Crimson Wind

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  She tried the phone again, but there was still no service. She came out of the office and found Alexander waiting. He was holding a bouquet of knives from the butcher room in the back of the store. She took two of them, tucking one into each sock. He followed suit, then added two more to his rear waistband.

  Outside, they went around back, crossed a narrow treed lot, and found themselves back on Highway 5. Cars clogged it in a solid mass. There was no way to drive on the road in either direction. Terrific. They’d have to hoof it back north until they could find both a car and some room to drive. Max started to tell Alexander so and then hesitated. There was one last thing she had to do. It would take a little time, but— She didn’t finish the thought. Stupid or not, crunched for time or not, she wasn’t going to just abandon the people they’d saved—Matthew, Amanda, their baby, Baker the biker, Geoff Brewer, and his two sons. Besides, Horngate needed witches, and Amanda was certainly one of those.

  “Where did you leave them?” she asked Alexander.

  He surprised her when he didn’t ask whom she was talking about. “Up the road a ways.”

  “Show me.”

  She started away, and he overtook her. They broke into a run, their canvas bags bouncing awkwardly. They must have made quite a sight, Max thought. Not that anyone was looking. Mount Shasta, its red eruption, and the shimmering curtain of the enchantment held every eye hypnotized.

  They had not gone far—not even two miles—when they met up with the group they were looking for. Geoff was carrying Amanda, who remained unconscious. He was red and sweating. Matthew walked stoically beside them, the baby crying. Behind came the two boys and Baker. They all looked dour and determined.

  They came to a stuttering halt when they saw Max and Alexander approaching. Matthew stepped protectively in front of Amanda, holding his daughter tightly. Baker stepped around on the other side, shielding the rest of her. The boys edged closer to their father. They all smelled of sweat and fear. Like she and Alexander hadn’t saved their asses. Why would they come back and attack? Still, she appreciated the way they protected one another, strangers as they were. They were good people. Horngate needed good people.

  “Where are you headed?” Max asked.

  “He told us to get out, go north,” Baker said, jerking his chin at Alexander. He’d lost his green bandanna. His hair was mostly brown and clung wetly to his scalp. It was as hot now as it had been earlier in the day. “So we’re heading north.”

  “Our mom is in Redding. Is she going to be okay?” one of the boys asked, the one with black hair. His hands were jammed into his pockets, and he was doing everything he could not to look scared. Tough kid.

  “I don’t know,” Max said. “Probably not,” she amended more honestly. Telling them lies because she didn’t want them to worry wasn’t doing anybody any favors. “If she survived the initial fall of magic, then she’ll be facing a lot of trouble.” She shrugged. “The odds aren’t good.”

  “Dad! We have to go get her,” urged the other son with the bleached hair tips and the half-assed mohawk.

  “Then you will all die,” Alexander said. “Max and I almost did not get out of there, and we are a lot better prepared for that world than you are.”

  “So what do we do?” Baker asked. “We all live down there—Matt and Amanda are from Sacramento, and I’m from Yuba City. Where do we go now if we can’t go home? Where is safe?” His voice was clipped and hard as flint. Max wondered if he’d been in the military. He had the look of resolute determination she associated with men who’d been ordered into battles they couldn’t win.

  “There’s a place in Montana where you can be safe.”

  “Safe?” Geoff barked harshly. “Who the hell can be safe anymore with that going on?” He pointed toward the bloody magic pouring out of the top of Mount Shasta. His face was deeply lined, and he swayed under Amanda’s weight.

  Alexander set down the bags he was carrying and plucked the unconscious woman out of the other man’s arms.

  “‘Safe’ is a relative term,” Max admitted. “Horngate has had its share of troubles, and we’ll be seeing more. But it’s a place to go where you’ll have shelter and food and some protection. But you’ll have to agree to keep the place a secret and obey its rules.”

  “What kind of rules?” Baker demanded.

  “The kind that keep everybody alive. Any more than that, you’ll find out when you get there. If you want to go.”

  “And if we don’t like these rules? If we don’t want to stay at this Horngate place?” Geoff asked.

  “Then you can try your luck somewhere else. But this isn’t the only volcano going off, and it isn’t the last magical attack.”

  “And Amanda? Is she going to be all right?” Matthew was staring at his wife, looking both worried and fearful.

  “She’ll wake up eventually. And then she’ll need some help. She can get that at Horngate.”

  He gulped. “Help?”

  “Training in her craft.”

  He made a face like he had eaten a raw onion. “Witchcraft.”

  No doubt his head was dancing with images straight out of The Wizard of Oz.

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t— Will she— What—” Matthew couldn’t put his questions into words. He stroked his daughter’s head, tears running down his cheeks. “Is she still going to be herself?”

  Max nodded. “She’ll just be able to use magic.”

  “We have to get moving,” Alexander said before Matthew could ask anything more. He backed away, forcing the others to follow after him.

  Max picked up the sacks that Alexander had dropped and fell in behind, chafing at their slow progress. She glanced at the eastern sky. Dawn was maybe an hour off. That left them precious little time.

  Alexander must have come to the same conclusion, because he increased his pace so that the others were panting as they hurried along, sometimes breaking into a jog to keep up.

  “What’s the hurry?” Baker asked breathlessly.

  “We have some other business to take care of,” Alexander said. “It is urgent.”

  “What’s more urgent than this?”

  Neither Max nor Alexander answered.

  People watched curiously as they threaded between the parked vehicles, which included motor homes and semi trucks. The stink of diesel fumes could not cover the overwhelming smell of magic.

  At last, the stream of cars began to thin. There was no other traffic coming. Police must have diverted it, maybe up by Grenada or Yreka. Max wondered where the emergency vehicles were—she would have expected to see them and the National Guard, too. But maybe they’d been sent elsewhere, like to evacuate the valley cities. Or maybe Mount Rainier had popped its top, too, and there wasn’t enough emergency help to go around.

  Alexander stopped, turning in a slow circle. Max eyed the cars around them. Most were empty. Maybe their drivers had gotten out and walked. More than a few were trapped in place by other cars. A gray minivan caught her attention.

  “There.”

  Alexander passed Amanda to Baker and followed Max. The van was locked, but Max opened it without a problem. Inside was meticulously clean. Satchels of prescription drug samples and a small suitcase filled the rear, and a bar of hanging clothes stretched across the rear seat.

  They removed the drugs and the clothing, stacking them on the side of the road. Then they lifted the van and carried it out from between the cars that wedged it in from front and back.

  “Ho-ly shit,” Baker said with a low whistle as they turned the vehicle around. “What the hell are you two?”

  “What we are is in a hurry,” Max said shortly, waving at them to get in.

  They put Amanda in the rear with her husband and baby. They were going to have to do without a car seat. The two teenage boys took the two middle seats, and Baker volunteered to drive while Geoff sat shotgun.

  “We need a screwdriver,” Max called to Alexander. “See if you can find a tool kit.”r />
  “A screwdriver won’t work,” Baker said. “You need a lot more …..” He trailed off. “Never mind. If you can lift a car, you have all the torque you need to break the lock pins and start the car.”

  Max grinned at him. “Perks of magic.”

  There were no tools in the van, but Alexander found a screwdriver in a rusty ranch pickup a few cars away. Max jammed it into the lock, then backed away.

  “You’d better do it,” she told him. “The lock will open for me, but then they’ll never get it restarted if they need to shut it down. Break the pins, and it won’t be a problem.”

  He leaned in and twisted. There was a crackling noise as bits of metal snapped, and then the engine roared to life. He stepped back, and Baker got in.

  “So how do we get to this Horngate place?” he asked after a moment of awkward silence.

  “Wait! I don’t know if I want to go there,” Matthew said from the rear. He held the baby against his shoulder, rubbing her back. Amanda was propped against the window.

  “Where else is there?” Geoff asked quietly. “None of us can go home. Do you have family or friends somewhere else who could put you up?”

  “There have been eruptions all over the world,” Max said. “Anywhere you go, you’ll probably find trouble.”

  “You think this isn’t the only one?” Geoff asked, looking like she’d clubbed him in the side of the head.

  “I know it’s not.”

  “So what makes you think this Horngate place is safe?” Baker asked.

  “That’s a long story. But it is safer than most places for you right now.”

  “Are there more people like you there?”

  Max nodded. “And some who are even more ….. interesting.”

  He scowled. “They’ll welcome us?”

  “They will.” She hoped. Giselle had claimed that she wanted to make Horngate a sanctuary for humanity in this war the Guardians were waging, but the witch-bitch had never said whom she was willing to take in. Maybe she was looking for Nobel Prize winners or people she considered more deserving than a biker, a father, two teenagers, and a young family. On the other hand, fuck what Giselle wanted. Horngate was Max’s home, too, and these people needed a place to go.

  “Give me that pad of paper and pen.” She pointed at the console. She wrote down directions and drew a map to Horngate. “Call this number first,” she said, writing down Niko’s cell number. “Hopefully they’ll still have phone service. Tell them I sent you. If you can’t reach them, then drive to Horngate. Someone will stop you, and you should give them this note. She jotted a few lines and handed the pad back to Baker. “Tell them what happened here.”

  She stepped back, bumping into Alexander, who stood silently behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. She twitched as she started to shake him off, then stood still.

  “Things will be strange there,” she warned Baker.

  His brows rose. “Stranger than that?” he asked incredulously, pointing toward the enchantment.

  She shrugged. “You might think so.” She wondered what they’d think of the two angels. If any in the van had a religious bent, they might be a little thrown to find out that angels were creatures of magic, not holy messengers of God. “You’d better get going.”

  Baker hesitated. “Maybe we should wait for the two of you to come with us.”

  She shook her head. “We might not make it back.”

  He sucked his teeth. “Then we go by ourselves. Good luck to you.” He put the van in gear, then looked out the window again. “Thanks for your help. We wouldn’t have made it out of there if not for you.” He pressed on the gas and waved, and the van sped away into the night.

  Max watched the taillights grow smaller. “Our turn,” she said. “We’d better hurry.”

  “Right this way,” Alexander said, pointing at a blue Toyota Corolla.

  Max opened it up and popped the trunk.

  “Nice talent, that one. Valery would envy you. You could be partners in crime.”

  “You’ve got the amulet. You be her partner,” Max said, regretting the words as soon as they slipped out. She didn’t know why the question of the amulet was chewing on her so much. She had told Alexander to leave, to escape living under the control of a witch. Why should it bother her that the amulet might make going easier for him? She ought to be happy for him.

  “I have a partner already,” he said, his eyes glittering.

  “Me?”

  “No one else.”

  He was looking at her with that hungry look that curled her toes. It made her want to hit him. He was demanding so much more than she had to give. She had no time, dammit, and if she did— And if she did, what would she do with it? She thrust the question away. It was stupid to even think about it. Scooter was waiting for her.

  “Primes don’t have partners,” she said curtly, and turned her back before he could reply.

  She looked down into the trunk. It was full of clothes, ratty shoes, bats and mitts, greasy rags, empty oil bottles, a deflated car inner tube, three stained ties, a collection of hats touting various businesses, a plastic tarp, a sleeping bag, and a half dozen empty cartons of cigarettes. She started grabbing junk and dumped it onto the road. She wrinkled her nose. It smelled like the bottom of an ashtray that had been dropped into a Porta Potty. Riding inside was not going to be pleasant.

  “We should find another car,” she said.

  Alexander looked over his shoulder and grinned maliciously. “No time. Everything around here either has no trunk or is too small.” He waved his hand at the surrounding cars. “And we are in a hurry, right, boss?”

  He made boss sound like an insult. And he was right. Bastard. She bared her teeth in a silent snarl and started grabbing the debris again.

  Alexander abandoned her to unfold the windshield screens and start taping them together in a large silver quilt. When she’d cleared the trunk, Max went to help him, overlapping the screens before taping them. This was going to be her light-tight shelter inside what protection the trunk would offer—if the stench didn’t kill her first.

  In a few minutes, they’d folded together a soft-sided rectangular box. The top remained open. Max would climb into it, and Alexander would finish taping it up and put her in the trunk.

  “We’ll have to find another screwdriver if you want to be able to shut down the car,” she said.

  “You forget, I am telekinetic. I can turn the lock with my mind.”

  She had forgotten. “Then let’s load up and get going.”

  “Hey! What are you doing with my car?”

  A man in a wrinkled brown suit was jogging toward them, threading his way between the vehicles. His hair was thinning, and his face was florid. He had a cigarette pinched in the fingers of his right hand.

  Alexander leaned his hip against the car. “You want me to handle this, boss?”

  Max glowered at him, resisting the urge to kick his ribs in. “Oh, look. It’s Mr. Helpful. Where were you when I couldn’t find any underwear?”

  She flushed as his gaze dropped, his eyes sharpening as if he could see through the denim of her pants.

  “I said get away from my car!”

  The car’s owner had stopped a few feet away. He was panting, and Max could smell his strong odor, like he hadn’t showered in three days and had dumped a bottle of cologne over himself to mask the stink. It hadn’t worked. He pointed with his cigarette hand.

  “Back off! I mean it.”

  “I’m sure you do, Spanky. But it isn’t going to happen,” Max said. “We’re taking your car. We need it more than you do at the moment.”

  “Like hell you are, bitch. I’ll call the cops.” His face turned a darker shade of red, and he was spitting.

  “You do that. C’mon, Slick. Let’s go.”

  Spanky leaped in front of her as she started for the car. He was shaking as he stabbed the air in front of her face with his finger. He might need it broken to teach him some manners. Course, s
he was in the middle of stealing his car. He might deserve some leeway for that.

  “You bitch! I am going to teach you a lesson.” He flicked his cigarette butt at her.

  Max batted it aside. “You know,” she said, “the pointing was rude, but I was going to let that pass, because I can see how you’d be upset. I mean, sure, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and you’re probably going to die screaming any day now, but I get that seeing someone steal your car would make you mad enough to lose your manners. But the cigarette? That’s just uncalled for.”

  She snatched him by the collar and lifted him off the ground. He gagged, and his feet kicked helplessly. His face turned more red, and she could hear his heart galloping like a frantic goat.

  “Seeing as how I’m in a hurry and you’ve got some right to be pissed, I’ll let you off easy,” she said. She carried him over to the rear tire of a battered old pickup truck. “Hand me that inner tube,” she told Alexander.

  He brought the discarded inner tube from the trunk to her, and she set her prisoner down on the ground beside the truck. She snapped the tube in half and then pulled away two long strips. Spanky watched her with openmouthed terror.

  “Put your hands behind your back,” she said.

  He complied slowly. She tied them tightly together, then used the second strip to make a large loop off his shackles. She motioned for Alexander to lift the truck up and slid the loop under the tire. Alexander eased the truck back down, and Spanky wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Not until someone came along to help him. A thought caught her. She bent and patted his pockets, then reached into his front right and fished out the keys.

  “Let’s go,” she said, tossing them to Alexander.

  Spanky said nothing as they loaded the trunk with the silver cocoon, the grocery bags, and the rowan spear. They lifted his car out from between the bumpers of the vehicles trapping it in place. They climbed in, and Alexander fitted the key into the ignition. The car roared to life, and they sped off north.