retrained his pistol on the three of them before they could move.

  “Miss Taylor has stood in the way of my business for a long time. Longer than I’ve ever allowed anyone else to, and you …,” he aimed his gun directly at Penny, and for a moment her heart seemed to stop. She was certain he would pull the trigger. “You somehow found out what I was up to and went squealing to her.”

  His voice, the quivering of his jowls, were oddly indignant, hurt, as if she’d somehow betrayed him. He looked to her like a jumbo-sized baby on the verge of tears.

  “But I’m trying to get past all of that,” he said, a measure of his false cheer returning. “I’m finishing up my business here tonight.”

  “You set the fire,” Susan said, and Penny prayed that Katie was hearing it all and would know what to do. “What good is my land to you now? What good will it be burned flat?”

  “None,” Morgan conceded. “But it ain’t about that now. It’s about closing the deal on my terms. It’s about not letting a couple little slips of girls like you meddle in it!”

  He rubbed at his left arm again and muttered.

  Beside Penny, Zoe had slipped her wand out, unnoticed by either Susan or Morgan. She flicked her eyes toward Penny, then at Susan’s back.

  Penny thought she knew what Zoe wanted and hoped with all of her might that her friend knew what she was doing.

  “In another couple of minutes I’m going to leave. You won’t.” His discomfort seemed to be growing, but he pressed on. “You like this crappy plot of land so much, you can die on it.”

  He turned his attention to Penny. “There’s so much more I’d like to say but time is short.”

  His face cramped again in discomfort and his gun hand twitched.

  “Now!” Zoe used her considerable volume, startling them, but Penny was ready. She grabbed Susan around her waist and threw her to the floor, landing painfully on top of her, and a second later there was an explosive crash that filled the living room like thunder.

  “Zoe!” Penny scrambled off of Susan, desperate to find her friend, hopefully still alive.

  Zoe stood where she had, her wand in her hand, staring at Morgan Duke with shocked, round eyes. A second later, Penny saw why.

  Zoe had fired her spell at Morgan’s gun, and her aim had been exquisite. Whether Morgan had fired or not, Penny couldn’t tell, but the bullets in his gun had exploded. A mess of bent, jagged metal clattered to the floor. Morgan stared at the hand that had held it, or what was left of the hand. The fingers were bent and bloody, sticking out at sickening angles from the meat-slab hand.

  A single sob escaped Morgan’s trembling lips, then he screamed and ran through the room, to the foyer, without another glance at the girls, cradling his ruined right hand in the crook of his left arm.

  “Wow,” Penny whispered.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Zoe said, and a second later she was. She shoved her wand back into her pocket and ran toward the kitchen.

  Susan began to stir at Penny’s feet, then leapt up with her own shout of alarm. She saw Penny and grasped her by shoulders.

  “Where’s Zoe? Where is she?”

  “In the kitchen,” Penny said, trying to keep her voice calm. She took Susan’s hands and forced them to release their painful grip on her shoulders. “Mr. Duke’s gun exploded. He ran away. Zoe’s ….”

  Zoe’s retching sounded loudly from the kitchen, and Penny didn’t have to explain anymore.

  Susan’s eyes fell to the twisted ruin of the gun on the floor and the blood splattered around it.

  “Is he hurt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good!” Susan grabbed Penny by the arm again and dragged her toward the kitchen. “Zoe, let’s go!”

  She pulled them out of the house, scanning the front yard for Morgan Duke but not seeing him. They were still on the steps and running toward Susan’s Falcon when the sound of an approaching car stopped them. They saw red-and-blue lights flashing on the driveway, then the sheriff’s cruiser. A few seconds later it slid to a stop next to Susan’s car, and Michael jumped out.

  He eyed the three of them, then the blazing field behind the house.

  “I got a tip-off that Morgan Duke might be here,” he said, covering the last of the ground between them at a sprint, right hand resting on his holstered pistol. “I guess the fire is just a bonus.”

  “He was here, Michael. He tried to shoot us and his gun exploded in his hand.” Susan stumbled a little where she stood, as if only just realizing how close to death they’d all come. “He’s hurt, and he’s close.”

  Michael eyed Penny and Zoe suspiciously and said, “I guess you got real lucky.”

  Penny tried to look innocent, but Michael wasn’t buying it.

  How much did he know, she wondered.

  Zoe blushed and looked at her feet.

  “I radioed the fire department on my way here,” Michael said, addressing Susan now. “They should be here soon, but you and the girls need to get out of here. I’ll look for him.”

  “Blood,” Susan said, pointing at the trail of splotches leading into the field, away from the highway. “Girls, get on your bikes and ride to town … Katie’s house or the park. I’ll find you when this is over.”

  She regarded Michael. “I’m going with you. I won’t slow you down.”

  Michael looked like he wanted to argue the point, but Susan was off, following the blood, and he had to hurry to catch up.

  “Straight to town,” he shouted at the girls. “And be careful!”

  “We will,” Penny and Zoe said in unison and ran to their bikes. They made it just past the drop to the highway, just out of sight of Michael and Susan, before they nodded to each other and angled their bikes into the sky.

  * * *

  They flew high to avoid watching eyes, and from their dizzying height they could see how swiftly the fire advanced. It had devoured Price’s field of winter wheat and now raced toward the house.

  “They won’t get here in time,” Penny groaned. “Our house!”

  “We need a firebreak,” Zoe shouted to her. At their speed, staying too close to each other was dangerous, but Zoe swerved near enough to make herself heard.

  “A what?”

  “If they had a bulldozer, they mi
ght be able to clear a wide-enough path to stop the fire.”

  “I don’t see any bulldozers down there, Zoe!” Then a thought occurred to her, and she almost dared to hope that they wouldn’t lose the house. “But maybe we don’t need one!”

  “What?”

  There was no time for explanation. Penny dropped from the sky, falling fast, aiming her descent for the fence that separated her back yard from Price’s field. She called on her fire and felt it respond at once. Her skin began to heat up beneath her clothing, the fine hairs on the back of her neck to rise as if charged with static. She directed the growing heat to her wand-hand as the fence came into view, then dropped toward it. She raced above the fence to the edge of the hill, then down toward the highway before bringing her bike sideways in a midair slide and rocketing in the other direction. She pointed her wand at the grass, hoping it would work.

  Fire shot in a jet from the tip of her wand, hitting the ground and igniting the grass around it. She poured fire onto the ground in a line, following the fence beyond her house, then continuing into the wild grass. Only when her house was almost out of sight did she raise her wand.

  She ascended again and watched her flames work. They burned through the dry grass and wheat, spreading out ten, twenty, thirty feet. The flames approaching from Price’s field closed in quickly. Penny hoped she’d been able to do enough.

  She wished her flames gone, and they obediently flickered and died, leaving a wide, blackened path in their wake.

  Zoe joined her, watching as the flames raced up from the field below toward that band of burnt earth.

  “Think that’ll work?” Penny was almost giddy with relief.

  “I think so,” Zoe said, “but we can’t wait to see.”

  She held up her mirror, and Penny could see flames reflected in its surface, but not the flames below them.

  “Kat and Ellen are at the hollow. They need our help.”

  Chapter 20

  The Crimson Brand

  They raced toward the hollow, high in the dark midnight sky and guided by the light of the second fire of the night, the one in the field high above the house and racing toward Aurora Hollow. This night the exhilaration of flight was tempered by the danger, both behind and ahead of them, the lingering sadness of two lives already lost, and the fear that they would lose more before the night was over.

  Penny had hoped she could make another firebreak to protect the hollow, but as they flew over the covering canopy of green, her hopes were dashed. Unlike the fire that had raced through Price’s field, the one below was slower, the sparse grass and shrubs not as ready a fuel as the dense wheat, but it was already there.

  She had arrived too late.

  They circled the hollow and dropped lower, searching for a safe spot to land.

  A familiar manic chattering reached them over the roar and crackle of the flames.

  Penny stopped high above the ground and waved Zoe to her side.

  “Homunculi,” she said, pointing toward the hollow with her wand. “The gray men are here!”

  Zoe nodded and plummeted straight toward the canopy of willow limbs she’d deftly woven together and they parted for her, allowing her in. Penny followed in her wake, slipping through just as the branches began to close again.

  Zoe jumped from the seat of her bike and landed next to Ellen, startling the two homunculi advancing on her, forcing her backward toward the creek. Three of the creatures lay shattered on the ground, and another dodged a spell from Katie. The angry homunculus still wore the skirt of green that had bound it and seemed eager to repay the indignity.

  Penny dropped onto the little monster as it lunged for Katie, squashing it into the ground. Identical spells from Katie and Penny stilled it, and Penny slid from the seat of her bike, letting it fall as she dashed to Katie’s side.

  Katie dropped to her knees and rummaged through the open chest, tossing items—the cup, the book, the now-unused black wand—haphazardly into the grass beside her.

  “Kat,” Penny dropped down beside her. “What are you doing?”

  “Finding this!” Katie rose with the strange doorknob in her fist. The etchings and lines in the brassy metal seemed to glow and squiggle under her grasp, and a short metal spike gleamed on the flat end. “Ronan was risking his life to find these, and you told me what they do.”

  “Yeah,” Penny said, feeling that there were slightly more pressing issues to deal with. “But we agreed not to mess with any of the stuff Ronan brought back. We don’t know what it does. It could be dangerous!”

  “We do know what this does,” Katie argued. “We just don’t know where it goes.”

  “Some of them don’t go anywhere!” Penny nearly shouted, desperate to stress the point she thought she’d already made.

  “I know!” Katie did shout. “If we’re lucky this might be one of them!”

  “What?”

  Ellen and Zoe ran to them and stopped just short, on edge and eyeing the hollow for more gray men.

  “You and Zoe got rid of the Birdman by shoving him back through his …,” she seemed unable to find the right word for what they had described to her.

  “Yeah,” Zoe cut in, then nodded, as if in understanding.

  “If it worked with him, maybe it’ll work again,” Katie said, calmer now.

  Penny considered it for a second. “Sounds good to me.”

  Katie nodded and turned toward the door.

  Penny grabbed her arm.

  “What now?” Katie was almost hysterical with impatience.

  “Let me do it, Kat.” She pointed up the path to the field beyond. The flames that had only been crowding the hollow a few minutes before were now embracing it, licking at the trees and tracing their way down the short slope toward them. “It’s going to burn down. I think you’re the only one who can stop it now.”

  Katie considered for a second then passed the doorknob to Penny.

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  But as she started up the path, another gray man appeared to block her path, then a second and a third. Behind them rose the huge horned head of the monster serpent.

  “How nice,” Turoc hissed. “I’m not too late for the party after all.”

  * * *

  Silence filled the hollow. Katie paused at the edge of the trail; Penny froze in midstep toward the door, the magic knob seeming to thrum in her hand; Zoe and Ellen stood rooted in place near the fire pit. The girls goggled up at the monster snake and his gray men, immobilized by shock.

  The monster and his minions moved closer, the former rising behind the latter, his three arms opening in mock welcome. The fourth arm, the one he’d broken in his fall at the landfill, was gone; in its place was a narrow waving stump.

  The three gray men bobbed in place, as if eager to leap down and begin the fight.

  “I had hoped Master Duke would keep you young ladies occupied back at the home place,” he sighed and shook his head, as if in sorrow, “but I did not count on it. He has been less than effective these past few months.”

  Katie backed away, joining Ellen and Zoe in a frightened huddle.

  Penny took a step toward the door, the knob clutched in her left fist, her wand in her right.

  The monster turned his gaze on Penny, and she stopped, wondering for a moment if he was hypnotizing her. She forced her eyes away from his, focused them on the crimson brand between them, and remembered where she’d seen it before.

  “It may interest you to know that his last successful job was the disposal of your obstinate mother.” He grinned hugely at her, revealing the full, frightening width of his mouth and too many pointed teeth to count. His fangs were long, curved downward, dripping with venom. “A job very well done, in fact. We had hoped Miss Taylor would prove more agreeable when ownership of this gateway passed to her, but alas, it was not to be.”

  He killed her, Penny thought, struck dumb and motionless at the news. He killed her!

  “We did not count on your interference,
however.” His voice turned bitter, angry. “You, young one, came as a bit of a shock to us, since we were led to believe that you had died at birth.”

  Penny saw her friends shift uncomfortably at this unexpected news. Zoe stepped away from the others, put her hand against the trunk of the closest willow. None of it registered, none of it mattered. Even the eager homunculi were unimportant. Penny saw only the monster behind them. The thing that had killed her mother.

  “You killed her.” Penny’s voice came back, weak, barely a whisper, but the monster seemed to hear her fine. He nodded his head slightly.

  “Not in the strictest sense, no. That was Morgan Duke and his idiot child, but I did command it and so must take my share of the credit.”

  The doorknob dropped from Penny’s numb fingers, and before she knew she meant to do it, her wand was raised and pointing at the monster.

  Intuition and rage guided her hand as she slashed her wand through the air in the Snakeman’s direction. It wasn’t a spell, just a lashing out, but the first downward sweep of her wand struck him across his horned head and stunned him for a moment.

  He blocked her second attack with a twitch of his wand, fangs bared and growling.

  Behind him the flames rose higher, closer.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” he chided her, and sent a spell of his own toward her.

  Penny dove to the side, and the ground exploded where she had stood, leaving a small, smoking crater in the dirt.

  “Get them,” the monster snake commanded, and the homunculi leapt at them with a coarse mixture of snarls and shrieks. Six more appeared and rushed at the girls.

  What happened next was almost too quick, too unexpected, to track.

  Two long willow whips reached down, wound themselves around Katie’s waist, and yanked her into the air. She vanished through the green canopy above them with a cry of surprise. A third willow limb snagged one of the gray men and hurled it out of the hollow, past the Snakeman’s stunned face, into the dark. But even as it vanished squealing into the night, another half-dozen homunculi launched themselves at the girls.