Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Janus laid his hand on Stab.

  His seers pushed outward from his body as a rolling, musical wave that moved forward into the what-will-be, steadied in the what-is, and backward into the what-was, but did not initially harmonize. A split second later, a pulse moved through all three, and they fell into the chord Leif had felt many times in his life: A powerful triad pulling all data through the filter of their talisman.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “Interesting?” Vick snatched Stab away again. “The only time we got that damned ship to do anything was when we tried to use a ground incursion to sneak close to the Atlanta Spike.”

  Which the Dragonslayer subsequently turned into a mile-wide, lava-filled crater because of some deeply-buried targeting trigger in her systems the Fates had not foreseen. Or maybe they had, and had decided to keep it to themselves. All Leif knew was that the ship had responded to an incursion opening on top of a spike by destroying that spike. The destruction of the Atlanta Spike also triggered yet another terrifying, crop-destroying volcanic winter.

  Nothing like accidently killing a third of your remaining human population with an oops none of the Fates saw coming.

  “You want to do that here?” Vick yelled. “On one of the most geologically active islands on Earth? There’s a reason Trajan declared no human-caused environmental damage!” He pointed at Janus. “I did not come into this timeline just so you could perma-fuck my chances here, too!”

  Behind Leif, Penny cringed as Vivicus’s voice reverberated throughout the cab.

  Janus twisted slightly between his seat and the steering wheel so that the hilt of the Midnight Blade was within easy reach. He sounded more bored than anything else, as if he’d foreseen this particular moment. Which he had. He foresaw everything. “I’ve already done this.” Janus shrugged. “Or a version of me has.”

  Vivicus opened his door and rolled out of the SUV. He held Stab over his head to keep it away from Janus. “We steal a plane!”

  Janus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Maybe I should kill you. Penny’s a Shifter. We’ll be fine.”

  “I will slice you nose to asshole, you arrogant motherfucker!” Vivicus roared.

  Janus winked. “There’s the psycho all timelines know and love.” He nodded toward Leif. “He’s the one true universal constant, our First Morpher.”

  “Vick’s right.” Leif held perfectly still. He kept his voice flat and without emotion, because that’s what you did when dealing with two rabid dogs.

  Never in Leif’s ten centuries had he met a Fate who could out-maneuver a Dracae in close-quarter hand-to-hand. Only a handful of Shifters. Yet Janus gripped the back of Leif’s head and slammed his face into the driver’s seat headrest before Leif realized what was happening.

  Leif bounced backward. He swung, but the Fate dodged.

  “I am Janus, Progenitor and father of every Fate dead or alive!” Janus bellowed. “I am your Judicial High Commander!” He punched the seat. “I was Marko Kruger, son of the Predictive Systems Engineer who will make the breakthrough necessary to model Fate abilities.” He hit the seat again. “I was a prodigy! I was a part of the team.”

  He jumped out of the SUV.

  “Jesus,” Penny breathed. Penelope McFarlane, though now close to one-hundred-fifty years old, had gotten a youth jolt from Trajan’s personal healer, the only remaining class-one left on their version of Earth. Penny was now as ageless as Leif, with her ice-blue eyes and her short-cut black hair.

  “And you!” Janus pointed over the hood of the SUV at Vivicus. “This timeline’s Trajan knows what to do with you.” He sniffed. “The you here was quite the prolific murderer.”

  It was a threat. He would call in Praesagio and hand over this Vivicus for the same treatment.

  Janus pointed through the open door. “This world’s Vivicus killed your mother.” He guffawed. “And you, in the process.”

  Another threat. Leif was disposable.

  “Penelope!” Janus yelled. “The Dragons’ Legion of this world does not hold you in high regard.” He straightened and his head disappeared over the top of the doorframe.

  They were all disposable.

  Yet they weren’t. Janus needed a Shifter. He needed a Dracae. Nax had Burner venom in his blood. Without them, his version of the Final Protocols wouldn’t trigger another iteration through the invasion cycle. They were the seeds that populated the world.

  Janus inhaled deeply. “Penny, ready the vehicle. Once I open the ground incursion, we’ll drive it through.” He waved his hand through the air. “A tank would be better, with the destruction of Tokyo’s infrastructure, but we will use what we have.”

  Penny frowned but didn’t respond to Janus and nodded to Nax instead. “He’s going to need extra suppressors when we wake him up,” she said to Leif, “so hold off on giving him any more.”

  Waking him up be damned; Leif would keep Nax stabilized no matter what anyone else wanted.

  Janus walked around the front of the SUV and well into Vivicus’s personal space. He turned slightly, so his back was to the vehicle.

  Whatever he said to Vivicus made the other man’s eyes narrow. He glanced over Janus’s shoulder at Leif for a split second, but it was long enough.

  Leif knew that look. He understood the strange, rubbery facial contortions of a raging morpher. He knew exactly what that stare meant.

  Leif’s father and aunt had long given Vivicus a vessel into which to pour himself—First Morpher, Legion Second, leader of men. He’d held himself to that role for centuries.

  But something here was different. Something Vivicus could not forgive.

  There was bad blood between Vivicus and the Dracae here, and it wasn’t just Vick’s doing.

  There would be vengeance. The slippery kind where revenge was applied not for the concrete actions of a timeline, but for a veneer on that world created by a mind looking for an excuse to cause harm.

  And Vick had just chosen his target.

  Fuck, Leif thought.

  But that was Vivicus. He morphed not just his body, but also his mind—and he would whip up whatever he needed to justify his actions, no matter the reality of the timeline in which he found himself.

  Better Leif than the version of his family who survived in this timeline.

  “Penny,” Leif said. “I think the boss is going to need a dose.”

  She dropped down and pressed her back against Leif’s seat. “I’m not Andreas. You know that.” Then she popped the SUV’s tailgate.

  No, she wasn’t the First Enthraller. Only Andreas was the walking aerosol pharmaceutical dispenser needed to get Vivicus to calm down.

  Janus said something else. Vivicus’s cheek twitched.

  Leif turned around and looked over the back of the seat. “You’re gonna need to try,” he said.

  “He can’t be enthralled if he knows it’s coming.” She dropped her feet off the back of the SUV and glanced around its side. “He’s not the biggest threat here, Leif.”

  Vivicus handed Janus the Midnight Blade.

  “Shit.” Leif hit the seat. “Come around. Get in.”

  Janus tugged on the blade—up, out, up—and pulled it from its scabbard.

  “Penny,” Leif said. “Get in now. I’ll drive us out of here.” He opened the door to move to the front seat.

  Janus twirled Stab around his hand. His seers burst outward like a punch.

  The sword, like her Midnight Blade sisters, was a gladius, and no longer than Leif’s forearm, so twirling wasn’t all that difficult.

  Except, also like all her sisters, Stab could cut through everything.

  Two big steps and Janus slammed her into the hood of the SUV. “Get out of the vehicle!” he yelled. “We are going to Tokyo and you three damned well better do your jobs or I will do my job poorly!”

  He yanked Stab out of the engine block. Nothing changed. No fumes or clicks or sparks. He’d likely killed the starter.

  He pointed Stab at Leif’s face.
“Do you want me to mess up? Get us too close? Set off the Dragonslayer’s auto-planet-killer response?”

  He wasn’t just threatening to kill Del or Leif’s family, even though they weren’t really his family. He was threatening to kill everyone, because to him, this timeline did not matter. Only the next.

  “Jesus Christ, Janus!” Penny yelled.

  The air filled with Penny’s enthraller calling scents and a calm should have descended on the group.

  But, as Penny said, she wasn’t the First Enthraller, and she did not have the strength or the capacity to enthrall Leif, much less Vivicus and the Progenitor of Fates.

  “I will kill you if you attempt another enthralling, Penelope McFarlane,” Janus spat. No indication of fear, or surprise. Just a sneer and a brushing away of calling scents like they were simply smoke in the air.

  She threw her hands up in surrender.

  Janus pointed at the SUV. “Wake him up. We go the moment I open the ground incursion.”

  “He doesn’t have a suit,” Leif said. Running an incursion unsuited was possible—Ismene had come through to this timeline un-suited—but Ismene was a Fate and a Burner, and she’d been carrying Stab. She had some built-in protection.

  Nax was unconscious. And sick. And not likely to get a good amount of momentum going before entering.

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t have forced me to destroy our vehicle,” Janus said.

  The Progenitor of the Fates had just pulled a blatant “look what you made me do” blame shift.

  “You’re twenty-three centuries old.” Leif slammed the SUV door. “This is why my family kept you at arm’s distance. You are fucking pathetic.”

  Janus trembled like a man about to punch the SUV. He closed his eyes instead, and slowly inhaled. “Vivicus. Come.”

  He walked toward Denver’s monolithic blue stallion.

  The winter air tingled against Leif’s bare nose. The metal statue tossed a shortened shadow, one more of limbs and hooves than of neck and mane. It hummed softly as its red demon eyes glowed with consumed electricity.

  Someone had forgotten to turn off the horse. It, like him, was a powered-up anachronism from a now-vanished place and time.

  Leif would have laughed, if it mattered. Everyone under Blucifer’s ghost-haunted hooves was some sort of anachronism, so at least he wasn’t alone.

  Vick’s nose twitched much like Penny’s did when she used her bloodhound scenting ability. Vick, though, was signaling just how deeply into Janus’s self-serving pocket he was willing to crawl.

  Penny pointed through the window at Nax. “We need to wake him up.”

  Leif leaned against the SUV’s door. The cold hadn’t let up, and he squinted against the bright, midmorning sun reflecting off the snow.

  Should he leave Nax unconscious? Or should he accept that if he didn’t wake the Lesser Emperor, Vivicus would?

  He flung open the door. “Wakey-wakey, Nax old man,” he said. “It’s time to dance.”

  Thirty feet away, in the center of the shadow cast by the stallion’s belly, Janus held Stab in front of his face, blade pointing up and his head bowed as if praying. He’d dropped the scabbard next to his feet. The hood of his stolen suit’s armor unfurled over his head, but not his face. The camo powered up, and the suit took on the metallic blue of the beast above it.

  Janus had fully activated his armor.

  All three of his seers erupted as a thick blanket of world-noise and colors. They pulsed outward first, and pushed beyond where Leif and Penny stood, and pulled back until they formed a tight standing wave centered on Janus.

  The wave shimmered like a five-meter diameter heat mirage.

  Penny couldn’t see it the way Leif did, but he knew she’d felt the initial blast. She, too, powered up, as did Vivicus, who was standing just outside of the wave’s horizon.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have sent all the tech with Antonius, huh?” Penny said.

  Antonius had taken several petabytes of scientific data to Praesagio Industries—everything from weapons designs, suit operations, and dragon aircraft schematics to dragon biological, behavioral, and language data, plus new-space physics and engineering—but nothing that would stop the Progenitor of Fates from arrogantly thinking he could control a ground incursion.

  Penny’s hood closed around her head, but not her eyes and mouth. “I think that sword is in charge. Not him.” She nodded toward Janus. “That Burner used it to hook to the shard the same way we hooked to it.” She looked back at Leif. “You were with Parrish when she brought through the Dragonslayer. You’ve seen that thing in action. You know as well as I do that it understands what it’s doing.” She moved her hand in a small version of the swoop that meant sword in American Sign Language. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Del had no idea what she was doing. Alt-Del? The version of her from his timeline? She was a vessel always ranting about voices.

  So yes, Penny might have been onto something. “There’s truth to what you say.” But Leif didn’t think Stab was in charge. The voices were.

  “If we survive this, every Fate left on Earth will know exactly where we are, what we’re doing, and what he thinks he’s going to do.” Penny pointed at Janus. “Because that thing is broadcasting on all its n-channels.” She pointed at the sky. “Every damned dragon in North America, too.”

  If the Fates all knew, then maybe Leif should let this play out. His father and the Draki Prime had used a “look at me!” strategy multiple times over the centuries. Nothing brought more Fates to the table faster than another Fate putting on a show. They were predictably arrogant that way.

  And in this timeline, Janus screaming “look at me!” would likely bring reinforcements.

  But all the Midnight Blades disrupted Fate abilities. No matter how bright this flash, the Fates of Praesagio might not be able to see its source.

  So maybe they’d come to help. Maybe not. Maybe they’d let this play out, too. Maybe they’d only come after they wrestled Stab from Janus, or landed in Tokyo, or Del grew wings and became an actual angel.

  Best to not bank on the Praesagio cavalry saving the day.

  Janus’s wave pulsed, and the second standing wave peaked up in the center of his seer ring.

  “How the hell is he doing that?” Leif muttered.

  A valley appeared just inside the horizon of the ring.

  “What?” Penny asked.

  She didn’t know his brain visualized seers. Vivicus didn’t know. It had been Daniel who had told him long ago to never tell anyone. Then he’d squeezed Leif’s arm and walked away into town to find Antonius. So Leif kept that bit of his life quiet.

  He returned his attention to Nax. “I have only thirty-one percent of my Burner blockers left. Sorry, my friend,” he said, and hit Nax with adrenaline instead.

  The Lesser Emperor gasped awake. He sat up fast, looked up at Leif—and vanished.

  “Damn it, Nax!” Leif hissed. Nax wasn’t technically a First—he couldn’t pass his glamouring ability to his offspring—but he was the Shifter Progenitor’s son. And as her son, he was just as powerful as Vivicus when it came to the control of his abilities.

  “Where’d he—” Penny suddenly clamped her mouth shut.

  Nax might burn himself out, but they could use this.

  “Nax,” Leif whispered. “Marko is Janus. We can’t let him open an incursion.” He’d have to trust that identifying Marko would give Nax the information he needed—Janus could not be surprised. Janus had the upper hand. Janus always threatened loved ones.

  Something large brushed by Leif, and—

  Vivicus slammed face-first into the ice and snow. Straight down as if Nax had knocked out his legs at the same time he’d grabbed Vick by the back of the head.

  Hitting Vivicus wouldn’t help the situation. If anything, it only made it worse. Janus now had a fix on Nax’s location.

  “Damn it,” Leif ran at Janus. No disguising. No camo from the suit. Just a full-on tackle in an attempt to disr
upt the energy wave he manifested.

  He made it to the edge of the wave before he realized he hadn’t responded fast enough. Neither had Nax.

  An incursion budded off Stab’s blade.

  Chapter Seven

  The incursion bubble was no bigger than Janus’s head, and floated perpendicular to his hands, about a half a meter away from Stab. It was big enough—and at the correct level—to allow you to stick in an arm, if you wanted to lose that arm.

  It was also big enough to cause significant damage if the Midnight Blade lost control of its event horizon.

  Leif spun as he slid on the snow and twisted around both the bubble and Janus like an orbiting dancer. He didn’t dare touch the Fate Progenitor or Stab. He didn’t dare do anything that might destabilize the new-space blister.

  He no longer saw Janus’s standing seer wave. He was inside it now, no more than an arm’s length behind the Fate, and the wave sang in his head like the booming, remembered phantom of an orchestra long gone.

  A hint of Nax’s form appeared in the rim of light around Stab and the bubble.

  Nax yanked on Vivicus’s right arm.

  What was he doing? The suits didn’t disrupt incursions. Even if he put it on, Nax couldn’t do anything worthwhile with it.

  The live, powered-up glove released from Vivicus’s suit.

  Janus opened his eyes and his entire face rounded. Janus, who could not be surprised, clearly had no more understanding of what was about to happen than Leif did.

  Nax tossed the glove. He didn’t whip it or intend for it to become a projectile. He tossed it so that it could be caught.

  But Leif was behind Janus, watching Nax’s distortion in the bubble’s parallax field. He couldn’t get between Janus and the glove. He couldn’t catch it.

  He didn’t have to.

  He’d felt her touch when she thought he threatened Mrs. K, back on Del’s bus. She’d sparked his suit, but he never saw her. Never got a whiff beyond the word of a now-dead Russian woman, Del, and her sword.

  She was on the opposite side of the bubble from Leif, her form ever so slightly visible in the parallax refractions around Stab and the bubble.