Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Les Enfants meant “The Children.” “What does de Guerre mean?”

  Harold rubbed at his head. “War. They are the Children of War. The War Babies. It’s their talisman.” He pulled down the collar of Daniel’s jacket to reveal the choker with the big ruby. “This here,” he said, “is part of a dagger. Her brothers wear the other two segments.”

  Did their talismans work the same way as Stab did? “Does it talk to her?” Did every Fate on Earth have a gaslighting bit of metal on them, too?

  Harold opened his mouth like he had an answer, even though the rest of his face said he didn’t. He might know more than I did about how Fates worked—a lot more—but this question knocked the same things loose as the question about them seeing alt-Earths.

  He didn’t know for sure that whatever drove a Fate’s abilities wasn’t the same as what drove Stab’s communication with me.

  “Sufficiently advanced technology,” I said.

  “Clarke’s Third Law.” Harold tucked the ruby back under Daniel’s collar. “I’d always thought the magic caused Praesagio’s tech advancements, not the other way around.”

  I tried the key one more time. The engine clicked, but nothing engaged. Whatever that EMP had done, it’d caused more damage to the electronics on the bus than it should have. “Do you know anything about engines?” I asked.

  Daniel coughed.

  “Hey hey hey,” Harold said. “Don’t move until we check—”

  I looked over my shoulder as Daniel wrapped a bloody hand around Harold’s neck and released a barrage of angry-sounding French words.

  No, not Daniel. The other person in that body.

  The way she held her shoulders had changed, as had the tilt of her head.

  “Are you Adrestia?” I yelled. What the hell was I doing? She was a War Baby. “Are you up-to-speed on what we’re dealing with here?” But part of me suspected that right now a little respect could get us a long way.

  Daniel—Addy, now—leaned toward Harold. More angry French rolled from her throat. She spit in his face, then pushed him away as if he was the most inconsequential insect she’d ever met.

  The bus finally coasted to a stop.

  We swayed slightly. Addy glanced at Marcus as he rolled on his seat. “He needs a healer,” she said offhandedly and in perfect English.

  I didn’t respond. I waited in the driver’s seat as she slowly and deliberately placed her glasses back onto her face. She stood quickly and with a grace I hadn’t expected from a murderer.

  She leaned against the rail between the steps and Marcus’s seat. “You are Philadelphia Parrish.” She did not ask. She stated.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I am Adrestia, present-seer of Les Enfants de Guerre.” She held out her bloody hand. “I would rather he hadn’t wounded my throwing hand.”

  “I thought that was you,” I said. “Ripping the shit out of Vivicus’s super-suit, I mean.”

  Addy titled her head as if looking up at the stars. “Vivicus spends his life believing that he is the superior in all situations.”

  Something told me that Addy believed the same thing of herself.

  She was more relaxed than I’d expected a suppressed killer would be after regaining control of her body.

  “I noticed that,” I said. What was the rule? Be personable. Agree and get them to look at you as akin to themselves.

  “Praesagio placed a port in the back of my head.” She lifted her ponytail and pulled some of her dirty-blonde hair to the side.

  I went with her random direction change and peered at the spot revealed. She did have a port that looked a lot like a cochlear implant but situated on the lower back side of her head.

  “It bypasses my optic nerves and feeds visual information directly into my occipital lobes.” Her nose twitched. “Daniel gave away our glasses.” She tapped the dark glasses and sniffed. “No matter. I see fine with my present-seer.”

  “Um, okay.” She seemed … not calmer than Daniel per se, but calm in a different way. She moved differently, for sure. I was beginning to think Daniel didn’t quite understand how to move hips with a lower center of gravity.

  If he didn’t know how to correctly drive that body, and still fought the way he did, what could the native Adrestia do?

  “I wonder if that EMP damaged my implant.”

  So not as random a thought as I’d suspected.

  “I do not have access to his future-seer the way he has access to my present-seer, so I cannot check.” She scowled. More nasty-sounding French followed.

  Their asymmetrical power access made her mad. “I don’t understand French,” I said, hoping to be a distraction. “I took Spanish in high school.”

  Her face remained flat and she did the Fate-reading-the-world stare out the windshield.

  “Are the planes going to bomb us?” I asked. “Do we need to run?” Best to get her thinking about something other than Daniel.

  Slowly, she moved next to me, and just as slowly, she squatted. “There are tricks we can do, as Fates, to send coded messages to our future selves.” She glanced at Harold. “Such tricks are difficult, and the domain of Prime Fates.” She sniffed again. “Is my triad Prime, Harold Demshire?”

  Several of the powered types I’d been dealing with had thrown around that word—Prime. They were Fates, which seemed weird enough, and the whole “Prime” thing seemed more about titles and their arrogance than anything useful.

  Now I wondered. Prime meant central and superior. Prime meant first.

  They’d been talking a lot about how Vivicus was a First—and how dangerous the Firsts were.

  And like an idiot, I hadn’t given it much thought.

  “You were never designated Prime, Adrestia,” Harold said. “One Prime triad per family.”

  She grinned, and just as slowly and carefully as she’d squatted next to me, she waved a bloody finger between herself and Marcus. “This history,” she said. “It is centuries old. You understand some of it. My present-seer tells me as much.” She slapped her hand on her knee. “Old grudges!” she said. “Ancient wars!” She pointed at Harold. “The only reason he is alive is because they needed someone to protect them from us. But he did a shitty job—didn’t you, Harold? And now I have a passenger.”

  “She’s lying, Del,” Harold said. “She’s not nearly as central to all this as she believes.”

  Addy laughed as she leaned close to me again. “Why are you not terrified of me?”

  She thought I wasn’t terrified? Of course I was terrified. But then again, I was terrified to the point that my terror had become my new normal and I really didn’t notice anymore. So maybe I wasn’t that terrified after all.

  Addy’s grin returned, and she tapped her thigh again. “Harold!” she said. “This one is a warrior.”

  He’d moved again, not necessarily closer, but he’d situated his body in such a way that if Addy swung at him, he’d be able to dodge. “She is, Adrestia.”

  “I listen,” she said. “I know no one has explained Fates to you.”

  Even with her flat expression, she seemed to find something about me… appealing? I couldn’t tell. Whatever was going on inside that normally Daniel-locked head was, at least for the moment, non-murderous.

  “No one explains anything to me either, Del,” she said.

  She wanted to bond over our mutual confusion, even though we were confused about completely different things.

  She rubbed her temple. “He’s waking up.” They were likely fighting the same way they had fought after Daniel ripped the faceplate off Vivicus’s suit. “Our wars mean nothing, now,” she said.

  “I think that’s true for everyone,” I responded.

  She nodded. “I will never be rid of him.” She smacked the side of her head. “He’s my jailor. My guard. My tell-tale heart.” She pointed at Harold. “I want to go home.”

  “Adrestia,” Harold said. “None of us have homes anymore.”

  She inhaled sharply. “Fates,�
� she said, “we come in threes. Future-seers, like my jailor, have a delay in processing. It makes them vulnerable in hand-to-hand with the best fighters, doesn’t it, Harold? That’s why Daniel allowed me to surface when he fought Vivicus.”

  “I suspected as much,” he said.

  “We present-seers are a wash.” She moved a little away from me. Not a lot, but enough for me to sense something was wrong. “Past-seers are the real danger. Past-seers learn, perfect, and maintain technique so much better than…”

  Harold dropped to the floor of the bus before she finished her sentence. “Get down, Del!” he yelled.

  “… the rest of us.”

  I flung my body away from Adrestia. My back arched, but I wanted to duck, and I ended up inhaling so quickly the cold air grated against my throat.

  The windshield cracked and the bullet whizzed between my face and Adrestia’s.

  She didn’t move. She didn’t wince. “Past-seers like my brother.” She only smiled. “Timor has come to take me home.”

  Chapter Nine

  Another bullet ripped through the exact same hole in the windshield. The same spot. Same shattered hole in the splintering glass.

  Addy’s brother was some sort of badass marksman.

  She called him Timor. He was the past-seer, which I figured was the opposite of Daniel’s readings of the future. Timor was probably the personification of those late-night memory hauntings—the ones about doing stupid things in public, or not understanding something in class, or hitting a foul ball.

  Nothing sharpened the mind more than remembered regret, and right now, that regret was shooting bullets at us.

  I flattened myself under the steering wheel as best I could. Addy did not move. Harold pulled the still-unconscious Marcus onto the floor and was doing his best to cover his husband.

  “Daniel!” I screamed. “Wake up!” Daniel the future-seer could get us out of this mess.

  “Oh, he’s awake,” Addy said. “Did you know that the names Daniel, Timothy, and Marcus had not yet come into common usage when the Draki Prime were born? Especially in that particular area of France.” She rubbed at the tip of her nose as she leaned close. “I think their future-seeing father was more powerful than the boys realized.”

  She raised her hands to the sky. “Metus knows his power.”

  Metus must be the future-seer.

  “Last I heard,” Harold said, “the Dracae kicked the living shit out of your brothers.”

  Another bullet hit the back wall of the bus.

  “Broke bones and punctured a lung or two.”

  Addy shrieked.

  “Good thing Del’s boyfriend isn’t here,” Harold yelled. “You War Babies would get a brand-new super-suited ass-kicking from a Dracae with no qualms about snapping your murdering necks.” Harold’s voice had changed. He’d deepened his pitch and slowed his delivery. His accent changed, too. Not a lot, but enough that I’d say he was from the mountains instead of the Midwest.

  Harold had delivered his insult in someone else’s voice. Someone who sounded like a cop, or a general, and not all that different from Leif.

  Addy’s lip curled.

  I shushed Harold. Adding a layer of terror on top of Addy’s crazy wasn’t helping.

  Harold ignored me. “Where are your pathetic brothers?” he asked. “Is your present-seer working well enough to pick them out of the trees?”

  He was working her for information.

  Another bullet flew by Addy’s head on a trajectory that would have taken off Harold’s ear if he hadn’t been flat against the bus’s grippy tread.

  Addy grinned. “Such a fearless little normal.” But she twitched as if arguing with Daniel.

  He was trying to regain control. He had to be.

  Addy punched me. She took me by surprise, a hard swing at the side of my head that landed her bloody-ass fist right on my cheekbone.

  My entire body twisted where I lay across the driver’s seat, and the other side of my head slammed against the padding of the seat’s back.

  She didn’t snap my head too far to the side. She hit me in a way that I was pretty damned sure looked horrific from outside the bus, but from the angle and cushioning, had done a lot less damage than it could have.

  Maybe Daniel had more control than Addy understood.

  Marcus moaned.

  Addy lunged at him. “Give me the ring!” she snapped.

  I caught her leg. I don’t know how, but I did, and I yanked. Addy fell face-first onto the tread.

  Harold knocked off her glasses and slammed her face into the floor. “Del! Over here! Get into the back of the bus before—”

  A man I’d never seen before kicked the bus’s door along the center seam. It buckled, and he pushed it open.

  I screamed. All this time running from Seraphim and hellhounds and dragons, I’d been living in a weirdness that somehow let me keep some sort of perspective. I think, somewhere in the back of my head, part of me didn’t believe the whole damned dragon thing was real. And that because it wasn’t real, it couldn’t hurt me.

  But now I had a stalky man with a gun lunging up the bus steps, and I shrieked like a terrified toddler.

  He was smaller than Marcus and Harold, and dressed entirely in black, with slightly darker hair than Addy and venomous blue eyes. I was pretty damned sure he was about to kill me.

  He moved haltingly, as if he’d gotten his Leif-worthy super-suited ass-kicking already, but he was still fast. He was up the steps and had me by the back of the neck before I could wiggle out from under the steering wheel.

  “Adrestia!” he barked. “You allowed this?”

  I latched onto his wrist. “Let go!”

  He swore in French as he shook me. “This one is the Witch of the Midnight Blade? Our grandfather spoke of you.” He spit over his shoulder. “Janus said you were formidable.”

  This murderous asshole was Marko’s grandson? “There was a dragon!” I yelled. “It could come back! Let us go!” Maybe he’d be distracted enough that I could get away.

  The French guy stopped yanking at my head. “Of course there was a dragon. The world has been overrun.”

  He snarled a long chain of French at Addy.

  “Metus!” she screamed. “Let her go! We must leave.” She pushed against Harold, but in a way that kept her body between him and the man.

  “Our grandfather called, sister. He knew we could not see you.” He shook me hard. “The Witch and her toys have hidden you.”

  “Yes,” Addy said. “But you found me.”

  “Of course I found you.” He sounded angrier about having to look for his sister than joyous about their reunion. “You must stitch. Our path from here is not clear.” He pointed at Harold. “You lift your head and you lose it, understand? Timor will not miss.”

  Harold stared up at Metus.

  He responded by pulling me down the steps and into the cold air.

  “Let me go!” I yelled again. I sort of understood that the ring blocked Fates from using their seers, as did Stab. The stitching part I didn’t understand, but I had a suspicion it was something Fates did to hide their dealings. And he said their path was not clear.

  All of which meant that I was about to be dragged off by an abductor who literally could not be found. Not by conventional cop methods, which I doubted anyone was doing anymore, anyway. Not by super-powered types like Marcus and Leif, either. The angry French murderer with his hand coiled in my hair would find a way to perma-repress Daniel and take his crazy-ass sister somewhere where they could cut me into small strips without a care.

  Because I was pretty sure I was dealing with that kind of killer. Even if he’d been able to mostly hold his shit together before The Incursion opened, Metus wasn’t much more than a ball of hate and muscle spasms now. Vivicus had the same weird tension. A guy who once tried to spike my drink at a bar had, as well. They all had that same twitchy, sniffy, wide-eyed fear—prey that’s puffing itself up in attempt to frighten off a predator.r />
  Why Metus, or Vivicus, would ever think of themselves as prey, I did not understand. But somewhere in their fragile little minds, they did. And I was about to become that fear’s next victim.

  Me, and Addy, too.

  She followed behind. “Addy!” I yelled. “He’s done this to you before, hasn’t he?” Maybe if I made her scared enough, Daniel would resurface.

  Metus pulled me through the ditch and into the trees. He swung his free hand and yelled in French. Addy yelled back. They argued. I screamed.

  He stopped and poked at finger at Addy. “You disappoint me, ma sœur.”

  “Janus said if I didn’t call for help, he’d leave me alone!” I said. “Please let me go.”

  Metus threw me to the ground. “You are a liability.” He pulled his big handgun out of the holster under his armpit.

  “She’s valuable!” Addy shrieked. “We could trade her for new glasses.” She pointed at the port on the back of her head.

  Metus rolled his eyes. “Why do you wish to be burdened by Praesagio technology?”

  Addy yelled more French.

  Metus slapped her across the face. “You did this! You allowed a fantôme into your head!” He grunted, raised his weapon—and flew sideways into the nearest tree trunk.

  He’d been hit by a human, not a dragon. Whatever rammed him hadn’t been big enough. Which meant we had a Seraphim.

  “Leif!” I yelled. It had to be Leif.

  “Down!” Addy pushed me flat against the ground just as the bullet hit the tree trunk behind my head. “Inch into the ditch. Go.”

  Her slight French accent was gone. “Daniel?” He had to be in control again.

  “Praesagio has been searching for Metus and Timor since they realized I was riding in this body.” He pushed me toward the ditch. “They’re out in the open now.”

  He’d known they were coming for Addy? And he let a psycho drag me off the bus by my hair? “How long have you been in charge?” He knew.

  “Long enough. Stay down.”

  “I hate you.” It came out of nowhere.