Succession of Witches (27 page)

Sam ran for cover behind a tree, grimacing as a curse whizzed past his ear and set another shrub aflame. If Quentin didn’t stop tagging his spells with heat, they were going to have a brushfire to deal with soon.

He popped out from behind cover, sent two quick curses in his assailants’ direction,
then moved deeper into the vegetation, heading for the saltmarsh. If he could just chip away at their barriers long enough, he might be able to get a curse to hit home.  Furthermore, the terrain of the marsh favored him; he would lose the cover of the trees, but his opponents would probably be out of their depth in the marshlands, where the mud came up to your knees and the plants seemed to be trying to choke you.

There were only two of them now: the third one, Lawrence, seemed to have peeled off at some point. Quentin and his companion yelled threats and hurled curses wherever they thought he might be; he was fast enough that it was hard for them to get a bead on him. He had also managed to summon some mist, something he had never previously been able to manage, but his most recent trip to the Realm had been very educational. If they knew he was leading the
m deeper into nature, toward the marsh and the barrier islands of the Outer Banks, there was nothing they could do about it.

During the summer, there would be the danger of running into birdwatchers, fisherman or hikers, but on a frigid night in the dead of winter, there was little chance of running into anyone.
Sam supposed he should be grateful for small favors.

“Give it up!” Quentin bellowed a
s they entered the maze of cordgrass and mud that marked the beginning of the salt marsh. “This is pointless, Sam! You can’t keep running forever, and we have a lot more protection than you do!”

“Those barriers of yours won’t last forever,” Sam called back, careful to mask the direction his voice was coming from with currents of air. It was something he would never have been able to do if he hadn’t just tapped into Cassie’s magic minutes ago. “All I have to do is keep hitting you until they’re gone.”

Quentin stopped on the muddy banks of the pond where Helen had summoned the Leviathan, and hurled a curse, seemingly at random. Another clump of cordgrass burst into flame. He was getting tired, sloppy: Good.

“That will take longer than you can hold out!” he responded. He grimaced as three lightning-quick curses were absorbed by his barrier with flashes of black light,
then ran back behind cover.

“Yo
u think so?” Sam called back. “Do you know where we are, by the way?”

“In the middle of goddamn nowhere, that’s where,” Quentin snapped.

Sam knelt behind the rushes, slowly inching around to where he could see the pair behind the tree they were hiding behind and hopefully, get an easy shot. He felt the mud soak in to his pants around the knees, but he found he didn’t mind. He felt strangely invigorated; it reminded him of playing in the reeds as a child. Back when he still had friends to play with. They were close enough to the sea now that he could hear it.

“The currents around here are especially treacherous,” he said, still masking his voice. “Years ago, ships used to sink here all the time. That’s why they call this the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

There was a pause as Quentin processed that. “So what?”

“So many souls here are ripe for the taking, even now.
People that died violently before their time, just pools of energy to be exploited. You picked a fight with a death channeler in a cemetery, Quentin.”

“You’re bluffing. You can’t use that,” Quentin called back, but his voice was wavering a little; he was afraid. Fear might make him do something stupid.

“More importantly, this is where I grew up,” said Sam, finally finding a good angle on the demons hundreds of feet away through an opening in the rows of cordgrass. “This is my playground.”

With that, he let loose a flurry of curses. Though the barriers still absorbed them, Quentin screamed and aimed a curse in Sam’s general direction, which he dodged easily. The two peeled off from the tree
on the edge of the marsh and disappeared into the mist.

Great
, thought Sam.
Now if only I can keep this up for another half an hour, maybe I have a chance of winning.

Cassie hunched over and paused to catch her breath. They were deep into the marsh, and though she could hear curses striking barriers, she still wasn’t sure exactly where the fight was. They seemed to be in an endless maze of cordgrass; a surreal mist, which made it hard to see more than three feet in front of your face, really wasn’t helping. She was pretty sure it was Sam’s doing, which made it worse.

“Can you sense where they are?” she asked Bennet, who was also panting next to her. Despite his impressive physique, he didn’t seem to be used to running.

“No, there’s so much magic everywhere by now I can’t sense anything. They’ve been casting spells like there’s no tomorrow,” he said between gasps.

“There might not be,” she muttered, then pulled
herself up to her full height, as unimpressive as that was. Bennet had cast a barrier on her, so she had some protection; not enough that she could afford to soak up abuse, but hopefully enough that a stray curse wouldn’t kill her.

“This sucks, how can I help him if I can’t find him?” she murmured and closed her eyes.

Where are you?
she thought.

Stay back. Stop trying to find me,
he replied, and she groaned; it was an absolute command. Now it was impossible for her to go any further.

“What’s wrong?” Bennet asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“He just commanded me to stop looking for him.”

“Hmmph.
Well, he can’t command
me
,” Bennet said, and moved past her, cordgrass tickling his waist as he did so. “Go back to the house, I’ll catch up with Sam and—“

He was cut off by the sound of Cassie screaming; someone had snuck up behind her, absorbed her barrier into their own and grabbed her, clenching one of her breasts.
Again.

She gritted her teeth against the pain.
What the hell is with today? Is it Grab Cassie’s Boobs Day or something? This sucks.

“You are quite the screamer,” her assailant said.

“Lawrence?” Cassie guessed.

Bennet was pointing at the man behind her, looking grave. “Let her go.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me?” Lawrence laughed, a coarse sound like sandpaper rubbing together. “Go ahead, try. Maybe Sam has a chance of punching through this barrier, but you, Son of Belial, do not. You couldn’t punch your way out of a paper bag.”

Bennet tensed. “That’s not true; I’m stronger than you think,” he said softly. “You abandoned your friends?”

Cassie could feel Lawrence shrug behind her. “It’s a shame, but better them than me. Rather than take my chances with Quentin, I’m going to cut my losses and take this one with me. I’ll sell her to the highest bidder.”

Bennet grimaced. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I suspect you’re one of my bidders,” Lawrence continued. “What do you think? You and I make this deal now, you snag her for much cheaper than on the open market, and we let Sam and Quentin kill each other.”

There was a crackling noise as anoth
er tree burst into flame. There was a flash of light, illuminating Bennet’s brown eyes with a red glow for a fraction of a second. “I don’t buy or sell people, Lawrence. And you’re not leaving with her.”

Lawrence muttered a curse and t
he two demons began fighting each other, while Cassie struggled to escape. Bennet had to move and dodge, while Lawrence could just stay where he was; his barrier was so strong, he could just absorb the curses without bothering to move. Bennet was also constrained in that he had to aim for Lawrence without hitting her, which Lawrence was exploiting by using her as a shield.

Cassie grimaced, then squinted at the barrier before her, which glistened ominously every time Bennet hit it with a curse; was it really that strong? If she looked at it cross-eyed, using a kind of sight she hadn’t known she had until recently, she thought she could see a gap in it; a tiny, fist-sized gap near Lawrence’s throat.

“Bennet, aim here! Aim here!” She cried, putting her hand up to indicate where the gap in the barrier was. Lawrence snarled and grabbed her arm.

Well, maybe if you hadn’t been holding my boobs, you could have been holding down both my hands, dumbass.

She saw something move out of the corner of her eye and felt Lawrence shudder behind her, and she knew it was over. His hands slipped off of her and he fell to the ground. She turned around, then gasped and turned away: A tree branch had pierced his throat. Someone had thrown it, with incredible precision, through the hole in the barrier she had indicated.

She turned to
Bennet. “Did you…?” He just shook his head, dumbfounded.

Just then, she started as Miri threw her arms around her.
“Yaaay! I finally got one!” she said in her chipper, sing-song way.

Cassie looked at the vampire.
“Miri? You’re okay?”

“Course I’m okay, though it was starting to bug me how many times I got owned. I had to do a better job protecting you, as a Buckley and all,” she said, releasing Cassie and walking over to look down at Lawrence. “Oh look, he’s still alive! How do you like that,
meany!”

She stomped on his stomach with her high-heeled boot and Lawrence gurgled, obviously suffering. Even knowing what kind of man he was, Cassie couldn’t stomach it.

“Stop it,” she asked, “Just stop it.”

“Awww.
I’ll just put him out of his misery then,” Miri said, then Cassie closed her eyes and heard a sickening crack; the vampire had snapped his neck. “That’s one bad guy down.”

Cassie opened her mouth to say something, but no words came; what was she going to do? Tell the vampire she shouldn
’t have killed Lawrence, who probably was the one who had broken her neck in the first place? Tell her they should have tried to take him prisoner, as if that was in any way feasible? She felt like an exile from another, kinder world than the one she currently inhabited.

Oh right
, she remembered.
Angel. Maybe I am. Speaking of which
….

She saw Aeka’s blond hair bob
bing up and down above the cordgrass, then the girl appeared in the clearing and grabbed her arm. She was barefoot; her feet and overalls were covered in mud, but she didn’t seem to care.

“Let’s go,” she said in her perfect, conspicuously feminine voice. “It’s scary here.”

“Hello, Aeka,” said Bennet, and Aeka cowered behind Cassie.

“Don’t worry, he’s okay,” said Cassie, patting the girl on the head. “He’s on our side
now, he’s not going to hurt you.”

“Aeka, I know I can never apologize for what I did to you,” Bennet said, lookin
g pained, “But I hope, someday—”

“Bennet, this isn’t the time for this,”
said Cassie, scratching the back of her neck. What to do? The immediate threat had been taken care of, but Sam was still fighting for his life, and there was nothing she could do to help. She turned to the vampire, who was standing with her hands behind her back, looking pleased with herself.

“Miri, go help Sam,” she said.

“Pshaw,” Miri scoffed. “My job is to protect you. Besides, those demons are fighting full out, I don’t have a chance,” she said quietly. “I only got lucky this time because Squinty here was totally focused on fighting Mr. Handsome Pants.”

“Who?” said
Bennet.

“Scared,” said Aeka again, tugging on her arm. “Scared, Cassie.”

Cassie’s eyes widened; it was the first time the girl had called her by her name.

“Oh, please,” said Miri with disdain, turning away. Apparently she hadn’t gotten over the fact that Aeka had cut off her head, not that Cassie could really blame her.

That was right; as hard as it was to believe, the small, frightened girl tugging at her arm like a child was actually a terrifying monster. Her strength seemed to dissipate once she had lost her armor, but had it really? Cassie squinted and searched the girl’s face, looking for any trace of The Knight. They had been assuming that her powers had come from the armor, but maybe it was the other way around; after all, she was an angel.

And, much as it pained Cassie to admit it, she was more of an angel than Cassie was; there was a reason the Leviathan had been drawn to her. The thing had looked at Cassie without an ounce of recognition. To the beast, she had been just another piece of food.

Cassie placed both of Aeka’s hands into her own.

“Cassie?” asked Miri, worried. Bennet was looking at them both with a strange expression on his face, like he had an inkling of what was about to happen.

Heaven help me for what I am about to do. Literally.

“Aeka,” Cassie started. “Do you want to go somewhere quiet and safe? Do you want to go back to the sea, together?”

Aeka nodded furiously, a tear rolling down her perfect cheek. Cassie hugged her.

“
It’s okay, it’s okay. We’ll go back to the sea, just you and me together; the sea is right here.”

“The sea is right here,” Aeka repeated as though in a trance.

Cassie pulled out of the embrace and put her hands on the other girl’s shoulders, looking into her eyes. Who knew what depths awaited there? “I’ll go with you, and we’ll be together forever. There’s just one thing you have to do first.”

“What’s that?” said Ae
ka. Her pupils were dilated; Cassie knew she would do anything.

“Kill Quentin.”

Aeka didn’t move for several moments. “Aeka?” Cassie asked.

“Summon: Armor,” said Aeka, and her voice had a strange resonance,
like there were different Aekas all over the marsh, speaking in unison. Then the whole world seemed to go white, and Cassie had to close her eyes.