by Rob Cornell
“Call it whatever you want. It is what it is.”
“Well, thank you for the invite, but I'm not much of a joiner. Don't worry. I'll take care of the Maidens. You and your new friends just need to stay the fuck out of my way.”
“Do you even know where they are?”
“Do you?”
She eased back in the seat and sighed. “No. But we have some good people working to find out.”
“If they find them before I do, let me know. I'll be happy to take care of those bitches. Besides, they have something of mine I want back.”
The sad look she gave me made me feel judged. I didn't see sympathy. I saw pity. “Your soul.”
“Yeah. That. So like I said, let me know if you find them, then back the fuck off.”
She leaned forward again and put her hand on my shoulder. “You can't take them on alone.”
I shrugged her hand away, threw open the car door, and sprung out. I marched to the back door on the driver's side, yanked that one open, and glared in at Fiona.
“Get out.”
“Be reasonable.”
“Get. Out.”
In the car's dome light, I could see her cheeks flushing. She stared arrows at me. “I'm not leaving until—”
I had a whole bunch of magic ready, so it took only a second for me to grasp control of the air. I drew a gust from behind her and blew her out the open door.
She rolled along the cracked asphalt a couple times, then quickly sprung to her feet. Tiger fur rolled up from her neck to her jaw line, instincts telling her to shift. But she pulled herself together and the fur rippled away.
“You've got a lot of nerve.” I could almost hear the tiger in her voice.
“You're the one who invaded my car. How did you really expect this to go?”
“I thought you'd listen to reason.”
“You're the voice of reason? The woman who betrayed me to a group of vampires? Who betrayed my mother? Who made me fall in love with her just to spy on me?”
Her face pinched, all the anger drained from her expression. “I can't take any of that back. I know. But they had my mother. And they killed her when I turned against them to help you.”
The breeze sighed through the tall grass. The night carried the sound of distant traffic. A clammy sweat had risen on my skin, making the air feel cooler than it was. Some of the fight drained out of me. I didn't want to talk to Fiona anymore. I didn't want to see her anymore. Rehashing our fucked-up history made me tired and sick to my stomach.
“Tell your resistance I'm not interested. End of discussion.”
She opened her mouth as if to argue, but closed it again and hung her head.
I waited a few seconds longer, but no more. I slammed the car's back door closed, got in behind the wheel, and started the engine.
I drove off without looking back, only readjusting the rear-view mirror when I had rounded the school and knew I wouldn't catch a glimpse of her reflection.
Chapter Eleven
By the time I reached home, I had gone from exhausted to wired. My little encounter with Fiona had given my nerves an unwelcome jolt. There was no sign of Odi at the house, so I couldn't offer him an apology for my boneheaded tantrum. I gave the TV a glance, but finding something I actually wanted to watch seemed like too much work.
I decided to go for a walk.
At four AM, Corktown was mostly still asleep. There were a few lights on among the houses lining my street. In this part of Detroit, I wasn't the only one on a vampire's schedule. The Ministry had worked to turn Corktown into a neighborhood for those of us in the paranormal community, a place to relax a little and not have to worry about what your neighbor might see, since your neighbors had their own magical secrets.
I wondered if the project would get scrapped under the Ministry's new leadership. The more I heard, the less concerned they sounded about keeping order between the natural and supernatural—their primary purpose in the first place. That train of thought brought me back to Fiona. She kept putting herself in the middle of this conflict. To what end? Redemption? Apparently, no one besides me gave a damn that she was a traitor. Hell, for all anyone knew, she planned to sell out this “resistance” to the new regime. They were idiots to trust her.
Not my problem, though.
I shoved thoughts of Fiona aside and tried to focus on my own mission. I needed to find another lead on the Maidens. Not long ago, I would have visited the Switch, a paranormal bar that had existed on its own plane of reality. The owner, Barry, had known all the goings on in our community, and had given me countless tips during my demon hunting days. But then the vampire riots happened, and a group of the bloodsuckers had trashed the bar and murdered Barry.
No such watering hole had replaced the Switch since then as far as I knew. Not that anything could really replace it. Barry's had been a one of a kind bar. He had even served vamps with a variety of fresh animal blood—pigs, cows, rats.
I was so lost in my thoughts, I didn't notice the shadows closing in until they surrounded me. Shadows darker than the night could conjure. Shadows that would occasionally blink yellow eyes and titter as they curled and rode the air. They formed a U around me, blocking me off from the direction I'd come. They were so thick, I couldn't see anything beyond them, as if the world simply stopped where they stood.
The chill emanating from them made me shiver. My stomach clenched.
They continued to close in while keeping the way forward open as if they wanted to corral me like a wild horse.
I raised my right hand and called fire around my fist.
The shadows quivered and giggled.
I threw the fire into their dark wall. It seemed to fly into infinity, growing ever smaller until a pin prick of blue light disappeared.
“Aw, shit.” I scuffled backward.
A half-dozen yellow eyes opened and winked at me from the blackness. Then closed and disappeared.
I turned toward the opening they left, knowing that was exactly what they wanted me to do. But I didn't want to get any closer to this mass of nothingness. If it touched me, I thought I might fall for an eternity within, like my fire ball had seemed to.
I took off in a steady jog, the skin on the back of my neck prickling. I could feel the shadows following behind me, a cold wave preceding them. The shadows at my sides also kept pace. When I reached the next intersection, the shadows shifted around me with a sound like wind tugging at a flag. They forced me to make a right.
I kept to the middle of the street. I had little choice. The shadows to either side of me rode along the curbs.
Then, up ahead, a pair of headlights turned in my direction. I waved my hands above my head, though they could hardly miss me. The car came to a halt, a little Ford Escort from another age. The man behind the wheel rolled down his window.
“What's your problem?”
I realized the chill that had pressed in against me from the surrounding shadows had faded. I glanced around. No sign of them. The residential street looked perfectly normal, and fully in view. The car's headlights cut easily through normal darkness in the direction I'd come.
I turned back to the guy. “Can you give me a lift?”
He scrunched up his face. “Are you kidding? Get the fuck outta my way.” He revved his engine and jolted the car a couple feet in my direction, his bumper coming close to my knees.
I didn't move. “Listen, buddy. There's…” I stole a look over my shoulder as if the living shadows might have returned. “There's someone after me.”
The guy laid on his horn. “Move it, or I'll run you down. I ain't kidding.”
I thought about giving him a little fire show, but I had no way of knowing if he was one of us. So far, on the street level, Ministry Law still ruled. I didn't need a visit from any guardians looking to put me on trial for breaking those laws.
That will be the least of your worries if those shadows come back and consume you.
I figured I'd try the nice way one more
time. “I'm serious,” I said. “There is someone after me. I'm afraid for my life.”
“And I'm afraid for mine, psycho.” He backed up, squeaking his tires, then sped around me and down the street.
I snapped my gaze from shadow to shadow, waiting for one of them to move unnaturally. A handful of seconds passed without any signs of the dark misbehaving.
I let out a long sigh and started for the sidewalk.
The shadows against the facade of the nearest house peeled away and flowed toward me like liquid night. I scrambled backward into the street again. I spun around. More shadows closed in from the other side. And here came more, joining together to cut me off from heading home again.
Yellow eyes flickered in a random pattern like a string of Christmas lights from hell.
The skin on the back of my neck rippled with gooseflesh. My gut squeezed into a tight ball.
“What the hell do you want with me?”
Giggling, like children on a playground, echoed back at me. A single yellow eye the size of a baseball opened in the dark and stared at me. It rolled up and down, the black pupil in the middle scanning the length of me.
I staggered backward, turned, and started jogging again. What choice did I have?
The shadows escorted me through a couple more intersections until they forced me into the front lot of a church. The street lights never once chased them away. And once I was in the lot, they formed a complete circle around me and slowly closed in.
I didn't normally suffer from claustrophobia, but eternal darkness blotting out everything except the patch of concrete I stood on let me know exactly how it felt. My breathing rushed in and out so quickly my lungs ached, and I felt lightheaded.
I kept waiting for them to swallow me completely, but they kept just enough distance to avoid touching me.
“What do you want?” I shouted. The collected darkness muffled my voice as if I stood in a soundproofed room. But a couple seconds after my question, the shadows ripped open and fled in a whirl like a flock of crows, disappearing into the night sky.
I watched them go. When I lowered my gaze, a familiar young woman stared at me from her stance on the church's front steps.
“Hello, Sebastian.”
A prickling heat rose up my back and melted away any chill that the living shadows had left behind.
“Kimber.”
She wore a pair of skinny jeans and a Wayne State University sweatshirt. Her mousey brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. Dark circles hung under her eyes. The mix of street- and moonlight gave her skin a waxy pallor. I could tell she hadn't been sleeping well. Which made my day.
“That was quite a show of power,” I said and pointed toward the sky.
She smirked. “There's a reason people call us the most powerful coven in the Midwest. It isn't because of parlor tricks like your fire.”
“I seem to recall my fire wasting two of you witches.”
Her smirk dropped away. Score one point for me.
She hesitated a second, then said, “This needs to stop.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Your quest to come after us. It must end.”
I held my hands out. “Then end it.”
She curled her hands into fists. About twenty feet stood between us. I wondered if she could hex me from that distance before one of my fireballs reached her. What was the deal with this high noon bullshit? Had the Maidens really sent only one of their crew to take me down in a fucking duel?
Hadn't they learned not to underestimate me?
“I didn't come here to kill you,” she said. “I came to warn you.”
“Oh, yeah? Do tell.”
“We're giving you one last chance. Break off your pursuit, or we will retaliate.”
I tilted my head to one side. “That's it?”
“What more is there? We are not responsible for your mother's death. You are the one who dragged her into danger. You were the one who traded your shard of soul for Sly's. Our dealings had nothing to do with you, until you made it so.”
I lanced a finger in her direction. “You're the ones who killed Sly in the first place.”
She shook her head. “You know better than that. Sly gave us his soul willingly. Our ritual had nothing to do with his illness. You know that.”
“He would have been fine if he'd had his whole soul.”
She lowered her gaze. The sigh of the city's traffic had grown more persistent. A hint of dawn lit the distance.
“He gave us his soul willingly,” she repeated so softly I almost didn't hear her. Then she lifted her gaze and straightened her posture. “We understand why this is difficult for you. That is the only reason you're still alive. We wish to let bygones be bygones.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” I raked my hands through my hair. My eyeballs throbbed in time to my pulse. “You murdered my mother!”
“We defended ourselves.”
The edges of my vision turned red. A pressure in my chest made it hard to breathe. The air I could suck down tasted bitter.
“This is a peace offering?”
“Like I said. It's a warning. Walk away and we'll live and let live.”
I worked my lips together while I tried to put together the right words in my head. “That's a tempting offer.”
She narrowed her eyes. I guess I hadn't sounded too convincing. “It's one you should take.”
“Can I think about it?”
Her shoulders drooped. “You don't need to think about it. You're either going to do the smart thing right now and say, 'Yes, Kimber. I'll leave you alone.' Or you're going to sign up for suicide. What is there to think about?”
I nodded and started walking toward her. “You're right. I can't take you all on.”
“So that's a yes?”
I continued to close the distance. “There's nothing to say I won't promise to stop bugging you, then turn around later and wipe you ladies out.”
She chuffed. “You could try, anyway.”
When I reached the foot of the stone steps, I held up my hand toward her. “I could make a blood oath. Then I wouldn't be able to turn on you, no matter how I felt about it.”
Kimber raised an eyebrow. “You'd be willing to do that?”
“Yes,” I said. “I'm tired. Tired of being so angry all the time. Tired of pushing away the people I care about because of this…obsession. If the Maidens of Shadow truly mean to put this all behind us, I'm willing to do the same.”
She sighed, then smiled. “I'm honestly surprised to hear that. Relieved. But surprised.”
I laughed quietly. “Me, too.” I raised my hand a little further. “You're a black witch, you should have something on you to make me bleed, right?”
“Blood is an important ingredient for our magic.” She smiled, reached into her back pocket, and withdrew a red Swiss Army knife. She unfolded its largest blade, took my wrist in her free hand, then looked in my eyes. “You ready?”
“I've been ready for a long time.”
I lit the hand she held with blue flame. The fire burned so hot it turned her own hand into a blackened stump in seconds.
She screamed and drew back. The knife tumbled and clattered on the church's stone porch. Kimber's eyes flashed as she locked her gaze on me. She opened her mouth, probably to spit some kind of curse, but I'd never know for sure, because the next blue comet of fire I hurled burned through her throat before she could speak.
Her head lilted to one side, her brain stem and spinal column the only thing keeping it from rolling away completely.
Her body shook and jerked, her nervous system in denial of her death.
I took a step back as she flopped over and rolled down the steps. I had now killed two Maidens of Shadow on stairs.
I took a moment to watch her burn, then used my magic to tame the fire and snuff it out. There was nothing left of her ears, but her blackened skull still remained, so I pried loose one of her molars and tucked it into my pocket.
I
turned on my heel and stalked away.
“Offer not accepted,” I said to the night.
Chapter Twelve
I woke up the following afternoon at three o'clock. An hour later, I approached my mother's grave with Kimber's tooth in my pocket. I had a theory I wanted to test. When I stood beside Mom's grave, I reached out with my senses, searching for any sign of magical energy. Sure enough, I touched a low hum that surrounded the grave site. The energy sent a faint vibration through my spine.
The sky was overcast. The chilly air penetrated my coat. I wished like hell the real spring weather would come soon. I was tired of shivering.
I only stood there about a minute before the spell surrounding the grave pulsed. My ears popped. A brief pressure pushed against my chest, staggering me. Then I sensed a new magical presence behind me, one a hundred times stronger than what circled Mom's grave. I knew before I turned who I'd find.
Urvasi smiled as our eyes met. Today she wore a pink sari. Her dark hair hung in a braid draped over one shoulder a lot like how Mom used to wear her hair. Not that it meant anything. Lots of people braided their hair that way. But I couldn't shake the feeling it was more significant than a coincidence.
“Hello, Sebastian.”
“Hi.”
She inclined her head toward the ground at my feet. “I see you figured out how to summon me.”
“I gathered you had set some kind of trigger here. But I still don't know how you show up so quickly.”
“I've learned how to walk between worlds.” Her smile turned a bit mischievous. “Something you could learn, too, if you let me teach you.”
“Thanks for the offer, but that's not why I came here.”
Her gaze roved up and down me as if searching for something. Her smile dropped away. “What darkness are you carrying in your pocket?”
I dug the tooth out and extended my hand toward Urvasi with the molar in my palm. “It's what I wanted to see you about.”
She wrinkled her nose and curled her lip. “What a horrible thing to possess.”
“You know what it is?”
“I know it belongs to someone with a black heart. It reeks of wicked magic.”
“Good call. It belongs to a black witch. More specifically, it came from the mouth of one of the Maidens of Shadow.”