Bitter Night

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  “Just that when he visited here he set a spell and it would shut off when everyone was depleted.”

  “We must find it and break it. There’s no other way.”

  Again a shuddering boom shook the cavern. The timbers of the ceiling creaked ominously. Giselle looked up worriedly. “We’d better hurry or there will be no point.”

  Max rubbed a hand across her mouth. Alexander edged closer. She was starting to get the same feral look she had had in Julian, right before she was about to throw herself into a suicidal battle with Selange’s Shadowblades.

  “We’re not going to withstand much more of this,” said the black-haired cook from the kitchen truck. The white stripes in her hair seemed to almost glow. Her gaze was locked on Max. Something in the way she spoke sounded portentous. When the words made Max jerk like she had been struck, Alexander was certain there was more going on here than he knew. He wanted to demand answers, but doing so would more than likely get him locked up somewhere in the bowels of the mountain. As far as Giselle was concerned, he was still the enemy. He bit down hard on the inside of his lip, forcing himself to stay quiet.

  “Make your Prime use her hailstone,” Selange said into the tense silence. “Have her wish the angels into hell. Better yet, have her wish them into your service.”

  Giselle stiffened. “Hailstone?”

  “Didn’t she tell you? But of course not. She wanted to keep it for herself. You can’t trust any Shadowblade or Sunspear. They’ll turn on you when you least expect it.” Alexander met her searing look with an unrepentant grin and a bow. An ugly flush seeped up her neck into her cheeks. Her hands clenched. She glared at Giselle, her voice turning silky. “She fed the Hag her blood and was given a hailstone for her trouble. Make her give it to you.”

  Max smiled wickedly at Selange. “Sorry. Used it already. But if you want, I’ll let you wait until it drops out of my ass and see what kind of magic you can do with it.”

  “You used it?” Giselle asked. She thrust herself forward, grabbing Max’s arm. “Tell me what you asked for. Tell me now.” Despite her demanding words, her tone was breathless and placating. “What did you want, Max?”

  For a moment Max didn’t speak. She’d gone inward to that cold place of calm. Alexander’s hands twitched. She wanted freedom beyond anything else. His stomach tightened and he knew without a doubt what she had wished for.

  But then, he had forgotten she didn’t leave any of hers behind. And Horngate was hers.

  “I wanted’” She paused, her jaw jutting as her eyes locked tight on Giselle. “I want the Guardians and their minions to forget Horngate and all who live inside its borders. Forever. I want them to forget Horngate ever existed.”

  Giselle’s hand came up to cover her mouth and she closed her eyes.

  “You stupid bitch!” Selange shouted. “What good does that do us? The angels will destroy us. What kind of stupid fool are you? If you were mine, I’d see your skin flayed away every day for a year. I’d gouge out your eyes and fill the sockets with hot tar. I’d’”

  “Want to see what I can do with you?” Max asked softly. “Or are you the kind of witch-bitch who can dish it out like a lunch lady on crack, but your tits shrivel up when you get a taste of your own medicine?”

  Alexander bit back his laughter. Like it or not, Horngate needed Selange right now, and she did not take well to ridicule. Especially from him.

  “Can’t you control your dog?” Selange said coldly to Giselle. “I remind you I am a territory witch with a powerful coven under my rule. You would do well to show me the respect I deserve.”

  “As I recall, you broke the rules of the challenge, sending your Blades after Max and Alexander. And then what about the right of free passage? You deserve a great many things from me. Respect is not one of them,” Giselle shot back.

  “You’ll choke on those words when you ask for my help,” Selange spat.

  “Then you might as well leave now, don’t you think? Why don’t you go out the way you came in?” Max said.

  Selange paled and fell silent.

  Giselle smiled slowly and looked at Max. “Well done,” she said softly.

  “She’s right, though. Doesn’t exactly help with the here and now.”

  The mountain shuddered again. A sound like the moan of a wraith ran through the room, raising the hair on Alexander’s arms. He scanned the ceiling. A heavy beam sagged downward, then dropped free. It smashed against the floor with a sound like a bomb going off. Luckily it was at the far end of the cavern and no one was injured. This time. Splinters of wood sifted down, and there were more creaks and moans as the entire ceiling shifted uneasily.

  “The mountain is going to come down if we don’t stop them,” Max said. “Where are my Blades? And Oz?”

  “They went to try to fend the angels off. I haven’t heard from them since.”

  “That will not work,” Alexander heard himself say. “They are immune to mortal attacks.”

  “We had to do something,” Giselle said coldly. “I have done what I can. Now I must try to break Alton’s spell and pull the shields back where they can do some good for those of us here.” She looked at Max, who was looking up at the ceiling, her brow furrowed in thought. “What is it?”

  Max lowered her head, rubbing her hand over her mouth, her eyes narrowed as she chased an idea. At last she turned purposefully to Giselle. “If my hailstone wish worked, then the Guardians should be forgetting about us, right?”

  Giselle nodded, frowning. “Right.”

  “Then when do the angels start to forget?”

  The witch waved her hand dismissively. “Not until they leave. It will be too late by then. They won’t leave until they destroy each other and us with them. Even if we get shields between us and them, we’ll give out before they do. A coven at full strength can’t stand against even a single angel. Our only real hope is for them to kill each other soon, and that is unlikely. They do not die easily.”

  A dangerous, reckless smile curved Max’s lips, and Alexander felt himself go cold. “No, that’s not our only hope. But you’ll need to get the shields working’enough to buy me some time. Otherwise there’s no point.”

  “Time? Time for what?”

  “I’m going to talk to them.”

  “Talk? And what will you say?” Selange said derisively. “ΓÇÿPlease don’t slaughter us’? Are you insane? The only chance we had was to destroy them using the hailstone.”

  Alexander was equally incredulous. But Max was dead serious. That dark, wild recklessness gleamed in her eyes, and he wanted to knock her down and tie her up until she came to her senses.

  She never looked away from Giselle, who looked more thoughtful than dubious. “It’s entirely possible that I might be able to convince them to join Horngate,” Max said. “If they did, their Guardians would forget them.”

  “Why would they? Even if they could get around their compulsion spells?”

  “Because there’s a chance they might one day be free. That’s worth more than you know.”

  Giselle did not have time to answer. Another massive blow struck the mountain. The floor leaped and buckled, and heavy chunks of stone and wood fell, shattering the quiet. The air filled with smoke and dust, and above, a fissure gaped in the rock ceiling. Thunderous crashes exploded throughout the cavern as more chunks of stone and ceiling collapsed. Flaming meteors of burning rock and wood fell through the gash in the mountain above, and where they fell, they spread.

  Max had shoved Giselle down by the wall, using the chair as a shield for the witch. She batted away the falling rubble with her hands. Alexander stood beside her, helping to protect the witch and those who huddled beside her. At last the avalanche slowed to a sift of pattering stones. Above, Alexander could hear the struggle between the angels continue. There was a clang of metal, like dozens of swords clattering together. The smell of sulfur and smoke was thick, and orange flames limned the stone far above.

  Alexander coughed and gasped, then
froze in place. A mass of timbers and stone filled the anneau floor like the rubble from an earthquake. None of the witches could have survived it.

  Max eyed the rubble, her jaw shaking, her teeth clamped tight. She turned away and pulled Giselle to her feet. “Will that have broken Alton’s spell?” she asked hoarsely.

  Giselle nodded. “Probably.” Like Max, she did not allow herself the luxury of grief.

  “Can you raise a shield?”

  “I think so. But I can’t hold it long. Not with the magic they are throwing at us.”

  “They are not trying to hit us,” Alexander found himself saying. “When they do, we will be in real trouble.”

  “Then we had better hurry up,” Max retorted. She turned to Selange. “If you don’t want to die today, I suggest you help. And you,” she said to the Shadowblades who surrounded Selange like a wall. They were bleeding and covered with gray dust, and two were missing. “You’re welcome to come help, but if you decide to stay here and protect your witch-bitch, let me give you a little something to think about. If anything happens to Giselle, I will hunt Selange down and kill her. If I can’t, then my Blades will, and if they can’t, then the Sunspears. Trust me on this’someone will come. Remember what Scooter said’you’re his enemies. So when you’re thinking about protecting your witch-bitch, remember that you’d better be watching out for Giselle, because if you don’t, you sign Selange’s death warrant.”

  Max didn’t wait for a reply. She thrust past Alexander and he followed. They bounded over the debris. At the far end, they found the door blocked. It took two minutes to clear it. In that time, molten rock began dropping from the crevice above. It landed on the pearlgray shield that was slowly rising like a bubble. Where it hit, the shield puckered and pitted. The flames died slowly, the light of the shield fluctuating erratically.

  Once they’d cleared the door, they entered a lofty, pillared sitting area. Once cozy nooks were scattered all around. Hallways led away like spokes of a wheel. Alexander could tell that much, though here, too, the ceiling had begun to collapse and many pillars had broken, shattering the tile floor. Except for the sounds of the battle above, a suffocating silence flowed through the space.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked.

  “I hope they are in the greenhouses’those buildings have their own weather wards, and that might protect them from the fire and smoke. But if you’re asking why there aren’t a lot more people in the hall, then the answer is that we are a small covenstead. There are only about eighty of us altogether.” Max waved a hand at the cavernous space. “Giselle built this place expecting a crowd one day. Maybe she should have named us Noah’s Ark instead of Horngate. Let’s hope we aren’t about to be the Titanic.”

  She led the way down one of the hallways. A dozen yards up, she stopped. To the left was an ornate marble stairway leading upward. Or it had been. It had crumbled to bits. Max didn’t say a word. Alexander was not sure he would have heard if she did. The mountain shook again, and the hollow, moaning sound it made was deafening, as if the earth itself screamed agony. The sound went on, the air filling with dust, rocks, and debris raining down. He coughed, sprinting after Max as she turned back the way they’d come. She darted across the open area, hurtling overturned furniture and the squat boles of the fallen pillars as the mountain shook. At the far side she slid into a concealed hallway. It was so narrow that she had to turn sideways to get through. At the end was a vertical shaft with a steel ladder bolted to the wall. Flashes of orange light winked faintly above. Rocks pinged down, clanging against the metal rungs and cracking like bullets against the buckled floor.

  “Stay close.”

  “My own personal Max-umbrella,” he said as she started up into the barrage.

  She looked down. “Was that a joke? I didn’t think you were capable. Did you sprain something?”

  “You are a bad influence.”

  “Not that bad’the joke sucked.”

  He pushed on her calf. “Get going before you add another rock to the rest in your head.”

  She climbed rapidly, ducking and weaving back and forth, dodging what she could. Still Alexander heard more than one stone missile hit flesh. She never flinched nor uttered more than a grunt. He kept close, feeling the battle above in the vibrations that ran constantly through the steel beneath his hands and growled softly from the stone chimney enclosing them.

  Divine magic filled the air, pulling and twisting like a live thing, raising silver sparks in Alexander’s hair and along his skin. He wasn’t the only one. The fiery flashes from above were growing stronger, and heat washed down over him, increasing with every rung of the ladder.

  Three-quarters of the way up, they reached a point where a spur of granite had fallen and lodged sideways in the chimney. The ladder was crushed and swayed away from its moorings. A gap to one side of the fallen rock was big enough to squirm through, but with precious few handholds, and the stone could give way at any second.

  Max did not even slow down. She climbed to the top of the uncertain steel and leaped. Her body bowed and her hands clawed for a hold, and her feet scrabbled against the rock. Then she heaved herself up, disappearing from sight. The monstrous slab of stone scraped and groaned, and he held his breath as he waited for it to break free.

  “Alexander?” Max called. She sounded breathless.

  “Here.”

  “Can you follow me? There’s a lip there just inside the gap. Grab it and pull up until you can get your feet on it, and then push up. I’ll grab you.”

  Another thundering roar struck the mountain, and magic rushed down the shaft. The stone pipe blurred under the onslaught, momentarily turning to liquid. The magic didn’t affect the ladder, but the rivets that held it in place popped free, and the ladder tilted away from the wall. The boulder dropped at the same moment. Alexander relaxed his hands and jumped, sliding down the ladder. A few seconds later as the rock solidified again, he clenched his hands and stopped his fall. The slab of stone had wedged again. Slowly he climbed back up, the ladder creaking protest as it bent back to rest against the opposite wall.

  “Alexander?” Max’s voice echoed. “Are you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you get up?”

  “Give me a minute.”

  He reached the top of the ladder and scanned the stone. Even as he watched, it grated downward with an ominous groan. There looked to be a narrow crevice on the opposite side. The only way to reach it was to leap across, grappling a handhold on the unstable boulder. He did not let himself consider. He launched himself across the fifteen feet and slammed against the granite, clawing a horizontal crack. He hung there, his heart pounding. Nothing happened. He let go with one hand, spidering his fingers across the rough surface. He found a place to grip and swung over, his legs dangling uselessly. Another handhold. Another. One more. He was across. He looked up into the opening and saw Max above. Behind her, the top of the shaft was a fiery furnace. She smiled fiercely with that wild recklessness that scared the hell out of him.

  “Just remember I told you to run when you had the chance. You could have been lounging on a beach somewhere,” she called.

  “Sounds boring,” he said, his arms straining as he scanned for another handhold. The stone slipped a couple of inches. He lost his grip and dangled one-handed. He twisted, his shoulder popping.

  “Just above you there’s a lip,” Max said. “No’to the right. That’s it. Hurry.”

  As if he needed to be told. He hooked his fingers over the inchwide outcropping and pulled himself up until he could reach Max’s outstretched hand. He gripped her tightly and kicked up through the gap until he sprawled on the fallen hunk of stone. The heat here was like a blast furnace.

  “Boring might be a nice place to be right about now,” she said. “Come on. This rock could go at any time. I do not want to be on it.”

  Her eyes danced and her face was alight. Alexander rolled to his feet beside her. “You are enjoying this.”

&n
bsp; She grinned. “Aren’t you?”

  Remarkably, he was. “Perhaps neither of us has enough clowns for a circus.”

  “Of course we don’t. Comes with the job. That’s why we’re standing here talking nonsense while the world is going to hell all around us. Let’s go.”

  The ladder was entirely destroyed but for a few rivets and scrap. The walls of the shaft were crumbled and fissured from the heat and the magic quakes. Max took off her shoes, tucking her socks inside. She knotted the laces together and slung them around her neck. Alexander eyed her suspiciously before doing the same. He was not a climber, but he recognized that having his toes free would be an advantage.