The Red Witch (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 6) (30 page)

Morning sickness. The aches. The pains. What if you’re pregnant? Fate doesn’t care, remember? Fate doesn’t care.

I stared up at his quiet, smiling face for what seemed like an eternity, and I was about to open my mouth when the door swung open and Collette—and the treble and bass of a live band—came rushing in with the swing.

“Zere you are,” she said in haggard breaths like someone who had just run a hundred meter sprint.

“Collette,” I said, pushing away from Aaron. “What’s up?”

“It’s Damien. Something’s not right.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“In ze main room. Come.”

She took my hand and pulled me with her, either oblivious to the tone of the conversation I had just been having with Aaron or acting on that same sense of urgency I had felt ever since we landed in SFO. I guessed the latter since Collette was pretty damn observant, but that didn’t do anything to soothe me.

Questioning her about what was going on, though, wasn’t an option because we had found Damien in the crowd without too much trouble. His face was powdered white; he had black lipstick and eyeliner on, and he was wearing a black shirt wrapped at the wrists, elbows, and torso with black tape. He was supposed to be
the Crow
—one of my favorite movies—and he had done a good job with his costume. And much like Brandon Lee throughout most of the movie, Damien’s face was all gloom and seriousness.

“There he is,” I said, tugging Collette through the crowd. But Damien turned and started to carve his own path between the revelers. I followed as best I could, but keeping track of him wasn’t easy. Damien was headed to the side of the room closest to the bar, and that was the part of the hall which was thickest.

About thirty feet ahead, Damien pushed open a set of double doors leading to a corridor of harsh, fluorescent light. Then the doors shut behind him, and I knew—
I just knew—
that something was about to happen.

CHAPTER 30

Damien had been standing watch with his back to one of the long walls, eyes peeled for potential threats. He, Frank, and Aaron were on high alert tonight, and each of them had fanned out to cover as much of the Centenary Hall as they could without splitting up too far.

And for a while things had been going great. The party seemed to be in full swing, the music was good, and Frank had been right—he absolutely could find three hundred people in Raven’s Glen to fill the room with. But a part of Damien had been wishing no one would turn up ever since the Stevenson place went up—
Dark Fire, burned flesh—
in flames. Hoping the place would be empty or, at least, that it wouldn’t be so packed so an evacuation could be performed quickly. But he hadn’t had his wish and the turnout had been immense.

He was in the middle of a thought about how people really did enjoy Halloween in Raven’s Glen when he felt the Currents of Magick ripple through him as if a rock had been dropped in the relatively calm lake he had been soaking in. Everyone carried the spark of Magick with them, and Damien found that wherever there was a big crowd of people, the Currents would move and sway a little more strongly than in a place devoid of human life, and this meant his senses needed to be a lot sharper to pick up a disturbance than they would have normally had to be.

But his senses had been sharp—razor sharp—, and he
had
picked something up.

This man seemed to be blending with the crowd like a chameleon. So much so, in fact, that Damien didn’t think anyone else could even see him, although he was moving around and between them as if they weren’t there. And though his face was hidden behind a mask, there was a familiarity to him that Damien could hone in on, and that was something he could use.

So like a bloodhound with a scent, Damien followed the man wearing the devil’s mask under a black hood, weaving around the drunks and the sober alike to get to his mark. And when his mark noticed he was being followed, he did something Damien hadn’t expected. He turned around so that his eyes could lock with Damien’s, pulled back his hood, and removed his mask.

It was Henry, Damien’s cousin Henry, whose face now came within full view. He was grinning a wicked grin, his eyes were wide with excitement—hate?—and he looked like he was on the brink of doing something crazy. The last time Damien had seen the man behind the mask had been a long time ago, back in San Francisco; when this man—this balding, hook-nosed, pot-bellied
thing—
had tried to kill him and had almost killed Natalie, an innocent, in his almost zealot like conviction.

And now he was here.

Why?

Henry turned around and made a break for the bar. Damien followed, hot on his heels, and an inch before Henry had gotten to it, Damien planted the balls of his hands-on Henry’s back and shoved him through the doors, sending him smashing against the wall on the other side. The man turned around in time to see Damien’s fist come swinging. A hand came up in defense and blocked Damien’s blow aside, and then another hand came flying up like a missile from out of the ground to make direct contact with Damien’s cheek.

Crack
.

Red spots exploded into his field of vision as the pain ripped through his jaw and cheek. The blow sent him staggering back a few paces, but then he shook it off and threw himself at Henry again, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and pinning him against the wall.

“You bastard!” Damien screamed.

Henry laughed. “Did you think you had killed me, cousin?”

“Does it matter? I’m going to kill you now!”

“I don’t think you are. I think you’re too
weak
to do anything. You’re only here because you’re trying to be the hero that you’re not.”

Damien jerked Henry hard, smacking the back of his head against a wall. “I didn’t get my chance with you last time you
fuck
, but I’ve got it now.”

“C’mon then, do it. Kill me. Strike me down with Magick and see where that gets you.”

Damien hesitated; maybe it was the crazed, wide-eyed look about Henry’s face—the eyes of a madman—that gave him pause, but he didn’t let go of Henry.

“That’s what I thought, you fucking whelp. How’s your sister, by the way?”

Lily falling away from him, the Dark Fire—
the dream, it was symbolic. If he ever had a doubt of his family’s involvement in Lily’s killing, they were gone now. They had come for her, followed her from Astoria, to San Francisco, to Raven’s Glen, and cut her down. And they were doing it because Linezka had told them to. Because they worshiped her like a Goddess.

He had failed Lily, but he wouldn’t fail Amber.

Henry’s knee came out of nowhere, connecting with Damien’s gut with a hard thump. Damien coughed, and his grip on Henry slipped. Then Henry, possessed as he was of some kind of supernatural strength, spun out of Damien’s hold entirely and kicked him in the back of the leg sending him down to his knees. The pain was immense, a bright, singing pain that made him scream out.

Henry grabbed Damien’s hair and pulled it hard, but Damien wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a scream of pain. In his mind, he started to call on the elements, reaching for the window at the end of the hall and willing it to open to let the elements in. But the latch was drawn, and the window only rattled harmlessly.

“See?” Henry said, “Without her you’re a gun filled with blanks. How about you just let me end this miserable existence of yours?”

“No!” Damien yelled, and the force of his voice sent ripples of Magick pushing into the latch on the window. A second, and the latch budged. The window flew open, and the room filled with a powerful gust catching Henry unaware and causing him to lose balance.

Damien bit back the pain, stood up, and willed the window to slam closed, shutting the howl of the wind with a loud clap. Henry backed away with his elbows as Damien approached, but he bumped into a pair of legs, halting his escape. And when he looked up, he saw Wednesday Addams looking down on him with murder behind his cold, unloving eyes.

Frank reached for Henry, long, manly hands stretching open to clasp his face.

“What a vile little creature… and so useless without your magical strength.”

Henry screamed a terrified, glass-shattering screech, and when Frank asked Henry to
schhhhh
, the screech fell mute, though Henry’s mouth remained open.

Just beyond the double door, Aquatic Bumblebee was thrashing their guitars and drums, making partygoers numb to Henry’s terrified shrieks. What was he being made to see? What sickly Magick was Frank injecting him with that was turning Henry—a man with the ability to wield that devastating, evil force known as the Dark Fire—into a bawling, weepy mess?

Frank was heaving and grunting like an animal in a girl’s dress, both hands clenched tightly around Henry’s face. Henry, meanwhile, was squirming and kicking and trying to hold onto something. Anything. Henry’s foot caught on the wall and he kicked back, sending Frank’s lanky form tumbling to the ground. Before Damien had a chance to stop him, Henry got up and made a break down the corridor, narrowly avoiding Damien’s hand that had pistoned out to grab him.

“What the fuck are you waiting for, witch,” Frank said as he untangled the pigtails crisscrossed over his face, “Go after him!”

CHAPTER 31

Aaron’s skin began to prickle when he caught a whiff of a familiar smell. The hairs of his arms went up first. Then a finger of ice touched the base of his neck, and the cold spread throughout his spine, his ribs, and into his belly where it met with the fire of his stomach and fizzled out into a cloud of steam.

He stiffened. Tilted his nose up. Sniffed the air.

He had been following Amber a moment ago who looked to be heading to a set of double doors next to the bar, but a second before she got to them she stopped dead in her tracks. That was when goose-flesh broke out all over Aaron’s skin in tiny ripples that crawled through him like ants marching on a log.

She had turned around then and made Aaron instantly aware that whatever he had sensed—
smelt
—she had smelt too, and she had also turned her nose into the air. It was an awkward thing to see because that wasn’t something he had ever seen her do. But he didn’t have time to wonder, because the smell was getting stronger. The source was getting nearer. And suddenly, he knew, everyone in here was in immediate, imminent danger. Everyone. Then a woman caught his eye. Maybe she had always been there, or maybe she had stepped through a wall, but there was something strange and out of place about the person that had just crossed in front of him.

Her perfume was intoxicating; fresh and wild, like a wet forest in the spring where the fruits are ripe and ready to pluck. But it had an off-putting quality about it too, and in the part of his mind responsible for translating smell into an image he could use to explain it, he saw the quiet little patch of spring forest become suddenly awash with fire.

Green fire.

It’s her!

Aaron didn’t need to be told. He leapt into action, shouldering through a group of kids about to take a selfie, and grabbed the woman by the hand to turn her around. She was wearing a half-mask in the likeness of a wolf, and when her full red lips curled upward into a smile, he noticed just how sharp her canines were.
The better to eat you with
, he thought.

She slipped her wrist out of Aaron’s grasp with a single, swift movement. Matching her speed, Aaron’s hand rose to her neck, to grab her, but before he could grab her throat, her hand was there, fingers entwined with his. She brought a free hand to her lips, shushed, and Aaron’s already tightly wound body tightened further, to the point where he couldn’t move of his own accord.

A kind of cold-hot sensation ran through him, one he had never felt before, and paralyzed him. Almost as if on cue, the band shifted from their usual high-tempo repertoire of songs to a slow-paced ballad. Then the woman took Aaron’s other hand, placed it on her hip, and began to lead him in a dance which his feet were obliged to follow a woman he had never met but heard so much about; a woman who, despite her immense beauty, seemed to be on some fundamental level… wrong.

“Aaron Cooper,” she said, with her smile still clear upon her full red lips. Her eyes, he saw, were jet black orbs behind the mask; orbs that sucked him in deeper and deeper the more he looked at them. “Finally we meet.” Her voice seemed to project from her mouth, but the music would have made it impossible for him to hear her, unless she had been yelling. So how was he able to hear her?

Aaron wanted to speak, but his body wouldn’t listen to commands.

“Fine,” she said, “I suppose this would be a more enjoyable dance if you could speak, wouldn’t it?”

The woman leaned close, bridging the gap between her face and his neck. She licked his skin, her wet, hot tongue sliding up and down his jugular. Her lips followed, then, closing around the thumping artery in an exaggerated manner. He could feel her teeth, razor sharp against his neck, and when she pressed them on his skin, they pricked, he was sure, and she got a taste of his blood.