The Red Witch (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 6) (19 page)

“That’s not Frank,” Damien said, mouthing the words.

Boom, boom, boom!
Aaron flinched and pulled away from Damien’s hold. He flicked his head up at the ceiling and dust fell upon his face. The growl that slipped from his throat was guttural and low, primal, a warning. But a warning to who? To
what
? Whoever, or whatever, was up there was jumping around in Aaron’s bedroom, and every thud made Aaron’s body shake.

His eyes went to Damien, then up at the ceiling, then to Damien again. It seemed like the angry jumping had ceased, but there were still footsteps to be heard. And there weren’t just one set of footsteps either, but a whole bunch of them. People, it sounded like, were opening and closing doors, wandering up and down the hall, and looking around in bedrooms.

People
.

At one time Aaron caught movement out of the corner of his eye and he was about to launch himself at it when he realized what he had seen and the spiders crawled up the length of his spine. It was a shadow at the stairwell; a tall, still shadow blotting out the majority of the light falling into the stairwell from the window just above it.

Aaron turned toward it fully and stared hard at the figure. It was humanoid, and it was breathing in silent heaves that made its shoulders rise and fall, rise and fall.
A challenge,
Aaron thought.
It’s challenging me, waiting for me.
But Aaron’s body was trembling, now, much like Damien was. He could see the shadow too, and maybe the witch’s logical mind knew what it was he was seeing. But Aaron knew what it was because he had
felt
its vile presence before.

“Fuck you,” Aaron said, his voice sailing through the air like a sledge-hammer.

The figure moved, and when its shadow disappeared Aaron heard its footsteps coming down the stairs, down to greet him. Aaron had accepted its challenge and it was coming for him now, but like fuck if it would catch him off guard. Aaron made for the stairs. Damien reached out to stop him, screaming his protest, but his hand slipped off the werewolf’s leather jacket and he was gone.

It all happened in the space of three heartbeats.

Aaron’s blood pumped hot and hard inside his veins and pounded against his temples. His jaw expanded to accommodate the elongation of his teeth, he flexed his hands and the nails he had used earlier to gouge tracks in the wooden counter returned, and the muscles in his chest, biceps, and legs ripped and healed with blinding speed to afford him the strength and toughness werewolves were renowned for.

He was ready.

The footsteps were coming down the stairs, sailing, flying. But Aaron was flying too; he was a hammer of muscle and flesh, ready to drive in to the thing coming to greet him.
Enemy. Threat.
Part of him knew he was rushing at a shadow and about to throw himself into a cloud of smoke, but the animal part of him didn’t care. Didn’t think. And that was okay, because when it came down to it his instincts came from the worst part of himself, and whether there was someone physically there or not, his instincts were right. He knew they were surrounded by
enemy.

And then he arrived at the foot of the stairs in a mad, furious dash, swung around the wall to look up—and all he saw was light. Cold, cloudy October light was spilling through the window at the top of the stairwell. Outside, birds were cawing. Crows, maybe? Crows come to watch the idiot werewolf fuck
everything
up. He wondered in that hot, sweaty moment whether they could sense the danger inside the house too, and if they had come as spectators or as little, black, winged messengers of death.

A cold chill ran through his body then, and the body reacted by returning to its normal shape—nails, teeth, and muscles included.

Aaron turned to look at Damien, whose face had turned an ashen white, and furrowed his brow in the momentary confusion. “I thought…” he started to say. “I thought…”

But he hadn’t thought. He had acted. Aaron glanced up the stairs and saw no one, heard nothing; no thumps, no bumps, no doors opening and closing, and no shadows chasing themselves around in the dim light. The enemy was here, he knew. He could still feel the vibrations, could sense the closeness of…
it
… but it had disappeared.

Deceiver,
he thought, and then,
it calls to your blood.

He didn’t know where that second thought had come from; whether it was his cognitive side overthinking something, whether he was answering a previous question he had asked of himself and forgotten about, or whether his animal—
worst
—side was picking up on the thought form of some external entity in the same way he could sometimes figure out what Amber was thinking if she concentrated on it real hard.

“How long has Frank been up there?” Aaron asked.

Damien checked. “Twenty minutes.”

“How long did he ask us to leave him alone for?”

“He didn’t.”

“So we’re just supposed to wait? We can’t go up there and find out what’s going on?”

“Frank told us to wait, to not trust what we see and hear, not to bother him, and to not leave the house.”

“You heard the things I heard,” Aaron said, approaching—striding—across the room. “None of that was
right
, Damien, and you know it.”

Damien didn’t say anything.

“Christ, man,” Aaron said, “What kind of dark shit is Frank bringing into my house?”

“I think,” Damien said, after a swallow, “He always carries the darkness with him, only he chooses when to use it and when not to.”

There was something Aaron could respect. He carried darkness within himself as well, but he wore it like a scar. It was a mark that was visible at all times, manifested in the way he would sometimes raise his voice without meaning to, in his sudden urge to go out for a run in the middle of the night, and in the way he could draw his nails along a wooden surface hard enough to leave lasting marks on it.
Step right up, folks; come and experience the curse of the werewolf!

If you looked at Frank you could also tell that he carried within him some kind of inner scars, a torment that called to him from the distant past like the father yelling at you to come home right now or else. Aaron hadn’t talked to him about it, but he figured Frank probably
had
come from an oppressive family and had lived a tough life growing up. Frank reminded him a lot of the weird kid at school; the one everyone would stare and talk about as they came walking down the hall.

In fact, Frank reminded Aaron a lot of Amber; only Frank wasn’t the kind of guy to dip his head low and walk faster when the insults started to come. He was the kind of guy who flipped you off and kept walking with his head high. The kind of guy who would get beaten up after school for looking weird and would then come in the next day looking even weirder, taking strength from the hate dropped on his doorstep. Aaron had never beaten any weird kids up but he
had
been a jerk to them, and now he kind of admired them.

Hell, he wanted to marry one.

He
was
one.

Thinking about Amber was like settling into a warm bath after a long day’s work. It relaxed him, turned his muscles to jelly, and allowed him to breathe more easily. But the things that had just happened in the house brought up memories of the time before his transformation, when demons were loose in Raven’s Glen.

And that familiarity unsettled him.

Moments later, like something out of a horror movie, there came a staggering sound rushing down the stairs. Aaron went bolt-upright, tense and alert. Damien too. They waited for a second, two, three. Then more footsteps—someone coming down another set of stairs.

“Frank?” Aaron asked. His heart was in his throat again, beating, constricting.

A shadow cut across the shaft of light falling through the stairwell, and Frank followed it, hobbling into the living room with a torrent of blood rushing over his nose and mouth. It was dripping onto the carpet and some of it was on his hands. It looked like he had been hit on the nose with a baseball bat.

Fuck, that has to hurt,
Aaron thought.

“Oh Christ,” Damien said, “Frank! Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his only clean hand. “Just need a fucking cigarette.”

CHAPTER 20

We were on the road again, zooming along the German countryside on the back of a four lane expressway, only this time there were three of us in the car. I may have needed to destroy the magical protection around Luther’s home to get him to come with us, but I could hardly have been called selfish for having done what I did. Of course, Collette would have suggested we try other—less violent—avenues, but I was due a rash action, dammit.

And besides, Collette had made it clear even if she didn’t exactly use the words that we had come to Berlin to get allies, and not contacts.

That was allowed, right?

“Where are we going?” Luther asked.

“We are going to ze Berlin Cathedral to meet some friends.”

In unison, I asked “Some friends?” and Luther asked, “A church?”

Collette cleared her throat. “I should explain,” she said.

“Yes, you should,” I said.

“Very well. Since we are joined by Luther zen it means we are on track with our mission and I may divulge its parameters to you.”

“Shouldn’t you have
divulged
any secret parameters to me before we flew to Europe so that I knew what we were getting into?”

“Non,” she said, shaking her head, “I suspected your good nature and your tendency to overreact would result in objections, so I hid my objectives from you.”

“I do
not
—yeah, okay, I guess I do. Continue, General.”

“Luther,” Collette said, pivoting on her seat to face him. “I am sorry we smoked you out of your home, but we needed your knowledge and experience as well as your magick.”

“My magick?” Luther asked, cocking his head.
Kinda looks like an older Damien when he does that,
I thought.

“You are a Necromancer, non?”

“I am.”

“And you have survived a confrontation with ze witch?”

“I have.”

“Zen your participation in my ritual is of utmost importance.”
“Ritual?”

The word caught my attention too. My eyes had been drawn to the beautiful German countryside with its tall oaks, bustling pines, and rolling hills until now. Everything was wet up here, the colors of autumn were more vibrant, and the sky seemed to be perpetually gray and overcast; and that was before I had brought Magick ripping into the world and inadvertently caused the sky to roar.

Oh, shit… that.

“Uh, guys,” I said, and the conversation died, but before I could mention my concern about Linezka being able to see us now I caught a whiff of something on the air, something familiar. It was a kind of musk I had smelt before… sweet, manly, but with a touch of femininity. “Do you smell that?” I asked.

Collette sniffed around the passenger side and Luther sniffed himself, but neither of them could smell what I was sure was man’s cologne.
Frank?
I thought. It sure did remind me of him more than it did the other two. Damien wore a manlier scent, the kind of cologne whose packaging has a picture of a totally ripped guy on it. And Aaron didn’t wear any cologne at all.

A chill like a trickle of ice water ran down my spine when I thought Frank’s name. For a moment I thought I could see him reaching for me, but in my mind’s eye he was being held back by something dark. Frank was screaming, flailing, but I couldn’t hear what he was trying to say because the dark thing kept grabbing for his mouth and holding it shut.

“Hey, Collette, grab my phone and call Frank, will ya?”

Collette dug into my jeans pockets, produced my phone, and dialed Frank’s number. When the number didn’t work she tried Aaron, then Damien. The phone rang a few times with Damien’s number, but then the line went dead.
Odd,
I thought. I was sure I had registered with one of the German networks immediately after landing. And I had texted Frank back after hooking onto the Hotel Wi-Fi, Aaron too.
Why haven’t they replied?

“We must not have a good enough reception,” Collette said, “Let’s try at ze hotel tonight.”

I nodded and Collette stuffed the phone back into my pocket.

“What were you going to say before, ma cherie?” she asked.

“It’s probably nothing,” I said, returning to the moment. “I just… don’t know if she can
see
us. After what I did in the woods, I mean.”

“Perhaps she can. Zis is why we must hurry, now. We cannot use ze same spell again, and if you weakened it earlier, zen it will only dissolve faster.”

I nodded again, but the thought of being locked in Linezka’s sights again didn’t sit well with me. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so impulsive. I applied a little more gas and watched tachometer rise from a steady 50 miles per hour to a dizzying 70, then 80. Collette urged us to hurry, and hurry we would.