Strange Trouble (11 page)

The witch stood at the edge of the roof, her hands on her
hips, bouncing gently on her toes.

Rune battled a bit with claustrophobia, but she had no fear
of heights. Still, the sight made her stomach clench just a little.

At the witch’s feet, Fie sat hunched and silent, her chin on
her chest. She didn’t look up at Rune’s entrance. She didn’t
so
much as twitch.

Damascus didn’t resemble the stereotypical witch.

She had her straight, white-blonde hair in a ponytail. She’d
dressed her slightly plump body in a too short black skirt, a blood-red blouse,
and a pair of black heels. Jewelry glittered at her throat, her ears, and her
fingers.

Her lips, thick with red lipstick, were black in the
moonlight. She smiled. “How do I look?”

“You don’t look evil,” Rune said, surprised that her voice
was calm. “But I can feel it coming from you.”

Damascus tilted her head. “What does it feel like?”

“Like a hazy, green bog full of troll shit and bubbling
poison.” Rune returned the smile, hoping no fear showed. “Something
like
that.”

“That’s not very nice,” Damascus murmured. She leaned over
slightly to caress Fie’s head. “Is it, Stefanie?”

Rune kept her stare on the witch. She couldn’t let her know
she was terrified for the kid.
As if she doesn’t already know that.
“What do you want?”

“Oh, I’m sure the deceptive little Marta told you exactly
what I came for.” Again, she tilted her head. “But I have failed. I must settle
for getting this tiny necromancer and you, instead.”

“You—” Rune swallowed. “You don’t
get
us.”

“Oh, but I do.” She put a finger to her chin. “And I get
your power as well.” She clapped her hands, laughing. “You will be a wonderful
addition to the others.”

Others…

Damascus sniffed the air. “From whom did you feed?”

“I was force fed by Llodra, your little runaway.”

At Llodra’s name, Damascus sank her teeth into her bottom
lip, and to Rune’s horror, began chewing through it like a juicy piece of meat.
“He was almost
mine
again.” The mangled, bloody lip
flapped as she spoke. “I was so happy. He was right here, in my hands. I could
feel him. I called with everything I had but he got away.
Because
of you.”

 She tilted her head, her gaze distant. “Why would my
Nicolas feed you?” She held up a hand as though Rune was about to interrupt
her. Then she once again speared Rune with her bottomless stare.
“Bloody protection.
Such bloody
protection.
Bloody, bloody, bloody—”

“Fie,” Rune said. “I need you to move away from the lady.”

The witch covered her mouth and giggled. “That’s precious.”

Rune shot out her claws and dropped her fangs. “I like a lot
of space when I kill.”

Damascus lifted her eyebrows. “Oh. I can certainly accommodate
you there.” She buried her fingers into Fie’s hair, jerked the child into the
air, and slung her over the edge of the building. Fie never made a sound.
“You’re welcome.”

“No,” Rune screamed, and didn’t even realize she’d moved
until her claws sliced empty air where the witch had stood a second before.

Damascus laughed, the underlay of malevolence so strong it
pierced Rune’s eardrums, filling her head with pain.

“
She
gone,
” Damascus cried.
“She dead!”
But then she closed her mouth, held a hand to
her head, and frowned. “That’s different. She’s a strong little thing.”

Rune threw herself to her knees at the roof’s edge. Roaming
zombies moaned and lurched over the dark ground, converging, Rune was sure,
upon Fie’s broken little body.

She couldn’t see the child, could only silently acknowledge
her regret and horror as she turned once more to face the witch.
Llodra’s maker.

It was his fault. Fie was dead because of Nicolas Llodra and
his fucking girlfriend.

There was little time for anything else—not even
self-recrimination. That would come later.

If she survived the witch.

“That’s a disappointment,” Damascus said. “I could have
trained her.
Used her.”

Rune lifted her stare from the floor and looked at the
witch.

“Oh,” Damascus said. “
There
it is.
Death
in your pretty blue eyes.”
Her own eyes flashed red,
then
went black. “But it’s your death I see there.”

“You talk too damn much.” Rune forced her silver claws to
elongate even more. They lengthened until finally she had to rein them in. They
were becoming too unwieldy.

“Hideous,” Damascus said, and dropped the blonde façade.

The blonde’s body seemed to implode,
then
peeled in layers to fall upon the roof before turning to a foul smelling gray
ash.

Rune stood frozen as she beheld the witch.
The true witch.

“I stole that body from a whore on the second floor,”
Damascus said. “She came up for a smoke and I fancied her. But I much prefer
my
body.”

Rune heard distant cawing, and crying, and the long dead
echoes of tortured screams. Hot, putrid wind stirred the growing tufts of her
hair. She shivered as gooseflesh erupted on her skin and she started to touch
her groaning belly before she remembered her claws were out.

The witch smiled.

In that smile was every terror ever imagined, every black
thing ever thought, every depravity ever invented.

The witch wasn’t a woman, not really. She was evil wrapped
in horror, tied neatly with a bow of rancid blood and sour anguish.

Her skin was partly translucent. Made up of twisted, knotty
veins and arteries, swollen, pulsating organs, and splashes of blood and rot,
she was something caught between life and death, something created in the
darkest depths of hell.

As Rune watched, faces of others—victims, they had to be the
witch’s victims—flashed over the witch’s skeletal face as though she wore
layers of masks that blinked into existence sporadically.

Like her body was a world, and those people were caught
inside, forever.

Screaming frozen faces with eyes that were still alive.
Still aware.

Rune wobbled as her knees weakened.
“Oh,
God.”
Her eyes hurt. She couldn’t force breath past the fear clogging
her throat. She could feel her heart beating, throbbing, hard and fast.
Too fast.

“God can’t help you now,” Damascus said.

Rune wanted to jump off the roof, to run screaming from the horror
before her—she knew, just
knew
the woman was going to reach out and drag
her inside that nightmare with the others.

The witch was a concoction of all the power she’d stolen and
sucked inside herself. She was everyone she’d ever destroyed.

And she wanted to add Rune to that nasty, bloody mix.

Rune had been afraid in her life, but never like she was
right then. All the self-hatred, all the pain…it was gone. In its place was
sheer terror.

Death didn’t scare her.

Being one of the people caught inside the disturbing
landscape Damascus called a body—
that
scared her.

She didn’t care about saving the world. The zombies were far
away, a dream, and they were not as important as her need to stay free of the
witch.

But she was not created to hide, shaking as her fear choked
her.

That left her one option.

She would kill the witch.

There were no other choices.

The witch watched her, exposed eyeballs glittering. She wore
a knowing smile, somehow, though there were no real lips to prove it.

But it was there.

“I do like a challenge,” she said.

“Then you’re going to love me.”

And Rune became her monster.

Would her monster be enough this time?

No.

She would have to become something more, something she’d
never been. It was inside her. She just had to figure out how to drag it
screaming from the shadows of her psyche.

She could.

Llodra had said so. And if he knew her father, he knew
her.

The witch came at her, her freaky, fucked up face changing
every couple of seconds.

She was fast—faster than anyone Rune had ever seen.

Rune flew through the air and had her claws reaching for the
woman before she was near her. She forced them longer and they blasted from her
fingers, right into the witch’s head.

And there they stuck.

Damascus howled with laughter, shaking her head from side to
side like a crazed bull. “Fun,” she shrieked.
“Fun!”

Rune tried to wrench her claws free, yanking desperately in
a frenzy of horror and disbelief.

But Damascus held her soundly and began to slowly reel her closer,
her monstrous head gulping at Rune’s claws like a snake swallowing a deer.

She was a hideous sponge, and she was absorbing Rune, her
monster, and her power.

Did that mean the witch would
be
Rune?

Rune forced herself calm. She found the darkness inside her
and embraced it greedily.

And then, instead of fighting to free herself, she began
stuffing her claws, her hands, even her arms, deeper into Damascus. “Eat
this,
bitch.”

Damascus stopped laughing.

Rune was up to her elbows inside the witch’s head. She swam
in there, exploring, gathering information. “I
see
you,” she said, her
voice a
singsongy
whisper.

The witch didn’t like that. She didn’t like it at all.

“Get out,” she screamed, and began frantically trying to
dislodge Rune.
“Out!”

Rune was powerful and full of a strange magic the witch had
wanted to taste, to steal. But she was no longer eager to do anything more than
survive.

Rune smiled into the bulging, glistening eyes.
“Got you.
Now what will happen to you when I take your
power?”

But Damascus wasn’t going to be that easy.

She gathered her own darkness and desperation and fought
back, as Rune had known she would.

A power like Damascus would never be easily defeated—but it
was enough that she understood Rune was just as strong.

And then Fie flashed across the witch’s face.

Rune moaned. “You
fucking…”

“She tasted sweet,” Damascus crooned.

Damascus had already taken Fie before she tossed her shell
of a body off the roof. Most likely she’d killed her long before Rune had even
stepped inside the building.

They both began to fight in earnest. No hesitations, no
talking.

Rune dug her claws inside the witch, trying to scoop out
something vital.

Damascus ran her fingers over Rune’s arms, and where she
touched, she left chaos. Rune’s skin began to crack, like mud left to dry in
the hot sun.

Her claws, deep inside the repulsive witch, began to peel
and snap. Once again, fear lit her mind and she pulled away, slicing at
Damascus as she fought to drag her claws free.

This time, Damascus didn’t try to stop her. She pushed as
Rune pulled. Finally Rune popped free with a savagery that propelled her across
the floor, where she lay dazed as she tried to reclaim her mind without the
connection to the witch.

She shuddered, sloughing off the invisible fingers of the witch’s
vast and dark mind. Her skin began to repair immediately. Her claws zipped back
inside her, and she felt them healing as well.

Something brushed her cheek and she reached up to shove her
hair out of her face. There was no time to be shocked about something
so
mundane as hair.

The witch was coming. She glided toward Rune, her face full
of determination.

Rune jumped to her feet, shooting out her claws. “I’m not
getting trapped inside that darkness,” she murmured.

But Damascus believed otherwise. She lifted her hands, her
lipless mouth moving as she muttered words Rune couldn’t understand.

A green-tinged fog appeared, swirling between her palms.
Then she blew, gently.

The fog or gas or whatever it was whooshed toward Rune, and she
barely had time to get her claws up to block it before the witch released
another round.

“Fie,” she yelled, as she blocked another ball of the
noxious green gas. “Can you hear me?”

Damascus stood still suddenly and tilted her head. “Of
course she can hear you. They all can.” She giggled,
then
stopped abruptly. “I tire of play. I’ll have you now.”

“How romantic.”
But her voice
shook. She ignored her fear. She wasn’t ready to give the child up, not yet.
“Stefanie!”

There was, of course, no answer.

And Damascus hadn’t lied. She was done playing. Her next
ball of fog was larger and faster, and broke open to splash upon Rune’s arm
when she blocked it.

It sizzled on her skin and the pain was so intense she
couldn’t help but scream. The fog, like acid, began to eat away her flesh.

She slashed at the witch, gratified when her long, silver
claws sliced off one of Damascus’s arms.

But it didn’t matter. The arm fell to the floor and began to
shrivel, crawling across the roof. The blood congealed and turned black, the
bones belching little puffs of smoke before turning to ash.

The witch regrew her arm.
In
seconds.

Llodra and Marta had been wrong. Rune couldn’t defeat
Llodra’s maker, and she couldn’t send her away. No one could.

The witch lifted her newly formed arm, pointed her fingers
at Rune, and began to make a stirring motion.

The air itself became the green acid fog.

“Fuck,” Rune shrieked, and ran. She ran with every bit of
the speed being an
Other
gave her. If the fog
enveloped her, it’d devour her skin and meat and leave only the clean bones to
drop to the floor.

And she could only hope if that happened, somehow she’d be
dead, not a part of the witch’s horrible little internal commune.

So she left Damascus behind. Fie and the others souls were
lost to her. She couldn’t save them, and she couldn’t defeat the witch. She
didn’t know how to.

She ran toward the edge of the roof, acid mist sizzling at
her back, and prepared to jump.

But at the last second, she threw herself to the side, let
the fog roll over her, and turned to drive her claws through the witch’s eyes.

Right into her brain.

It wouldn’t kill her, but it would slow
her
the
hell down.

And as Damascus screamed and scratched furrows into Rune’s
arms, trying to dislodge the silver claws, Rune did the unthinkable.

She began to feed from the witch.