Crimson Wind (24 page)

Her words hit like bullets. Max’s fury reared up and words spilled from her in a torrent. “Did you see what just happened to me?” she spat. “Do you think that was fun? That I wanted that? If you do, then you are stupider than you look. I never wanted to be a Shadowblade. But once I was turned, there was no going back. I stayed away because of you. All of you were better off if I was dead.”

“Better off?” her mother asked. She had her arms wrapped around herself, and tears rolled down her cheeks. Max’s father slipped his arm around her.

Max whirled on her. “Have you seen what’s happening out there? The monsters in the smoke? The ones that want to eat you alive? They’re maybe a three on the scale of scary shit I have to deal with every day. Did you want me bringing my new friends around at Christmas or Thanksgiving? Maybe for the Fourth of July we could put on a real show. Of course, if I’d had warning, I could have protected myself, but no one told me my best friend was a witch, did they? Or that witchcraft runs in the family.”

She glared at her father, who, for the first time, looked a little shamefaced.

Max looked away and took a breath. She was wasting time. “Where’s Jim?”

“In here,” her mother said, and led Max through another door into a TV room. Jim lay on the couch inside a sleeping bag piled with blankets. He was shaking. His eyes were red-rimmed and his skin was sallow. He lifted a hand in greeting as Max came to crouch beside him.

“’Bout time you showed up. Thought you said you’d be here by dawn yesterday.” He coughed, his throat sounding raw.

She waited until he was done.

“Are you going to be okay?”

He shrugged and snugged the sleeping bag tighter around himself. His lips were blue, his chin speckled with blood from his coughing. “You know me. One foot in the grave most of my life. No point changing now.”

She frowned. “How bad is it?”

He coughed again, and the sleeping bag and blankets pushed down. Bruises patterned the skin of his chest. She covered him again as his cough subsided. He drew a ragged breath, wiping his mouth and looking at the blood on his fingers.

“I got attacked coming in. Pretty sure I’m done for.”

“The hell you are,” Max said softly, brushing her fingers over his forehead. He was a seedy little man, with receding brown hair, a narrow chin boasting a scraggly beard, and a wicked sense of humor. “I’m going to get us out of here. Tonight. We’ll find you someone to help.”

“Gone too far, babe. I’m already gone, my body just hasn’t agreed yet. Can’t feel my legs. Cold. Coughing blood. I’m toast.”

“Not if I can help it,” she said, rising to her feet.

He smiled and took her hand in his weak grip. “Take care of yourself. Get your family out safe.”

Her hand clamped around his. “You should have waited for me, dammit.”

“The shield ward wouldn’t have held long enough. Needed extra juice.”

She nodded, a tear sliding down her cheek despite herself. She brushed it away. “Thanks. I owe you.”

“Lucky you won’t have to pay me back. Besides, I owed you big for what you did in Arizona. Consider us even.” He began to cough again.

Alexander handed her a glass of water. She looked at him, startled. She nodded thanks.

“Here,” she said to Jim, holding the cool liquid to his lips. He sipped and then pulled away, lying back on his pillows.

“I’ll be fine. Go get to work.”

She nodded. She felt she might snap apart at any moment. “I’ll be back for you.”

“See you when I see you,” he said, and closed his eyes.

Max turned and brushed past Alexander, unable to take the pity in his eyes without completely losing it.

She stepped back into the kitchen and several hushed discussions fell silent.

“I don’t know what Jim told you or what you’ve figured out, but here are the high points so I know we’re all on the same page. Right now, we’re surrounded by smoke, and it’s full of shape-shifters that want us all dead.”

Kyle and her father nodded.

“Jim told us they were shape-shifters,” her father said.

“What do they want?” her brother asked. He was tall and angular, with the same pale hair as Max. He wore it in a short, military-style cut.

“Your land,” Alexander said. He was leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed, looking deceptively calm. He wasn’t. “You might have been spared, but you practice the craft outside of a coven—right?”

Kyle and Max’s father nodded, frowning at Alexander.

“That’s right. We’re solitary practitioners, for the most part,” her father said.

“The Guardians don’t know you exist. So your land and your lives are fair game. If they’d known about you, they probably would have tried to recruit you for their war,” Alexander said.

“The Guardians?” Tory repeated.

She looked like Tris had at the same age, with long wheat-colored hair, a slender body with curves in all the right places, and a defiant curl to her lip, like she wasn’t going to let anyone push her around. Exactly like Tris. She was looking at Alexander as if he was dessert. Max suppressed a sudden urge to warn the girl off.

“What war?”

“The Guardians oversee the magical world. They decided that humanity has done too much to harm magic. So they’ve ordered a war to cull most of humanity and bring magic back as a force in the world. Chances are they gave this land to the
obake
and the
bakemono
in exchange for helping them,” Max explained. “This isn’t the only place they’re attacking. That’s why I have to take you back to Horngate. You’ll be safer there.”

“That’s your covenstead?” Kyle asked.

He looked eager, as did her father. The palm of Max’s hand itched to slap them. This wasn’t a game. People could die.

“It is. So I suggest you gather what you can’t live without and only what you can carry, and get ready to go,” she said curtly.

“How?” Kyle asked.

“That’s what we need to figure out. You, me, Alexander, and ….. Peter,” she said. Calling her father by his first name felt awkward and weird, but she couldn’t call him Dad, either. He was a stranger now, just like the rest of them. They were afraid of her and of what she’d become. She couldn’t blame them. But it hurt. More than she was willing to contemplate. She refused to let herself think about it.

Her father bustled everyone out of the kitchen. Her mother lingered, staring at Max.

“You look the same,” she said finally.

“I’m not,” Max said. It came out more harshly than she intended, but she was having a hard time managing her emotions.

“I see that.” Her mother lifted her chin. “We missed you. Very much.”

Max nodded. “I missed you, too.”
So much
. But being here now, she realized she had missed something that never really existed. Her parents weren’t who she thought they were.

“I want to hear about your life. If you will tell me. When we are safe.”

Her voice was tentative, but she was reaching out. It wasn’t the homecoming Max had dreamed of, but it was something. Not that Max could tell her much; there was too much her mother could never understand.

“Sure,” she said. “When we’re safe.” But she hadn’t been safe in thirty years.

Her mother left, and Max turned to her father, who was watching her and Alexander with sharp curiosity.

“What are you capable of?” Max asked abruptly, not bothering with manners. She was too pissed off. “Did you make the shield wards out there?”

Her father shook his head regretfully. “I’m a minor witch. Hedgewitch is what I’d be called in the old days. I can do small things, but I hired someone to make that ward line.”

“And you?” she asked Kyle.

“I’ve got some power. Tell me what you need.”

Max rubbed a hand over her mouth. The fastest way to Horngate was to go back through Winters to get to the freeway. But the smoke would certainly kill Jim and probably everyone else. If the shape-shifters didn’t get them first.

The only other way out was to take the road through the smoke, back to where she and Alexander had left their car. Hopefully they’d be able to outrun the
obake
and not get lost. It was shorter, but left them on the wrong side of Winters. They’d have to run for the coast and hope they got there before the crimson wind trapped them in the valley.

“Those are our two choices,” she said, explaining her thinking. “Unless one of you has a better idea.”

No one did.

“What about these Leshii friends of yours?” Max asked her father. “Will they help at all?”

He gave an embarrassed shrug. “They keep to themselves mostly. I tried to talk to them when the smoke descended, but they shape-shifted into grass and trees, and that was it.”

“They are in as much danger as we are,” Alexander said. “So long as the ward line holds, they will be safe enough, unless the smoke bothers them. But once it breaks, and undoubtedly it will, even if the Guardians have to send someone to smash it, then the
obake
will find the Leshii and kill them.”

She stood up. “I’m going to talk to them. Can you show me where?”

“I will.” Kyle stood.

She looked at Alexander. “Go see what we’re working with for vehicles.” She looked at her father. “And weapons. Anything you’ve got.”

She headed for the front door. As she went through the living room, she noticed a picture of herself on the mantel. It had been taken on a trip to the ocean when she was nineteen. She was hugging Tris in the water. Both girls looked happy. She looked away. She wasn’t that girl anymore, and neither was Tris. Nothing was the same.

She strode outside, letting herself flatten beneath the rising Shadowblade Prime. Human cares did not matter to the Blade, only war and killing.

“What the hell is that?” Kyle backed away from her.

“It’s what I am. What I really am.”

“But you’re—”

She smiled, toothy and dangerous. “Fucking scary? I’m supposed to be. Show me the Leshii.”

He led the way around the house and past the barns. He coughed frequently as the smoke chewed on his lungs. On the other side was a vegetable garden, the lush leaves wilted and curling black. At the far end was a compost heap, taller than Max was and grown over with wild garden plants. All around was thigh-high grass, and there was a single gnarled cherry tree.

“That’s the father. Careful where you step. Somewhere around here in the grass are the mother and children and a couple of aunts or uncles.” Kyle stayed at the foot of the garden while Max approached the Leshii tree. Her Shadowblade senses roamed over the grass, and she heard the muffled sounds of insects as they burrowed downward to escape the smoke.

She could feel the Leshii in the grass. In this form, she could pluck them and kill them as easily as stepping on a spider. She touched one, then another, then all five, brushing her fingers lightly over each stem. Then she stood before the tree.

“If I can find you all, the
obake
can, too. You aren’t safe here. Sooner or later, the ward line will break. The Guardians won’t let this place stand, not when they’ve decided to conquer it.”

The tree shivered like it had been struck with an ax, then the lines of it blurred and pulled inward, shrinking into itself until the father Leshii stood before her. He was only three and a half feet tall, with an ancient face and green eyes the color of a summer pond. His skin was as pale as grass that’s never seen the light of day, and the strands of his hair and beard fell about his head like willow twigs.

“Where is to go?” His voice was dry and earthy. “This is home for long time.”

“Time to find a new one. I’ve got a place you can go, with trees and water and few humans. But we’ll need your help to get out of the smoke.”

“New home?” He considered, closing his eyes and tipping his head back.

Max waited. You didn’t hurry fairies. One of the tall grasses lengthened and turned into a female Leshii. She looked like her husband, but without the beard. Her hair was fernlike.

She looked at Max, studying her. “We go,” she said finally. “What must be done for you to help?”

“We need you to help us find our way through the smoke when we leave.”

“No protection?”

Max looked at the two Leshii children and the two aunt Leshiis. The children had short, mosslike hair with tiny star-shaped flowers. The elders looked much like the mother.

“Keep your strength for yourselves. We’ll help you all we can.”

The father tipped his head, eyeing her. It was a measuring look, the same his wife had given her. “You ask for little.”

“I’ll ask for more if I need it.”

“And we do not give?”

“Then we might not make it to safety. But it’s your choice.” She did not want to force them or make demands. She needed their help, and they needed hers.

“You promise much.”

Clearly he was suspicious. She didn’t ask for enough to warrant helping them get out of there and providing a new home. He didn’t understand. There was a tit-for-tat notion of life in the Uncanny and Divine world. You didn’t put yourself in the position of owing anybody anything. You paid as you went, or you were sorry for it later when the bill came and it was more than you expected or wanted to pay.

Max crouched down to eye level. “I’ve asked what’s fair to ask,” she said. “I promise you a place to live, but only if we all get out of here alive. So you have to give first. I’m asking you to make a leap of faith on the word of a stranger. That’s a lot for you to give, as far as I’m concerned. I will ask for more if I need it. But right now, what I need most is eyes through the smoke. You protect your family. They are the whole reason you are trusting me, and if anything happens to them, then what’s the point?”

The Leshii father put his hands on her face. They were surprisingly soft and long, looking more like roots than fingers. He stared deep into her eyes. Finally, he nodded. “Agree.”

Max rose to her feet. “We’ll leave soon. Out the front gate. I’ll meet you there.”

She returned to Kyle and walked back to the house.

“They wouldn’t hardly talk to us. Just to make the deal that we would let them be and they would help the orchard.” He sounded slightly awestruck. “They wouldn’t say anything when the smoke hit.”