Bitter Night (11 page)

Max finished checking the other rigs, then went to the warehouse entrance and rolled up the two main doors. She motioned Magpie to move out first. The cook didn’t look at Max as she rolled past. The other RVs and the hospital truck followed, spewing clouds of diesel exhaust.

When they were through, Max slid into her Tahoe. As she pulled out onto Commercial Street, heading north for the Conclave, she thought again of the hailstone and wondered if she shouldn’t have made her wish before it was too late to do so.

5

TRAFFIC, AS USUAL, EVEN AFTER DARK, WAS HEAVY. It was eighty thirty. In Montana, it wouldn’t have been full night for another hour and a half. There were, Max decided, one or two good things about San Diego. She would have liked to swim in the ocean, but this wasn’t a vacation.

Glancing in her mirrors, she saw that Akemi was riding her bumper with Tyler on the left and Niko behind him. Max turned off on Twenty-seventh Street, then wove aimlessly about, making right and left turns with no reason or rhyme. A little after nine, Max pulled off Dale onto Elm. Akemi followed, while Niko and Tyler turned in the other direction. Max speed-dialed Akemi.

“Cut your lights and pull up behind me. Tuck against my bumper and don’t back off until we cross the veil. Once inside, drive as slow as you can. I’ll catch up with you before you reach the parking area.”

She snapped her phone shut on Akemi’s quiet affirmative. A moment later, the red crew cab jolted Max’s bumper. At Granada Avenue, Elm came to a dead end. Ahead was a garden fronted by a pair of crepe myrtles, a cluster of oaks and eucalyptus, an enormous prickly pear cactus, and a low screen of bushes and palms. Between the two myrtles at the curb was a yellow sign with a double-ended arrow helpfully pointing out the dead end and directing traffic to turn. Below it was a red, diamond-shaped sign that said nothing at all. It had nothing to do with guiding traffic. It was there to thin the veil for the Conclave.

Both Granada and Elm were eerily quiet. The repulsion spells that kept curious people from investigating past the dead end had been expanded, gently pushing traffic well away from the entrance to the Conclave road. Those same spells had pushed away the residents as well. Max nodded. She’d timed it so they’d likely be one of the last to arrive and no one would see the extra car crossing.

Max lifted her foot off the brake and onto the gas. The two vehicles crept forward and up over the crumbling curb. Max drove between the myrtles and through the sign. For a moment there was a grinding sound as the signpost pushed back. Then suddenly it folded gently to the ground. Max drove over it and past a small PROTECTED HABITAT SIGN.

Just beyond, the air turned thick as syrup and everything outside the Tahoe runneled together like melting wax. Forces moved against Max. They bumbled, large and blind. They bulled into her chest and head and nuzzled against her with all the grace of an angry elephant.

The pressure ground against her, loosened a moment, then clamped hard. The breath exploded from her lungs. She gagged and coughed, still pressing firmly on the gas. The Tahoe rolled relentlessly forward, the engine revving loudly. The magic of the veil held it to a slow crawl. Inside the Tahoe, the air around Max hardened until she felt as if she were caught in a block of glass.

She couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t move. Aching pain swelled in her muscles. Her body convulsed, her teeth grinding together. Her fingers clenched on the steering wheel. The resin cracked under her grip.

Almost there …

She tipped her head back against the headrest, every muscle rigid. She coaxed herself, C’mon ...Anytime now.

Then suddenly she felt a give.

The spells that Giselle had carved deep into her flesh and bone more than twenty years before shivered and woke. A tornado of sparks roared through her. Max gasped, feeling tendrils of magic uncoil from beneath her skin. They plunged through the veil like sturdy roots. Instantly the pressure began to subside. She drew a deep breath, blinking away the muzzy film gauzing her eyes. She swiped at the trickle beneath her nose and frowned at the blood on the back of her hand.

Fucking hell. If the veil hadn’t been thinned, she’d have probably gone unconscious. The lock-spell was supposed to work better than that. And when had it ever? She jeered at herself silently, licking her blood from her skin.

She eased the Tahoe onto the gravel road just ahead, checking her rearview to see how Akemi and Giselle fared. They were right behind her. Giselle had opened a slit in the veil to allow them to pass through. Max’s lock-spell should have done something similar for her. But it wasn’t that easy. It never activated until she was at least half-dead. Which, according to Giselle, was because of Max’s bad attitude. “It’s your witchblood. It gives your stubbornness muscle. You can will the spells stronger if you want, and you can will them not to work. Look at the healing spells. They work instantly because you are so completely determined to stay alive to kill me. All you have to do to make the other spells work just as well is accept being a Shadowblade’accept that this is your life now and you can never go back.”

All she had to do ...Max shook her head sharply. “Bet that’s what Mengele said to his victims, too,” she muttered aloud, then grimaced. Wasn’t talking to yourself a sure sign of insanity? But then, she didn’t really have anyone else she wanted to talk to about Giselle.

Abruptly she pressed down on the gas. The Tahoe fishtailed and gravel shot into the air. Max eased up slightly, straightening up and steering the Tahoe down the steep road. Trees crowded close’mostly juniper and scrub oak with scraggly bushes in between.

She reached the turnoff for the box canyon where the parking was and the trail up to the Conclave began. The road was made of stone, each square of gray rock etched with centuries-old magical symbols. The forest that rose up around her now was a bizarre mix of trees that had no business growing in San Diego.

The turnout that Max had been looking for was just where she remembered from her only other visit to the Sagrado. It was a shadowed cleft in the canyon wall bracketed by two juts of rock dotted with clumps of dried grass and scavenger bushes. Max backed in, maneuvering until the Tahoe was well under the trees. She got out, pulling her backpack with her and leaving her cell phone on the console. There were no signals inside the veil. She hid her keys in the crook of a knobby oak and launched herself up the canyon wall. The moon was hidden by a bank of clouds that hunched low in the east, making it easier for Max to see. She reached the top of the ridge and found a deer track through the trees. She sprinted along it.

Near the Conclave butte, the path veered around the edge of a rocky ravine. Tall pines grew up out of a thicket of scrub. She edged down, rocks sliding beneath her feet. At the bottom of the ravine, she chose a pine that couldn’t be seen from above. From her backpack she pulled a spool of fluorocarbon fishing line. She unwound several feet and tossed the spool high over a branch. It looped over and fell back to the ground. Max slipped off her backpack and knotted the end of the line around the top loop and snapped the spool off the other end before tucking it back inside the pack. She stepped out of her hiking boots and shoved them inside, then quickly drew the pack up until it was snug against the limb. Anyone looking would have a hard time seeing either the line or the pack. She tied off the other end around the trunk of the tree, then climbed back out of the ravine.

At the top, she stopped to sniff the air. The cocktail stench of the city had faded only slightly inside the veil, making it nearly impossible to smell danger. Not that she needed to. She could feel it swallowing her. Its teeth slid along her skin, its breath licked her like flames. Swiftly she began to run again, this time angling back just east of where she’d concealed her Tahoe.

She made good time, and Akemi had driven very slowly. Max crouched in the trees as the Chevy truck wound nearer to her. When it curved around the bend, Max streaked across the ground and vaulted into the open rear window of the crew cab.

“Any trouble?” Giselle asked.

Max raked her fingers through her short cap of blond hair, pulling out a twig and a couple of pine needles. “No.”

“But you think there will be.”

“You don’t?”

Giselle said nothing for a long moment, and Max didn’t think she was going to answer. Then the witch said, “I trust your instincts.”

Max felt herself recoil. She didn’t want Giselle to trust her. She wanted the witch-bitch to fear her. She wanted her to always be looking over her shoulder, wondering when Max would finally break her chains and rip her head off.

“You trust my instincts, but still we’re going to walk into the fire.” Magic itched at her, raking steel claws down her nerves. Her compulsion spells prodded at her to carry Giselle off somewhere safe. Max fought to keep from leaping over the seat and grabbing the wheel.

“There is no choice.”

“How am I supposed to keep you in one piece if you just bumble stupidly into trouble?”

“You will do what you do best, same as always,” Giselle said with a dismissive wave of her fingers. Then her voice hardened. “If the war my mother foresaw has finally begun, then we have to know what the rest of the covens are going to do. It’s the only way Horngate will survive.” She turned her head, her delicate profile coldly austere. “Understand, Max. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Horngate safe. That means I sometimes have to risk myself. This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. So shut up for once and do as you’re told.”

“Yeah, well, next time you decide to throw yourself under a bus, do me a favor and loosen up the compulsion spells so I don’t have to die with you.”

“But I don’t plan to die. You will protect me. I have total faith in you.”

“Bite me,” Max said, her fingers curling into claws, her stomach clenching tight. The pain of the compulsion spells was harder to ignore than ordinary, physical pain, and it hurt far worse. Probably because she’d got so good at managing agony, Giselle had felt compelled to up the ante so that Max couldn’t ignore it.

But she could manage this, too.

She drew a breath and forced her muscles to relax. For years she’d endured pain and torture that no ordinary human could ever have survived. Time after time, she’d lain on Giselle’s altar while the witch pushed her to the brink of death and insanity, until Max inevitably broke and Giselle was free to etch her spells into Max’s flesh, bone, and soul. Each time Giselle was driven to greater effort. Each time it took longer and more pain for Max to break. She’d learned to embrace the agony, to savor its mouth-full-of-salt corrosion and welcome its hot, caustic touch seeping through her entrails and burning through her heart. She began to draw a perverse strength from it. The pain reminded her of who she was. And so long as she remained so, she could still get revenge on Giselle. For that nebulous promise, Max could suffer anything. Even if sometimes anything was more horrifying and painful than she could imagine. And Max had a hell of an imagination. But then, so did Giselle.

Now she let the pain ripple through her. A tremor ran down her neck to her heels as her body perverted the hurt to certain pleasure. Max smiled, triumph burning hot in her gut. Each time she accepted the pain, she grew stronger, and Giselle had to work harder to break her.

Max straightened up, looking through the windshield. Ahead was a lush blackberry-bramble wall. Like all the other plants that shouldn’t have existed inside the veil, it was fed by springs induced to the surface by magic. The road disappeared through a notch wide enough for only a single vehicle. There were no guards that Max could see.

Akemi drove through slowly. The parking lot was full of expensive cars, including a half dozen limos. Shadowblades stood about like stiff soldiers, mostly watching each other suspiciously, though a few talked together and a handful played cards on the hood of a Jaguar. They all turned to watch Akemi’s truck enter.

“Pull around and back into that spot over there,” Max said. It wasn’t really a space. The back bumper of a yellow Hummer hung well into it. Akemi would have to shove her truck into the bramble. Which meant that anyone attacking her would likely come from the front or over the Hummer. It also gave her a straight run at the entrance or thorny back exit.

The bramble gave way grudgingly, scraping the side of the truck viciously. Akemi gunned the engine, her knobby off-road tires gripping the ground hard. The truck lunged backward until the bed was overhung with brambles and the hood was half-covered.

Akemi glanced in the rearview mirror at Max. “You owe me a paint job.”

“I’m good for it,” Max said, her mouth stretching in a pirate’s grin.

She crawled over to the other door and let herself out and walked to the front of the truck. The other Shadowblades continued to watch the newcomers. Max recognized one or two and nodded at them. Her scalp prickled. All around her swelled the scent of magic. It was almost smothering in its intensity.

“I thought there would be someone guarding the entrance,” Akemi said in a quiet voice.

“There is,” Giselle said. “Just hope you don’t ever see them. It will be the last thing you do. You won’t get out the entrance until the Conclave releases and I come back for you. If something happens, try going over the bramble wall. You might have a chance, then.”

“Nothing like that guarded the place last time,” Max said.

“Last time the Guardians didn’t call us here. The Sagrado belongs to no witch. It lies inside Selange’s territory, but it belongs to the Guardians. They have rules and they send minions to enforce them. Tonight’who knows what creatures stand watch. Be warned. Whatever they are, they will offer no mercy if you attempt to leave before the Conclave ends. It is the law.”

Akemi had gone pale at the the word Guardians. She swallowed and nodded.

“We’re going to be late. Max, let’s go.” Giselle strode toward the entrance. Max overtook her and walked in front of her.

“There’s no danger here,” Giselle said. “The Guardians won’t permit it.”

“What if they can’t stop it?” Max muttered, and prowled ahead.