The Witch's Eye (27 page)

Ronan watched Danica.  He wondered if he’d have to kill her in the end, and if he actually could do it if things came to that.  He wanted to believe she was ok, that her mind could come back from wherever the vampires had taken her.  He of all people knew how deep you could fall, how broken you could become.  He watched her walk through the snow like the rest of them, refusing to use her spirit unless they entered combat.  He knew her fighting style, knew how she used her weapons, even the Necroblade falchion.  Ronan knew ways around magic, knew how to penetrate arcane shields and elude blasts of eldritch might.  From a logistical standpoint he knew he could defeat her, even if it would cost him.

C
ould you kill her?
he asked himself. 
If it came down it, could you take her life?  You let the blonde boy live, after all.  Not once, but twice.

He could
do it.  He knew he could.  But the damage to his soul would be irreparable.

The skies were clear to the east.  Clouds of charred fumes hung directly overhead.

“Something
’s following us,” Danica said when they were a few miles from the Loch.

“
Ebon Cities?” Ronan asked. 

“
Yes.” She stopped and looked into the sky.  “I hear them.  In my mind.”  She was breathing hard, and Ronan saw fear in her eyes.  “They’re coming for me.”

“Maur thinks this is bad,” the Gol said.  He was on his feet again.  They all were exhausted from the c
hill.  Ronan’s lungs were ice dry, and his muscles ached.  They’d been in the cold for so long his face had started to numb even beneath his cowl. 

“It
is
bad,” Ronan said.  “God damn it, we need to get to the Loch.  We can take cover in the trees off the shore.”

“That may be
difficult,” Creasy said.  “Look.”  The warlock pointed to the southeast.  A squad of gargoyles and a Razorwing were closing in fast.  “Run!” he shouted. 

The bulging estuary was still some distance off.  The
Nightblood roared along its course a dozen paces to their left.

The fliers
screamed in.  Bullets tore into the ground.  Ronan and Maur turned and fired back. 

The gargoyles strafed
the area and closed fast.  Creasy deflected their gunfire with his spirit.  Ronan killed one of the winged brutes, and it crashed in a heap of blood and skin.  Maur fired as another raced past.

Danica
’s spirit roared up and out.  Spirals of acid concertina shattered grey bodies and brought them down in exploding heaps.  The air stank of burning meat and flames.

The Razorwing
swooped in low.  Creasy called his spirit and fired bolts of black cold into the creature’s flanks.  Its reptilian howl sliced open the air.  Razored jaws closed down and barely missed the warlock as he leapt out of the way.  The draconian crashed in a thunderous explosion of rock, snow and blood, and its massive armored body slid forward like an out-of-control train.  Ronan grabbed Maur and jumped clear.  They fell into the snow, and the creature scraped past them. 

A
pair of gargoyles grappled Danica.  One landed a barbed chain around her waist, and she just managed to turn, sever the blade and slice off the gargoyle’s arm when the Razorwing’s thrashing tail knocked her into the water.

Ronan let go of Maur and
dove after her, into the fast-rushing Nightblood.  The world dissolved into oily darkness.  Dread cold lanced straight into Ronan’s heart as he fell into the freezing river.

SIXTEEN

CORE

Dragon
plunged into shadowy waters.  The river flashed across her skin like a storm of razors.  Frozen fluid invaded her lungs.

I don
’t want to die.

Memories flooded past her, things she hadn
’t remembered in years.               

She
went rigid.  The sky was sucked away.  She sank into a dark oblivion of arctic liquid.  Her eyes stung from cold and salt. 

T
he current carried her to the bottom of the river, past schools of eyeless fish and sharp stones.  Her spirit wrapped around her just seconds before she smacked face-first against the rock.

Everything bleeds.  Her vision explodes from black to white.

Do you?

Where am I?

She’s alone in the house.  Heavy winds batter the walls and make them creak. 

Her bed is messy, and her dolls lie scattered
all over the floor.  She makes them fight the way Mommy and Daddy do, or at least the way they used to when Mommy had still bothered to fight back.

The sky is black outside,
and her room is dark.  Shadows shift in the corners.  A breeze rises from nowhere and shifts the pale curtains.  Branches scratch the window from the outside.

He
’ll come for her soon.  It’s inevitable, and she knows there’s nothing she can do about it.  She’ll close her eyes and pretend he isn’t there, vanish into the noise inside her head. 

Her friend
’s voice will be waiting.  He’ll keep her safe.  But even knowing he’ll be with her doesn’t stop her from crying.

Air rushed into her lungs.  She coughed and gasped.  Ice water ran down her throat.  Vicious currents ripped her further downriver, and she was dragged back underneath.

Do you?

The rifle jumps in her hand, and the shot echoes through the valley.  She watches the Ebonback, a great pachyderm with dark scales and many horns, grunt and sink to the ground.

It
’s no easy feat to bring a beast like that down.  Her father has taught her and Cradden everything he knows about hunting, and about killing.  They’ve learned fast.

They make their way
down into the valley and watch from a distance while the creature struggles and breathes its last.  Its dying moans rattle in the cold air. 

Dry leaves
lift in the frozen breeze.  The mountains loom behind them, imposing black monoliths reflecting the light of the morning sun.

Cradden and her father – who are
nearly identical with their thick red hair and broad frames – walk ahead of her down the slope.  She watches them in fear.  The Winchester feels heavy in hands, almost seems to burn against her skin.

The voice in her head
calms her.  It’s the voice of her spirit, a voice she’s heard all her life but that she’s only recently learned she can call on for aid.  Like its teenaged host, the spirit is confused and lost, afraid and volatile.  It understands her pain, but it pleads caution – even though she doesn’t comprehend its garbled whispers, she senses the emotions behind its intent, its desire to keep her safe, to protect her, even from herself.

She heeds the voice, and t
hat’s how she’s able to resist the urge to shoot her father in the back of the head as the three of them wander across the valley floor, learning to survive in the world After the Black.

She sprang up from the water.  A hand took hold of her metal arm and pulled her away from rocks.  Ice clouds and frothing waves spun in her vision before she fell back below the surface once more.

She screams.  He bears down, breathes on her.  His fist is red with her mother’s blood, his breath reeks of alcohol, and his eyes burn with hate. 

Her shirt twists as he tries to tear it away.  Her jaw aches, and she tastes blood in her mouth.

It’s just past dawn.  Their bunker is several miles outside of Ath.  The Creels are their nearest neighbors, holed up in their own bunker at the other side of the valley.

No one is coming to help
her.

His fingernails jam into her arm.  Her hips pop as he shoves his weight down and forces her legs open.

“Please…” she breathes.  “Daddy…”

Her spirit is there.  Murderous rage turns the air black
and burns her dolls to a crisp.  She hardly knows what’s happening before her father is thrown against the wall.  The whispers fill her ears like a storm of hissing razors. 

Her father is alive, but injured.  Blood runs down the
wall behind him.  He hobbles to his feet.

“Your little bitch…” he growls.  “I knew there was something wrong with you.” 

He takes a step forward, but her spirit moves between them and throws him back again, not as hard this time, just enough to stop him in his tracks.  His face twists in rage.  He reaches down and picks up her hunting knife from the bedside table.

“If you want to stop me, you
’ll have to kill me,” he growls. 

Her heart skips.  She
’s not sure she can do that, even though a part of her has dreamed of it for so long. 

She backs awa
y.  Her spirit whips around her and tugs at the edge of her thoughts.  He wants her to stay, wants her to face him, but she’s afraid. 

H
er father rushes at her with the knife.  She feels her spirit solidify into a drill-blade of force.  He shapes himself into her weapon, an extension of her anger, her sharp-honed fear.  A blade wedge aimed at her father’s heart.

A shot cracks
open the air.  Bone and blood splatter onto the wall.  Her father falls, his eyes glazed open. 

Cradden is in the doorway
with a smoking rifle in his hands.  He’s crying.  He aims it at her face, and his teeth grind so hard she can hear them from across the room. 

Fear floods her chest.  Her spirit is still there, a smoke-wreathed ethereal blade. 

Cradden lowers the gun.

“Get out,” he says.

She does.  She never sees her mother again, and it’s many, many years before she faces Cradden in the ruins of Shul Ganneth, shortly after she meets Eric Cross.

Air.  Daylight.

Her lungs swelled as she bobbed to the surface.  She spat out river water
thick with ice and dirt, and climbed onto the shore.

Silver waves
passed behind her.  Her ears filled with the sound of soft collisions.  Her senses came alight, and she saw and felt things she knew she wouldn’t have noticed just minutes ago: trees swayed overhead; small insects crawled on the back of her hand; light glittered on the surface of the fast-moving water; grey clouds hung frozen in the red sky; dirt under her fingernails and sand on her tongue.

She sat up and looked around.  There was blood on the
ground, and white shards of broken steel.  A man lay crumpled in a heap on the shore.

“Ronan!”

He didn’t stir, and didn’t seem to hear her.  She reached out, and froze at the sight of her iron arm.  Memories flooded back to her, flashes of torture and pain.  Vampire fangs, and the axe.

Her spirit
had been trapped and battered, and he’d struggled in vain to try and reach her, to reason with her, only she hadn’t heard him. 

The Witchborn.
  Lynch.  The Witch’s Eye.

Ronan.

She turned him over.  He coughed and hacked.

She looked around.  Heavy mists rolled over
the river.  Rimefang Loch’s eastern shore was just a short distance away.  She saw cold churning waters and blocks of green ice, frothy white waves and shores of black sand.  The sky over Rimefang Loch was cold and crimson and riddled with charcoal clouds.  She smelled the ice from there, the frost waters.

“Ronan,” she said.  “Are you okay?”

He writhed on the ground, delirious.

“Don
’t,” he said.  “Don’t kill him.” 

His eyes were out of focus.  His body shiver
ed, and there was blood on the side of his face.  He’d been injured on the rocks at the bottom of the river, and he shook from the cold. 

Danica
called on her spirit, and realized he was locked in the metal arm.  He was afraid.  She remembered how she’d treated him, how she’d cowed him into submission and kept him isolated like an animal.  She’d only released him to inflict pain.

“Hold on, Ronan,” she said.  “Hold on.”

She let her spirit do his work, unbidden and uninhibited.  She knew it couldn’t have been easy – she’d twisted him, made it so he couldn’t remember how to function without the constant fear that he was about to be locked back in his prison and held there like a caged dog.

Water shot
from Ronan’s lungs.  His eyes fluttered open.  He clawed at the sand, roared and reached for a weapon that wasn’t there.  His eyes fell on Danica, and for a moment he looked murderous. 

She watched him, and he calmed. 
And then she saw something in his eyes she’d never seen before. 

Fear.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.  He sounded concerned.  She wasn’t used to hearing that from him.  Ronan was a killing machine.  He’d always been the least human of them all.