Witch On The Run: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 4)

by Sami Valentine

  She had another mystery to tackle.

  Dressing simply in jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt, Red brushed her teeth and texted her favorite soulmancer. Before rushing out the door to catch Basil before his latest lecture, she left her phone to recharge. She smiled ruefully as she imagined what Hannah would have to say about Red running around with a dead phone. Like all millennials, she felt a bit naked without a phone, but it would only be a quick errand. She debated putting her journal in her bag, but she didn’t want to get lost in organizing the nest of books she had fallen asleep in.

  She raced down the stairs, dodging alchemists as she went. Accidentally elbowing one, she apologized, only belatedly realizing it was Doctor Finch as she dashed by. His eyes widened nervously at her as if expecting her to sprout fur and fangs.

  She found Basil outside a laboratory in one of the less grand corridors off the Pyramid—this one was brick instead of marble.

  “You’re lucky I was already up and preparing early for my next lecture. I don’t take morning appointments,” Basil said grandly, standing up to reveal his chartreuse linen suit pants had been tailored to shorts.

  Red led him away from the crowded hallway to a more isolated row of laboratories in the mismatched maze that was the academy. “This is important. I know you just do souls, but Perenelle told me something weird about my magic.” She recounted the tale. “I don’t know if the enthymema draught worked on my subconscious, but it did something. I just need to check and see what there is to see.”

  “I did this a few days ago.” Basil sighed. Closing his eyes, he lifted his hands. He frowned after a long minute. “That’s new. There is more… dimension. I can read new imprints on your soul, but they feel like fragments.”

  “Are you talking about those ridges on the soul edge that you went on about during your last lecture?”

  Nodding, he swirled his palm over her forehead. His lips puckered in confusion. “Some are more jagged than others. I can’t sense anything about your magic that has changed. When we did that first ceremony to recover your memories, I connected with your magic, and then we were together on the Genesis Machine. It always felt like a cup in a gallon jug.”

  “Will you two find somewhere else to talk?” An adept stuck their head out of a laboratory. “Some of us are getting ranked tomorrow!”

  Breathing a restrained sigh, Basil led Red into a doorway at the end of the hall. “This is only for staff and esteemed visiting scholars. Of which I am one.”

  “I’ve stumbled into the teacher’s lounge before.” She walked into a wood-paneled chamber with a ceiling rounded like a wine barrel. Milling teachers and alchemists sat at couches and tables, grading scrolls and eating microwaved meals.

  “More like the teacher’s wing,” Basil said, moving toward the back of the room. “I can read one thing loud and clear in your soul—that diner in Oregon.”

  “So do I. Every weird dream I’ve had lately includes it. I think that’s what you sensed when you scanned me. It’s a real memory.”

  “Are we sure? Really sure? Not just hopeful?”

  “It’s a concrete lead!” Red cringed as she looked around, not meaning to raise her voice. A few professor types looked at her, including the doctor who whispered to another alchemist at the coffee pot.

  Red looked around and pulled Basil into a winding side hallway away from the others. A dormitory for the staff, welcome mats and packages lay in front of doors with name plates. “It’s solid. And so is this dark mage who took my magic.”

  Basil smoothed his hair as he turned from her. “That’s a thread you shouldn’t pull yet. You’re safer doing an Oregon diner tour and binging on waffles.”

  “I’m safer being here,” Red droned as her restless feet moved down the hall.

  “Say it again with more enthusiasm.”

  Walking in silence, Red tried to piece together how to explain the growing call drawing her north to Oregon. They had turned a corner to another line of private suites. A thump jolted them to a stop.

  Behind a cracked-open door, Trudy paced in her living room. Her curly ponytail bounced in agitation behind her. “You went on a date with her?”

  “Is that really news to drop a book over?” Ezra asked, his head popping into view of the eavesdroppers as he picked up the book to set it on an unseen surface.

  Red turned to leave, feeling awkward, but Basil put his finger to his lips and pressed himself against the wall. His aura flared white as he accessed his soulmancy magic.

  Trudy demanded. “Are you sleeping with her?”

  “We’re close now, Mom, but I still don’t want to talk about my sex life. But no, she hasn’t sullied my virtue.”

  “What is she to you?”

  “What’s up, Mom? You’ve been weird since I came over. First it started with breakfast at the buffet when I haven’t seen you eat a carb in years, and then you drop all those bombshells. Now you want to start in on Red and Vic?”

  “I received a call from the Brotherhood,” Trudy confessed, settling heavily on the couch. She covered her face as she pulled down her chained glasses. “They’ve added to my orders. I’m merely stressed.”

  “Two weeks back in the fold and they’re already jerking you around.” Ezra paused. “Is it the Brotherhood or Mr. Gabriel?”

  “Don’t make that face. They were going to assign Hannah to another Bard. Even after I found her and brought her to safety. He’s the one who got me reinstated.” Trudy wagged a warning finger. “You think the Head Bard did that? She was the one who led the witch hunt.”

  Red shared a quick look with Basil. She thought Trudy had retired, not that she was driven out. What was this about only being reinstated two weeks ago?

  Ezra’s tone came out firm and insistent. “Melissa was not your fault.”

  “I failed by every definition of the word. She was a responsibility given to me by the Brotherhood,” Trudy said. “I was always a better warrior than a Bard.”

  “Let me guess? Management agrees, so they’re sending you after those werewolves,” Ezra said.

  Trudy sighed, slipping her glasses back on. “Mr. Gabriel wants me to take out the threat. The order was for Hannah, but she isn’t ready for all that is demanded of a Hero. She won’t see this side of the duty while I am around.”

  “What about Red?” Ezra suggested, desperately.

  Trudy froze, staring grimly ahead. “This isn’t the fight that I want for her either, I assure you.”

  Ezra switched tacks, the plea clear in his words. “I don’t want you to lone ranger this one.”

  “I have resources.”

  A step creaked closer to the door. Ezra called, “Is someone—?”

  Red and Basil crept backwards. He pushed her into a portal archway. They popped into a stone chamber. It would have looked like a standard lab except for the two peacocks laying on a patch of grass in the center. The archway they had entered through disappeared.

  “Now, I could have sworn this went somewhere else.” Basil stepped forward. A sigil glowed on the ground. Smoke billowed over the grass. The peacocks took flight to land on the ledge of a pillar.

  Red knocked Basil to the ground. An arrow soared over them, shot from the wall like it had been placed in a forbidden temple for tomb raiders. She helped him to his feet and started running. Alchemists and their boobytraps. She opened another door and ran into a hallway. The stones spun, and she found herself running on the ceiling. She couldn’t read the floor sigil that she had accidentally activated, but it was powerful enough to skew her perception. It was vertigo on crack.

  Basil bolted in the other direction on the ground.

  She tried to run over him but, defying all physical logic, each step took her farther away from him. The room spun again, and she found herself on the ground. She staggered, reaching out to balance on the wall. Basil had disappeared.

  She tried to find him in the maze of laboratory doors, feeling like she was in a loop like those old low-budget cartoons where
they just recycled the same background image. When she saw a man in a white coat behind her, she waved and smiled, recognizing Doctor Finch. “Can you help me find my way back to the Pyramid?”

  The doctor’s reply was a sweaty grimace. He lifted his palm, blowing gray powder into her face.

  Red’s eyes rolled back, ears barely hearing the strained apology as her legs gave way.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Red rolled on scratchy-soft fabric, rocking against a warm form. Flapping wind droned in her ears. The deep feeling of wrongness hit her before true wakefulness did.

  Gold suit wrinkled and pompadour deflated, Diego Blanco lay beside her. Wide brown eyes willed her not to make a sound. He had been slung over flattened seat backs like an old duffle bag in the rear of the soft-top jeep. The white and beige houses zoomed by the rippling plastic window above. A sodden bandana gagged him. Bound at the wrists and ankles, he hadn’t been able to pull off a Houdini and escape. The cuffs looked like a special alloy of cold iron etched with unfamiliar symbols. They restrained his magic as much as his movements. She had used a set on Nevaeh Morgan, she knew their power.

  Stained upholstery, its camel color darkened to rust, stretched between them like grim foreshadowing.

  Unbound, she stayed still, eyeballs straining as she peered at the werewolf in the driver’s seat without moving her head. Gloria. The passenger seat felt occupied but was outside her vision. It took a moment for her ears to decipher the conversation with the wind escaping between the fasteners of the old jeep’s soft top.

  “…are different now that Paul is…” Gloria’s feminine voice drifted from the front. She whimpered quietly more like a beast than a woman. “Not beta.”

  Red scanned the back seat of the jeep to see if they had brought her purse along. There was only a twisted-up blanket on the floor. Using were-mace in such a tight space and billowing wind would hurt her too, but she was willing to take the risk. Unfortunately, she didn’t see her purse anywhere.

  The passenger didn’t say anything. Masculine hands came into view, lifting her wallet to pull out the cash. He tossed the wallet against the back door to bounce and land at Red’s feet.

  Gloria fiddled with the radio dials and then tapped her fingers on the gear shift. Her wandering fingers, full of the restless energy before a kill, moved to a golden poker chip on the cluttered dashboard. “I’m glad we’re not waiting for Nuno. I love my brother, but you know him.”

  Chilled, Red fought the ragged gasp bubbling up in her lungs. She knew who was in the front seat now.

  “Yeah, poor Nuno. That doctor is probably just bitchin’ at him about having a trace on his own key when we split up.” Continuing to chatter, Gloria did a stuttering impression of the doctor. “But the deal was for Diego’s key!”

  Diego had an untracked one as a Synod member. The plot motivations tumbled into place for Red. The wolves got a clean way into the academy and Doctor Finch was down a rival.

  Ranking season could make alchemists competitive. She hadn’t realized how deep it could go. Diego had effortless charm, natural talent, and a whirlwind lifestyle as a headlining singer. This was before you counted his accomplishments in the laboratory to have earned him a place on the twenty-member Synod. It must have burned Doctor Finch to see the playboy alchemist rise in the ranks without seeming to try. It had scorched him enough to bring in assassins to ensure he would reach the top.

  The doctor was smart. He wouldn’t let werewolves use his poker chip key, tracked as a regular adept. Yet obviously, brawn had beaten brains among the conspirators. A mistake that the Gendarme would make Finch regret. Red could only hope that Ian Keli’I had noticed a strange ping on the doctor’s chip.

  But why did they grab her? Did they realize they couldn’t kill Hannah and escape, even with the key, and needed more bait to lure her out? Red thought back to the cage in the creepy exam room and realized Perenelle had accidentally saved her from being snatched before.

  Gloria chattered on. “…them both dead and buried and be out of this town by sunset. Stop at Dunkies, maybe, you think?”

  Diego stiffened beside her.

  Red bit her lip to repress the gasp. It was impossible. They weren’t after Hannah at all. They were after her.

  Gloria started to whine. “I can’t wait to get the hell out of that squatters’ den. I don’t care if it was warded from alchemists. I don’t like being in debt to a…”

  Red focused her intention and began to summon her energy, knowing that without any ingredients she only had the elements to rely on. She beckoned to the air, igniting her power to ready it to her will even before she knew what to do with it.

  “Quiet.” The hoarse whisper filled the jeep, cutting through the white noise of the wind.

  Hard fingers yanked her up by the hair. Frank Lopes regarded her. His flat stare was utterly dispassionate under his thick eyebrows. Up close, an old scar puckered the skin of his neck. It trailed off into the patchwork of lumpy scars on his hairy chest, revealed by his half-zipped windbreaker. Nostrils flaring, he whispered, “I smell magic.”

  Red shrieked and lifted her hand out, propelling a gust of air that sent Frank back in his seat. She resisted panicking and throwing all her magic at him.

  “She was supposed to be knocked out for hours!” Gloria complained, swerving as she looked back.

  The iron repelled Red when she took Diego’s hand to combine their magics, so she pressed tried to find something else to defend them with. Her fingers brushed against her wallet. She tucked it into her waistband, but that wasn’t going to help her now. Something long and metallic pinched at her under the blanket. She groped for it. It was a tire iron. Now, that was something she could use. The tight fit of the jeep back made it awkward to grab from under them.

  “Daddy’s going to get you, bitch!” Gloria called over her shoulder. “We’re going to carve you up for your shitty little friend to find, then we’re going to get him for Paul.”

  Knife in hand, Frank climbed into the back, shimmying over the flattened seats like a marine in a foxhole.

  She kicked his head with the flat of her foot.

  He growled, balancing on his knees next to Diego. The jeep bounced over a speed bump. Frank lurched.

  “Sorry!” Gloria said.

  Grabbing the blanket, Red threw it over Frank to blind him.

  Diego rolled in the way to knock the wolf off balance.

  Red levitated the tire iron up, knowing that she didn’t have the clearance to physically swing it hard enough to hurt a werewolf. The tire iron bashed against Frank’s head and then his side.

  Gloria slowed the jeep down. “Daddy!”

  Red slipped her fingers under the edge of the soft top over the back door. Channeling energy away from the tire iron, she willed the air to slam the back window open. The plastic flew up over the spare tire to flap against the roof. Wind blowing her hair back, she reached for Diego. She hoped there was enough slack in his chains.

  She grabbed him by the armpits, launching them out of the speeding jeep. With only a second to call upon on it, the air thickened into a cushion. Red and Diego glided an inch over the pavement for a few yards, spinning in a tumble of legs. Then they slumped to the earth, banging knees.

  Panting, Red heaved herself creakily to her feet in the center of the residential street. It had that eerie calm of the middle of the day when everyone was at work. None of the curtains shuddered with peeking eyes. Diego hyperventilated behind his gag, eyes darting. Back protesting, she hoisted him to his knees. “Come on, Diego, we gotta run.”

  The jeep spun into a tire-squealing U-turn.

  Keeping a tight leash on the air energy around her, readying it for defense, Red struggled to balance the bunny-hopping alchemist. She ungagged him as they fled onto the sidewalk, crossing a rock lawn.

  Diego drew a harsh breath into his liberated lips. “Red, you absolute angel.”

  “You haven’t met an angel yet, Dieg
o.” Red heaved, tiring from holding him up.

  “Get me out of these cuffs, and I’ll be an avenging one. Starting with Finch for selling us both out.”

  “Let’s just run,” Red said. Her hands grew clammy. She was weakening. That familiar feverish feeling from overusing magic heated her cheeks. She muscled through it as they retreated around a street corner. A sparse group at a bus stop diagonally across an empty intersection stared, pointing and muttering to themselves.

  Relief surged in Red and she quickened her jaywalking. Bound Diego bobbed beside her. It was broad daylight. There was a group of bystanders. The werewolves couldn’t do anything or risk the secrecy of the Dark Veil. It was the first rule of supernatural law. She smiled as the bus rolled up right on time. She even had a pass in her wallet. Frank Lopes had lost.

  They were halfway across the street when a tire screech warned her too late.

  The jeep slammed into them. Metal bested flesh in combat. The air rocketed from her lungs even as the element rose to her aid. Red toppled forward. Instinctively her magic flung her into a thicket of rosemary on the other side of the street by the bus stop. Diego slipped from her grip. Scratchy twigs cut her face as she landed on the oversized bush. Her whole body ached. Her arms trembled, refusing to lift her. Shock locked her limbs. Red rolled over, buffered by the sweet-smelling rosemary.

  Prone, Diego stirred in the middle of the street next to the idling jeep.

  Jumping out the back, Frank clutched the tire iron. He marched to Diego.

  Red struck her hand out, she tried to draw the air around the tire iron to wrench it from the werewolf. The magic sputtered even as it answered her call.

  The metal bar jerked up from the assassin’s hand.

  A silent snarl on his face, Frank grabbed the tire iron in midair. He jerked it down. Werewolf strength didn’t need a windup. The metal cracked through Diego’s temple like it was a ceramic teapot. It wasn’t oolong tea that came out. Without magic and their laboratories, alchemists were just humans. Fragile.