Bitter Night (28 page)

“I am getting really tired of these,” he said with a curled lip.

“Better than nothing. Should have snagged the cooler out of the truck.”

She grabbed the other bag and disappeared inside the bathroom. Moments later he heard the toilet flush and the shower start.

He kicked off his shoes and lay on the bed nearest the window and stared up at the popcorn ceiling, slowly chewing one of the bars and listening to the water, thinking of it flowing over her skin, between her breasts’He broke off the thought before he could pursue it. That is not going to happen. Not in this lifetime. He rolled on his stomach to hide the sudden swell in his groin. Max had not come out of the bathroom before he fell asleep.

He sat up straight when she shook him awake.

“We’ve got a half hour before we can head out. You’ll want to clean up. Eat some more. You didn’t get much this morning.”

Alexander swung his legs off the bed and stood. The crusted mess on his chest and shoulders cracked. He looked down at himself. Red stripes remained where Kev had clawed him, and stiff soreness permeated his muscles. He looked at Max. She sat cross-legged on the opposite bed, her elbows resting on her knees. She looked drawn, but the bruises on her neck from the noose had faded to yellow splotches. Her fingers shook and a tremor ran through her. Her jaw was set in a tense line.

A thrill of unease ran up Alexander’s spine. “Something wrong?”

“Want me to make a list?”

“I could probably use a scorecard.”

“I called Horngate. No one is answering. I can feel my bindings to Giselle’she’s alive. But something is very wrong.”

Max’s voice was flat, but emotion churned in her eyes. A tremor shook her again. It wasn’t fear’her compulsion spells were hammering on her to get home and protect her witch. They would not stop attacking her during the day when she could not travel. They could literally cripple her before she could get back.

“Are you okay?” he asked, knowing she was not.

“I’ll survive. I always do. Go shower. I want to get on the road as soon as we can.”

Alexander hesitated, then did as told. Max did not like sympathy. The last time he had offered it, she had nearly torn his throat out. They had a fragile peace between them at the moment, and the last thing he wanted to do was blow it.

They were on the road by eight. The vestiges of the sunset burned Max’s skin as they loaded into the truck. The darkened windows blocked the rays, but it took several minutes before the burn rash subsided.

She drove through a Burger King and they ate while they drove. It wasn’t Alexander’s usual fare’he did not usually like fast food’but he ate the greasy burgers and fries with gusto.

They drove up through Victorville and Barstow, across into Nevada, through Las Vegas and then up into Utah. Max stopped only when she had to for food, fuel, and bathroom breaks. She did not speak, turning inward so deeply Alexander was not sure she could see the road. Tremors continued to ripple through her, though she never acknowledged the fierce pain she must be feeling. At every stop she tried to reach her coven with no success.

They stopped in St. George just before dawn. There was not enough night left to reach another town. Max got a room at the Holiday Inn, then they went to the Wal-Mart and loaded up with food before returning to the room.

Max paced as she ate. Alexander watched her, leaning against the headboard. He was feeling better, though his body still felt unwieldy and weak. Max continue to look drawn, like she’d lost ten pounds just that night.

“Certainly Horngate must be safe. Giselle is a powerful witch with a full coven. Perhaps there is a phone outage in the area?” he suggested, though it was unlikely.

Max’s mouth twisted. She looked at him consideringly, then blew out a slow breath. “Did you hear what the Hag said about a war coming?”

Alexander nodded.

“It’s already begun. That’s what this business with the angel and the scrolls is about. The Guardians are summoning the witches to war. Seems the big guys are pissed at the way humans have been abusing the earth and the way magic is being strangled. They’re planning to exterminate most of humanity in order to bring magic back to the world in a big way. Witches will be their generals and the rest of us their armies. The scroll the angel brought said they’d raze Horngate if Giselle didn’t answer the call to serve. My bet is that the scroll Selange got says something similar.” She scowled at him. “You don’t look all that surprised.”

“When Selange took your hailstone, she said that with it she might be able to defy the Guardians. I added it up and figured they sent the angel.” His eyes narrowed. “But it does not make sense that they would threaten Horngate. If they need covens to serve, why do that?”

“I don’t know. Giselle thinks maybe they destroyed Old Home because Alton wouldn’t cooperate. Though if he did get a scroll, he wasn’t saying.” Max stopped pacing suddenly. “But what if he did? We’re assuming they all said the same thing, but the angel said that the fire was a gift, a threat, and a promise. But for who?” She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand as if to remove a bad taste, then drank from a bottle of milk. Setting it aside, she stared back at Alexander. “He’s a weasel and he’s up to something. He wanted Giselle to scry before the Conclave’he wanted to weaken her for some reason, or he wanted her to hightail it home. But why? And then, why is Selange resisting? The Guardians could give her a lot of power and she serves them’all witches do.”

“Why does Giselle object?” Alexander countered, and was surprised when she answered.

“She apparently had a vision a while back. She decided she is going to save what she can. Horngate will be a sanctuary.”

He stared, even more certain he had made the right choice to stay with Giselle and Max. Then another thought struck him. “Perhaps that is why they are threatening Horngate. If she does not join the war for the Guardians, then she sets a bad example for other witches. She is very strong. She could cause problems.”

“Against the Guardians? They’ll swat us like a fly.”

But something in her expression told Alexander she did not entirely believe it. There was something she was not telling him.

She blew out a breath. “We need to get home.”

“How much farther?”

“It’s another thousand miles. That’s another night and a half. I don’t know if they can hold off that long’if they are even under attack. With Sunspears and Shadowblades trading off the driving, Giselle should have made it back to Horngate yesterday, and she’ll have strengthened the shield wards. I just don’t know how long the Guardians were going to give her to answer before they attack. And what the fuck is Alton up to?” She shook her head. “I need a shower and sleep. Try to eat. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need all the strength we can muster.”

She strode into the bathroom, leaving Alexander to stew over the new information. He knew why Selange was resisting the call of the Guardians. She was a flesh mage. No matter how much power the Guardians gave her, once humanity was destroyed, she would be entirely dependent on them. She’d fight tooth and claw to avoid that.

He was still staring at the ceiling when Max returned and lay on top of her bed. Soon she was asleep. But it was not peaceful. She shook and her body knotted against the pain of her compulsion spells. He watched her for hours, unable to help her. Sweat gleamed on her skin and she tore at her face and arms with her nails. Then finally, in midafternoon, she seemed to conquer the pain. Her breathing steadied and she stopped struggling, her body going still. It was almost like she fell into a coma. He scowled at her. At this rate, she might be dead before they got to Horngate.

He lay down at last. His last thought before fading away was that Max had said we, like she had accepted him into her Shadowblades. He hoped it was true.

16

THE NEXT NIGHT ALEXANDER BEGAN A CAMPAIGN of asking Max questions as they drove north through Utah and Idaho. He wanted to pull her out of herself. That inward-looking habit could only agitate her compulsion spells, and he did not know how much more she could take. She looked haggard, and her body had been through so much in such a short time that he feared the straw that might break her. He had to be careful, though. At any moment she might shut him down. He had to avoid walking out onto any of her personal minefields. The trouble was, he had no idea where they might lie.

“Tell me about Montana,” he asked after they had eaten their drive-through meal.

He shifted in his seat to watch the play of emotions across her face. She gave him a sidelong glance. Not entirely friendly, but not unfriendly either.

“What do you want to know?”

He shrugged. “Do you like living there?”

“I do. It matches who I am.”

“How so?”

“It can be a harsh, unforgiving place. The Rockies are full of sly, secretive valleys and canyons, the peaks thrusting out like knives. What grows there has to be tough. The forests aren’t easy things. They aren’t lush and green. The trees root into the bones of the mountains, and they don’t invite intrusion. The things that live there are hardy and dangerous’mountain lions, wolves, bears, moose, and elk. Each one knows how to kill to survive. The valleys aren’t much more inviting, though they’ve been tamed by ranchers.” She paused thoughtfully. “I never thought I’d be happy there. Now I can’t imagine being happy anywhere else.”

“Where did you come from before that?” Alexander asked tentatively.

“Nosy today, aren’t you? All right, if we’re going to play the question game, how old are you?”

He let out a silent sigh of relief. She was not shutting him down. “Selange made me in 1904. At that time I was twenty-three years old.”

“You look pretty good for an old geezer,” Max said. “So how did you end up with her?”

Alexander looked down at his hands. He did not often talk about his past. But if he wanted to know more about Max, he would have to give as much as he got. “I was born in Canada in 1881. My parents were Bohemian. They had emigrated to Kolin in the district of Assiniboia, which today is part of Saskatchewan. They were poor, hardscrabble ranchers. It was a difficult life. My father drank and was sometimes violent. My mother ...she was tough. She left him when I was ten years old. She never came back. I never saw her again. It made my father bitter. He died five years later in a saloon brawl. There was a smallpox epidemic a few years after that, and both my brothers died. I left soon after. I worked herding cattle mostly, then trapping up in Washington and BC. Even did a little searching for gold in California.

“I met Selange in San Francisco. Even then she was a powerful witch. She had come from France ten years or so before. She was hungry to establish a coven in America. There was a lot of free territory’it was all just a matter of staking it out. I had just come in off a tramper down from Seattle. I was footloose’I was not sure what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. Then I saw her.”

He smiled at the memory with bittersweet emotion. He had been so damned young.

“And?” Max prompted.

“And I was lost. I followed her carriage. I could not help myself. I did not know it then, but she had glamoured me. She had need of Shadowblades in this new land.

“One day she invited me into her carriage and into her bedroom. Then she asked me if I wanted her gifts. I said yes to everything. Anything. A man like me could not hope to touch a woman like that, and there I was in her bed. The bedsheets alone cost more than I was worth. Everything smelled’like a garden. Within a month I was a Shadowblade.”

“Well, at least you got laid. Giselle just got me drunk,” Max said sourly. “All right. Fair is fair. I grew up in Iowa. Went to college, and my roommate turned out to be a witch. One night we went to a bar and she started asking me all these questions. You know, what if I could never get sick, never grow old ...I said that would be great. Next thing you know, I woke up on her altar.”

“When was that?”

“Nineteen seventy-nine.”

Alexander sat up. “But’”

“But what?”

“It is just that you are so strong. I thought you surely must be older than that.”

“I’m a fifty-year-old child wonder. If my family could only see me now.”

That did it. Her expression went cold and once again she started withdrawing inside herself. Alexander could feel the stillness settling around her like armor. He scrambled for something’anything’to keep her from going away. The only guaranteed route he could think of was to go running straight out into the obvious minefield.

“Where is your family?” he asked. “You are so young’surely they must still be alive.”

She twitched and jerked her head to look at him. Her eyes had turned nearly black. They looked like black holes. Alexander stiffened, more than a little expecting her to reach out and try to rip his head off. Her hand on the steering wheel tightened and the other flexed in her lap. His gaze slid to the knives strapped to her forearms beneath her pushed-up sleeves, and he wondered if he should be reaching for his.

“They live near Sacramento.”

He was so shocked that she had actually replied that for long moments he had nothing to say. Finally: “Do you see them? Do they know?”

She shook her head. “I just disappeared one night and they never saw me again. Papers said I’d been taken by a drifter, and a big manhunt ensued, but of course they didn’t find me. Couple of years after that I made sure the cops found evidence of my death. I didn’t want them to keep hoping. It was killing them. They left Iowa and went to the Sacramento Valley and grew cherries and peaches. They’ve retired and moved to a place called Del Webb’it’s a retirement community. My brother still runs the orchard. My sister owns a bakery.”

Her voice was expressionless, as if the words had nothing to do with her. Alexander did not know what to say. He had never known what to say to new Shadowblades who had to give up their families and friends’their entire lives. Selange made the choice easier. She promised that she would kill the families and friends of any Spears or Blades who came into contact with someone from their past’even accidentally. No one doubted that she would follow through.