“I couldn’t risk that you would say no. I needed you to say yes’otherwise I could not have bound you. I hoped our friendship would mean something, that you would know I did not do this lightly. I hoped you would be pleased with the changes in you. If you think about it, you will agree that this life suits you. Do you think you could go back to an ordinary, human life now that you know what else is out there?”
“It should have been my choice,” Max said adamantly.
“Perhaps. I have often wondered what you would be capable of if you were willing. Even as bitter and resistant as you are, there is no better Shadowblade. But you can’t change what you are. Even if I wanted to, I can’t unwind the magic that has made you. You are a Shadow-blade and you always will be. So now, knowing what is coming, you have a choice to make. This business with the redcaps and the Hag and the ominous silence at Old Home’it all stinks of the Guardians. If so, they’ll be knocking on our door soon.”
“What exactly are you asking?” Max’s stomach churned. It felt as if the world were turning inside out’which, if she believed Giselle, was exactly what was about to happen. Did she believe? Honestly? Yes, dammit. But what was she willing to do about it?
“I am asking for your help. I am asking you to stop fighting me and start helping me.”
Max tensed. Though she already knew the answer, she had to ask, “If I do? What will you give me in return?”
Giselle shook her head. “You want me to say I will free you. When it’s all over. But I don’t know if it will ever be over, and I won’t lie to you and say it will be. I don’t think I can ever let you go.”
Max’s teeth bared in a snarl. “You ask too fucking much. You always have.”
“I know. Will you consider it?”
“Go to hell.”
Max slammed out of the RV. The steel walls of the warehouse closed in on her. Her throat closed. She could hardly breathe. She shivered. She reached for her anger, wanting its comforting heat. But it was cold and bitter, like ash. She thought of the Hag’s promise: Know what you want. You will have it.
She wanted her freedom; she wanted revenge.
But she couldn’t have either.
Will you consider it?
Thirty years ago Giselle had bound her in magical chains, and today the witch-bitch had bound her again, this time in chains of duty and friendship. Not for Giselle. But for Oz. For Niko and Akemi and Magpie and Lise and everyone else who called Horngate home. Including Max. She had no choice.
Horngate needed Giselle, and the witch-bitch needed Max’the best of her’heart, mind, and soul.
A sound tore from Max’s throat and her hands curled, her fingernails cutting deeply into her palms. Hot tears burned her eyes and a hollow space opened in her chest. Giving up her battle against Giselle tasted too much like consent’like she approved of what Giselle had done to her. Like she accepted and condoned it.
Her stomach heaved violently and she swallowed, swinging around and punching her fist into the side of the RV. A hand snatched her arm before she could connect. She stopped, tracing the arm to the shoulder and face. Niko. He looked worried, but he didn’t let go.
She wrenched away. “What the fuck do you want?”
“You do realize that the protections on the RV haven’t changed. Hitting it will only powder your bones. It won’t even scratch the paint.”
“Yeah, well, maybe it would make me feel better.”
“Because a shattered hand makes everything better,” he mocked.
“I could always hit you, though your head is hard as a rock.”
“True. Now, not to be insulting, but you could really use a shower. Even Akemi thinks so.”
He glanced over to where the Chinese woman stood with her arms crossed. She flashed a look of annoyance at him. “When you find your clothes in the burn barrel, you’ll know how they got there,” Akemi said.
Niko blanched. “That’s just mean.” Suddenly he grinned. “Look at that, Max. It’s like seeing a baby take her first step, ain’t it?”
“Pook gai,” Akemi shot back, color flushing her round cheeks.
“Whoa!” Niko said, glancing at Max. “Did you hear that? I think she swore at me. Wow. That’s two steps. I’m so proud.”
“Niko, shut up before she cuts your tongue out,” Max said, humor eating away the hot edge of her fury. “I’m going to shower. Do try to play nice.” With that she stomped away, heading for her bunk.
4
MAX STEPPED INSIDE HER CRAMPED, LIGHT-sealed room in the bus. She wore a T-shirt and her underwear, her wet hair slicked back against her head. Her room was really nothing more than a cubicle paneled with fake wood with a narrow, folding bunk along the outside wall. Strapped to its underside was a collection of weapons and ammo. A small nightstand was beside it, and above it, a footwide closet. There was a mirror on the wall facing the bed, and nothing else.
On her nightstand was a note. She picked it up. It was a Taco Bell receipt. Scrawled across the back was one line: Keep yourself and Giselle safe. Oz hadn’t signed it. So. Giselle had convinced him to go. He’d folded fast. Max wondered what Giselle had told him. Much to Max’s relief, there was no mention of their kiss. Hopefully he hadn’t taken it seriously.
She wadded the note and flung it against the wall, glaring balefully at the clothing laid out on the bed like a deflated corpse. The skintight, forest green suit consisted of leather pants and an almost-whole vest without any shirt. With a jerk of her arm she swept it onto the floor and lay down on her bed, setting the alarm for eight o’clock. She didn’t fall asleep immediately.
Her mind roved over what Giselle had told her as she stared at the ceiling. The Guardians were real beings. Fuck. And Giselle was afraid of them. Which made Max want to curl up in a ball and hide under a mountain. Giselle was made of stone and ice. Max sighed, frowning. She didn’t know a lot about Guardians. A lot of the legends claimed that they had created most of the Uncanny and Divine races, then abandoned earth for other dimensions. Which was a good thing because what little Max did know about the Guardians wasn’t good. They were cruel, petty, and terribly powerful. Some said they’d set off Mount Vesuvius to teach one merchant about too much pride. Then, too, they were credited with the disappearance of Atlantis, the creation of the Sahara Desert, the black plague, and a billion other things large and small. Even if only a fraction of those stories were true, humanity was way the hell up shit creek.
She fell asleep, and though she dreamed, when the alarm went off, she couldn’t remember any of them. They left behind a bad taste in her mouth and a residue of unease on her skin.
She swung off the bunk and grimaced as she reached for her night’s uniform. She shimmied into the pants, then began wrestling with the vest. It was like putting on a straitjacket. Finally she got it on right and fiddled with the laces until they were tight enough so that it wouldn’t fall off and would still be loose enough to let her breathe. By the time she was done, she was cursing Giselle in a low, unrelenting string.
She looked down at herself, tugging on the front of the vest, then over her shoulder at the small mirror on the wall. The lacings revealed wide strips of pale skin down her stomach and back, and two more beneath her arms. Her breasts bulged, halfway to falling out of the plunging neckline. What was annoying was the fact that the pants were too tight to let her do a good spin kick, and the vest offered precious little protection from pretty much anything stronger than a cool breeze. Not to mention that it would be incredibly inconvenient if her breasts flopped loose in the middle of a fight. On the other hand, it was pretty obvious that she wasn’t concealing much of anything, least of all weapons. Which of course was the point.
The trouble with Conclaves was that no one was allowed to go in armed. Not that every Shadowblade wasn’t a walking weapon and every single witch as deadly as a taipan snake and ten times as vicious. But that didn’t mean Max was going to the Conclave unprepared for this whole thing to go south and in a hurry. Not after Giselle’s
warning.
Max packed a small backpack with her usual black jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, a hat, her .45, and a half dozen clips loaded with shot shells, and another half dozen clips with hollowpoints. She threw in her knives, a garrote necklace, a handful of powerbars, and a body bag that was charmed against light. She’d put her hiking boots in later. She wasn’t allowed to wear shoes to the Conclave either’that had everything to do with magic and nothing to do with weapons’even the witches went barefoot. She planned to stash the pack near the Conclave site. If and when the shit hit the fan, she wanted to be ready for it.
Now all she had to do was hide the hailstone. It was safer here than with her. She examined her small room, then opened the closet cabinet. She had a jacket hanging inside and a stash of books, powerbars, two bottles of Gatorade, a gallon jug of water, and a few other odds and ends.
Max reached up and pushed the short clothes bar out of its cradle. It was aluminum and hollow and offered the only possible hiding place. She tore the sleeve off one of her T-shirts and wrapped it around the glittering hailstone before shoving the package inside the bar. She settled it back in its cradle and hung her jacket back up. The hailstone wouldn’t roll around and rattle and entice the curious. Besides, no one who wanted to live would come sniffing around, and she didn’t have a roommate’privilege of being Prime.
She shut the closet and slung her backpack over one shoulder before stepping out of her room and closing the door firmly behind her. The back of the forty-five-foot RV was lined on either side with small compartments much like her own, except each of the others held two of the foldaway bunks. The hallway was narrow’barely two feet wide. There were no slideouts in the rear in order to keep the coach light-tight. In the front was the usual galley kitchen and a slide-out that provided a small lounge. The table and two small couches on either side plus the swiveling driver and passenger seats provided all the furniture.
Max grabbed a cherry Gatorade from the refrigerator and guzzled it, tossing the empty bottle into the trash and heading out the door. A quick scan of the warehouse floor told her that Oz had taken one of the RVs and three cars. Niko and Akemi leaned against her pickup, and Tyler sat smoking a cigarette on the hood of her Tahoe. One of her Shadowblades, Tyler was tall and lanky with long, wispy blond hair, hazel eyes, and a close-trimmed mustache and beard. He was loose-jointed like a ballet dancer and rarely spoke unless he had something worthwhile to say. All three of them looked at Max as she came out.
“Who do we have left?” she asked Niko as she tossed her pack onto the passenger seat of her Tahoe.
“Us three, and Oz left four Spears. They are still on patrol.”
“Go get ‘em,” Max ordered, and went to Giselle’s RV. She hammered the door with her fist, then vaulted up inside without waiting for a reply.
Giselle sat in lotus position in her chair, her eyes closed, the fingertips of both hands pressed carefully against her face. She looked very witchy, wearing a sleeveless maroon silk blouse and matching pants, both batiked with a complex pattern that Max assumed had magical properties. Cuffs of silver chased with gold and copper circled her biceps and ankles. They were set with disks of black-veined turquoise and jellow jasper, the stones gleaming with subdued spell fire. A matching, wide, flat collar circled her neck, and twisted wire earrings holding round beads of turquoise and jasper dangled nearly to her shoulders. Her feet were bare but for three toe rings on each. On the right was a copper band set with an oval sunstone, a plain gold band, and one of iron set with amber all the way around. On the left was a silver band set with pearls, a platinum band set with black opal, and a thin band made of jet sandwiched between bloodstone. Each bit of stone and metal enhanced Giselle’s magic.
She opened her eyes slowly and lowered her hands. “You know I could have been in the middle of a spell. If I had been, breaking my concentration would have been fatal to both of us.”
Max shrugged. “And that’s bad because ΓǪ? Besides, you’d be stupid to waste your strength now right before the Conclave. You aren’t that dumb, but if you were, you’d use a proper spell web to contain yourself, and you’d be the only one dead.”
Giselle sighed, unfolding her legs. “You really know how to give me a headache. Your attitude hasn’t improved. Does that mean you are going to keep fighting me?”
“It means I still want you dead.”
“Color me stunned. Should I call CNN?”
Max’s mouth twitched. “Sun’s almost down. Are you ready?”
“What have you planned?”
“I’ll scramble the nest out of here and start them north. They’ll find a shopping center somewhere up on 15 where they can wait for us to catch up. Just in case we need the hospital truck.”
“Sounds good.”
“I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to hear you say so. Now, you’ll ride with Akemi. Niko, Tyler, and I will shadow you in the cars. I’ll drop the Tahoe and stash my gear as near to the Sagrado as I can before meeting you at the parking lot. You’d better pray there’s no trouble. There’s too few of us to handle a major attack.”
“It’s Conclave. The law calls for peace from dusk to dawn.”
“You witch-bitches only obey the laws you can’t get away with breaking,” Max said.
Giselle shrugged. “No one can get away with it at a Conclave.”
“Famous last words. You’ll excuse me if I plan for the worst.”
“That’s what makes you the best.”
“Fuck you. I’ll stir the hive. You’ve got five minutes.” Max didn’t wait for Giselle to reply. She stepped down out of the RV and shut the door hard behind her. Strengthening spells on it kept it from warping in its frame. It wasn’t the first door Max had slammed.
She turned just as enthusiastic clapping broke out, and someone with a death wish gave a low catcall.
“Shut up, Lise.”
“You are so smokin’ hot,” Lise replied with a leer. She and the three other Sunspears had joined Niko, Akemi, and Tyler at the cars. “Can I borrow that outfit when you’re done? You can still be in it if you want.” Her eyebrows waggled suggestively. “I’d never kick you out of my bed.”
Max’s teeth bared. “That’s because you’re a female tomcat. And you’re welcome to it if I don’t burn it first.” She glanced around the group. “You Sunspears will ride with the nest. Tyler is going to take Lise’s car, and Niko, you’re in Kamikani’s El Camino.”
Kamikani was Hawaiian, with smooth skin the color of aged mahogany and long, curly black hair. He wore a white T-shirt with the arms torn off and a pair of faded blue jeans with ragged white holes in the knees. He was only a couple of inches taller than Niko, and not quite as broad-chested. His 1969 El Camino was his pride and joy. He’d restored it himself and guarded it with his life. But at Max’s order, he swallowed and handed Niko his keys.
“Don’t scratch her,” Kamikani said in his quiet, musical voice. “I will hurt you.”
“Max isn’t Prime because she avoids trouble,” Niko said cheerfully. “Don’t worry. I’ll help you fix the car if anything happens. Or throw a hell of a funeral.”
Kamakani shook his head. “Damned haole.”
“That’s me.” Niko stretched out his arm. “White as alabaster. Beautiful as Michelangelo’s David, aren’t I?”
“Women don’t like corpses,” Kamikani said, shoving the arm away. “Or statues.”
“I manage all right,” Niko said smugly, twirling the keys around his finger. “I don’t need a pretty car to get them to look at me.”
“Baby, neither does he,” Lise said. “He’s gorgeous, he cooks like a pro, and he surfs. And just look at those eyesΓǪ. If I liked men, I’d fuck him every chance I got.”
Kamikani flushed.
Niko feigned hurt. “But not me? No wonder you like girls. Help me out, Max. You like men. Which of us would you curl up next to on a cold night?”
Max eyed him balefully. “I’m too much for either of you two pretty boys to ha
ndle. I’d snap you in half. Now, Sunspears’keep your weapons ready and the safeties off. Wear your radios and keep your cells handy. If we need you, you’ll have to come out and play in the dark. Hopefully not so long that it kills you.”
Unlike Shadowblades, who either melted into a pool of liquid carrion or exploded in flame under enemy sunlight, Sunspears could function for a while when exposed to darkness’and it didn’t matter what kind’a cave was just as bad as the night. They could last up to a few hours, depending on how much moonlight there was, how much sunlight they’d been exposed to recently, and how old they were. But eventually all of them would gradually freeze dry and crumble to dust. All of Giselle’s Spears carried flash bombs as part of their emergency gear, and all their bunks were wired with LED lights backed up by magic in case the batteries failed.
Bitter Night Page 8