by VK Fox
RIGHTEOUS EIGHT
©2021 VK FOX
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Dedication
For my kick ass daughters and sons. You were made for greatness, not comfort.
Thanks
Walt and Matt for your service and for setting the HALO bar suuuuuuper high.
Drew for telling me that the first draft needed to be burned and putting up with all of my subsequent tantrums.
Anya for bringing Fitz's sketchbook to life.
K.P. for the mummy room, the tooth brushing line, and your generosity with both.
Keystroke Medium for everything from French translation to advice on which guns go where.
My sensitivity readers. Thank you for your sage feedback.
My beta readers, gamma readers, and gamma the revenge readers. You guys did your job three times over.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Thank you for reading Righteous Eight
More In Urban Fantasy
About the Author
Prologue
Allison Card made quick work of the fairytale path. Travel in the gap between realities, even mundane, laborious foot travel, had a rhythm to it. Once mastered, the tempo left spaces wide open and spooling for mile after wind-whipped mile. Locomotion here wasn’t about moving your feet or keeping your balance, so walking might be the wrong word, but the cadence and essential energy were walking-like. Allison brushed the powder-red sand from her silk tunic and shook it from her semi-mohawked gray hair. Swigging from her canteen, she swished and spat the grit out of her mouth. Flying would be faster and cleaner, but she’d only successfully achieved altitude for a handful of seconds before faceplanting in the dirt, hiccupping out little clots while her nose fountained blood. Not good.
The shifting road ended at a garden fence comprised of pock-marked iron, stoic and unyielding, spearing the red sand every six inches, terminating in grisly chest-high barbs angled to the outside. More like a barricade than a fence. Spiders roosted and preened in finger-thick webbing, carving out home turfs ten feet wide and providing the cross pieces to prevent someone small or conveniently shaped from slipping between the posts. The gate was clean though, contact polished and hinges dripping with lubricating fat. The desert sand drank every spilled drop with a soft sigh.
She was finally here. The only thing left was to slip through the gate, find the walking rhythm, and arrive at the house of an extranatural Traveler who wanted an ally from Allison’s reality. So far, so good, but bookish research—even the really lovely, forbidden kind—didn’t cover the clenching in her gut, her knees turning to lead. Pioneering was full of such stress, but since Zack had plan B well underway, Allison took courage in that safety net. She reached for the gate. It hissed open under her grip.
Light inside the fence was exhausted and tissue-thin, worn out from attempting to penetrate the gloom. Allison toed the dirt path and nearly ended her journey on a wall of brambles growing in copious thickness and seeping pitch, hidden in the first shadow fall. The sparse, weedy ground to the left and right appeared to be an easy workaround, but this realm straddled the gap between reality and fiction, so tests were expected. Proving worthiness or quick wit was such a universal theme in magical places, it would be folly to dismiss this repeating feature of stories as conjecture. Circumventing the carefully placed brambles couldn’t be a real option. Don’t leave the path. Basic.
Allison bent, pale lips hovering a centimeter from a dark vine. It swelled like a lover at her proximity, the air thick with an organic, overripe scent.
“What is this?” Allison’s voice was muffled in the dampening shadows and vegetation.
The leaves whispered back. “Give us a drink.”
“Why?”
“Allison, the ways of the path are perfect and must not be questioned.”
The words were a layer of melody over the percussion of walking. Once the tune resonated through her mind, she was an instrument, a part of the story. Allison unstrapped her precious canteen and poured it over the dusty ground. The vines parted with a shudder and she stepped through the gap, minding the thorns. Heart beating in time with her footfalls, the path spooled out ahead.
A shimmer flickered, and what at first seemed to be water or heat waves resolved into light between wheeling shadows. Against the bruised sky crows darted and circled, drawn to the spot by forces unknown. Wind from their wings swept the ground clean, excepting a few leafless, gnarled shrubs clinging to the dirt with exposed roots. Allison paused, finding the right words for this moment.
“What is this?” Her voice was caught by the wind and flung to the sky. A crow landed with a hop on the path, belly heavy with eggs and bright eyes restless.
“Give us a nest.”
Allison’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Allison, the ways of the path are perfect and must not be questioned.”
Pulling out her utility knife, Allison cut her long silver top locks down to the scalp until her questing fingers produced nothing more to give. She offered her hair in cupped palms and the crows descended, stripping the tresses away with piranhal speed and fleeing to the bushes before Allison could lower her pinched hands. She bolted up the path and nearly tripped over a hunched old man, gnarled
and naked, hugging his knees to his chest while sitting in the dirt.
“What is this?” Her voice was high with exasperation. Three tests. Of course there were three, but she had nothing else.
“Give me your clothes.” His voice was phlegmy and rough.
Allison clenched her jaw. “Why?”
“Allison, the ways of the path are perfect and must not be questioned.”
So Allison stripped to the skin and helped the man, stiff with torpor, into her silk blouse. His boney hips slid into her slacks, and she pulled her thick socks and leather boots over gnarled toes. When he hobbled aside, she jogged the rest of the way, mounting the front steps of the house on chicken feet and throwing open the windowless door.
The hut was snug and warm, a single room well purposed. Firelight played along the honey-wood walls. A stone hearth was swept, and the wood floor was clean and bright. Beams crafted from four-inch trees with the bark still on dangled lavender, mint, sage, chamomile, and five dozen others that Allison couldn’t place. The walls hung with salted hams on meat hooks, beet-red sausage, and grayish smoked fish. The smell of baking ginger and cedar wafted from a large oven set against one wall mirrored by a gleaming metal cage against the other. A washbasin large enough to sit in stood next to a black cauldron and a butcher block table with meticulously polished knives. The rocking chair by the fire was swaying empty, and Allison glimpsed the house’s owner on a stool in front of a vanity brushing her long, dark hair.
At least Allison’s nakedness was in good company. The woman’s back was bare in the firelight, straight spine knobbing beneath vintage skin; the raw, puckery edge of youth mellowed into a masterpiece of subtlety and softness over immemorial years. She sat on the stool like a bird on a perch, her soft roundness meeting polished wood and dimpling under the contact. Allison couldn’t see the woman’s face in the smokey mirror, but her hands spoke of gnarled age where they gripped the bone brush, gliding it through wavy tresses. Oak fingers with nails filed to razors.
“How is my son?” The woman’s voice was a flute in arthritic hands: haunting air and shrill edges.
Allison’s mind missed a beat and the silence hung like an accidental flat. Careful. Calm. Allison groped for her rehearsed greeting.
“I’m Allison Card, a traveler from an unconnected reality. I’m here as an ambassador.” At first, maintaining a regal bearing was easy, even naked. The room was warm, the lighting gentle, and Allison was frankly lousy with regalness even under worse circumstances. But as silence spun out, what had been simple became more and more to bear. Like holding her arms out—easy, an effortless gesture until the weight of minutes accumulated like desperation while limbs trembled and flagged. When had her shoulders hunched? Had her eyes darted aside? It could have been five minutes or five hours. How would she even know?
“Allison Card.” Her name was foul in the woman’s mouth. It left an oily, rancid bubble in Allison’s ears. “Step closer, child.”
Allison tried to object, but her feet obeyed. She was ten years old, and her teacher called her forward. She could argue, but what was the point?
This close the mirror surface was thick with soot, a filthy contrast to the wooden frame rubbed with gleaming beeswax. Reflections were all but lost. As Allison stepped to the woman’s left shoulder the hairbrush smacked against her belly. Closing her hands around the bone handle, some calm, distant part of Allison’s mind registered the carvings of a man with cloven hooves enthusiastically penetrating a goat. The honeyed air made her muscles warm and floaty, like morphine, as she stroked the brush through thick, sallow hair. Her fingers tingled at the tips, numb and cold needling her knuckles and palms.
A gnarled hand dropped to the bone knob of a vanity drawer, awkward with talons, and worked it open, rummaging for a moment before lifting out the skin of a face. The visage was beautiful, with a demure nose and lips that would pout full when stretched over a meaty backing. The eyes were holes, of course, and the skin under the chin was attached, which made the entire article hold its shape fairly well, sparing Allison a glimpse at whatever was on the flip side. The woman held it with slow, familiar gestures, inspecting it this way and that. The mirror showed Allison nothing, though she strained to make out the woman’s naked features in the dark glass before the mask smoothed on.
“Sweet girl. Clever girl. Tell me about my son.”
“Your son?” Allison’s voice was heavy with smoke and heat, sliding out to lay awkwardly between them. The fire crackled. Allison brushed, her fingers calloused and bleeding. The woman lowered her hands into her lap.
“My boy, my boy, my youngest boy. I sent him to your home to prepare the way for my arrival. You are here so he has made me proud. He must have been clever for the barrier to grow so thin, clever and quick. He always is, you know. His fingers. His tongue. His… wit.” She stilled Allison’s weak hand and the brush clattered to the floor. A sob of relief tore from Allison’s lips as her shoulders quaked with exhaustion, stomach in hunger knots and legs slick with her own filth. The ends of her fingers were withered and black, and it wrung her heart to see them.
“Wh—Who?” Allison’s teeth chattered. She searched for her power, the puppet’s strings inside her connected to emotions she could kindle. She needed more kindness, more patience, more collaboration. This woman should like her. They could start fresh. Allison seized her link, casting the line of emotion into her foe and pushing magic through with the force of a geyser. The herbs on the ceiling plumped, bloomed, and showered the floor with fresh seed, but the woman sat, unmoved.
“Silly girl, don’t you know who I am?”
Gooseflesh crept across her arms and her nose tickled. When she itched it with her unspoiled hand, she smeared blood. “You’re Baba Yaga, Heckedy Peg, and the witch of the woods. You’re the sea witch and Dame Gothel. I know who you are.” Allison tried to infuse her voice with strength, with backbone and flame, but it came out mewling: a house cat, not a tiger.
The woman slapped her thigh and bit her plump, stolen lip. “Children's tales, fancies for poppets, and you a woman grown. You must know I’m more than these.” She stood and turned to face Allison in full: bare breasts, sharp hips, and teeth glinting chrome. “I am Circe, Ereshkigal, and Morgase. I am the queen of air and darkness, and I demand to know why you have abandoned my beloved Mordred.”
“I…” Alison’s word ended as the Crone fixed her with a gaze, a look of death. Allison became a piece of meat to be hung by a hook on the wall.
Chapter One
Sana Baba’s Alcatraz was an oil rig in international waters off the east coast of Maine—a metal and incandescent beast with concrete legs in the freezing ocean. The prison boasted twenty-five high-security cells built to contain every magical effect known to man: sound-proof cells and fire-proof cells, cells with their own air circulation, and cells made entirely of mirrors. Seamless cells with titanium, mesh-covered air vents and cells made exclusively from natural materials. Everest Lovecraft was sitting on the floor of a jet miles above those rooms, clad entirely in neoprene and lying to himself about being calm.
Dahl’s face was shining over his gray rubber pre-breathing mask—stormy eyes bright. Everest had seen him in oxygen masks before, in the hospital after surgery or in the emergency room, but this was the first time he was anticipation brilliant.
“You doing good, Ace?” Megan spoke through his headset, and Everest reminded himself to breathe. Since he was now successfully strapped tandem to Sister Mary’s torso for the last few minutes of the ride, Breathe and Don’t Panic were his only jobs for this part of the mission. Magical anxiety drummed his temples, the result of peering at their odds of success in preparation for launch. Future sight sported a baffling quality of late. Picking out the real information from the background static wasn’t impossible, but it was getting harder, as if the static was getting louder.
Breathe. Everest forced another long pull. They needed to purge the nitrogen from their blood by inhaling oxygen for an hour i
f they were going to come out of this jump without issues. He’d done alright in mission prep, but the real thing inevitably brought on more nerves. Combined with his side effects of anxiety, the result was smothering. Everest carefully quarantined his simmering panic, closing it away in a vault in his mind. That worked, sometimes.
“Ace?” Megan prompted, and Everest focused on her. The entire team was clad head to toe in black, but Megan’s peacock-green eyes peered out from the small frame of dark brown skin around her goggles, and she was six inches shorter than anyone else on board.
“Fine. It’s good to be back in the field.” He turned to Dahl. “You’re the smoker. We should be worried about you.”
Dahl grinned and bumped their shoulders together. He continued to stare out the exit and into the night with soft features and awed, dancing eyes.
“Five minutes.” Sister Frances Ruger’s abrupt voice sliced through the headset and they started performing final checks. Everest switched out his pre-breathing mask for the jump mask, skin exposed to the sub-zero air for a few seconds before the seal slotted into place in his helmet. Megan slid hers on and checked the straps of her gigantic backpack. Her cargo was bulkier than a parachute and, despite her enthusiastic reassurances, Everest couldn’t shake the image of her petite frame crushed against the ocean surface under the load.