War Witch

by Layla Nash

  Stupid, to think I could outrun a shifter. I cast confusion spells and smoke screens as I ran, out of breath with the heavy bag and grimoire bouncing against my side, but I had to get to the Skein. I just needed a little time to figure things out, and then we could avert the war. I could get the witches back.

  I focused on that as my lungs burned and my legs grew heavy and not even magic could give me energy to keep going. But the streets grew quiet and still behind me, the only sound my panting and coughing, and I slowed to a halt still several blocks from the Skein. They’d given up awfully easy for two guys under threat of death by the Chief Investigator.

  I didn’t bother to celebrate or question my good luck, and started a limping jog to make it the rest of the way to the memorial. If they stalked me from a distance, so be it. At least I had a cleansing spell to get the pepper spray off me.

  Chapter 41

  I welcomed the darkness as I limped into the Skein. The trip through the Slough’s overgrown paths to reach the memorial left me covered in sap-laden leaves and scratches. And I still couldn’t catch my breath, though I couldn’t tell if that was because of exertion or the periodic tsunami of panic that rolled through me every time I thought about not having anyone to trust in the world.

  In contrast, Eric looked unruffled and impeccably dressed in a man’s suit and trench coat, not unlike the one I’d left in the Remnant. Maybe she had a closet full. She eyed me askance, rubbing the five o’clock shadow that was an elegant touch to her disguise. “I didn’t think you’d make it.”

  “It’s been a rough night,” I said. I picked another twig out of my hair. “What the hell is going on? Did you guys just throw the Truce out the window? Why the fuck would you attack Soren’s house?”

  “You needed everyone away from here to do your thing,” she said, slowly and deliberately like I’d forgotten something obvious. “After this morning at the crime scene, Stefan figured you found some kind of dark magic. We saw the War-dog carry you out of there, so we assumed that you brought the bad stuff to the Peacemaker’s house. Done and done.”

  I clutched at my head, staring at her. “You just started another war. Don’t you understand?”

  Eric shrugged and picked something out of her teeth. “I think it’ll settle down again, but it won’t matter to us. While the humans and animals fight each other, we can finally be free to do what we want. To get lokis to the top of the food chain.”

  “This isn’t an opportunity, you psychopath!” I shoved past her into the clearing and tried to focus. Finding the witches had to be my first priority. Once I had Tracy back with me, and maybe some of the younger witches, we could figure out what the hell happened and what we could do about it.

  Eric followed, though her eyes narrowed and darkened as she watched me. “I’m not crazy, Lily. You are, if you think for a second that the animals would allow you to live, if they knew what you are. Those animals are crazy, thinking they can remain in control a single day longer, and the humans are the worst of all.”

  I strained to hear the sounds of pursuit or ambush, but nothing reached me but the rustle of leaves and Eric’s stomping feet. Under the moonlight, she looked almost human. “I appreciate the warning, but I’m not about to stand by while another decade of war destroys everyone I love.”

  “Who, exactly, is that?” Eric folded her arms over her chest. “Because you looked pretty damn alone over the last month.”

  I set my bag down and got out the salt, wishing she would leave so I could finish my work in peace. It would be hard enough to dredge up magic to complete the spell without her distracting me and draining my energy with wild claims. “The last month? What, you followed me around all month?”

  “To a degree, yes.” Her fake face lost all expression and her real face, shimmering in an oil rainbow, chilled me to my core. “I found you during a routine survey of nonaligned, at the market on Fifth. You stood out, sparkled. I knew what you were, so I decided to find out how much you knew about us. Whether you would be an ally or an enemy to our cause.”

  I stopped in my tracks to face her. “I don’t even know you, Eric. I’m not your enemy, and I don’t think I’m your ally. Not yet. We can talk about this later.”

  I may have added, “If I survive the night,” but I hoped she didn’t hear. Gathering loki together was the fast-track to consolidating cooperation between the humans and the Alliance once they caught a whiff of the plot. The only thing they agreed on completely was the danger posed by uncontrolled shapeshifters.

  Although that would be one way of averting war and shoring up the Truce...

  The External shoved her hands in her coat pockets, still distressingly calculating as she watched me. “Soon, though. You’ll learn the truth about Loki’s Children.”

  “Fine, soon.” I centered myself and hefted the bag of salt.

  The clearing lay dark and still, burdened with the dark magic festering under my binding. Containing it there for so long had not been kind to the forest. The trees and grass and even the dirt faded to a pale watermark of the rest of the forest. I paced a circle around the clearing, wide enough to encompass the bound magic and everything left over.

  But my curiosity got the better of me. “What is that, some kind of loki self-help group?”

  She didn’t smile. “It’s evolution. We’re the next step up the ladder. We’re beyond them, above them. They outnumber us now, but they won’t forever.” Her eyes narrowed, grew cold and distant. “And all those years of running and hiding will end.”

  I watched her from beneath my eyelashes as I weighed the salt against the mirror from my bag. The salt would wipe it all away and leave nothing to point me to Tracy. Or I could balance on the slippery slope once more and invite something out of the mirror’s silvery surface. The mirror glimmered, so innocuous, in the moonlight.

  Eric sidled a little closer. “And you’re pausing to check your hair?”

  “This mirror,” I said, studying the imperfections in the bubbled glass. “Is set in silver. Probably with bone and blood mixed in, maybe some gravedirt.”

  “Why?” Her coat moved and the badge at her belt gleamed in the moonlight. I wondered how much I could really trust her. She could kill me for what I was about to do, and get twice the promotion she coveted.

  I crouched outside the circle to sift dirt through my fingers, seeking an anchor in the earth as I debated. “It’s a focus to call demons.”

  “Holy shit.” Her eyebrows arched.

  No other paths revealed themselves. I straightened. If Anne Marie summoned a demon, it should have been bound along with the rest of their magic. If it answered my call, I would have my answers. “Not holy. But close.”

  Her features melted and reformed into a similar face with subtle differences. “Why do you have it? I thought you were a Glinda.”

  “Do you really want to know?” I slung the bag across my chest once more, settling it against my back as I tucked the salt away. I cut my ring finger and squeezed three drops of blood onto the mirror, stomach clenching as the glass instantly absorbed it. I tossed the mirror into the center of the circle and side-stepped to complete the circuit.

  I pressed my palms together at my chest as the bound magic rose through me. I could almost see them standing with me in the circle: Anne Marie, Jacques, Desiree, Tracy, Rosa, Joanne, Andre, Lauren, and Betty. No strangers, no unknown signatures. The only anomaly was a thread of demon magic.

  As the dark magic wheeled and brushed against me, the magic’s hunger to be used buffeted the dispassion I found with my own magic. Worries over a new war and the damage I’d done to whatever relationship I might have had with Leif by attacking his friends faded. Finding the witches meant fixing everything else.

  The demon magic, cold and foreign, swept through me and set my teeth on edge until I hated Eric for her powerlessness. Useless. I focused on the mirror as she paced behind me.

  The spell waited in the back of my head, learned so long ago I didn’t really remembe
r the first time I’d heard it. I’d even used it a handful of times, in circumstances that still left me wondering if I’d been an instrument of good or evil.

  As a last resort to save the Alliance, loosing demons on a human army seemed the best choice, when we were backed into a corner and facing certain death and the fall of Sanctuary. No one looked at me for weeks afterward, but Soren marveled at the efficiency. He asked me straight-faced why we didn’t use demons sooner as we stood in the mire created by the effluence of twenty thousand human corpses.

  Yet another reason I swore no oaths to him.

  I shook myself out of the blood-soaked memories. I was a coward for delaying the inevitable. At least using a demon to find Tracy, to save her life, fell in the “good” category. No one would fault me. The remains of their spell fueled the summoning, so I didn’t technically call the demon. Anne Marie did.

  Even through the War Witch’s disdain, my hands shook as I reinforced the spells to contain the demon. Opening a door without knowing what had been invited from the other side was a stupid, dangerous thing to do.

  Smoke curled from the mirror in graceful strands, collecting at the top of the magic dome. A disembodied voice oozed into the night. “Who disturbs my rest?”

  Bloody demons and their flare for the dramatic. My jaw locked as my skin crawled under the slime of its voice. “I have no name to give you, demon.”

  “Only a witch would tell that lie,” it said with a calculated sigh. “Always you witches, asking favors. Offering no payment but a few measly drops of blood.”

  “Demon, did you answer a summons here?”

  It made a noise like a pleased cat. “Mmm. That delicious coven.” A chuckle rolled from the mirror as the smoke grew dark and viscous like old blood.

  “You,” it murmured. “Were not one of them. Your magic is... controlled. Seasoned and aged.”

  I tried to force my jaw to work, but nothing moved. Rosa’s screams echoed in my ears. Was it the same demon that killed them? Or had it been lying in wait for them all this time?

  “What do you want of me, witch? To know the future? To change the past? Choose your fate? Perhaps three wishes.”

  I closed my eyes and focused. I could have just asked for Tracy’s location, but that would have required payment. One did not want to be indebted to a demon. It was worse than being indebted to the Peacemaker. “Tell me why you were summoned.”

  “You ask much and offer nothing. A poor bargain for me.”

  “I have nothing to offer you, demon. I do not make deals with your kind.”

  “Three more lies,” it murmured. “True artistry. You should own your past, witch, and your blood.”

  Magic shielded my uncertainty, at least. I only counted two lies. “Tell me why you were summoned.”

  “Such iron control.” It nearly purred, and the smoke thickened and pushed at the boundary between our worlds. “Hiding your dark deeds. You called me too clearly, and bound me too well, for this to be your first time playing in a mirror.”

  “If you will not answer, I will banish you.”

  It heaved a sigh, reluctant to return beyond the mirror. “I will have to teach you patience, I see. It is a gift. Here is another, then: I was summoned to retrieve something lost.”

  My back slicked with sweat, clammy and cold as my shirt clung in a sudden breeze that smelled of sulfur. “Something lost.”

  “Yes.” The sibilance sent a frisson of fear down my spine, called up memories of crinkle-dry snakeskin gliding through dead leaves.

  I tried to swallow the knot in my throat. “Who summoned you?’

  A dark chuckle made my skin prickle. “You did.”

  A lie. It was definitely a lie. The hair stood up on my arms all the same. I hated demons. I truly did. “What was lost?”

  “I was.”

  I looked up, across the clearing, to where a ghost stood. Made real, in the flesh. Solid. Wearing a dead man’s face and speaking with a dead man’s voice.

  Sam smiled at me. “Hello, lover.”

  Chapter 42

  It had been seven years since his death. Seven years since he betrayed the Alliance and the coven and everyone who needed him. Seven years since he crushed me, heart and soul, rampaged through what remained of my faith in humanity. Seven years since he stole memories from me, until I couldn’t trust the accuracy of my own thoughts. Until I imagined myself guilty of such heinous crimes they haunted my dreams. Seven years since I killed him.

  He still had the power to take my breath away.

  The world tilted on its axis; the universe reoriented itself. My ears rang as I stared at him.

  My traitorous heart leapt to see him alive. I still missed him—the man who held my hand through the war. The first man I really loved with the whole of my heart. The person who stood by me when life was at its very worst. I missed the man he was, the witch he’d been.

  Sam.

  He lingered on the farthest edge of my circle, neither inside nor outside. Existing in the border—trapped. He remained shrouded in darkness and a veil of gravedirt and smoke. His eyes glowed red and black, deep-set like embers hidden in ash.

  The demon reveled in the tension, lightning sparking out of the mirror’s surface as it purred. “I am called Berith, witch—remember. We will meet again.”

  Its magic melted away until the smoke dissipated, and I faced only Sam.

  “Nothing to say, Lilibet?”

  A chill slid through me as he used the old pet-name, something I hadn’t heard in seven years, and the clammy touch of the dead dragged down the back of my neck. Him saying the name was only half of it. I swallowed the sudden taste of bile as panic rose through me. “You’re dead.”

  His smile didn’t slip.

  “I killed you.”

  A grunt of disbelief behind me reminded me Eric witnessed all of this. Sam’s attention sharpened on the External for a tense eternity before he looked back at me. He wagged his finger at me like I’d been a naughty child. “And I have not forgiven you for that yet.”

  I shook my head, trying to gather my thoughts. It was impossible. I’d killed him, then burned his body. “How are you here?”

  Sam brushed dirt from his clothes—the same clothes he’d worn when I killed him. The clothes we burned him in, but untouched by flames or soot. His hand glided over the boundary of my circle, testing it until cracks ran through the magic. “I have so many things to tell you.”

  “Are they things I already knew and you stole from me?” Finally—finally—a spark of rage surfaced through the disbelief and panic. I’d killed him for a reason, after all.

  His creepy red gaze looked away. Maybe some part of the real Sam survived, deeply buried under all the demon madness and dark magic. I almost hoped he would apologize, beg forgiveness. But when he faced me, the sickening smile returned. “I’ve learned many things since we parted. Perhaps I can rectify some of my mistakes.”

  “Stop,” I said, hands clenched at my sides. “How did they raise you, Sam?”

  The circle trembled and his head tilted back, body convulsing, when I said his name. He straightened, eyes dreamy through the red glow. “I missed hearing you say my name. You have not spoken it since you killed me.”

  Sickness burned in my gut. Our bond ended with his death. I’d felt the connection sever in a second heart-rending loss. He had no hold on me. I hoped. My voice came out in a croak. “Only to curse you.”

  His smiled deepened, dug ditches in his cheeks. “I would have heard that, too.”

  Swallowing revulsion and fear at the same time nearly choked me. This was not my Sam. This was an ugly revenant. An abomination. Demonspawn.

  He edged around the circle, caressing the surface. I felt every drift of his fingers through my magic, and hated myself for getting lost in the memories of what it had been like to share magic with him.

  Sam’s voice deepened and darkened, like the demon smoke. “Such elegant magic. I’d forgotten how naturally you summoned demons. I am so
pleased it was you who finished Calling me.”

  Air rushed out of my lungs. Finished Calling.

  His smile stretched. “You didn’t realize? Clever girl like you? Such a pity. And here I’d hoped you did it out of love.”

  I wobbled back a step. Not possible. It just wasn’t possible. I was the War Witch. I should have seen it.

  “That worthless coven tried to raise me,” he murmured, sharing the secret with a wink. “They failed—not enough power, the wrong spell, no conviction. But I knew you wouldn’t fail. You were worth the wait.”

  I steadied myself, forcing the War Witch to stand and defend herself. Intent mattered, was all that mattered, and I had not intended to raise him. It was not my crime. He made vulgar allegations in front of an External, cowering in the trees. “I did no such—”

  “You did,” he crooned. That spawn of hell with my lover’s face smiled. “Their summoning froze when you bound it. You pulled me from purgatory. Thank you for my second life. My second chance.”

  I couldn’t breathe. It had to be a nightmare. I struggled to form a coherent thought, a real denial or a hex or anything so I wouldn’t die in silence.

  But Mother chided me—never open a door unless you know what waits on the other side.

  It seemed I was as sloppy a witch as Anne Marie after all.

  Sam’s gaze slid to the tree line behind me. “Other men have no place in your life, Lilibet. Now that we are together again, we will rule the world together—this world and the others. But I will not tolerate dalliances.”

  “That’s rich, coming from you.” I clenched my fists and let that anger boil up. “Since you were fucking practically every witch in the Alliance before you came home to me. And we’re not together, witch. Never. You’re dead and evil, and the only future we have together is where I kill you again. True-dead.”