“We’ll talk about this later.” Red squinted her eyes at her mentor before turning to her soulful ex-honey.
She had spent the fall and winter chasing Lucas, feeling that spark between them even as he felt conflicted on what he could offer her as a vampire. Push, pull. They hadn’t named what they had, but when they had finally slept together, she’d thought something had solidified between them. Then it shattered.
“Lucas, I’m grateful when people try to help me, but I don’t get what this is.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“I’m not annoyed by that part.” Red tramped back a long sigh. “You’ve been here for days, so I assume that’s why Vic hasn’t been trawling the city for the werewolves. You’re doing it for him.”
“Fat lot of good it’s done me. They’re lying low and away from the usual haunts.”
“The Alchemical Synod already put the local supes on alert. They run this town, so the pack has to obey. Not sure if that stops the local weres from sympathizing.”
Lucas shook his head. “Frank Lopes kills his own kind if the money is right. Doesn’t make him popular.”
“He’s a hired assassin. They usually aren’t,” Red said. It was validating that the Lopes family weren’t being helped, but now she had a new issue. What was she going to tell Ian when the academy cop discovered the mysterious new vampire messing with his case was her ex-lover?
“You don’t seem worried. Selene saw you fighting for your life.”
“Why should I be worried? I’m safe.” Red twirled her finger at the casino surroundings. ”There are guards who have his picture, protection wards, and magically locked doors. I spend most of my time in an academy where there are exam-stressed alchemists ready to vanquish anyone who even coughs in the library. It’s not like I doubt Selene’s sight, but mistaken identity happens. Hannah is my build, she wore a red wig when we found her on the run. She might have seen that.”
“It couldn’t have been in the desert. My sire kept talking about tombstones and rain,” Lucas said. “And some of the vision could have been a bloody metaphor, but it doesn’t change that you were in it. Dying.”
“Mission accomplished. Now I’m on guard.” Red tried to deescalate the growing mutual frustration curling around them like the smoky air of the casino. Snipping at him wasn’t what she wanted. “Really though, thanks for telling me. I get why you’re worried, but once we found out Frank’s identity, it was game over. They blew their only chance. These jobs fall apart without a payday, and how long will their client pay them to wait? The Gendarme will find them soon.”
“Those wolves could get desperate. Grab you, the little chosen one’s buddy, to lure her out. That’s what I’m trying to stop here. Vic agreed.” He lifted his palm up as if offering the statement on a plate. Maybe he thought the Vic seal of approval would change her mind.
“Could have told me that theory before I went to the mall.” Red gritted her teeth as she held back the rest of the biting sarcasm. “I appreciate the vision warning. I would have appreciated it sooner and with a lot less going behind my back. Were you even planning to tell me that you came?”
The whirls and beeps of gaming machines filled the silence between them.
“I’m taking that as a no.”
Lucas put his hands in his pockets. “I thought space was better for you considering…”
“You broke up with me?” Red jerked out a nod, chomping on her tongue to stop a half-baked remark about the sudden “What’s best for Red” committee.
“That’s not it. I missed you.” He gripped his hair, creating a small nervous mohawk.
“Not enough to talk to me until you saw me with another guy. You broke up with me. That was the decision you made for us. Remember that.” She walked away, stiff kneed, heart racing, and disappeared into the disguised doors to the Pyramid where he couldn’t follow. Not even the sight of the verdant banyan calmed her.
Hannah rushed up to her, eyes wide and watery. “Red, before I tell you this, you have to know that I had nothing to do with it! I came as soon as Trudy told me. I hate this. It really freaking sucks.”
Ears still buzzing from Lucas’s words, she snapped, “What?”
“We’re going to be ranked tomorrow. Against each other!”
Chapter Eight
The tarnished gate loomed, copper bars glinting like sharp teeth in a crooked smile. Spectral traces of ether floated through the slot. She had no idea what was in the gloom within. Only that she had to face it without her hunter’s kit.
Competing against Hannah.
Across the long chamber, nearly a football field away, the Alchemical Synod sat in judgement on high benches. Clerks with clipboards scurried underfoot. Magical barriers, glowing elongated golden bubbles, covered the stands. Alchemists packed into either side of the Ranking Court in bleachers that nearly reached the ceiling. Some held binoculars to better view over the tall fence that wrapped around the ranking field. They all looked hungry for the games to begin.
Red was sick of staring at the starting line too. She was ready to do this thing. It wasn’t that she was pumped to crush the other witch in a contest. The ranking didn’t mean anything to her, not like the hunter’s challenge did. She had woken up ready to get this over with. Even before she’d turned on her phone to see all of Vic’s texted advice.
She didn’t even have Basil in the throng; the soulmancer had fallen sick this morning after his great academic debut yesterday. She knew he wasn’t simply hungover because he would have come in sunglasses with a Bloody Mary. Her cheering section consisted of Vic muttering advice to her as he glared at Trudy.
The competition stood a few yards to the right. Hannah sent anxious glances toward Red and Vic. The stone-faced Bard was in dark tweed, but her champion was outfitted for a fight in a padded turtleneck and kneepads over very aerodynamic looking pants.
When Red had gone shopping, it was for regular clothes. She didn’t think she’d need to outfit herself for the Hunger Games. Now, she and Vic looked like they were representing the Redneck District.
She definitely looked like Vic’s intern in her oldest jeans and denim jacket. Besides the bullet hole, the right armpit had given out in Santa Fe. She was fine if this and her North Dakota tourist T-shirt were ruined by yak bile or something else as equally weird. She had been dragging the old thing around since the nurses at the Eugene hospital gave it to her after Vic had found her. Technically, it was her first shirt. At least the first that she remembered. She tried not to be sentimental about it. This wasn’t the time to mosey down memory lane. She pressed her temples and tried to meditate.
Lee the librarian rushed to them from the base of the high bleachers, a ranking volunteer pin bright orange under their bow tie. They puffed out of breath, megaphone at their side. “Sorry about the delay, folks! This ranking is unexpectedly well attended but we have finished extending the protection wards for the spectators.”
“Finally.” Red huffed out a sigh, rolling her shoulders.
Vic started rubbing Red’s shoulders. “Now, you gotta fly like a bat and sting like a porcupine.”
“That’s not even the quote, Muhammad Ali.” Red tapped his hands away. After Hannah had told her yesterday about the surprise ranking, they were pulled into separate corners by their Bards. Vic hadn’t stopped hovering over her ever since.
“You’re like my Million Dollar Baby.” Vic frowned. “Scratch that. I just remembered how that movie ended. Man, Clint Eastwood’s movies have been a bummer in this century.”
Red shushed him.
Long skirt flowing behind her, Perenelle stepped between the two Bards and their witches. “We have been ranking alchemists for millennia, but witches… that called for something new. After consultation with Ms. Fox, the Synod has designed three trials that appeal to both your strengths and weakness.”
“Bet she told Hannah everything,” Vic muttered.
Red elbowed him. She had been thinking the same thing, but
they didn’t need to say it out loud right then.
Hannah looked stricken at Vic.
Perenelle gave them one final warning, clever purple eyes glinting. “You will be evaluated on your speed and spell work, not collaboration. You’ll find all you’ll need inside.”
The copper gate slid open with a coffin’s creak to reveal a small makeshift hall built from the same gray wood as the perimeter. Hannah and Red stepped up and exchanged a glance. Was this a maze? They had been forbidden to go up in the stands to peek.
“Christ. It’s timed, Red!” Vic shouted through cupped hands.
Red sprinted through the gate, turning right when Hannah went left, down a thin open-air corridor. She dialed up her third eye. The alchemists murmured in the bleachers. If she lifted her head, she could see the top row where one man—surprisingly not Vic—yelled out indistinct suggestions. The sight was more distracting than anything else. Red dropped her eyes to the ground. She turned a corner, jumping over a hex circle drawn on the floor.
Landing in a crouch, her knee slapped the ground awkwardly, and she winced. She jumped up, yearning for kneepads. She pumped her arms for speed, trying to ignore the throb.
A yelp rose from the far left, and the crowd winced.
Red paused, glancing behind her, heart kicking up. It was Hannah. Should she go back to find her? It was every man for himself, but she didn’t like it.
“GO!” Vic’s amplified yell echoed above the din of the crowd. “Oh, shit, yeah, here is your megaphone back, Lee. What? Turn it off?”
Huffing a weak chuckle, Red shook her head and jogged down the corridor.
The hallway opened into a long stone chamber. Thick fog split the room in the middle. Obscured, a staggering shadowy figure lurched behind it. A pair of blue flame pillars burned, radiating heat, on opposing walls. Surging, the fire pillars drew closed like stage curtains. The light flickered over the mystic jumble on two battered wooden tables, side by side. A raven’s feather floated above each.
Breaking her run, Red took her bearings as she approached the tables. It was a laboratory. There were the tools. The challenge was definitely to get past the fire, but how?
On the tables under the feathers, arranged tiny brown caraway seeds, white selenite, and charred bird bones blazed with energy in her spirit vision. She went to the closest. A thick papered card with loopy handwriting sat next to a burnt beak.
You’ll need to hold it up now.
The spell ingredients shuffled themselves before her eyes as the raven feather fluttered to the tabletop. Red grimaced. Floating things… The last time she had done that half right was floating a stake against a baby vampire on her first night in LA. It had nearly been her last when she missed.
Hannah staggered into the room, missing a kneepad, half a pant leg ripped away. Deep angry scratches scored her skin.
Red tried to shoot her an encouraging smile. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” The teen set her jaw then pointedly ignored Red as she read the card and moved crystals around on the table.
“Alright then…” Red tried to rearrange the spell ingredients as she remembered them. Was it two circles inside an octagon or a square? The smooth caraway seeds bounced away from her fingers. She began to sweat, trying to recall magical correspondences. What the hell did caraway seeds do? Her magic kept slipping out of her grip. The hum of the crowd pulsed like cicadas. She tried to center herself to float the feather, but all she could hear were the spectators.
The blue flame curtain budged an inch as Hannah lifted her feather.
Red refocused, trying to remember all the breathing techniques Trudy had taught her with names she couldn’t pronounce right. She slowly found her center, but she couldn’t shake the anxiety as her feather laid there. The urge to shock it with her magic tempted her even though she knew it was stupid. This was a magic exam, and there were two more tests after this. She couldn’t blow her energy load here.
Hannah floated the feather above herself, eyes fixed on it, backing up toward the opening fire. She slipped through a foot-wide gap.
Red chewed her lip. No one had said she couldn’t improvise. She ran to Hannah’s abandoned table and grabbed more selenite. They were powerful amplifiers for magic. She arranged them in a triangle inside the circle. Breathing deep, she tried to rely on the crystals to anchor her to the ritual and boost her intention instead of throwing all her magic into it. She imagined her power moment and felt the magic ignite.
Floating the feather above her head, she guided it to the blue flames, feeling like she was playing a party game, the magical equivalent of balancing an egg on a spoon.
The fire curtain opened to billowing fog.
Red ran through the miasma, sinking ankle deep in unseen swampy water. It was a cold shock to her system, and goosebumps popped out on her arms. The fog thinned.
Fence boards rose from the perimeter, but it was the only sign of the outside world. Rot perfumed the air. Two tombstones squatted on a low hill in the corner. The dimensions of the place didn’t make sense. It was like the alchemists had grown an expansive graveyard complete with a pond for the ranking. Distant spooky iron gates lurked on the opposite side. Clouds and ravens drifted overhead in a simulated night sky. Rain pelted her.
She tramped out of the bog, summoned by a piercing shriek as the haze cleared. Judging by the smell, she should have guessed what she’d find.
Backed against the fence by the source of the rot, Hannah screamed again.
Two ghouls penned the brunette teen in, stretching their slimy arms out. They had gray skin like the underside of a mushroom. Decay softened their figures, creating odd contours under their long, tattered tunics, erasing gender.
Ghouls… Red friggin’ hated ghouls. When muggles thought about zombies, what they imagined were more like ghouls—ravenous, mindless undead creatures who infested cemeteries and had a bite that could rot a mortal from the inside out. She yearned for her big hunter’s kit. It might have had an old packet of dried ghostflowers in it left over from a job in the south.
Hannah raised her hand. Sparks rocketed from her palm like fireworks. They landed with a fizzle on the ghoul’s moist dead flesh. Just like werewolves, ghouls had a hide too thick for most magic to penetrate. “No way!”
Lifting her knees high, Red pushed through a cluster of reeds growing between slippery rocks. The razor edges nipped her denim jacket as she passed. “I’m coming!”
The ghouls turned, putrefied maws opening in a silent hiss. Ever-growing hair, lanky and wet, drooped over their bloated faces as if they had been pulled from the bog. Startling milky white eyes protruded from darkened sockets. They were nearly undistinguishable except for a scrap of jawbone showing through one’s cheek.
Slow, mean, and stupid, they weren’t the poster boys for object permanence. They staggered toward Red, seemingly forgetting Hannah.
Hard to kill, but easy to keep down. You just had to avoid their poisonous jaws. Keep them at arm’s length. Red tried to yell that advice as the teen did the exact opposite.
Hannah hopped on a ghoul’s back to stop its advance. The second lunged for her, mouth widening, distending jaws cracking.
Red ran to the girl and barreled her shoulder into the attacking ghoul. A worm wiggled out of the hole in its cheek as if waving at her. She winced on impact.
Her denim squished against the lumpy moist flesh, knocking the creature down. She rolled away into a somersault. Stumbling to her feet, she held her hands out for balance, scanning the boggy graveyard. What the hell could she use against these things?
The ghoul lumbered after her.
“Don’t get close to their mouths,” Red called over her shoulder to Hannah as the girl backed away from the ghoul.
“I can do this!”
“Whatever.” Red ran past a dead tree, dried branches creaking under the weight of the assembled ravens. The beady black eyes watched her as intently as the alchemist spectators had.
The rain cleared. Sh
e zagged around a grassy dip and rabbit hole in the ground, smiling to hear the quiet oof of a tripping ghoul. The attention to detail… She had to give the alchemist’s their due on designing the field.
She pivoted quickly to the dead tree. Taking a running jump, she grabbed a branch, bark cutting into her palm. The ravens blasted out of the tree. She let herself drop. The branch bent, splintering. Body weight and gravity snapped it. Grunting, she landed on her knees. Legs aching, she leapt up and brandished the branch like a spear, impaling the tottering ghoul at a run. She twisted her face away on impact.
It popped like a boil. Foul air and cold ooze splattered on her jacket.
“Nasty!” Red pushed the ghoul away, shaking herself like a wet dog. She resisted the urge to wipe her sweaty face with her dirty sleeve.
A cheer echoed through the graveyard from an invisible crowd. She smiled. That answered the question of if they could still see the challengers. She actually might win this. Running to the cemetery gates, she stumbled at the scream behind her and screwed her eyes up to the simulated heavens. She could win this… Red looked back instead.
At the edge of the bog, the last ghoul staggered toward the teen. Its shoulders were slumped at a lopsided angle where she had hopped on him. Hannah kept stepping back, deeper into the water.
“Fuck! They can swim!” Red turned around, sprinting. Ghouls couldn’t just swim, they were faster underwater than on land. Its why they loved lakes, ponds, and bayous. Louisiana might as well have been ghoul country. Running by the prone ghoul, she yanked the branch out of its chest to charge at the one still walking.
It lurched to the side, whatever was left of its rotting synapses remembering how Red had taken out its buddy. Pus-yellow spittle dribbled from its silently howling mouth. Its lungs had long since dissolved into goop. Black pointed teeth jutted out of its rotted gums.
Red slammed the branch upside the ghoul’s head, sending it flailing back into the sharp reeds.
Snatching the branch as it fell, the ghoul flopped like a turtle on its back, arms catching on plants and palms, slipping on the rocks.
Witch On The Run: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 4) Page 14