Bitter Night

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  THE RETURN TO SELANGE’S COVENSTEAD WAS A SILENT, tense affair. Neither the Hag nor her staff had been found. Brynna was both furious and edgy. She’d spent a few minutes arguing on her cell phone and now sat fuming in the passenger seat, frequently glancing back at the bound prisoners as if they might be her salvation.

  Alexander knew what he had to do. He had no alternatives. He glanced at Max. With luck he could keep her alive, but she would never forgive or trust him again.

  They pulled into the underground garage of Aulne Rouge just before dawn. The heavy steel doors rolled closed with a loud rumble after the two vans rolled through. They parked and got out. Thor pushed open the rear doors, yanking Alexander out by his feet and flopping him over his shoulder. Cleo followed suit with Max.

  “Selange is going to be happy to see you two,” Brynna gloated as she bent over Max, whose eyes had finally opened. Brynna ran her fingers over Max’s cheek, then bent closer. “She’ll peel your skin off you and rip your bones out while you watch. You’ll scream until your throat is shredded and you’ll shit your pants. You’ll beg for her to stop and she won’t. I can’t wait to see it.”

  A slow smile unfurled on Max’s lips. “That bedtime story might terrify you, Kitten, but it sounds like Disneyland to me.”

  Brynna sneered and pulled back. “We’ll see about that.”

  But Alexander could almost feel the rats still squirming in his gut. He remembered what Max had told him’I’m a very good victim, and Giselle likes to practice.

  They were taken to cells located a level below Selange’s chambers. Each was a cage of iron bars wrapped in steel mesh. An outer frame of woven bone, wire, salt, and wood was layered with imprisoning spells. They were designed to hold the most powerful Uncanny and Divine creatures, though Alexander had doubts that they could have held the messenger angel.

  Thor wordlessly laid Alexander down on the floor inside his cell and locked the outer doors. Cleo carried Max inside and dropped her with a sodden thud, then kicked her in the stomach with her booted foot. Brynna brought in a green-and-white-striped rope and hooked it through a loop welded to a crossbar on top of the cell. She tied a hangman’s noose and dropped it gleefully around Max’s neck, then pulled the rope until Max was balancing precariously on her tiptoes in the center of the cell, gasping for breath. Brynna tied the rope off.

  “That will keep you thinking,” she said viciously, then locked the cell doors.

  Next she went to a thermostat on the wall and pushed the temperature button. Heat began to pour through the ducts. Brynna kept pushing until the thermostat read 101 degrees. Then she went to a sink on the wall and turned the cold-water spigot on.

  “When your mouth is so dry that you can’t swallow anymore, when your body stops sweating because it can’t afford to lose the fluid, when you’re so hungry that you start cannibalizing yourself to keep from dying’I want you to think of me and remember that I am responsible for your own private Disneyland. Enjoy it, bitch.”

  Alexander snarled silently. He should have killed her when he had had the chance.

  Brynna left, leaving the two prisoners alone. Except they were not, Alexander knew. The room was fully wired for sound and video. Somewhere, Selange was watching.

  He rolled over and managed to squirm upright, leaning back against the bars so that he could watch Max. She did not look at him. Her chin was held high by the rope and she could hardly keep her balance.

  Hours passed. Sweat dripped from the both of them and water continued to run tantalizingly in the sink. The heater ran continuously. Alexander’s eyes were parched and his lips cracked. His tongue clung to the roof of his mouth. He watched Max with furrowed brows. Her injuries the previous night had nearly killed her. How long would it take her to break?

  She tipped back and forth here and there, but mostly remained straight, showing no outward signs of strain. He could not tear his eyes away from her. He could feel the raw power of her’it was like standing naked in front of a hurricane. She held inside herself a violence, a wild recklessness, of the sort that could erase a town or tear apart a forest. Instead of weakening her, captivity seemed to peel away everything else but her essential force. She was terrifying and enthralling. He could imagine why a man might stand up against a killer storm just to feel the full breadth of its power as it swallowed him.

  It was close to sundown when Selange finally deigned to visit them. Max had begun to pant and her skin was dry. Her body was shutting down to protect itself. She looked gaunt, but her presence filled the chamber.

  The door opened and Selange entered. She wore spike-heeled boots over red velvet jeans and a loose white blouse. She stopped outside Max’s cell, examining her from head to foot. Then she came to look at Alexander.

  “What exactly are you up to, Alexander?”

  He had thought of what he needed to say all day. “You gave me a task. I completed it. I brought her to you,” he said hoarsely.

  “You failed the challenge,” she said, her nose rising, her lip curling. “You screamed like a child. You made me look weak in front of the entire Conclave.”

  “Let them think you are weak,” he said dismissively.

  “They will learn better soon enough. I may have failed the challenge, but I have not failed you. I have lured her back to you, and I bring news besides.”

  “News?”

  “Your angel delivered a scroll to the witch Giselle last night.”

  Selange frowned, her gaze narrowing. One finger rubbed back and forth along her upper lip. “Anything else?”

  He shook his head. “I beg you to forgive me. You know I am bound to you by chains of loyalty and love. I wish only to serve you once again.”

  “Marcus is my Prime now.”

  “He is inexperienced and I am stronger. You need me. You need all the strength you can get.”

  She gave him a measuring look, her eyes cold. Then nodded. “You were not strong enough last night. But you have done well, bringing her to me. I will give you a test of loyalty. If you pass, then you may return to serve me. But be warned, I will not tolerate any more whining from you. If I let you come back, then you will do what I say when I say it, no matter how much you don’t like it. Do you understand?”

  “Of course. I will do anything you want. Whatever it takes. I want to come home.”

  “Fine. Tonight is your test. Without the Hag’s staff, I have to find another weapon. I have to summon and bind to me something equally powerful. For that, I will need blood magic.”

  She paused as if waiting for a reply. Alexander had none. Selange was a flesh mage; she drew her power from people. They gave off so much magic in their daily lives’in their passions and wars, in their joys and their despairs. Magic poured off them in waves, and flesh mages such as Selange collected it for their own spells. But sacrifices gave off a much greater power.

  “Who?” he asked, hoping she would believe the rasp of his voice was from his parched throat rather than sick horror.

  She smiled at his discomfort. “Children. I must have at least thirteen of them, but twenty-one would be better. They must be innocent’unmolested and drug-free. None may be older than six. You and Marcus will take the Shadowblades tonight and find me what I need. I will conduct the spell at sundown in three days.”

  “So soon? Can you be ready that quickly?” Alexander asked, his stomach churning. Selange was not given to taking such desperate risks. He wished to hell he knew what the message in the scroll had been.

  “There is no choice.”

  With that she returned to Max’s cell, opened it, and went inside. “I can feel it on you. Where is it?” She did not seem to expect an answer. She held a flat hand out just inches from Max, stroking from side to side. Her fingers hovered between Max’s breasts. She shook her head. “So easy? I thought you would be a harder nut to crack.”

  She slid a small knife from a sheath in her sleeve and sawed a slit in Max’s shirt.

  Max tried to twist away. “Fucking bitch
,” she whispered.

  Selange ignored her, sliding her fingers into the tear. She grasped a pouch and pulled it out, sawing through the strings to free it.

  She smiled, gripping the pouch until her knuckles turned white. “This will help. With this and a champion of my own, I think the Guardians cannot force me to do anything.”

  “Guardians?” Alexander repeated harshly in surprise, then coughed raggedly. But their involvement made sense. No witch could control an angel. But witches served the Guardians. What was Selange doing? Why would she choose to defy them? There was no power on earth that could protect her from them.

  Selange ignored him. “I’ll be back to question you later,” she said to Max. “Try to be more polite when I do.” She gave Max a shove, knocking her off her delicate balance.

  Max swung from her neck, twisting and wiggling until at last her toes scraped the floor again and she came to a teetering halt. She gasped wrenchingly, her face scarlet. “I’m going to kill you,” she whispered at Selange, who was locking the cell.

  “You’re not going to have the chance. As for this’” The witch held up the pouch containing the hailstone. “You should have used it when you had the chance. Now I will use it to become stronger than any Guardian.”

  “She ...gave ...it ...to ...me,” Max wheezed. “Use it ...and you’ll ...be ...cursed.” She laughed, a coughing, hacking sound that knocked her off her feet again.

  Selange watched her, the tip of her tongue running back and forth over her lower lip. Finally she shook herself. “I will take that into consideration. In the meantime, you can stew about just how stupid you were not to take advantage of the hailstone when you had the chance.”

  The witch went to the wall and pressed her hand against it. A shimmer of pink witchlight flickered over a small square area, then a compartment popped open. The inside was lined with metal and held a wood box. Selange twisted open the lid and put in the pouch, then closed and replaced the box. She shut the door and sealed it with magic.

  “It will be safe there until I’m ready for it. Think of it’the means of your salvation only a few feet away and you can’t do a thing to get it. I bet that chews you up, doesn’t it? But don’t worry, I don’t plan to give you all that much time to agonize. I will harvest you, too. I will unwind the magic that makes you. The more you suffer, the more you hate, the more you fight’all of that will feed my strength.”

  With that, Selange opened the door and stepped out. A few minutes later, Thor apeared. He pushed into Alexander’s unlocked cell and used a pair of wire cutters to snip the heavy cable ties.

  Alexander could not help jerking away when Thor lifted him to his feet. He could not stop the memory of the other man standing in front of Max’s Tahoe with an Uzi cradled in his hands. For the first time since that night, he felt fury at Selange’s dismissal and his own Shadowblades’ betrayal. He felt Thor recoil as his anger swelled into something almost tangible. The air grew thick and heavy. Thor retreated a couple of steps, eyeing Alexander warily. “Selange wants you ready to roll by sundown. She says to put a feed bag on you and let you have your sticks and stones back. Says you’re one of us again.”

  “Never wasn’t,” Alexander said, glaring. The Texan’s gaze dropped almost instantly. Alexander’s fists knotted and he strode out of the cell. He halted outside of Max’s. She met his gaze for the first time since he had helped capture her. He felt the impact like a blow to his chest. He glanced up at the rope knotted to the metal loop above her. He could loosen it. Over decades, the spells Selange had layered into him had connected, fused together, and evolved, allowing him a certain amount of telekinetic power. Only Selange knew of it, and if he loosened the rope, she would know he had done it. He could not risk it.

  He gave Max one more hard look. She was a survivor. She was not going to let Selange kill her easily. With any luck he would be back to free her before dawn.

  He spun around and started out of the room, pausing to twist off the faucet and click off the heater. That much he could get away with.

  “It would be stupid to let her die before Selange is ready for her,” he said aloud. He followed Thor into the hallway and shut the door firmly. He would be back, and whatever it took, he would get Max out. He had to. He would be damned if he did less for her than she had for him.

  12

  AN HOUR LATER ALEXANDER FOUND HIMSELF back in the gray van. Cleo drove, Brynna sat shotgun, Thor slouched beside Alexander on the right, and on his left hulked Mercury. No one spoke. Alexander clenched and unclenched his fists. Mercury took out a knife and started jabbing it into the upholstery. Thor rolled his thumb over his forefinger in an endless circle. It was the only outward sign of his distress. Brynna tapped her polished nails on the dash. The sound hammered sharp and hard at Alexander’s skull.

  They were headed for Balboa Park and the zoo. The other two teams of Shadowblades were headed for Sea-World and the beach. Bile filled Alexander’s mouth at the thought of what they had been ordered to do. Even the endlessly ambitious Brynna was troubled. Alexander had always refused to attack innocents when he was bound to Selange, though he was aware she had employed others willing enough to conduct such ugly business on her behalf. Her Tatane familiar topped that list. Jade-eyed Kev was a stone-cold killer.

  They reached their destination all too soon. They parked on the west side of the park grounds near the miniature railroad. There were still cars in the parking lot, despite the fact that the railroad and the zoo had closed for the night. Usually families crowded the park on a midsummer’s night, picnicking and listening to music and attending the variety of other events. But a thick pall of smoke from the southern fires hung low, and he hoped those families had found other things to do this night.

  Thor stepped out onto the pavement. He carried a pellet gun. Lifting it, he shot out the streetlights with casual ease, and sheltering darkness settled over them.

  Quickly the other four levered themselves out of the van. Thor climbed back inside to return the pellet gun to its brackets.

  “We should split up,” Alexander said when no one seemed willing to take charge. Who wanted to be in charge of such a despicable mission as this? “We will be less likely to be noticed.”

  “No,” Brynna said. She pointed a finger at him. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re up to, Alexander, or what you told Selange, but you are not one of us, and I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  He shrugged. “Then the rest of you scatter and see what you can find. Take some tape. We do not want screaming.” Rolls of duct tape were piled in a sack in the back.

  For a long moment, no one moved. Then Brynna snarled and snatched up the bag. She handed a roll of tape to each of them and took one for herself, sliding it up on her arm like an industrial bracelet. “Fine. Questions? Kids no older than six. Don’t worry about mistakes. We’ll sort it out later when we’re back at the covenstead. If we get a couple that won’t work, we’ll take care of it later.”

  Take care of it? Did she mean kill them? Did it matter? For what Selange wanted to do, children would die. Alexander turned the tape in his hands. He had had every intention of following through with this. He planned to go after the children and bide his time until he could disable his companions. Then he would release the children and hightail it back to the coven-stead to get Max. He grimaced. Idiot plan. He should have known he could not go through with terrorizing little boys and girls. Not even for what he owed Max. He did not think she would blame him, much as she despised him now.

  He eyed his companions. Thor was still in the van. Good. Alexander drew a breath, shaking his head slowly. They were about to find out exactly what made him Prime.

  With blinding speed he rammed his fist into Brynna’s back, then caught her back-flung head and twisted it sharply on the stalk of her neck. Bones cracked loudly and she made a single gasping sound. A look of absolute shock was on her face as she stared at him, her head turned the wrong way around on her body. Then she slumped. She was d
ead. Shadowblades were strong, but not invincible’a lesson she frequently forgot.

  His attack had taken only a second. Alexander pivoted and flung Brynna’s body at Mercury. The other man staggered backward and grappled her aside. Alexander ducked as a shot rang out. A bullet whistled past his head. Another creased his neck. Thor was shooting from the van. Cleo’s Glock had hardly cleared the holster on her hip.

  Alexander lunged for her. She had a bad habit of planting her feet. It made her slow to move and react. He had spent many hours trying to train her out of it. Now he was grateful. He seized her wrist with both hands. Her gun went off, bucking in her hand. Alexander gripped hard, twisting and bending. Bones snapped. She screamed in agony.

  She punched him in the ear with her other hand. Pain exploded through his skull. But his bone-strengthening spells were old and powerful. He shook off the momentary blurriness in his vision and swung her hard around, hurling her toward Thor, who was outside the van now. He was the better shot of the three. He was also smarter and faster. One day he would be a good Prime.