Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  We weren’t going anywhere. Not with him throwing up every half hour. So running from angels had to wait.

  I set the supplies on the coffee table and briefly placed my hand on his forehead. “You have a fever,” I said.

  Nax pressed his hand against his brow as if to contain an explosion. “I have survived famine, pestilence, and war. Death does not come for me this day.”

  “Well, those are certainly the most imperial words I have ever heard spoken,” I said.

  Nax chuckle-coughed. “Just doing my job, Bearer of the Midnight Blade.”

  I chuckled, too. “Let me see that leg.” I poured some distilled water on a washcloth and patted at the wound. The water wasn’t saline, and it wasn’t sterile, but it was the best I had. Nax did a good job of not wincing, but I could tell it hurt. His wounds looked nasty, but neither showed a lot of swelling, nor did I see signs of infection. Evidently, being a Shifter came with some nice immune-system side effects.

  Mrs. K fidgeted with her lap blanket. Without power, the furnace wouldn’t run. The house had already dropped into the mid-sixties by the time we’d arrived, and I suspected we were moving toward the high-fifties now.

  Outside, with the wind, Colorado was well within a January freeze, so even the indoor chill was better than outside, or the bus.

  “I’ll start a fire.” I pointed at the fireplace. “If I remember what to do.”

  Nax tried to sit up. “I can—” He moaned and leaned back again.

  “Just sit still, okay? Let me take care of this.” I gently dabbed at the wound on his chest with the distilled water.

  “I think Maria tried to talk to me upstairs,” I said. Or maybe I’d imagined it. The other option—that Alt-me was knocking at my brain’s door—unsettled me enough that I didn’t want to think about it. Not with Nax sick and Mrs. K slowly freezing to death.

  Mrs. K wasn’t the least bit surprised that I’d felt Maria’s presence. “She says with the power off, and with our distance from Ismene, she can see what’s wrong with Nax.”

  Nax pulled his hand off his temple. “And?” he said.

  Mrs. K pointed at the wound on his leg. “Maria says Ismene must have licked her hand before she burned you.”

  Nax gingerly touched the wound’s edge. “Licked, huh?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. K said.

  “Why does that matter?” I asked. “Was she drinking hellhound venom or something?”

  Nax coughed again, then stopped when it obviously hurt too much. “It’s not hellhound venom I need to worry about, is it, Irena?”

  Mrs. K adjusted her lap throw. “No.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. So much of their world was hidden, and since I wasn’t born knowing the correct handshake to get in, I had no idea what half their references meant.

  Half? More like nine-tenths.

  “It’s not important,” Nax said.

  Mrs. K shook her head.

  It most certainly was important. “Tell me the truth.”

  Nax leaned against the couch and closed his eyes. “Ismene infected me with Burner venom.” He sighed. “They usually bite and inject. That’s how they turn someone. But she must have figured out how to weaponize it.”

  Turning someone Burner was already an act of weaponization. Of course Ismene had figured out a way to weaponize slowly. “Are you going to turn into a Burner?”

  Nax tossed a knowing glance at Mrs. K. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “If it was going to happen, it would have already,” he said.

  Mrs. K looked up and to the side, to listen to Maria. “She says that in the space where she exists, she can see and feel the workings of a Shifter, Fate, or Burner ability. The venom residue is fighting with Nax’s natural whirlwinds. His energy isn’t moving smoothly. The residue is acting as a series of barriers.”

  “That’s exactly what it feels like,” Nax said. “Like I’m hitching and tripping.”

  I covered the wound with a bandage and leaned back. “Here,” I said, and handed him one of Dad’s larger sweatshirts. He might have a fever, but it was cold in the house. I shivered. Nax slowly pulled the shirt over his head.

  “What do we do about it?” I asked.

  “Maria says this is completely new territory for her and that she has no answers.” Mrs. K frowned. “She also says she will stop her attempts to investigate and to remove the poison.”

  Nax groaned. “So she’s been poking me? That explains the sudden bouts of nausea.”

  Mrs. K patted his knee. “I cannot always see what she is doing.”

  He leaned against the back of the couch. “Did she at least learn anything from having her fingers in my chest?”

  Mrs. K shook her head.

  Nax grunted. “Of course not.”

  “She apologizes if her attempts to understand added to your discomfort.”

  Nax grunted again. “Please tell her to stop.” He fluffed a pillow. “Let me sleep.”

  I handed him a bottle of water. “Drink.”

  He sipped and set it down. “Del,” he said. “If the sword tells you to run, you run, understand? If someone comes for you—the Seraphim, Praesagio Industries private security—you do what the sword and Maria want you to do and stay safe. Irena and I, we’ll be okay.” He nodded to Mrs. K. “Whatever is happening here is bigger than us. That sword, though, it’s….” He trailed off and leaned back again.

  “Maria says there are people who want to take Stab from you, even though the sword has made its preferences clear.”

  Nax nodded. “Praesagio will want it.”

  “Is that bad?” I asked. “Praesagio Industries might be the only people left who could fight the invaders. Having Stab might give them an edge.”

  Mrs. K smiled.

  “Figuratively,” I said.

  Nax shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows what Trajan would do with it.”

  “Trajan?” I asked. He must mean Trajan Upton, Praesagio’s CEO. He’d been on the news recently, but I hadn’t paid attention.

  “Emperors, dear,” Mrs. K said.

  I gaped at her. “Seriously?” I said. Why was I surprised? The Emperor Trajan running one of the world’s largest corporations was the least weird thing about today.

  Nax nodded. “He and I have had… disagreements.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Let me guess. You kicked his puppy two millennia ago and he’s still mad.”

  Nax closed his eyes. “No literal puppies punted. Thankfully.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “Promise me you will run if that sword tells you to, Del.” Nax seemed pretty adamant about the whole save the sword thing.

  Mrs. K frowned, but did not argue, even though Nax was obviously wrong. Of the three of us, he was the only one big and fast enough to take on—and hide us from—hellhounds. And I needed Mrs. K to Maria-whisper for me.

  “Get a few hours.” I pulled my mother’s crocheted blanket off the back of the couch and tucked it around his shoulders.

  He closed his eyes.

  Mrs. K needed a cozy cover, too. “We need to get you out of that chair.”

  She fidgeted with her lap blanket again. “The sword,” she said, and pointed at the scabbard on my back. “Stab’s energy is different from Ismene’s.”

  “I hope so,” I said. Since I’d gotten them off the bus, I’d been carrying the sword around like it was a shoulder bag I barely paid attention to. After the initial discomfort, the blade and her scabbard were just there, on my back, as if they’d always been part of my uniform. “I think Stabby McMidnight Blade is a bit more together than a Burner.”

  Mrs. K continued to frown. “No, darling. Maria is confounded by this Stab.” She flicked her hand at the blade.

  “Okay,” I said. How was I supposed to answer that? You are the bearer of an extra-confounding, super-magical Killer of Evil and Slicer of Enemies seemed a bit much, even considering what we’d just gone through.

  But not really. I might as w
ell own up to carrying something special on my back.

  I nodded toward the already snoring Nax. “Does Maria think she can remove Ismene’s, what? Venom residue?”

  Mrs. K shifted in her chair. “Help me to the recliner,” she said.

  I helped her stand and walk the few steps to Dad’s massive “watching the game” chair.

  She snuggled down into the upholstery. “Warmer,” she said. “Does your family have any meatloaf, darling?”

  I’d promised her food. “I’ll look.”

  She nodded. “You should clean the bus.”

  Yeah, I should. I’d wiped up the treads, but we didn’t need to be riding around in vomit-stink after Nax woke up. “I’ll start that fire, too.”

  Mrs. K rested her head against the back of Dad’s massive chair, and like Nax, she closed her eyes.

  So much for getting more information from my ghost-whisperer.

  I picked up the distilled water and made my way to my cleaning duties.

  Chapter Five

  I found a wire brush and a battery-operated lantern in the garage, plus a bottle of orange-based degreaser and three brand-new sleeping bags, all still in their boxes. The sleeping bags I piled in the back of the bus, along with two tents and a nice hoard of dried camping food.

  Dad must have been planning on taking the boys camping once it warmed up.

  I pulled my mom’s bright lavender knit hat—somehow the yarn-maker had indeed made the lavender blindingly bright—down over my ears. I wished my parents had left me a note before they ran. But why would they? Neither of them had any reason to think I would show up at the house with two ex-Paradise Homes residents.

  I set the degreaser and the brush on the bus’s floor and pulled out my phone once again.

  This time, the calls didn’t even go to voicemail. This time, nothing connected at all.

  I put the phone back in my pocket. Should I worry? Why hadn’t one of them left me a message? Probably for the same reason I couldn’t get through now.

  That had to be it. Mom had tried to leave a message, but technology failed her. She couldn’t get through. She’d call again, once this was over.

  Or once humanity got used to its new hellhound-filled normal.

  No one ever wanted to talk about the space between normal and the apocalypse. Around me, over my head and under my feet, was a weird membrane not all that different from the upsy-downsy membrane of the mini-Incursion that Stab and I had closed at Paradise Homes. At this time of night, Aurora was normally dark and quiet, dotted only with pools of bluish glare from the streetlights. Things often skittered—coyotes, raccoons, dogs, cats, and the occasional bobcat. Leaves rustled. And the ice in the sky would often circle the moon with pastel rainbows.

  But tonight the rainbows ate the world, and the membrane was about to pop.

  I tried to figure out where the distortions were, to make sure we survived the change, but I didn’t know what it all meant. Even worse, I didn’t know how to feel.

  Should I be terrified that my family had been ripped away for a reason? Why should I run from “angels” if the invaders were going to bomb Denver anyway? Maybe I should feel hopeless. Maybe I shouldn’t care anymore.

  Maybe I should just climb up onto the top of the bus and watch the world die. I glanced at the house. Mrs. K and Nax slept inside, both snug next to the fire.

  The real question I needed to ask myself was when I wanted to die.

  Now? Tomorrow? Did I want to be Alternate-me scavenging through a ruined Colorado landscape?

  I also had two charges, and really, the moment I decided to die, I pretty much decided when they were going to die, too. At least Mrs. K. Nax, maybe not so much, but I doubted even he could handle a battle with angels right now.

  Not that I could handle angels, either, even though I carried Stab on my back. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving it just sitting around, even though I had no idea how to actually use it for slicing and dicing, and didn’t know if I’d manage anyway if I needed to. I’d never stabbed anything in my life. I didn’t even like cutting up steak for fajitas.

  Death by cuts—death by the releasing of blood and innards with their dark smells and their metallic shocks—that was different from the smoothed-out, slow smells of death by old age.

  War glared. Old faded away. Neither was all that fun.

  I balled up some more paper towels. Either way, the bus needed cleaning.

  The degreaser did its job, even in the cold air, and the bus took on the semi-fresh scent of oily, electrocuted oranges. I put the cleaner and the brush in a box with several extra paper towel rolls and added it to the other supplies just in case Nax tossed his cookies again.

  I leaned against the side of the bus. The wind had died down, but the January air bit at my eyeballs and worked its way through my jeans.

  No neighbors had appeared while I cleaned the bus. No one wiggled a curtain or stared at me out of the shadows. Maybe the entire neighborhood had raised a collective middle finger to the authorities and left instead of sheltering in place. Or maybe they were all too cold and terrified to look outside, even with the strange vehicle in my parents’ driveway.

  The mini-bus seated fifteen, plus the wheelchair lift. Someone at Paradise Homes once had the bright idea to add a roof rack, plus a ladder next to the small rear window.

  Part of me wanted to go inside and get the one lone bottle of gin in the back of my parents’ pantry. They didn’t drink beyond a glass of wine on special occasions, and even then they rarely finished the bottle. Someone gave them the gin as a gift years ago. It was still there, still sealed, even after all these years. Not even the boys had touched it.

  But if I drank myself into a coma out here, who’d drive the bus tomorrow morning?

  I looked up at the clear night sky. With Denver dark, the sky all but shimmered with stars. Wisps of high crystalline clouds drifted by, transforming the sky into a pixie playground hanging over a dying Earth.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. That one, small word wrapped up all the weirdness, terror, freaky impossibilities, and every single ounce of the apocalypse’s weight.

  I hauled two of the sleeping bags up to the roof. I could go in, stay warm by the fire, but what was the use? However, if I was going to sit out here and watch the world end, I should probably do it from a spot at least somewhat safe from hellhounds.

  Trees blocked most of the view beyond my parents’ street, but patches of orange glow spread above the houses to the east, and to the southwest.

  Buildings burned. One of the ones to the southwest was probably Paradise Homes.

  An emergency vehicle wailed off in the distance, and a jet screamed overhead. I counted, one, two, three… and a sonic boom washed over Aurora. Someone important must be on that jet for them to make so much noise when we were all supposed to shelter quietly in place.

  Somewhere nearby, someone fired a gun.

  Pop. Pop pop pop.

  Someone screamed.

  An unearthly howl lifted from between the trees, one both familiar and unfamiliar, and a flash of purple light burst between the houses.

  One of the thousand or so hellhounds from Ismene’s Incursion had made it into the neighborhood.

  It walked along Mrs. Meyer’s fence like a shimmering, ghost-like spirit. This one was small, about the size of an ocelot, and sniffing the ground. It wagged its stubby hellhound tail, and a new wave of purple light popped off its back. Then it returned to its shadowy shimmering.

  So I sheltered in place, on top of a bus, against the cold, hard truth of the cold, bitter world. I shivered, but I didn’t cry. And I watched an unearthly creature trot through suburbia.

  It would leave soon enough. I’d be able to go in with the oldsters and the warm fire if I wanted to. But I wrapped myself and my sword in the sleeping bags instead. I curled up inside space-age fabrics and I hid in plain sight from the monsters stalking the world because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how not to be numb.

&nb
sp; And I did the dumbest thing a person in shock could do.

  I closed my eyes.

  I dreamed that I held Stab against my chest. She shimmered as much as the hellhound, but not in light I could see. Not in a place I could touch. Not in the old space I called reality.

  Her shimmers circulated around her blade in a controlled way. She executed tasks, and she processed information. She pinged out into the gray and she oriented herself in the space that I should not have been able to see.

  Snow devils danced over the top of the bus. They swirled and whirled and spit cold ice against my eyes, but they weren’t tiny tornados of winter air. They were power. They were connection. They were the end of the world made manifest in the space between the curlicues.

  There were mathematics here, maths I did not understand, but sensed anyway. There were ghosts, too, and calls from long-distant places.

  I am the fearless and the bold, the voice said. You will manifest me into this world.

  “How?” I asked. I shivered on top of the bus in the blackness of civilization dying, wrapped in sleeping bags and holding a computational sword against my breastbone. How was I supposed to manifest anything?

  A hellhound leaped onto the roof.

  This hound wasn’t the ocelot-sized beast that had slunk down the street before I cried myself to sleep. This one gripped the sides of the bus. We rocked, and the frame creaked, and a Grizzly-sized hellhound sniffed my face.

  Dream terror disassociated the hound’s sniffing from the hound itself. Heat pulsed off its hide, as did muted reds, yellows, and blues. But that sniffing, that breath, froze every fiber of every one of my muscles.

  It raised its head. It looked toward the northeast.

  A wave hit us. Not a wave like the one that hit when the blister opened on the lawn of Paradise Homes. This wave held computational shrapnel that felt like tiny specks of Stab’s shimmers.

  The hellhound spasmed. One of its giant, six-taloned paws almost gouged my shoulder, and my outer sleeping bag ripped.

  The hound fell off the roof of the bus.

  I didn’t see where it went. I didn’t look. I didn’t need to. That wave of power had disrupted the bubble of the hound’s world and had sent it away.