Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Leif laid his hand on Nax’s neck. “The venom has calmed.” Then he checked Harold and the Fates. “No broken bones. Everyone’s pulse is strong.”

  I reached for his hand. “What’s happening?” I didn’t understand Marko’s true identity, nor did I understand what he was on about. “He told me he’d kill me in front of you if you didn’t cooperate.”

  Even when we had him tied up, Leif had never looked defeated. He’d never looked as if he was about to give up. But Marko’s presence, or more likely Leif thinking of him as Judicial High Commander, was too much for Leif to fight. He sighed, and I swear the metallic hints in his eyes dimmed.

  Leif looked over his shoulder. “He will, Del. Do what he says.” Then he looked down at Mrs. K. “I need my armor.”

  He slowly blinked his violet eyes. He didn’t want to strip his armor off a dead old lady. He wanted all this to be over as much as I did.

  “Okay,” I said, and helped him unzip the armored jacket.

  Leif gently closed Mrs. K’s eyes. “I am so sorry,” he whispered. “I thought I could get you all through this without anyone getting hurt.”

  I touched his hand and Leif Ladonson, the man I called a douchebro, squeezed my fingers.

  “Gather the Lesser Emperor,” Marko called. “We must leave. This stretch of road may be deserted, but we’re about to have a visitor.”

  Vivicus and the now-conscious Penny walked toward Nax.

  Leif pulled the armor off Mrs. K’s legs, but didn’t stand. “I’m staying with the injured,” he said.

  He hadn’t lost all of his soul. I squeezed his fingers again.

  Marko sighed and pulled Stab off his back. He ran his finger along the flat side of her blade. “She’s remarkable, isn’t she?” he said. “I sacrificed her once already for the good of the world.” He spun her around. “And now she’s been returned to me whole. No more modulating my seers to fake a third-rate Shifter ability.”

  Leif’s lips pinched as if someone had punched him in the gut.

  “I am at full capacity,” Marko said. “You will do as I command.” He sounded bored.

  Leif shook ever so slightly. His jaw tensed. Was the hum lifting from his suit? I didn’t think so. Fear had set up a resonance between his soul and his body.

  Vivicus and Penny gathered the still-unconscious Nax. Both frowned at Leif, and continued with their work of dragging Nax toward the red SUV.

  I could yell and scream, but it would do no good. I couldn’t stop them.

  Marko might decide to follow through with his threats if I did.

  Leif balled up his armor and tucked it under his arm. “I’ll watch over Pertinax.”

  He was leaving. Just like that, Leif chose his defeat over staying and protecting the man he called Uncle Marcus. Or me.

  Marko pointed at the sky with both hands. “Thank you, Philadelphia Parrish, for bringing us the tool we need to stop the cycles of time that plague humanity.”

  “What?” I said. Stab was on his back, not in the sky.

  “The Dragonslayer,” Marko said. “She’s here, now, because of you.”

  Alt-me had talked to the Dragonslayer, who had built a cage and folded something or other. But we were the only people here.

  Marko walked toward Leif. “So we are clear: I will kill her if you don’t cooperate.” He rubbed the side of his face. “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her family. I’ll kill his boy.” He pointed at Nax. “Then I’ll kill your family, Impossible Son.”

  “You’ve never been able to kill my family,” Leif spat.

  Leif’s family was alive. Mine was, too, as was Nax’s son. This world still connected to us.

  Marko laughed. “You know damned well that from this moment forward no one in this timeline matters.” He pointed at the sky again. “The question is when and how they die. It could be peaceful. It could be in agony. I do not need to be merciful.”

  Vivicus and Penny stuffed Nax into the back of the red SUV.

  They were taking Nax away. They were taking Leif, too, and leaving me here with unconscious Fates I did not know, and a ghost with whom I could no longer speak. “Leif…” I whispered.

  He pulled me close for a quick hug. “I don’t know how you did it,” he whispered. “I don’t know why, either. But it’s done.” He looked up at the sky. “We’re going to activate the Final Protocols, aren’t we?” he asked Marko.

  The other man touched the tip of his nose, then pointed the same finger at Leif.

  “You’re sentencing this world to death,” Leif said. “A death they have a much better chance of avoiding than we ever did, if we let them.”

  Marko shrugged. “All the cycles end with the death of the world. This one is no different.”

  “No,” I said. “No. We have hope. We hold most of North America. Leif’s family survived here! We have what we need to fight!” We had what we needed to win.

  Marko shook his head. “You gave me what I need to make sure that the world of the next cycle wins.”

  Alt-me sentenced everyone on her curlicue to death. She listened to the voices and did what they said and she took away their one tool that might have made a difference.

  That’s what Alt-Marko said. That’s what Leif and Vivicus said. Alt-me stole the Dragonslayer from their world.

  I helped. I held open that door, even though I had no idea why, or how.

  I brought a tool here that Marko was about to use to sentence my world to a death we might have been able to avoid in order to save another. He was going to kill everyone I loved so that the world of another curlicue could prosper.

  What had I done?

  Leif turned away. “How do we reach the Dragonslayer? She’s in orbit.”

  The Dragonslayer was in orbit?

  What had I done?

  “Go,” Marko said.

  Leif looked back at me one more time, then jogged after the others.

  Marko squatted next to me and Mrs. K one last time. “Thank you,” he said. He turned to go, but snapped his fingers and leaned close again. “Rest now.”

  He bowed his head to Mrs. K, then stood. He nodded toward Marcus. “Tell the boys that if my seers pick up even a hint of Legion involvement, I will kill the Dracae.”

  Marko the security guard, who was, like everyone at Paradise Homes, hiding a secret, followed his new friends and hostages to the red SUV. He hopped into the front passenger seat, and Penny, who had already started the vehicle, pulled it into the eastbound lane.

  I watched them drive away with Leif, who could have been my friend, and Nax, who was. I was alone with three men I did not know, and the body of Mrs. K.

  I clenched my fist around the ring on my thumb. Marko hadn’t noticed it. He made no comment about Maria, either, as if he’d forgotten she existed. Maybe I should forget about her, too. Without Mrs. K, she was lost to me anyway.

  Marko had stripped everything—my friends. My family. Even Stab and the connections to new-space that came with her.

  It was all gone.

  All gone, because I’d listened to the voice and enabled a dangerous long immortal. But me? I was just the cog doing a task during a cocktail party which I had no business attending.

  And I’d inadvertently let in a weapon that stripped away all the hope the people who’d stopped The Incursion had given us. I’d listened to the voices and opened the door for something Marko was going to use to fix not this timeline, but the next.

  What had I done?

  A sob burst from my chest like the monster it was, and I bent forward and placed my forehead on the cold pavement. What had I done?

  Oh my God, what had I done?

  PART THREE

  Chapter One

  “Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” some brilliant old dude said a long time ago. Heinlein, maybe, or Asimov, or one of those other old-school science fiction writers who knew all about rocket science when both rocket science and science fiction were shiny and new. Harlan Ellison, perhaps,
or even Carl Sagan. It’s a nice quote. It’s succinct, precise, and to-the-point.

  None of those boys lived it. Not one of them had a spaceship muttering in their heads. None of them had that tech gaslighting them like some asshole manipulative boyfriend. Not one of those science-y boys had a super-sharp sword running timeline-hopping algorithms. They never dealt with the end of the world.

  They were never used by the magic.

  Used, abused, and tossed to the side of a deserted road outside of Denver, Colorado. Winter turned the bright morning sun into a blinding cold glare. The breeze kept most of the hellhound death stench at bay, but not the smell of the gasoline leaking from the overturned SUV to my right.

  My ears froze, as did my hands and feet, but I didn’t move. I sobbed where I was, on the pavement between unconscious Fates I didn’t know and the dead body of a little old lady who used to talk to Russian ghosts.

  The bus clicked. The trees swayed and rustled. The universe did what it did, killed who it wanted, and fucked over everyone else.

  Because the universe lacked compassion. It lacked empathy and caring and all those other skills one needs to nurture growth and stability amongst one’s children. She’s all about the nature, the universe is, and her nature includes all the magic and sufficiently advanced doodads that come with it.

  Then again, the doodads should be on our side. We built them, after all. But nothing says “human” like narcissistic, psychotic technology. One’s nature begets what it begets, no matter the nurture, and humans are nothing if not petty and manipulative.

  Humans, and dragons.

  Arthur C. Clarke. That’s who said it. “Sufficiently advanced tech” is one of his laws. Clarke, a brilliant mind from a much simpler time when only people did the gaslighting and everyone understood their place in the world.

  I thought the doodads were on our side. I guess I’m too trusting.

  And once again, all I wanted to do was cry.

  Chapter Two

  Back when I first started at Paradise Homes—back when it was just humans destroying our world—I saw one of the oldsters die. He went by Mr. Hamster or Napster or something just as weirdly entertaining. I don’t remember his name. I couldn’t then, either. Perhaps he had wanted it that way.

  He’d been sitting in one of the cushy lounge chairs in the common room with half a dozen other residents. There’d been singing. They’d broken into some old-timey song about thigh-high stockings and the loveliness of ankles and were slapping the vinyl of their armchairs or tapping the tips of their canes against the industrial carpet under their slippers.

  Seven old people perfectly in tune with each other. Seven men and women who, at the time, were singing Mr. Hamster his eulogy before he stroked out and fell face-first into his one-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.

  Because they’d known.

  So future-seeing Fates had some use in the world.

  Except the unconscious future-seer lying on the cold pavement hadn’t stopped Vivicus from killing Mrs. Karanova. He—she—I had no idea and honestly I didn’t think Daniel-ghost-in-the-blind-woman had figured out their correct pronoun, either—had been just as overwhelmed and surprised as the rest of us by Mrs. K bopping Vicky the Psycho on the head with a garden gnome.

  Some things in life you just don’t see coming no matter how good you are at reading the room or preparing for outrageous possibilities. You know, like dragons invading the world through a popped blister in the sky called The Incursion.

  No one but the Fates saw that coming, either. I certainly did not.

  Yet here I was, swordless and cold, abandoned and effectively alone, and waiting for nothing in particular.

  The trees rustled behind the dead corpse of a bison-sized hellhound. Somewhere not too far away, a crow cawed. Mrs. K’s skin moved from sallow to chalky to the rubbery yellow that happens right before the blue surfaces.

  And I didn’t know what to do.

  “Oh, Mrs. K,” I said, and carefully moved the three remaining pieces of Rostislav the Gnome away from her bent legs. “Thank you.” She’d smacked Vivicus because he was trying to hurt Nax, Leif, and me.

  Perhaps if she’d missed, Vivicus would have stopped me from bringing through the Dragonslayer.

  I leaned back on my heels and looked up at the deceptively blue Colorado sky. Somewhere up there, in high Earth freakin’ orbit, was the weapon the angel boys from alt-Earth said was their final hope. A weapon that I’d stolen from their alt-timeline and brought into my version of the real world.

  I wasn’t strong on the specifics. Stab, my Midnight Blade sword, whispered from some gray plane the boys called “new-space” and told me to hold open a door. So I did. And a spaceship came through.

  Because I was pretty sure the Dragonslayer was some sort of orbital battle cruiser. I’d opened some weird-ass new-space gate for a galactic-sized shark who’d been whispering in my ear about candy-grams.

  And yet I didn’t feel nearly as confused as I should, which most likely meant I was in shock.

  “Fuck,” I muttered.

  I needed help, but Marko had been clear that calling in the local American powers would be met with him somehow killing my family. So who? All the reports I’d seen so far suggested that everyone between Japan and Portugal was gone, except for a handful of northern cities protected by heavy cloud cover. The nations of the Southern Hemisphere were also mostly intact, at least for now.

  I ran the pad of my thumb over the gaudy ruby embedded in the Tsar’s ring I still wore on my finger. Daniel had said it was for Mrs. K’s ghost, the daughter of a Tsar, Maria Romanova.

  Leif, before he ran off in order to protect Nax from Marko the lying bastard, had said something about another Tsar. A new Tsar. A Russian with a lot of power.

  Because that’s who the world needed, right? An autocrat in charge at the end of the world.

  But at least the Russians wouldn’t mess around when it came to bombing the shit out of the dragon invaders. I suspected that good swaths of the Earth were currently on fire and not just because of ballistic bombardment from space. If anyone would be up for blowing a gaslighting spaceship out of the sky, it was the Russians.

  “Fuck you, Dragonslayer,” I muttered, and pulled out my phone. What had Leif called the man? Tsar Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov. Leif had dated his daughter. And Nax had interacted with her as well.

  Nax. What the hell had he done? Something not good. Stupid dumbass. At least Leif was looking after him.

  I tapped “Pavlovich” into search, praying that search was still a function available. The dragons hadn’t bombed us, and the West Coast was still up and running, so I had hope, except…

  Maybe I shouldn’t look. That liar Marko said that if he got even a whiff of Legion involvement, he’d kill everyone.

  Thing was, I wasn’t one of the Fates, and I sure as hell wasn’t part of the mysterious Legion, and I hazarded a guess that the guy running the Russian Empire probably wasn’t Legion, either.

  But his daughter might be.

  “Fuck it,” I said again, and scrolled through the results anyway.

  The first entry was an historic Dmitri Pavlovich who was some sort of badass who got himself kicked out of the final Tsar’s royal whatever because he’d had a hand in killing Rasputin.

  The second Dmitri Pavlovich owned a bar in Branson, Missouri, called The Land of Milk and Honey—and just also happened to be the working CEO of Praesagio Industries.

  The two men looked suspiciously alike.

  “He’s a Shifter,” I muttered. Or a Fate like Marko.

  I scrolled through the contact information for the bar, figuring that a call to his main hangout wasn’t really a call to Praesagio or any Legion types. Maybe someone there had a direct line to Moscow.

  I flipped through the site’s pages. They had a bar, a hotel, trails, and animals. I tapped the page with the horse before I realized what I was doing.

  And there she was, standing with a hand on a gorgeous thoroughbre
d’s neck with an equally gorgeous smile on her goddess-level beautiful face, one Tsar’s worth of daughterly perfection, a woman named Daisy Pavlovich.

  She was a veterinarian on top of her big, shiny, black curls and her golden-brown eyes.

  The Tsar’s daughter was a frickin’ brilliant supermodel, so of course her alt-self had dated Leif. He was a frickin’ brilliant supermodel, too. The tens stick with the tens, after all.

  None of which was important right now. Or would be important ever again. This Daisy Pavlovich never knew a Leif anyway, and was probably married to an A-list actor or at least some dude who looked nice in a suit.

  I scrolled back to the contacts page. Time to call The Land of Milk and Honey.

  “Don’t.”

  I yelped and almost dropped my phone. Daniel hadn’t moved or opened his eyes—not that it mattered because he couldn’t see anyway—and had decided to let out a loud, authoritative “don’t” just to scare me.

  “You could have moaned first or something,” I said.

  He rolled onto his side and his ride’s dirty-blonde ponytail flopped over his shoulder. He reached for his dark glasses sitting next to his shoulder. “That ring is making it difficult to use my seers on you.”

  “It’s not stopping you from fake-seeing the world, though, is it?”

  He sat up and rubbed at the scar on his host’s cheek. “I realized what you were doing when you reacted to Daisy’s photo.”

  I set the phone on my thigh. “Is that so?”

  He held up the hand he’d ripped up fighting Vivicus. “Addy’s upset.”

  Addy was the woman in whom he rode. Her body had a strength to it, like a gymnast. She wasn’t heavily muscled, but I could tell. That body moved with precision. From what little I’d gathered so far, she wasn’t a kindly individual.

  “She’s a psychopathic murderer,” Daniel said, as if he could read my mind. But he could read the present as well as he could read the future, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by the mindreading. “She killed my brother and me.”