Storm Cursed (A Mercy Thompson Novel)

by Patricia Briggs

  She wore a light-colored, silky top with a scoop neck that was just low enough to display the triple strand of pearls that lay over her collarbone. Her slacks were darker, but her midheel pumps were the same light color as her top. Pink, I thought. But it might have been lavender. She looked as though she were dressed for a garden party fund-raiser for a high-powered politician. Or posing for a society article in a magazine, maybe titled “What the Well-Put-Together Witch Wears to an Outdoor Torture Session This Year.”

  In contrast, Death looked like she was dressed for a jewelry heist. She was encased head to toe in black. But this was nothing new. The whole time I’d been with that poor cat in her laboratory, I’d never seen her in any color but black. Tonight she had on a long-sleeved, high-neck tunic top, black jeans, and silver-laced black boots that matched the ones the poppet had worn. The whip in her hand was black and she used it on Elizaveta.

  Elizaveta was an old woman, in her early seventies, I thought. She was in good shape for a woman of her age—there were muscles under the thinning, slacking skin. But her age added to the indignity and horror of what they were doing to her.

  Unlike the senator, Elizaveta’s skin, pale and exposed, displayed the damage they’d been doing. I hated it that somewhere in my head I could look at the welts, burns, and bruises on a naked old woman and think, They’ve been taking it easy on her tonight. And they haven’t had her up there too long. Because I knew what it looked like when the witches were really working someone over.

  “Again,” said Magda. “Please, Ishtar, please. That felt like . . . better than the last witch, better than all the witches here. That felt like—”

  “Power,” said Death. She hit Elizaveta again and both witches shivered with the aftereffects.

  I could think of her as Death because the alternative was Ishtar—essentially calling her a goddess, which I would not do. I had never heard her real name, though I had the impression that she hated it.

  “I could do this all night, Elizaveta,” crooned Death, working up a rhythm with her whip. “You probably know exactly how wonderful this feels—yes, I had some lovely talks with your people. I almost kept one or two, but in the end decided I could use the power boost more. You have that much of a reputation, which should please you.”

  She paused, surveying her work. There was a certain satisfaction in her body language. She took pride, I remembered, in the evenness of her lash work.

  “I could break you, Elizaveta,” she crooned. “I could destroy your flesh and drink down your power.”

  Magda squeezed herself and shivered. “I like it when you do that, Ishtar. Yummy.”

  Death gave her a sympathetic smile. “I know, sweetheart. But I was given a task.” She started swinging again. This time there was no rhythm in it, no way to plan for the sting.

  I knew how that felt.

  “I could beat you to death,” she said. “We will drink your power and your pain, and my coven would find that acceptable. Particularly when you have given us such interesting toys and spells to take home. I bet you didn’t know that your grandson knew where you kept the family spellbook, did you? Stupid of you to leave him alive so long. He died knowing that he’d gotten his revenge.”

  Robert, I thought, and had an instant, unbidden memory of his featureless, scarred face.

  Elizaveta was beginning to pant, though it was more from emotion than from exhaustion. “Or you can surrender. We have ten bloodlines in our coven. Yours would be the eleventh. So close to a full coven. You’ve felt our power as a victim. Wouldn’t you love to feel it as one of us? I offer you power you could only dream about without us.”

  “I am Elizaveta Arkadyevna Vyshnevetskaya, of house Kikimora. I can trace my bloodline a thousand years. Never would I join your ragtag band of mutts and rejects. I know who you are, Patience Ramsey. There is no house Ramsey. You do not know from where your witchblood comes. It was present in neither your mother’s nor in her husband’s lineage. Calling yourself Death does not make you a great witch, does not make legitimate your bloodline.”

  She didn’t get it all out at once. But she did pull it off without screams or grunts, and I wasn’t sure that I would have managed it if I’d been in her place. By the end of Elizaveta’s little speech, Death—Patience—was trying her best to beat Elizaveta into silence.

  I wasn’t just waiting around while the witches and Elizaveta had their chat. I used the fire and their preoccupation to slide all the way around the outer edge of the patio. It was really dark tonight; the moon was a bare sliver and there was a storm in the air that was covering the stars. If anyone had been looking, they would have seen me easily. But Elizaveta was giving them enough of a show that no one thought to look.

  Except for Adam, who pinned his ears at me. And the dead dragon, which had turned its head in my direction.

  I pinned my ears back at Adam. I was good at slinking unseen in plain sight. It was what coyotes do. And I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t have drawn the attention of the witches if I jumped up and ran around Adam singing “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” They were enjoying themselves so much beating on Elizaveta, they were making this part much easier than it might have been.

  As far as the dragon was concerned, I had decided to worry about it when it decided to worry about me.

  I came, eventually, one careful pace at a time, to the shadows next to the house, wiggling (carefully) behind a box elder bush. Elizaveta kept her home very neat, and there were no unfortunate dried leaves or weeds to make noise. If we survived, I’d thank her for that. If all went according to plan from here on out, I’d spend the next stage of our battle here, out of the way.

  When all hell broke loose, I’d run for my cutlass—especially since I knew that there were a lot of zombies, a lot more than any of us had planned on.

  Adam was watching me—and so was the dragon. I wrinkled my nose and showed them both my teeth. I was trying to hide. I couldn’t do it if they both were determined to make sure the witches figured out there was something in the bushes.

  Look away, I told Adam via our bond.

  Adam and the dragon turned their attention to the outer darkness, away from Elizaveta’s corner of hell, and away from me. I had the odd thought—I expected a dragon, if I ever met one, to be bigger.

  I sighed, put my muzzle on my paws, and settled in to wait. It was Wulfe’s show now.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  Like me, he took advantage of the distraction Elizaveta provided. He stepped onto the concrete without fanfare, and no one—except Campbell, Adam, and . . . Elizaveta—noticed him do it. He just walked up to Death, to Patience, and grabbed her arm midswing.

  She jerked, then fought—but he was a vampire. He ignored her and waved a careless hand. The manacles on Elizaveta’s ankles and wrists dropped to the ground. Somehow he let go of Death’s arm and caught Elizaveta before she hit the ground, too.

  I had the uncomfortable thought that he might be faster than most of the werewolves. Maybe faster than me. I counted on my speed to stay safe. I didn’t like it that Wulfe was so quick. I would remember that.

  He set Elizaveta down on one of the chairs scattered carelessly around the patio, picking one that was several paces outside the action. He took his time, making sure that she was as comfortable as possible—almost as if he were inviting the witches to attack him while they thought he was distracted.

  They didn’t take him up on it. Patience, rubbing her wrist, had run across the patio until she stood shoulder to shoulder with Magda, where they could touch.

  If I’d been Wulfe, I would have been interested in keeping them farther apart.

  “Who are you?” Patience asked, her tones wary.

  I felt a subtle wash of foul magic.

  “Wizard,” said Magda. “The Wizard—whatever that means. Wolf and Wizard.” Her face twisted unhappily. “He’s not a wolf. I
don’t know why I said that.”

  “You can call me Wulfe if you want to,” said Wulfe with a smile. “Or you can call me Wizard—but not many do that last to my face.”

  I wondered if he felt the slow build of magic that Death, that Patience, was working. But I needn’t have worried.

  Wulfe laughed, that horrible boneless laugh, then made a gesture that ended palm out. He used the hand Stefan had cut off again. I wondered if Stefan had cut that one off for a reason.

  Patience crumpled around her center, not quite losing her footing, but it looked like a near thing. She screamed, partly out of pain, but I’d wager some of it was anger, too.

  “You’re a wizard,” said Magda indignantly. She reached out to grip Patience’s hand. “You used wizard magic to free Elizaveta. You can’t be a witch, too.”

  As soon as she touched the other witch, that one quit screaming. I thought that Wulfe should maybe keep them from touching each other. Instead, Wulfe said, “No?”

  He made another gesture with that hand. Patience put a hand, palm up, between them, and this time she didn’t scream. But the firelight revealed sweat on her forehead. The tendons of her neck were tense, as if she were making a great effort.

  “Babies, help Mama,” crooned Magda. The dragon uncurled and lunged—but so did Adam. He grabbed the dragon by the muzzle and held on.

  Cutlass. Adam’s need reached through our bond.

  I bolted out from under the box elder and ran for the garden with every ounce of speed I could muster. I’m pretty sure that the only one who noticed me was Elizaveta, because I ran right in front of her—and because that witch was pretty scarily observant.

  A step from the cutlass, I changed back to human. I grabbed the blade and brought it across the throat of the boy zombie I’d passed on my way to the house. I hadn’t seen him, just knew that he was running for me. The sharp silver blade snicked through his neck and kept moving as the boy fell.

  I felt the force that animated the body break, as if I’d cut through more than flesh and bone. I felt again the likeness to the pack bond—a bare trickle compared to the river of the pack, but both were running water. For a moment, something else lingered where the zombie had fallen. Not a ghost, not a soul, but something tragic and broken. I was pretty sure it was fading, but I couldn’t wait around to find out—Adam was fighting a zombie dragon.

  I ran.

  No one on my side had died yet. Adam was still wrestling with the zombie. His battle was aided by the fact that the zombie was mostly just trying to get to the witches, and fighting Adam only because he was in the way.

  Whatever Wulfe was doing—and it made breathing while I was running like breathing underwater—it kept the witches occupied. Magda had had no chance to change her orders to the dragon. I felt like I was overlooking something, but I’d worry about it sometime when Adam wasn’t fighting a dragon zombie.

  I relied on the bonds between us—mate bond and pack bond—to time my move. I did not slacken my speed as I passed the embattled dragon.

  I put my other hand, the one that was not holding the cutlass, on Adam’s shoulder. He was braced for it so my weight didn’t disturb his balance as I vaulted up and over, out of the way of the half-hearted swipe of wing. Instead, that strike turned a sturdy wooden table into kindling.

  Adam twisted his weight suddenly and the dragon’s head twisted, too. He released the dragon’s muzzle as I slid the cutlass into the soft flesh under the dragon’s jaw, up through its snout. Locking the jaws shut with the sword.

  I jumped up as the dragon writhed and Adam knocked the creature away from me. The battle was a long way from over, but Adam could fight now, instead of just trying to keep its mouth safely closed. Triumphantly, I dashed across the patio to stop a handbreadth from Elizaveta. Half laughing in exhilaration, I briefly caught Elizaveta’s gaze, but her attention slid past me and over my shoulder. The firelight brightened on her face for an instant and I saw her pupils flare.

  “She’s called them all,” she said.

  I whirled.

  Of course, I thought, the boy zombie I’d killed was no longer settled under Wulfe’s thrall. That meant they had been called. All of them, a lot more than a hundred.

  I could feel them stirring beneath the tug of Magda’s words. Their twisted unnatural state was a sadness that dragged at my heart.

  They were running at us—and Elizaveta called out something that sounded like “passion fruit” but equally well could have been something in Russian. Elizaveta could speak English with the precision of a BBC newscaster. But today, her Russian accent was full bore, and that meant I was more than usually likely to misunderstand what she said.

  Magic rippled, leaving the air taut with something that felt to my overheated senses like anticipation. A zombie, the first of dozens, made it to the edge of the concrete and ran into an invisible barrier, as did the teeming mass of zombies that followed it. Adam and the dragon had not confined their battle royal to the patio. When Elizaveta had brought up her spell, a warding that followed the edge of the concrete, both Adam and the dragon were on the other side of that barrier.

  “They cannot come through my magic,” Elizaveta told me.

  Adam’s back hit the barrier hard, and he used the semi-elastic surface to launch a leap that ended with him atop the dragon, which still had the cutlass stuck through its jaws.

  Elizaveta saw what I was watching. “Adam should be able to take care of himself,” she said confidently. “He is a splendid beast.”

  “Elizaveta,” I said, whispering furiously, “there are a lot of zombies out there.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You can do something about that, Coyote’s daughter. And I do not know why you are waiting. My barrier will not stop you.”

  “What—” I started to ask her, but I was interrupted by a commotion followed by the crack of wood.

  I looked up to see the senator’s chair sliding along the concrete on its side. I couldn’t immediately see a cause for it—so it was probably something Wulfe had done. When it had gone over, it’d knocked over a small table where the witches had kept an array of sharp objects.

  I jogged over, one eye on Wulfe and the witches. To my shame, Senator Campbell had not been a priority for me, though he was the most vulnerable of us. It was past time to get the senator free of his bonds so at least he could run. Not that running would help him escape the zombies, but maybe he could get out of the way of stray blows not directed at him.

  Rather than try to pull the chair upright, I just used a short-bladed knife that had been among the witches’ scattered implements. It had no trouble slicing through the ropes Campbell had been tied to the chair with. Once he was freed, I helped the senator lurch to his feet.

  With a hand under his elbow, I urged him to the relative safety of the space near Elizaveta. She might even be inclined to help keep him alive. I gave him the knife and he went to work on his gag. As I turned to see what the witches were doing, I got a whiff of fresh blood—a lot of it. We’d left a blood trail behind us. The senator’s pant leg was wet with it—and someone had chewed a hole in his leg.

  I reviewed that first flash of a glance I’d taken upon my arrival to the tableau on the patio. Abbot had been curled around Senator Campbell’s leg. He’d evidently been chewing. I didn’t know if he’d been doing it because he was a witch and powering himself up with the senator’s pain. Or if he was a zombie now. He hadn’t smelled like a witch when I’d met him before—but male witches aren’t as powerful as the females. It was possible that Magda’s scent had masked his.

  I looked for Abbot, but I didn’t see him. Maybe he’d ended up on the outside of Elizaveta’s circle.

  I scanned the darkness, but all I could see were the zombies crowded thickly around us. They were all focused on coming to Magda’s aid. As Wulfe had said, the majority of them were humans, but I saw a border collie a
nd a pair of cats.

  I glanced over at the witches and was caught in the beauty of their battle. The stench of black magic was so thick that it seemed almost unconnected with the fight between Wulfe and the witches.

  I could not see the magic, just felt it on my skin and in my flesh. Some was so vile that I felt as if I would never be able to wash it from my body. Some of it was sharp and sparkly, and it felt the way fireflies look. But that, too, seemed unconnected to their combat. Impossible that such foulness could be a part of the beauty of their dance. When the fight had begun, it had been a thing of gestures, of hands and fingers. Deep into their battle, they moved as if they were doing kata—quick and graceful movements that used their whole bodies.

  Wulfe’s body had the fluid grace of one of the big cats. Patience’s dance consisted of small, efficient movements—precision was her guiding force. Magda—the one I’d have expected grace from—moved instead with jerks and stomps. There was power in her dance, but not elegance.

  After a few seconds I began to see the flow of power. I couldn’t see the magic that passed between them, but I could infer the path from the connections between the three of them.

  I’d seen crime scenes on TV shows where yarn was strung to trace lines of bullet trajectories. If there were enough bullets fired, the string pattern was oddly beautiful, like a freshman art project. The witches’ combat reminded me of that.

  One of the zombies was big enough it caught my eye and I turned to see that the dragon zombie—a huge wound across its face beginning to scab over as I watched—was dragging its claws against the invisible wall of Elizaveta’s working. The cutlass was gone.

  Adam’s life was bright and whole on the other side of our bond. I could feel the wild joy of battle shiver into my blood. Adam was fine.

  “Mercy,” Elizaveta said. “You can free them—”

  “Vampire,” called Magda triumphantly over the top of Elizaveta’s voice. “He’s a vampire, Ishtar.”