Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Nax walked out of the house with Mrs. K in his arms. Mrs. K rested her hand on his shoulder and watched the flames suspiciously.

  Nax disappeared into the bus with Mrs. K, and I turned around to take one last look at Ismene’s handiwork.

  In the middle of the street, not too far from the end of Mrs. Smith’s driveway, a pony-sized blob shimmered as if we had an isolated spot of snowy weather. The spot looked correct, but not quite as clear as everything around it, and small, almost-imperceptible “snow” danced along its surface like little fairy lights.

  I squinted. The blob’s top curved as if it crouched down like every predator crouched when it stalked. It camouflaged well enough I could barely make it out against the shadows thrown by the rising sun.

  A hellhound. We had a mimicking, stalking hellhound no more than thirty feet away.

  I slid back my foot. The shimmer that had to be a hound, wiggled.

  Every cell in my body focused on the semi-invisible threat in the middle of the street. Every brain cell that had been hyperventilating about Stab’s weirdness, or the wispy aurora-like remains of The Incursion in the sky, or the fact that I now knew about the soldiers and Ismene even though there was no way I should know shit—they all stopped their thoughts and focused on the hellhound.

  I stared at the heat-mirage-like shimmer of an outline. From the curve and the smoothness of the line, this one had to be one of the bear-like hounds.

  More hounds probably stalked nearby. My exposure to the beasts might have been limited to the attack at Paradise Homes, but the hounds all seemed willing and able to work together.

  So where was the rest of the pack?

  “Nax!” I called as I lifted Stab off my back. “We have a hellhound about thirty feet away in the middle of the street.”

  Stab’s non-light magnetic-like field contracted around the blade. It darkened, though not in a “giving off less light” way. More a shifting into darker colors, like a black-light glow.

  The energy around the blade collapsed into something as invisible as the hound, but with less shimmer and more of an edge. The air around Stab took on a parallax bending, as if I was seeing a distorted image of the reality behind it playing out in a compacted line about two inches above the metal.

  “Wow,” I said. I held her directly between me and the hound.

  There was definitely a hound there. As I moved Stab through the air, her field—I didn’t know what else to call it—acted as a sort of magic lens that showed the truth of the world. Stab’s distortion undistorted—or maybe extra-distorted, I couldn’t tell—the edges of the hound’s mimicking. Stab didn’t undo the hound’s camouflage. The hound’s glimmers spread and contracted instead, and all the little changes in the air that allowed me to pick it out in the first place magnified.

  We definitely had a bear-like hellhound between us and Mrs. Smith’s house.

  “Back up slowly,” Nax said. He stood right next to me. He must have glamoured up cover to get so close without me noticing.

  “You probably shouldn’t do that until you’re healed,” I said.

  He stepped in front of me—and Stab revealed the edges of his glamour. It bubbled off him in distinctive levels with the thickest about three feet from his body, then another “edge” about ten feet out. The farther one brightened, then split, and a third bubble continued outward, toward the hound.

  I could see every single distortion in Nax’s body left behind by Ismene. Every single tiny cut and miniature nibble. His glamour crawled with moving, worm-like wounds.

  “Wow,” I said again as I swept Stab through the air. “Nax, you shouldn’t be using your—”

  A second invisible hellhound crept between the houses. I pointed. “Another to our left,” I said.

  “Irena is set. I put her chair on the bus.” Nax signaled for me to back up. “Move slowly,” he said.

  Gunshots echoed through the neighborhood—three pops followed by a louder boom. The flames from the burning house puffed upward as if responding.

  “That came from the direction of the explosion,” Nax said.

  Someone screamed.

  “That, too,” he said.

  Both hounds looked away from us and down the street, toward the explosion.

  Ismene ran around the corner. She still wore her triple leggings, her big boots, and her oversized red hoodie—and she was moving faster than any regular human should be able to run.

  She jumped a hedge and darted into Mrs. Smith’s yard.

  An Ismene-touched Molotov-ed potted plant flew over the hedge, its dry stems and leaves blazing.

  It hit the middle of the street and burst into a wide, brilliant flame.

  The two hellhounds dropped their stalking camouflage. The one in the street howled and reared up on its back legs like a frightened horse. Oranges and reds flashed from its hide. The other hellhound turned a brilliant aqua-blue, stomped its front limbs, and roared at the sky.

  Flickers sparked through Nax’s glamour bubbles. A hole opened in the one about five feet ahead of us.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He shook his head no.

  I looked over my shoulder at the bus. Ten strides and we’d be in. I looked back at the hellhounds. The one in the street was close enough it might overtake us if he dropped his glamour.

  Behind the hedge, Ismene screamed. One of Mrs. Smith’s trees ignited.

  We didn’t have a choice.

  “Go!” I said, and turned to begin my run to the bus.

  The hound in the middle of the street leaped. It crouched like a big cat, and launched itself directly for us.

  Nax staggered. I held up Stab more as a shield than a weapon. I had no idea how to use a sword. No idea at all if and where to cut a hellhound.

  Something hit the side of the hellhound, and disrupted its trajectory. It yelped and flailed, and flopped onto its side five feet in front of us.

  A metal disc had attached itself to the hound’s side. An angry red ring pulsed from the disc and the wound, then contracted, then pulsed out again, this time into a wider circle with a new, yellow pulse filling in underneath it.

  The hound screamed, and its legs flailed.

  Someone had shot the hound with a device that disrupted its nervous system and its ability to camouflage. Someone I could not see.

  “Nax…” I said. We needed to run, and run now.

  Ismene screamed again. The second hellhound ran away, between the houses.

  The flailing hound wailed and tried to stand. Nax turned around as if to make sure our path to the bus was still clear.

  A new camouflaged distortion landed on the hellhound’s neck. This one, like the hound, looked snowier than the dawn light around it, but this one wasn’t bear-like.

  This one was human-shaped.

  The soldier pulled a massive, also-camouflaged rifle off a hands-free, probably-magnetic scabbard and placed its muzzle against the hound’s head.

  He fired. The hound’s head vaporized.

  Nothing remained. Nothing at all, except a hole in the road. And every shimmer, every color, every sign of life left the remaining corpse.

  The rifle flipped onto the soldier’s back. He leaned over and ripped the disc off the side of the dead hound, shook it, and slapped it against his shoulder.

  The soldier pointed at us.

  “Philadelphia Simone Parrish, by order of the Judicial High Commander of the Mundus Imperium,” he yelled, “I hereby place you under arrest.”

  Chapter Eight

  The super-soldier in the hellhound-level camouflaging suit saw us, even through Nax’s glamour.

  His suit cycled down enough that I could easily pick him out against the background without Stab’s help, and he became an eight-bit ghost in the dawn glow spreading along the street.

  “Drop the glamour, Emperor.” His deep, authoritative voice echoed as if he spoke through a speaker. “We calibrated for you.” He tapped the side of his still-shimmering helmet.

 
; Nax’s look clearly said Now what do we do?

  We couldn’t run, but we had to run. We couldn’t fight, either, though I suspected we wouldn’t have any other choice.

  “Show yourself!” Nax yelled.

  The soldier leaned forward as if to leap at us, and vanished.

  One instinct wanted to scream and drop to the ground. Another wanted me to run. A third wanted me to use the sword in my hand and to slash the threat into ribbons not unlike the former hellhound in the street.

  A terrified and terrifying part wanted me to fight.

  It didn’t matter. The soldier appeared directly in front of me as he grabbed my sword wrist.

  The soldier—the Seraphim—looming over me scared me more than The Incursion. He scared me more than a hellhound. He was more frightening than Ismene.

  Because he was calm. He was collected.

  “You will allow me to take the Midnight Blade,” he said. “Then you will remove and hand over the scabbard. Do you understand?” He pointed at Nax with his other hand. “If you move, you will be incapacitated.”

  Pain screamed up my arm. The soldier was going to break my wrist.

  “This is the United States of America!” I yelled. “You have no right to attack us!”

  I swear the soldier sighed. “Eight years, two months, and five days after the closing of The Incursion, the remaining human nation-states declared solidarity as the one, true civilization of Earth, the Mundus Imperium.” He sounded bored. “By the authority of the Judicial High Commander, and by decree of the Emperor himself, we have been granted special temporal rights to engage and arrest one Philadelphia Simone Parrish, and to confiscate her Midnight Blade, before she commits her heinous crimes against humanity.”

  “I’m not her!” I yelled.

  He wrenched my arm backward and turned my forearm upward, then pushed up the sleeve of my jacket and slapped his gloved hand over my bare skin.

  “Your DNA says otherwise.”

  His suit shifted into a half-mimicking, half-wintry-camo-pattern and its armor became visible. Tiny hexagons covered his entire body, more like a plated glove than any boxy, robotic armor in any of my little brothers’ video games. It did not inhibit or slow down his movements in any way.

  He was fast. He was strong. And he moved as if sent by God himself. How the hell was I supposed to run from angels in armor that could render them invisible?

  “This isn’t your timeline!” I yelled. “I’m not the me you know! I’m—”

  He shoved me hard enough that I stumbled and dropped to my knees. “Quiet.” He pointed at Nax again. “On your knees, Emperor.”

  Nax growled.

  The soldier yanked on my wrist again. “Do as I say or I will snap her bones, Pertinax. Then I will snap yours.” His voice did not hold the crazy enthusiasm of someone who would snap my hand. He sounded bored.

  But the bored could be as vicious as the pumped-up.

  “Nax…” I whispered.

  He looked between me and the flickering, semi-visible soldier, then he too dropped to his knees.

  “Good,” the soldier said. “Now the sword.” He squeezed my wrist in such a way my grip weakened from the pressure. I yelped, and dropped Stab.

  The soldier pushed the sword out of reach, then crouched next to me, and like every authoritarian asshole everywhere, placed a condescending forearm on his thigh.

  His helmet parted. It split first along the bridge of his nose. Panels on each side contracted into leaf-like sections—three on his forehead, two over his eyes, five sections over his mouth, plus several more over his cheeks and jaw—all contracted and pulled back into a hood.

  The man underneath stared at me with weary, tired, dark brown eyes. The shimmery hood kept most of his other features concealed, and even though he was threatening, I suspected I wouldn’t recognize him if he walked up to me in street clothes like a normal human.

  He inhaled slowly, as if to calm himself, and blinked once. “You will behave now.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’m getting too old for this shit, young lady. Too old, and now homeless.” He flicked his hand at the sky. “There’s no going back for us.”

  “Too bad, so sad,” I said. The words slipped out like four little pokey needles I should have left deep down inside. But my legs ached, and he’d made me drop my sword. And I was pretty sure he was playing “tired soldier” at the end of the world to gain some sort of respect for his authority.

  His face changed. Literally hardened up as if every muscle under his skin had turned to stone.

  Gross, I thought. Nax had said something about how some shifters morphed their bodies. This guy must be a morpher.

  Nax wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me away from the soldier. “Vivicus,” he said.

  So Mr. Sad Eyes wasn’t some random soldier-boy morpher. He was the morpher, the horror everyone kept whispering about, Vivicus.

  He frowned and his suit down-shifted again, and the wintry patterns darkened into grays with slight reddish undertones.

  I didn’t know much about this world’s Vivicus beyond the fact that he led the Shifters who called themselves Seraphim. But back at Paradise Homes, the others—Marko and Erik—had sure seemed wary, and maybe a tad frightened, when speaking of the man.

  This Vivicus had the leading and the threatening parts down pat, no matter how tired he pretended to be.

  Vivicus pointed at Nax. “We have nothing but the highest respects for the Captain’s father, correct?” he said in a loud voice obviously meant for other soldiers we could not see.

  Nax stiffened.

  Vivicus grinned. Was he enjoying Nax’s discomfort? Or was he just happy he’d gotten control of the situation quickly enough that he and his soldiers would soon be on their way to cold beers, a meet-and-greet with some Emperor somewhere, and a good night’s sleep?

  He pointed at my face. “This one killed you where we come from. Rumors were she did it to prove her worth to the Russian Tsar.” He shrugged. “The Russian Sub-Empire is part of the Mundus Imperium, of course. But Russians will always be Russians, will they not?” He winked.

  “We don’t know any Russians,” I said, even though I knew Nax was somehow tied up with Russians, and that we had a Russian ghost-whisperer on the bus.

  And a Russian ghost floating somewhere around us right now.

  Vivicus pointed at me yet again. “You don’t. Not yet.” Then at Nax. “He harmed someone he should have left alone.” He sure liked to jab his finger at people.

  Vivicus didn’t know about Maria. He couldn’t. Otherwise, he would have commented about Maria, and maybe Mrs. K.

  “Why do you think this world mirrors yours so closely? I don’t know what you are talking about,” Nax said.

  Vivicus pinched the bridge of his nose with great show of condescension. “You should be thankful you have value, even if it is solely to placate the Russian.” He looked over his shoulder. “Where is my Burner?” he yelled. Then he pointed over Nax’s head. “Leif! Watch the Emperor.”

  A second soldier manifested between Nax and the bus and his suit cycled down into the winter camo pattern as he walked toward us. He also carried a massive rifle on his back, and two hound-killer discs on his shoulders. But unlike Vivicus, the second soldier also carried a small arms holster and at least three visible knives. He was big, too, like Nax.

  Vivicus leaned toward me. “This one’s real name is Cadmus, but no one likes a Cad.” A stupid, ain’t I funny grin spread just a little too far over his face as he hauled me to my feet.

  Why the hell would I care what the Seraphim underling’s name really was? Goddamned creepy-assed dick, I thought.

  Cadmus, Leif—whatever his name was—opened his helmet. It parted along his nose and his cheeks the same way Vivicus’s helmet had, and retracted behind his ears.

  Dark, almost-violet blue eyes glared at Vivicus for a split second before Cad-Leif reined in his disdain, then he slapped a hand onto Nax’s shoulder. “Stand up, Emperor,” he said.<
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  I should have been as terrified of this new man as I was of Vivicus. I should have found the implants along the side of his temple disgusting, and his short-though-still-wavy black hair ugly.

  I didn’t, because I’m a dumbass and I have a weakness for tall men with velvety voices. And Leif clearly disliked his boss. We had that in common.

  Nax slowly stood.

  “I promised you and the blade to the Emperor.” Vivicus picked up my sword and swung it around his wrist. “Three of my Seraphim and half our weaponry are on their way to Portland as we speak.” He leaned closer. “Seems they’d sent the Assassin’s Daughter to look for the shard and the Lesser Emperor here. She met us at the door.”

  Praesagio Industries sent someone to Paradise Homes? Of course they did. And that someone took the spoils back to the castle. Or half the spoils, and then sent Vivicus, Leif, and two more of his team after Nax and me.

  Vivicus set Stab against the magnetic scabbard and next to his big gun. “You remember the Assassin, don’t you, Pertinax?”

  Nax’s lips thinned.

  Vivicus grinned again. “The Assassin was responsible for his short reign.” He took my arm. “Come.”

  “Sir.” Leif pointed at the bus. “There’s an old lady.”

  Vivicus pinched the bridge of his nose once again. “Place a call to the local emergency services.” He pointed up the road. “Why aren’t they here?” He looked up and down the street. “We have a burning house and no one cares? No wonder Aurora didn’t survive the attacks.”

  Leif held out his forearm and tapped at a panel I could not see.

  Vivicus turned toward the street. “Where is my Burner?” he yelled again. “I wish to leave.”

  Why was he referring to Ismene as his Burner? “Ismene won’t cooperate with you,” I said.

  Vivicus laughed. “Cooperate? Why would we need an unconscious Burner to cooperate?”

  Nax stumbled toward me. “You have a way to knock her out?”

  Vivicus sniffed and rubbed the tip of his nose with the back of his hand. “Your disbelief in the quality of our technology wounds me, Pertinax.”

  Somewhere behind Mrs. Smith’s house, Ismene let out a high-pitched screech.