“Your land,” Alexander said. He was leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed, looking deceptively calm. He wasn’t. “You might have been spared, but you practice the craft outside of a coven—right?”
Kyle and Max’s father nodded, frowning at Alexander.
“That’s right. We’re solitary practitioners, for the most part,” her father said.
“The Guardians don’t know you exist. So your land and your lives are fair game. If they’d known about you, they probably would have tried to recruit you for their war,” Alexander said.
“The Guardians?” Tory repeated.
She looked like Tris had at the same age, with long wheat-colored hair, a slender body with curves in all the right places, and a defiant curl to her lip, like she wasn’t going to let anyone push her around. Exactly like Tris. She was looking at Alexander as if he was dessert. Max suppressed a sudden urge to warn the girl off.
“What war?”
“The Guardians oversee the magical world. They decided that humanity has done too much to harm magic. So they’ve ordered a war to cull most of humanity and bring magic back as a force in the world. Chances are they gave this land to the obake and the bakemono in exchange for helping them,” Max explained. “This isn’t the only place they’re attacking. That’s why I have to take you back to Horngate. You’ll be safer there.”
“That’s your covenstead?” Kyle asked.
He looked eager, as did her father. The palm of Max’s hand itched to slap them. This wasn’t a game. People could die.
“It is. So I suggest you gather what you can’t live without and only what you can carry, and get ready to go,” she said curtly.
“How?” Kyle asked.
“That’s what we need to figure out. You, me, Alexander, and ….. Peter,” she said. Calling her father by his first name felt awkward and weird, but she couldn’t call him Dad, either. He was a stranger now, just like the rest of them. They were afraid of her and of what she’d become. She couldn’t blame them. But it hurt. More than she was willing to contemplate. She refused to let herself think about it.
Her father bustled everyone out of the kitchen. Her mother lingered, staring at Max.
“You look the same,” she said finally.
“I’m not,” Max said. It came out more harshly than she intended, but she was having a hard time managing her emotions.
“I see that.” Her mother lifted her chin. “We missed you. Very much.”
Max nodded. “I missed you, too.” So much. But being here now, she realized she had missed something that never really existed. Her parents weren’t who she thought they were.
“I want to hear about your life. If you will tell me. When we are safe.”
Her voice was tentative, but she was reaching out. It wasn’t the homecoming Max had dreamed of, but it was something. Not that Max could tell her much; there was too much her mother could never understand.
“Sure,” she said. “When we’re safe.” But she hadn’t been safe in thirty years.
Her mother left, and Max turned to her father, who was watching her and Alexander with sharp curiosity.
“What are you capable of?” Max asked abruptly, not bothering with manners. She was too pissed off. “Did you make the shield wards out there?”
Her father shook his head regretfully. “I’m a minor witch. Hedgewitch is what I’d be called in the old days. I can do small things, but I hired someone to make that ward line.”
“And you?” she asked Kyle.
“I’ve got some power. Tell me what you need.”
Max rubbed a hand over her mouth. The fastest way to Horngate was to go back through Winters to get to the freeway. But the smoke would certainly kill Jim and probably everyone else. If the shape-shifters didn’t get them first.
The only other way out was to take the road through the smoke, back to where she and Alexander had left their car. Hopefully they’d be able to outrun the obake and not get lost. It was shorter, but left them on the wrong side of Winters. They’d have to run for the coast and hope they got there before the crimson wind trapped them in the valley.
“Those are our two choices,” she said, explaining her thinking. “Unless one of you has a better idea.”
No one did.
“What about these Leshii friends of yours?” Max asked her father. “Will they help at all?”
He gave an embarrassed shrug. “They keep to themselves mostly. I tried to talk to them when the smoke descended, but they shape-shifted into grass and trees, and that was it.”
“They are in as much danger as we are,” Alexander said. “So long as the ward line holds, they will be safe enough, unless the smoke bothers them. But once it breaks, and undoubtedly it will, even if the Guardians have to send someone to smash it, then the obake will find the Leshii and kill them.”
She stood up. “I’m going to talk to them. Can you show me where?”
“I will.” Kyle stood.
She looked at Alexander. “Go see what we’re working with for vehicles.” She looked at her father. “And weapons. Anything you’ve got.”
She headed for the front door. As she went through the living room, she noticed a picture of herself on the mantel. It had been taken on a trip to the ocean when she was nineteen. She was hugging Tris in the water. Both girls looked happy. She looked away. She wasn’t that girl anymore, and neither was Tris. Nothing was the same.
She strode outside, letting herself flatten beneath the rising Shadowblade Prime. Human cares did not matter to the Blade, only war and killing.
“What the hell is that?” Kyle backed away from her.
“It’s what I am. What I really am.”
“But you’re—”
She smiled, toothy and dangerous. “Fucking scary? I’m supposed to be. Show me the Leshii.”
He led the way around the house and past the barns. He coughed frequently as the smoke chewed on his lungs. On the other side was a vegetable garden, the lush leaves wilted and curling black. At the far end was a compost heap, taller than Max was and grown over with wild garden plants. All around was thigh-high grass, and there was a single gnarled cherry tree.
“That’s the father. Careful where you step. Somewhere around here in the grass are the mother and children and a couple of aunts or uncles.” Kyle stayed at the foot of the garden while Max approached the Leshii tree. Her Shadowblade senses roamed over the grass, and she heard the muffled sounds of insects as they burrowed downward to escape the smoke.
She could feel the Leshii in the grass. In this form, she could pluck them and kill them as easily as stepping on a spider. She touched one, then another, then all five, brushing her fingers lightly over each stem. Then she stood before the tree.
“If I can find you all, the obake can, too. You aren’t safe here. Sooner or later, the ward line will break. The Guardians won’t let this place stand, not when they’ve decided to conquer it.”
The tree shivered like it had been struck with an ax, then the lines of it blurred and pulled inward, shrinking into itself until the father Leshii stood before her. He was only three and a half feet tall, with an ancient face and green eyes the color of a summer pond. His skin was as pale as grass that’s never seen the light of day, and the strands of his hair and beard fell about his head like willow twigs.
“Where is to go?” His voice was dry and earthy. “This is home for long time.”
“Time to find a new one. I’ve got a place you can go, with trees and water and few humans. But we’ll need your help to get out of the smoke.”
“New home?” He considered, closing his eyes and tipping his head back.
Max waited. You didn’t hurry fairies. One of the tall grasses lengthened and turned into a female Leshii. She looked like her husband, but without the beard. Her hair was fernlike.
She looked at Max, studying her. “We go,” she said finally. “What must be done for you to help?”
“We need you to help us find our way through th
e smoke when we leave.”
“No protection?”
Max looked at the two Leshii children and the two aunt Leshiis. The children had short, mosslike hair with tiny star-shaped flowers. The elders looked much like the mother.
“Keep your strength for yourselves. We’ll help you all we can.”
The father tipped his head, eyeing her. It was a measuring look, the same his wife had given her. “You ask for little.”
“I’ll ask for more if I need it.”
“And we do not give?”
“Then we might not make it to safety. But it’s your choice.” She did not want to force them or make demands. She needed their help, and they needed hers.
“You promise much.”
Clearly he was suspicious. She didn’t ask for enough to warrant helping them get out of there and providing a new home. He didn’t understand. There was a tit-for-tat notion of life in the Uncanny and Divine world. You didn’t put yourself in the position of owing anybody anything. You paid as you went, or you were sorry for it later when the bill came and it was more than you expected or wanted to pay.
Max crouched down to eye level. “I’ve asked what’s fair to ask,” she said. “I promise you a place to live, but only if we all get out of here alive. So you have to give first. I’m asking you to make a leap of faith on the word of a stranger. That’s a lot for you to give, as far as I’m concerned. I will ask for more if I need it. But right now, what I need most is eyes through the smoke. You protect your family. They are the whole reason you are trusting me, and if anything happens to them, then what’s the point?”
The Leshii father put his hands on her face. They were surprisingly soft and long, looking more like roots than fingers. He stared deep into her eyes. Finally, he nodded. “Agree.”
Max rose to her feet. “We’ll leave soon. Out the front gate. I’ll meet you there.”
She returned to Kyle and walked back to the house.
“They wouldn’t hardly talk to us. Just to make the deal that we would let them be and they would help the orchard.” He sounded slightly awestruck. “They wouldn’t say anything when the smoke hit.”
Max shrugged. “I had something to say they wanted to hear. And I’m scarier than you are.”
“I’m a witch,” he protested, sounding like a ten-year-old defending his honor.
Max smiled to herself. “You’re a witch,” she agreed. “But not a particularly frightening one. That’s not a bad thing, if you ask me. But I was made to kill and I’m pretty good at it. That makes me a threat the Leshii can’t ignore.”
“Threats can’t be all they respond to,” he said dubiously, and once again broke into a cough. When he pulled his hand from his mouth, it was spattered with blood.
“I don’t know about that. The world of the Uncanny and Divine is a world of danger, of give and take, kill or be killed. You don’t make a lot of friends.”
“Sounds lonely.”
She shrugged, thinking of Niko and Tyler and Oz and the rest of her fellow Blades and Spears. And Alexander. For so long, it had been terribly lonely. And now—
She stopped dead. Family. They were her family more so even than her own parents and Tris and Kyle, who were strangers to Max.
“Is something wrong?”
She shook her head. “No. Nothing’s wrong.” She kept walking.
Tris was waiting on the porch. She paced, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She turned as Kyle and Max approached through the acrid smoke.
“I want to talk to you,” she told Max. Her voice was raspy from the smoke, and her breath rattled in her lungs.
“I’ll go get ready,” Kyle said, taking the hint that he wasn’t welcome in this conversation.
Max stepped up onto the porch and leaned against the rail. “Whatever it is, keep it short. We don’t have a lot of time.” But it hurt, looking at Tris and seeing only anger.
“That was a great show in there, you know that? All the writhing about on the floor like you were in agony. Really convincing. But you lied. Dad said you have to want to become a Shadowblade; no one can make you do it.”
“Technically, that’s true,” Max agreed. Her heart pounded against her ribs. This was so much harder than she’d thought it would be.
“So what the hell kind of a game are you playing? Why all the drama? Why not just admit you wanted to be—” Tris gestured stiffly with her hand, still clutching her elbows tight against herself. “Whatever you are.”
Max bit her lips hard. “There’s no game and I wasn’t putting on a show. If I so much as think of trying to hurt Giselle, my compulsion spells punish me.”
“Then why? If it’s that bad, why did you do it? Just to be forever young? Were you that stupid?”
“Very stupid,” Max conceded, her stomach churning. “But I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. Not really.”
Tris stopped and stared. “You’re saying this was, what, an accident?”
Max ran her fingers through her hair. “I was drunk,” she admitted. “She asked the questions then. Would I like to live forever? Would I like to never grow old? Would I like to be superhumanly strong? I thought she was joking, so I said sure. That was all it took. I woke up a month later, and I wasn’t human anymore. I was this.” She waved a hand at herself. “And so long as I promised to stay away from you, she promised she wouldn’t have all of you killed.”
That caught Tris up short. She covered her mouth with her hands. “Killed?” she whispered. “Giselle? But she couldn’t mean it. She visited us. She wept for you.”
“She meant every word.”
“And there’s no way out? No way to undo this? What if Dad and Kyle helped you?”
Max shook her head. “No. But, Tris, this is who I am, and I wouldn’t go back now. Not even if I could. I’m—” She was going to say ….. happy. Holy mother of fuck—was it possible? In thirty years, she’d never been happy, never imagined it was even possible. But somehow it had sneaked up on her. Part of it was her ties to everyone at Horngate. So close she considered them family. Part of it was Alexander. Part of it was her strength and knowing that she could make a difference—protect the people she cared about.
“You like being a—” Tris motioned at Max’s clothes.
Max looked down. Her clothes were shredded and she was covered in blood, hers and the obake’s. “If I wasn’t a Shadowblade, then nobody would be here to help you now,” she said, lifting her gaze to her sister.
“But still—”
“But nothing. I am what I am, and I like it. I might hate Giselle and the fact that she owns me, but the rest is good.” She was surprised at how much she meant it. “Now, c’mon, little sister. We’ve got to get out of here before the sun comes up and I fry.”
“Would you really?”
Max snapped her fingers. “Poof. Me and Alexander both.”
“Oh, my God. You can’t go to the beach or watch the sunset?”
It was always the silly things people fixed on in a crisis. “No. But we can talk about it later. Go make sure your girls are ready.”
Tris looked at her a long moment, as if she wanted to say something else, then went inside. Max sighed and rubbed her chest. The smoke was still eating at her lungs. They had to get out of here fast.
“How are you doing?”
Alexander stepped up onto the porch and leaned against the rail beside her. She’d been aware of him for a few minutes. She looked at him.
“I’ll live. But I always do.”
He brushed his knuckles down her cheek, and she leaned into his touch, her throat knotting with pain she didn’t want to think about.
“It will get better.”
“Maybe. But I’m not my parents’ daughter anymore, and I don’t know if any of them can get around that.”
“You will have time to figure it out.”
She shrugged. Maybe. She stood up straight. “We’d better go. What kinds of vehicles did you find?”
He stood and slid his hands
delicately around her neck. She almost whimpered at the gentleness of his touch. It was so very opposite to the way she was feeling. He bent and brushed his lips against hers, and warming heat poured through her. He ran his hands down to her shoulders as he pulled away. She licked her lips, wanting more than a brief taste of him. He watched her, his eyes flaring. He stepped back, letting go.
“Just remember, I am not going anywhere,” he said, still watching her lips. “And if you ever try to hide from me, I will not believe you are dead. I will find you. Count on it.”
She stared at him. He meant it. And more than that. There was a promise under those words that made her stomach twist with both fear and longing. She licked her lips again, all too aware of the effect it was having on him and liking it a whole lot.
“You’d better,” she said finally. “Don’t let me down, Slick.”
Chapter 17
ALEXANDER HAD FOUND A PAIR OF PICKUP TRUCKS and a stock trailer. “There are a couple of little cars and an old Suburban. The gas tank is about empty on that one, and the obake would overrun the other two,” he told Max.
She was wound so tight he was afraid she was near to snapping. She was holding herself under tight control, but he could feel her emotions churning. There was little he could do for her except watch her back.
She nodded. “We’ll take just one truck and the trailer. Peter can drive and we’ll put everyone else inside the trailer. The windows are small and the back is closed. That will keep the obake from being able to swarm them. They’ll have to fight off the bakemono. Nothing will keep them out.” The smoke creatures could slide inside a crack and shift into a flesh shape to attack.
“Are they up to it?”
“They’ll have to be. Kyle can ride with them. I don’t know if he knows how to use his magic to kill, but he’ll have to learn fast. You’ll ride on the running boards and try to keep Peter alive, and I’ll protect the Leshii.”
It was not a good plan, but he had nothing better to offer.
Max went back to the house to fetch her family, and he went back to the barn and found several lengths of chain. He had already filled the back of the truck with all the tools he could find that might serve as weapons. He returned to the trailer and hooked the chain up inside so that it could be locked from within.
Crimson Wind Page 26