The Night Witch: Wilde Justice, Book 6

by Stark, Jenn

  And apparently, we made quite the spectacle. The assembled guests collectively gasped as we appeared in their center, then burst into remarkably enthusiastic applause.

  “Gentlemen, ladies,” Armaeus began in his best Jarvis voice. “It is with great pleasure that I bring to you the evidence of our success. Many of you know Justice Wilde?”

  There was a gratifying ripple of conversation through the room. It appeared that my reputation had preceded me with the assholes of the world. Good to know.

  “Then you will appreciate that she is constrained.” He lifted his hand, and mine followed without me doing anything, as if we were bound by an imaginary chain. Armaeus-as-Jarvis smiled, clearly enjoying this part a little too much. Something we would need to talk about later.

  He gestured to his left. “And with me as well is a creature of profound power—a creature who is my slave.” Qadir dropped to one knee and then the other, and bowed almost to the floor. As he did, he exhaled heavily, and a rush of colored mist flowed out to fill the room, billowing up in shades of maroon, blue, and green. This guy would be amazing at a thirteen-year-old’s birthday party.

  Around us, the murmuring grew more intense.

  “So you see. It is all coming together,” A woman spoke out, and she strode forward, her power so evident that my third eye shot straight open, and I marveled at the gyrating electrical currents that rolled off her in waves. I didn’t recognize her, but I felt like I should. She was tall, as pale as Jarvis, but with a shock of deep black hair that was swept back in a sleek fall over her shoulders. She was beautiful and aristocratic and entitled, I could see in a flash. No wonder Jarvis liked her so much.

  Now she continued. “Your commitments are all made, and the weapons of our revolution are in place. The secrecy will be held. No one will know where the strikes come from, as they will come from everywhere at once. It cannot be stopped.”

  “We’ll be safe?” a blonde woman in a deep-crimson business suit asked, her voice both cold and excited, the fever of bloodlust as thick as her Southern twang. “Throughout the whole of it?”

  “You’ll be safe,” the elegant brunette confirmed, radiating confidence. A second later, I understood why. “We have our own army of mercenary soldiers, culled from the deadliest military forces in the world. They’re on their way here right now to ensure your safe transport. Nothing has been left to chance.”

  I barely managed to avoid glancing at Armaeus. A cabal of highly trained mercenary soldiers descending on us didn’t sound all that awesome. Why can’t anything be easy?

  A chill snaked through me as another man stood forward, bulky in his designer suit.

  “We are ready. You have only to say the word,” he announced. He had a smooth Belgian accent, and practically oozed money. In fact…they all did in this room. I felt like I was staring out at a nest of gold-plated vipers. “When does it begin?”

  The woman smiled. “It already has.”

  Armaeus inhaled a long breath, and I saw the subtle shift in the djinn smoke emanating from Qadir. My eyes widened slightly. Were those two working in tandem with each other to…what? Gather intel? Mark the attendees? Fumigate the room?

  “You are all members of the Shadow Court,” Armaeus said in Jarvis’s smug drawl. “The first time you ever dared to assemble.”

  The woman’s chin lifted. “A show of faith was important for what was to come,” she said, a touch of warm approval in her tone. “We all believe—as I believe in you, Jarvis.”

  I forced my lips not to twist at her clear affection. Somewhere, burning in Hell hopefully, Jarvis must be seriously pissed. Sucker.

  Qadir, still on his knees, lifted his bound hands, and blew a soft whisper across his palms. A new puff of smoke billowed upward, creating a screen against which the plans of the Shadow Court erupted like a rushing storm.

  War, sickness, death. I watched with growing horror as the same people who stood in front of us emerged from the wreckage, blood on their hands and their feet, striding forward, glowing with magic. Magic they’d taken from the victims strewn around them like scattered straw.

  Even worse, among the victims’ corpses were thousands of figures destroyed the way Sariah had been. Their bodies literally ripped apart in a bid to permanently destroy and dispel their magic. Fury spun within me, coalescing into a hard ball.

  The picture changed, but the group before us remained together, lifting goblets in some sort of future celebratory toast. Applause broke out in the room, a patriotic fervor to a twisted cause.

  We all had seen enough.

  “It is perhaps not fair to judge you for an atrocity you have not yet committed,” Jarvis drawled. For the first time, the woman running this little show looked at him with something other than smug superiority.

  “What?” she asked, but Armaeus was already changing—and Qadir as well. As they did, the shackles fell from my wrists.

  “But I think we can overlook that, this once,” the Magician said.

  “Attack! Guards!” the woman shouted, twisting into a pillar of smoke. By then, we were already in motion. My hands snapped apart, and a thousand sets of bracelets leapt into view, cuffs that would allow me to send every last one of the Shadow Court’s minions to Gamon for judgment.

  I sent them flying—but not here, not in this gallery. We knew our enemies here. Instead, I directed the cuffs to go streaming through the night outside this place, to find their targets wherever they lurked. As steeped as I now was in the stench of the Shadow Court, surrounded by its magic and its foul intent, I could recognize its members anywhere—if only for a little while. It was enough. The Shadow Court would be bound, once and for all.

  But even as I pressed into the chaos of the gallery, I knew what Gamon would see in whatever bastards I did choose to send to her. Abuse. Violence. Death.

  Fury roared through me. Was this the moment for the night witch to strike? For who was I to let the blood from this battle only be borne by others? Who was I not to commit, when I had asked others to stand?

  A man rushed toward me out of the darkness, shoving a gun in my face.

  Time seemed to move forward a frame at a time—each second a decision, each move a declaration. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself striking out, crushing the man’s skull. Saw him falling to the ground, dead.

  It would be so easy, I thought. It would be right, even good. It would be exactly what the night witch would do—should do.

  Was I the night witch, truly? Both light and shadow, right and wrong? Was that my path, now?

  A voice cried out a half a world away, my voice. My soul. “Yes,” shouted Sariah, lost in her delirium. “Yes, this. This!”

  “Yes,” echoed the memory of Gamon in my mind.

  No, came another voice—a multitude, an army. The roar of the Connecteds I had pledged to serve. They did not need a murderer to lead them. They needed honor. Possibility. Hope.

  No.

  I didn’t strike.

  Time raced forward once more. I ducked away from the man’s attack, and he disappeared into the chaos, only to be replaced with another—and then another. They didn’t—couldn’t touch me. I was Justice, and they were not mine to Judge. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  But I could—would—make sure they never harmed another soul again.

  It was another several minutes before it was done. The mercenary soldiers the elegant woman had spoken of never arrived. Maybe because she’d called them off? Maybe because they’d called themselves off? They were mercenaries, after all. Either way, the gallery of glitterati no longer stood in their resplendent business suits and elegant evening wear. Bodies littered the space, most of them not moving. Qadir and Armaeus, apparently, had no such restrictions on who they saved and who they spared. The ones that remained were trembling in fear in the cuffs of Justice, moaning for release.

  “These would be more useful alive than dead, at least in the short term,” Armaeus said. His voice was cold, and his eyes gleamed black, their red rims shot throu
gh with gold. I looked over the group, but I didn’t see the sleek-haired woman. Maybe Armaeus had taken her out?

  Qadir grunted beside him. “You should have a care, Magician. They cannot be trusted not to recall—something. Even if you wipe their memories, there will remain a terror of what transpired this night. A terror that will never leave them.”

  “Then I chose well,” Armaeus returned. “Because this particular handful of Shadow Court members employed that very trick. They each utilized a particular technoceutical in their campaigns of terror to ensure their victims could not remember…but also could never forget.”

  He turned to me. “Miss Wilde? You can take them now.”

  I stepped into the fray and set us all on fire.

  Gamon was waiting for me when I rematerialized in the stark amphitheater of her intake bay. She nodded at me, but there was no joy in her expression as she took in my captives. “You could simply have sent them.”

  “No. They need to know it was me who sentenced them.” I gestured to the huddle of prisoners. “So they carry that memory forward too. How much do you know?”

  “All of it.” She gave me a steady look. “You didn’t kill. Actions have consequences. Your position has responsibility. It was your right to kill them, to protect the greater good. And you didn’t.”

  The haunting lyric whispered through my mind. I lost my power in this world…

  I pushed the thought away and focused on Gamon. “Do we have any way of knowing how much of what they were planning was bullshit and how much is real?”

  “It was real, as far as their intentions were concerned.” Gamon shrugged. “But as to their readiness to act, it gets murkier. Simon’s been tracking down every player to their base, both the ones in the gallery, and the ones you cuffed remotely. Where’d those people end up anyway? Not here.”

  “I didn’t have time to fetch them.” I shrugged. “If their magic is strong enough, they can get rid of the cuffs, but if they’re part of the Shadow Court they’re marked either way. I’ll find them all eventually.”

  “Good, because there’s no mention of any nefarious plot in any official channels anywhere. The terrible tragedy of this meeting and the terrorist attack that cost the lives of so many great leaders, military, and celebrities, blah blah blah, is being met with confusion in official circles. Most of the attendees of this Girl Scout meeting were here on the down low, with not even their official security details involved. There will be hell to pay and an outcry against terrorists, but so far, we’ve seen no evidence of the war laid out so prettily before you.”

  I scowled at her. “All that was a lie?”

  “Far from it,” Gamon said. “It’s an indication that the Shadow Court had its talons dug deep, guided by subtle hands. There are doubtless active cells already in place. We just haven’t found them yet. Hopefully, the information I can pull out of these guys will be worth it.”

  “I think Armaeus already read their minds. He would have found something that major.”

  “Armaeus and I use far different tactics,” Gamon said. “You never know which one will be more effective until you try.”

  “How long will you need?”

  Another shrug. “A day, maybe two. No more than that. It’ll take you that long to get your own head on straight.”

  She wasn’t wrong. Even now, with the rush of the fight leaving me, I struggled to understand how I truly felt. It didn’t feel good to have stepped back from revenge, to have remained in the shoes of Justice and not the night witch, but it didn’t feel wrong either. It would have to be enough.

  “I’ll let you know what I find out when I find it,” she said.

  She lifted a hand, and a door at the far end of the bay slid open, grim-faced minions hustling out, pushing gurneys and wheeled chairs. We watched silently as they loaded the day’s work, and the haunting lyrics washed over me again. I lost my power in this world…

  “You know, the rules of Justice don’t have to apply to you,” Gamon said quietly. “You’re more powerful than any Council member who ever walked the earth. Powerful enough to be Justice—and the night witch too, maybe. Think about it.”

  I didn’t know if her words were intended to comfort me or indict me, but she’d already turned away to follow her fell cargo into her domain. I turned away as well. I had other places to be.

  But as I disintegrated into nothingness, I heard her murmur drift across the open space between us.

  But you could still use it.

  27

  I didn’t return to the chamber of horrors where I’d left Armaeus and Qadir. Instead, I hung, unmoving and unformed, transfixed in the space between being and nothingness. In all my adult life, I’d never felt so unmoored. Something had changed within me, and I didn’t know how to process it. I didn’t know who I was anymore, or who I wanted to be.

  A voice broke across my thoughts like waves crashing on a distant shore, a cry of rage and vindication in the darkness. A cry I knew. Sariah. Unlike the moment during the battle at the Palais des Nations, she wasn’t shouting for me, or even at me. She was simply challenging the night with the same demanding, forthright anger she used to face everything in life. Constantly needing to move forward, never taking respite. Had I been like that as a child, before the horrors of my seventeenth year split me away from Sariah’s spirit? Was I becoming like that again? Should I?

  Power crackled around me, the urge to remake myself, to re-form as a Justice Wilde who no longer passed the worst offenders to others to face the consequences of their actions, but who held those offenders accountable myself. Was this truly the right path for me? Would it lead me to become as dangerous as some of the criminals I hunted down?

  Was this who I really was?

  And if not me…who?

  I didn’t know how long I hung in that space—minutes, hours. Finally, a new demand teased at the edge of my senses, a call that broke through my fog, urging me into the fight again. Another cry for Justice from a victim looking for deliverance? Oddly, I didn’t think so. This was something sharper, clearer. This was a call not for aid, exactly, but…to come home?

  “Dollface!” The words exploded in my mind. “For the love of brats and sauerkraut, get yourself here already!”

  I slapped my hand to my arm, pressing into the tattoo that Death had inked into my skin what seemed like a millennium ago. I rematerialized in a puff of smoke and scattered embers, not much the worse for wear despite my prolonged stay in the ether.

  “Boom,” Nikki said, finger-gunning the burly Mongolian general who sat across from her on the broad, sunny patio of Danae’s House of Swords. She wore a bright red minidress, cowboy hat and tasseled boots, a vivid white kerchief around her neck—daywear for her. Ma-Singh’s attire was decidedly more subdued—his usual dark-hued military gear. A crowd of silent figures stood some distance away, all of them dressed in military gear. “You totally owe me a pony ride.”

  “Chono is no pony,” Ma-Singh shot back. “He’ll just as soon eat you as let you on his back.”

  His grin faded as he turned to me. “Justice Wilde. Thank you for coming so quickly. This meeting we must have is…unexpected. With Mistress Danae traveling, I did not know where to begin.”

  I scanned the patio again, but I didn’t recognize any of the assembled men and women, other than they possessed the kind of fierce intensity I’d grown familiar with during my tenure as head of the House of Swords. “What’s going on?”

  “The army of Swords has been called to battle. But we don’t know by whom.”

  “And Danae is out of commission,” Nikki put in. “Armaeus whisked me back to Pompeii, where we found Eshe’s trio of virgins locked up in a caravan near the ruins and guarded by idiots. He left me there with a Council plane at my disposal to sort out the mess, and poofed out just as quickly. I jetted the girls back to their families on the double—and you’ve now got one happy wizard willing to follow you anywhere, by the way—but I haven’t heard from Armaeus since. That was yes
terday. I think he had to work through the mess of demons we left behind…” she paused. “You know, what do you call a group of demons? I’ve never asked Warrick. Gotta be a horde, right?”

  “A legion?” Ma-Singh offered.

  “Something with a D would be good, for alliteration,” Nikki mused. “A den? Dominion? Diaspora?”

  “Nikki,” I broke in sharply. “What’s going on here?”

  “Well, we need Danae, speaking of important D words,” she said. “And you. But she’s gonna want to hear this pretty much pronto. I was thinking you could, you know…” She tapped the side of her head. “Phone a friend.”

  I barked a sharp laugh, but obligingly opened my mental barriers to Armaeus. You there? I asked.

  A huffed, surprised breath met my query, a breath that was decidedly not Armaeus’s. “The Magician is…thinking. He seems to do that a lot.”

  My brows shot up. Qadir? You can intercept our communications?

  “You’ve made a connection?” Ma-Singh asked, hope ringing in his voice. “Please. Tell her it’s urgent. The battle cry has sounded from the four corners of the Connected world, and our troops are mobilizing—but here at the House of Swords base of command, we have received no such call for help. We don’t know where this is coming from. We need Mistress Danae.”

  “I can see that,” I said, eyeing the grim-faced assembly of warriors. They certainly looked like they meant business. Ahhhh…Armaeus? I tried again.

  “He is very committed to thinking,” Qadir observed in response, a touch of awe in his words.

  Well, knock him over if you have to. Is Danae with you?

  “Oh, yes…” There was no denying Qadir’s rush of emotion, so intense, it rocked me back on my heels. “She stands in sunlight, straight and fierce. A glowing beacon in a shadowed—”

  Got it. I need her here. Las Vegas, Nevada. She’ll—