Crimson Hunter

by N. D. Jones

  The muracos also halted. Phelan and Adolfus came to stand beside Zev, their snouts lifted, hairs on their backs raised.

  He wasn’t the only one who had sensed they weren’t alone on the nameless street. Instinct told him to run. But pride kept him rooted.

  Muracos growled, snapping at the air. Phelan and Adolfus joined them, jostling Zev with their anxious movements. Then the muracos darted up the street, plunging through and disappearing into a dust cloud that extended the width of the street. The sounds the werewolves made ranged from barks to howls to growls.

  Zev hadn’t budged, not even when Adolfus and Phelan also galloped toward the dust cloud, their muscular forms swallowed up as easily as the others.

  He’d wanted to yell out to them. Warn them. He howled. Over and again, Zev howled, infusing a bark into the sounds rumbling out of him. He had to make them understand, had to draw their attention away from the futile hunt. But no one emerged from the dust cloud or returned his bark or howl.

  Zev retreated, walking backward, eyes trained on the street in front of him. The sense of being hunted intensified. He barked again.

  No reply.

  He howled.

  No answer.

  A burst of sound and light filled the space between Zev and the dust cloud.

  Blood pumped faster to his heart.

  A swirl of yellow and red materialized from the darkness. The ravenous maw, a vortex of magic, drew dust and ash into its mouth. Muracos howled and, for a second, Zev’s heart stopped pounding as relief bloomed. They hadn’t abandoned him. He wasn’t in this fight alone.

  Their howls, however, soon turned to whines. Whatever was happening on the other side of the growing wind tunnel had Zev turning on his heels and getting the hell out of there.

  The vortex followed.

  He ran faster.

  Zev darted around corners. Jumped over rubble. Slid on ash but didn’t lose his balance.

  No matter how fleet-footed he was, the vortex continued to gain on him. It nipped at his heels, as if playing a deadly game of chase.

  Zev didn’t know where to go. Every street he ran down looked the same—like an apocalyptic town. Charcity. Cinders. The Void. Any of those names would better suit than Redwatch. It was all in ruins.

  He skidded to a stop. Where to go? Where to go? Shit, he’d run himself into what looked to be a cul-de-sac. Growling, Zev turned to face the vortex that had chased his ass all over Redwatch.

  No, not chased. Hunted. He’d become prey.

  The rotating column of magic, now a bright red, towered a hundred feet high and spanned two city blocks. The high winds no longer sucked in everything around it. It didn’t have to because muracos swirled in the tornado. They had been stripped of the black dust and ash—their white fur now sparks of morbid light mixed with fatal red.

  Crimson.

  Crimson Hunter.

  Zev waited for Oriana to appear from her death tornado. She’d blocked the only exit. He’d tried outrunning her magic. All his effort had earned him were burning lungs and cramped legs.

  If Oriana wanted to fight, there the fuck he was. Standing on his hindlegs, Zev growled. Oriana may have named Marrok Cyrus of Steelcross, but once he killed her, Zev would become Alpha of Earth Rift. She’d felt his claws once. Zev could guarantee she would feel them again.

  But the witch was toying with him, hiding behind her vortex which was … retreating? Not retreating but crumbling in on itself. In deafening waves, the vortex imploded, made scarier by the death whimpers of the crushed muracos. The image was like the beer cans Alarick had crushed in his strong hands then tossed onto Zev’s table—trash to be discarded later.

  The gruesome scene had taken less than a minute. Zev could now see the cul-de-sac clearly. It’s destruction as complete as the rest of Redwatch. Gone were the dust, the ash, and the sooty curtain of air, to be replaced by a cloudless blue sky he hadn’t seen in days. For the first time, Zev found himself more grateful for the sun than for the moon.

  Oriana had spared him. He didn’t know why she had, nor did he trust her retreat. She’d be back, but Marrok wouldn’t wait around for her return.

  He took off. Moonblight Penitentiary was a half day’s run from Redwatch. If he pushed himself, stopping for quick breathers and water, he would reach the prison by nightfall. When he did, he would free the muraco prisoners. Zev could still make his plan work, even without the Steelburgh white werewolves.

  Yet, when Zev reached the small town of Brassville, most buildings wrecked, Moonblight Penitentiary stood tall and strong—a pillar of iron. Zev’s oasis. His army to lead. His …

  Zev quirked his head to the side—listening. Creeping closer to the security gate, Zev tried to detect movement and sound within. He heard nothing, so he tried the gate. Unlocked. On high alert, he stalked inside only to find himself the only werewolf at Moonblight. The matriarchs didn’t give a shit about werewolves. If they had, they wouldn’t have used their starmount towers on Janus Nether. Yet, they’d evacuated a prison of convicted witch killers? Saved muracos from their attack?

  This couldn’t be.

  Zev shifted, scampering away from Moonblight. Exhausted but fueled by an emotion he refused to name, Zev ran the length of Brassville, searching for signs of life. When he found none, he returned to Redwatch.

  After a restless night’s sleep, he continued his search.

  Ironbark.

  Mage Flame.

  North Star.

  Nothing. No one.

  Days later, Zev found himself back in Wild Moor in the center of the same town square where he and his muracos had made their stand against Oriana and her Crimson Guards.

  When he’d walked through the city of his birth, the destruction from the starmount tower having made it nearly unrecognizable, each unsteady step he took had had him shifting from werewolf to man. By the time he’d reached the square, as naked as the day he had come into the world, Zev had drawn two conclusions.

  One, he was the only person left in Wild Moor and the surrounding towns.

  Two, Oriana hadn’t spared him. She’d created his worst nightmare, bringing to life his greatest fear. He’d felt it after Alarick had left his apartment. The emotion doubled when he’d gone to his father’s home, knowing Io had left with Lita but needing to see for himself. The feeling of aloneness had ebbed when the muracos had appeared in Wild Moor. But the discomforting sensation returned in triplicate, intensifying each time he reached another abandoned suburb.

  No pack. No community. Alone.

  The worst fate for a werewolf.

  May 7, 2243

  Steelcross Realm

  Steel Haven Medical Center

  “I refuse.”

  “Yet here you are.”

  “Against my will.”

  Oriana swept her gaze over Kalinda. Hair pulled taut in a severe bun, black blouse and slacks crisp to the point of sharpness, lips painted red but set in a frown, Kalinda looked like a disgruntled teacher on her way to the funeral of a student she’d murdered.

  “Against your will? Look who is being dramatic today. I’m the one in a hospital bed, not you.”

  Kalinda’s frown deepened, and she stepped closer to Oriana’s bed, arms crossing over her chest. “I’m here because your healer called me. She said I’m your next of kin, which I damn well know. Then she mentioned something about, if I wasn’t available to assist with the procedure, that you had given her permission to make the request of Lita of Ironmere City.”

  “No need to spit Lita’s name. She’s my mother-in-law after all.”

  “You’re not her daughter. You’re mine. She has no place here.”

  Fidgeting with the white covers, more to annoy her mother than to arrange them to her liking, Oriana ignored Kalinda, an act of passive-aggressiveness that did nothing to dull Oriana’s anger and hurt.

  “Stop that.” Yanking the covers out of Oriana’s hand, Kalinda straightened them herself. “You’re not sick. You shouldn’t even be here.”<
br />
  As usual, her mother was wrong. Oriana felt sick to her soul.

  “I’m going to have a blood transfusion.”

  “So Dr. Shams informed me. Do not do this. You know what happened to my mother.”

  Real pain entered Kalinda’s eyes—the pain of having lost her parents and the pain of possibly losing her daughter. Until a week ago, Oriana would’ve never contemplated using her mother’s love and grief against her—an act of insensitivity unbecoming of a daughter and of a matriarch.

  “As you see, I’m taking precautions Grandmother did not.” Oriana smiled as if they weren’t speaking of a life-and-death procedure. “The furniture is flame retardant, although I don’t think the walls are. But the sprinklers are up to code, so that’s a plus.”

  “This isn’t a joking matter.”

  “Dr. Shams will be here, which is more than Grandmother had. Then there’s you. The second strongest witch in the realms.”

  If Kalinda’s eyebrow arched any higher, it would be in her hairline.

  “You’re in rare form. Is today the day?”

  Kalinda glanced around, found a chair in the corner of the room and pulled it beside Oriana’s bed. Sitting with legs crossed, she observed Oriana with something akin to a snake sizing up its next meal.

  Oriana sat up and swung her legs over the edge. She returned Kalinda’s assessing glare. “Yes, today is the day.”

  “Fine.”

  Oriana dove off the cliff. No net. No magic. Just a free fall that could break every bone in her body, the agony of such a landing no more excruciating than the broken heart she carried.

  “How about this, Mother: I’ll tell you exactly how I’ve chosen to respond to what you’ve done, and you can stop the charade.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking ab—”

  “Stop lying to me!” Unbidden, Oriana’s Ravagers of the Lost cannons formed. She jumped from the bed. “No more lies. You know what?” Oriana rounded on Kalinda, who stared up at her with such controlled posturing, a part of her snapped.

  Oriana drew her weapons upward, pointing both at her mother. She had never seen a star die but she imagined the astrological phenomenon looked very much like Kalinda’s eyes—the fuel of her core running out, her star contracting, the layers expanding, ejecting critical messages sent to her brain, turning them over into a white dwarf of disbelief then finally into a black dwarf of stunned silence.

  A dying star. A mother’s shattered world.

  Oriana had prepared for this confrontation, including what she would say and how she would react when Kalinda pretended, lied, and outright dismissed her accusations. She’d rehearsed everything, but not this. Not the soul-stealing, heart-wrenching anger that had come over her when Kalinda did exactly what Oriana knew she would.

  Not only anger but a bone-deep disappointment. After all they’d been through and after all Kalinda had done, she still couldn’t look Oriana in the face and speak the truth. So, there Oriana stood, weapons she’d used to kill criminals pointed at the last person she would ever want to hurt but who had brought pain to so many.

  “Matriarch Kalinda of Irongarde City, you have been found guilty of aiding and abetting the escape and rebellion of one thousand three hundred forty-five muracos, of the murder of Dr. Bhavari of Cooper Vale, and of the willful destruction of Janus Nether—all acts punishable by death. As Matriarch of Steelcross, I hereby sentence you to death by my hand.”

  Said hands trembled slightly, but Oriana forced them to steady. No matter how much her words felt like flesh dipped in scalding oil, or how the sight of her mother’s teary gaze and slumped shoulders hurt to witness —Oriana would not back down. Not this time.

  “You would kill me? The woman who gave you life? Raised you? Loved and cared for you? You would sentence me to death?”

  “It’s the law. You forgot to add that you taught me to follow and uphold the law. As matriarch and Crimson Hunter, I’m charged with doing both.”

  Like Kalinda’s, Oriana’s cheeks glistened with tears. She cried for the little girl who thought her mother could do no wrong, for the young woman who refused to accept when she had. Who was the greater criminal then? The matriarch whose schemes ended lives or the matriarch whose gullibility made her a pawn?

  With a quick movement, Oriana jerked her left cannon away from Kalinda’s chest and raised it to her own head.

  “Noooo, Oriana. Don’t. Don’t.”

  “We’re both guilty. I didn’t see, although I should’ve. I let you point me in your chosen direction, and I went. I followed orders, like a good little witch. I believed in you more than I trusted myself.” Oriana’s chest seized with pain, with guilt, with shame sharper than a werewolf’s fangs. “I’ve killed witches and werewolves in your name, as Crimson Hunter of Earth Rift, claiming their lives with a righteous arrogance.”

  “They broke realm law.”

  “So did you!” Oriana pressed the barrel of the right cannon to Kalinda’s chest. “So. Did. You,” she repeated, her tone a soft contrast to her outburst. “You may continue to lie to me and to everyone else, but you know the truth. You know you’re guilty of breaking realm laws, although you feel justified in your actions. You always do. But how does it feel, Mother, to have the Crimson Hunter’s chosen weapon pointed at you? To know I am within my legal rights to end your life? Your judge and executioner. How does it feel?”

  Oriana pushed magic into both cannons, priming them. This wasn’t what she’d planned, wasn’t how she wanted to die. Keira didn’t deserve to grow up knowing her mother had killed her grandmother and herself. She wouldn’t understand.

  Kalinda wept, shoulders shaking and lips quivering. Her mother was a beautiful woman but an ugly crier. Perhaps that explained why she’d never seen her cry before. Likely, Kalinda removed her mask only when she was alone, ensconced in her suite where no one could witness the vulnerable witch who resided inside the hard-as-iron matriarch.

  “I love you, Oriana.”

  “I know, and it’s an awful, brutal love that stifles and deceives. You also love Earth Rift but to the point of violent adherence to a matriarchal system that enslaves us all. I honestly don’t think you believe you did anything wrong. You wanted me to co-rule, but you had no idea what that would look like in reality, especially when my convictions diverged from yours.”

  Oriana powered down her cannons, letting her arms fall and shift back to normal. Despite Kalinda’s crimes, Oriana couldn’t kill her mother. She wasn’t above scaring the shit of her, though.

  “You have a month to put your affairs in order.”

  “W-what do you mean?”

  Snatching a tissue from a box on the nightstand, Oriana wiped her face before returning to the bed. She was exhausted, and she hadn’t even had the blood transfusion yet.

  “I could have you imprisoned for the rest of your life.”

  “You wouldn’t dare. I’m matriarch of—”

  “One month to get your affairs in order. That’s how long you have to make the transition from Matriarch Kalinda to simply Kalinda of Irongarde City.”

  Kalinda shot from the chair, tumbling it backward. “You can’t. You can’t. I’m matriarch.”

  Settling under the covers, Oriana pulled them back to her waist. “No, you’re a criminal I’ve decided to pardon, even though you don’t deserve my kindness. You’ve never appreciated it before, perhaps you will now. Even if you don’t, I won’t have the former Matriarch of Irongarde carted off to prison like the common criminal she is.”

  “Oriana, you cannot do this to me.”

  “It’s already done. You will step down from the Matriarchy. Spin whatever tale you wish. I don’t care, as long as you remove yourself from the government.”

  Oriana waited for Kalinda’s melancholic visage to morph into sharp lines of fury. But it didn’t. She simply stared at Oriana, awaiting the rest of her fate.

  She didn’t keep her mother waiting.

  “You’ll also remove yourself from Iron
Spire.”

  That had Kalinda stumbling backward, hand going to her chest and over her heart.

  Oriana hated every bit of this. Practicing in front of her mirror, she hadn’t felt the magnitude of what this would mean to her mother. But the full impact of her words were knife wounds to Kalinda’s heart. Her mother’s punishment, like Zev’s, had been deliberately chosen.

  Oriana had taken no more pleasure in torturing her brother-in-law than she did in ripping everything away from Kalinda that she valued and loved.

  “Iron Spire is my home. You can’t. Where will I go?”

  “Janus Nether was the black werewolves’ home, but you didn’t hesitate to take it away from them.” Oriana steeled herself for the most difficult part of her sentence. “Kalinda of Irongarde City, as of one month from today, you are expelled from Irongarde Realm and excluded from residing in or visiting Steelcross Realm.”

  Unable to watch her mother’s mental disintegration, Oriana closed her eyes, crying along with Kalinda.

  Kalinda had lived all her sixty years in Iron Spire and Irongarde Realm. She’d spent the last few decades as Matriarch of Irongarde. So much of her identity stemmed from being a matriarch descended from the first Matriarch of Earth Rift. If Oriana’s punishment had ended there, Kalinda would’ve licked her wounds, settled into retirement and moved on with her life, privileged and unrepentant.

  As Crimson Hunter, Oriana had blood on her hands that could never be washed away. She would have to live with each life she’d taken, even though laws of Earth Rift had supported each mortal punishment. But no law could compel Oriana to kill her mother, feeding Kalinda’s doomed soul to her Ravagers of the Lost cannons.

  Kalinda’s crimes meant she’d forfeited her life, but there was more than one way to kill a person other than physical death.

  Oriana opened her eyes at the sound of a body hitting the floor. Every instinct told her to run to her mother’s side, to help her to her feet and into the chair. Her muscles ached from forcing them not to move. Oriana’s mind railed against doing nothing. But she forced herself to impassively watch as a proud witch was brought low by her own machinations.