The Red Witch (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 6) (24 page)

The distant dark speck in the tunnel appeared before me again, a black pinprick steadily growing in size until it was a hole as big as a baseball, as big as a basketball… three, two, one.

I blinked.

This time there was no moment of disorientation. The clash of Magick, the smell of candle smoke, and the sounds of battle came all at once, like a solid wall of sensory input. I blinked again and found myself standing before a crucifix with an image of Christ, with his bleeding wounds, looking down on me.

I threw myself to the ground just as a swift, sharp object came swinging around in a wide ark, cutting across the space where my head had been a second ago. Hitting the ground on the palms of my hands, I craned my neck and took a swipe at the figure standing behind me, hooking the heel of my right foot into the back of his calf and sending him to his knees. He was a man wearing a hooded jacket, and his chilly, pallid gaze and heatless breathing reminded me all too much of one of the men I had encountered last year at home.

My heart was thundering in my head, beating with rabid ferocity, but the instincts had taken over. My attacker hadn’t dropped his knife when he hit the ground, but when I grabbed it with my mind he could do little to stop it from flying out of his hand and across the church. Then, from my position with my hands and knees on the floor, I pushed a jolt of telekinetic energy into my foot and drove it into the man’s chest. A direct hit—
thump!—
sent him sprawling to the ground at the foot of the altar as if he’d just been hit with a wrecking ball.

Around the area where the hooded man had landed, the space where the ritual pentacle had originally been set up—which was now no more than a mess of ribbon and turned over candles—, all hell had broken loose.

Luther, his hands wreathed in shadow, one of them clutching a blade of pure darkness, was fighting against one of the many hooded men in the Cathedral. To the right, two of the witches—Carolina and Regina—were chanting, holding hands, and causing another hooded man to levitate off the ground, helpless. But there were more hooded men than I could count, rushing around, circling the witches trying to fight them off. And fires had started; pews were burning, candles were melting, and smoke was starting to rise into the basilica.

I made a dash into the thick of it, whipping telekinetic Magick around as if I were holding onto two long, dangerous whips. I struck one hooded man in the back and sent him face first into a marble column. Another turned around to look at me, but my second whip came down on him hard and fast, striking him across the face and turning him into a human spinning top for an instant before he dropped.

I moved down the center aisle, striding fast and hard, to scan the church for signs of the others, but then a wave of hooded men came scrambling across the rows of pews on either side of me to converge in the middle until I was faced with a wall of advancing men. The Power was buzzing inside my chest, ready to strike, but there were too many of them. There were just too damn many of them!

One of them lunged forward and made a swipe for my face. I arched my back to avoid the blow and then threw the full force of my Power into his chest. The strike hit him with a bone-crunching thud that sent him sprawling into the group of men behind him like a bowling ball into a set of pins. I thought they were about to turn and run after seeing what I had just done to their comrade, but they held their ground… and then they started to slink back into the rows of pews.

At first I didn’t understand why, but when I saw the woman walking down the long aisle between them, I knew. I had never thought to visualize Linezka before, but I always had a feeling that I would know who she was. And when I saw this woman, I knew… it was her.

From a distance she looked no different to any other woman I had ever met. She was young, her hair was dark as night, she had elfin features, a thin waist and an ample bosom. There was beauty to her, yes. And youth. But there was something inherently
wrong
about her. When you looked at her closely you saw how abnormally grey her skin was—like the color of ash—, and you could also see how her black eyes looked like deep, deep holes; bottomless pits from which you might never get out of if you fell into them.

Something sucked the air out of my ears with a popping sound that left them ringing. The church suddenly fell eerily silent, though the free-for-all continued to rage all around. In that moment of first contact it was as if we were the only two people in the entire church, as if the chaos had paused and parted to allow us this moment.

Behind me, the flickering rip in the fabric of reality—the portal I had stepped through—persisted, flashes of light and licks of silver flame bursting out of it in strobes, but still; no Collette.

Linezka’s right hand came up slowly, hand clenched into a fist. Then it opened, and I saw the pentacle carved into her palm. The flesh was red and raw, like an open wound, the skin around the edges of the carving pink and sore. But there was something else in that pentacle; a patch of misshapen flesh at the center of it that seemed to be completely out of place.

Then the patch of flesh squirmed, an eye opened, blinked, and the Magick that came out of it hit me like a sledgehammer. The blast didn’t send me spiraling across the church; it seemed to come down on me at an angle with force enough to make me stagger several feet and then collapse onto my back. And then the cultists started to come.

I sent my Magick whips of telekinetic Power out in a wide arc around me, catching one of the men in the shoulder hard enough to knock him down. But there were too many of them. One man grabbed my arm, another grabbed my foot. I squirmed and kicked, but soon enough they had overpowered me and were carrying me down the aisle, toward the altar.

They slammed me onto it and pinned me down, and before I could make any more Magick come out of me, Linezka was there, with her hands on my shoulders. The sick Magick flowing into me from contact with the palms of her hands caused my body to tense and stiffen to the point of paralysis. A terrified sweat broke out all over my forehead, and the hot panic pinched my throat.

Linezka climbed on top of me, knees to either side of my paralyzed body, and produced a knife from the small of her back.

“I had no idea the Red Witch would make this so easy for me,” she said, in a seductive, smooth voice. “It’s so very anticlimactic isn’t it?”

This is it, I thought as my heart hammered thumping beats into my head. I could almost see the knife coming down hard on my chest, piercing my ribcage and finding my heart. Death probably wouldn’t come instantly; it would ebb out of me slowly as the lack of oxygen to the brain brought on by the sudden stopping of my heart took my life away inch by inch. I would be able to see her smile, or laugh, or do whatever she wanted to do before the curtain fell.

But that wasn’t what she wanted.

Linezka pulled the knife up to her lips, stuck her tongue out, and dug it into the soft tissue. There was a terrible squishing sound, and then blood came down trickling in warm droplets, falling over my paralyzed forehead, cheeks, and nose. I wanted to squirm, to scream, to kick and thrash and not let the blood get anywhere near my mouth, but I couldn’t move, could barely think, and my Magick wasn’t coming.

But then Linezka’s head spun around, hard and fast. She scowled, and that’s when I saw the tendrils of inky blackness spreading through the air as if through water. One coil of darkness lashed out at the first body it could find and wrapped itself around him; and when I traced the writhing thing to its source, I saw Collette.

She had barely crossed the threshold and her Necromantic Magick was already spilling out of her like an inky black beast. I watched her pale skin peel away revealing only thick shadow, blacker than black, until all that was left of Collette was a dark shape vaguely retaining the figure of a woman, with pale blue orbs for eyes; orbs that shone with the cold light of dead stars.

Another black tendril shot out of Collette’s shadow form and went darting across the church, then another, and another, her power spreading like ink in water and finding its mark upon the hooded men assailing the witches in the Berlin Cathedral.

My eyes went to Linezka, who was watching on with amusement; that wolf’s grin still plastered on her face.

“Look at you, all grown up,” Linezka said. She craned her neck to look at me. “Now that she’s busied my men, how about you and I see if the prophecy really is true?”

“Why don’t you let me go and we find out?” I asked. I can speak? I didn’t question it.

Linezka hovered off me and landed about ten feet away, at the foot of the altar. Around her, the fire was spreading and raging. Time was running out.

I straightened my back, righted my body to face her, clenched my hands into tight balls, and let my Power fill me with warmth. I thought of Aaron, of Damien and Frank, thought of Collette and all the witches that were depending on me. The pressure came down hard, like an iron weight descending upon a wooden plank balancing between two stones. But I couldn’t crack. Not now.

Linezka came at me fast, her body shimmering like a mirage under a hot sun. Her knife sliced through the air in front of me, and I pulled away from it, letting instinct take over and guide my movements. Again, the knife came down, and again, and again, and each time it cut through empty space or strands of my copper hair.

Then, when I felt the moment was right, I dug my foot into the ground, pulled as much of my Power into my right hand as I could, and hit her with a ball of invisible energy that sent her slamming into a marble column. Her back hit the marble first, then her head, and the column cracked with the force of the impact.

I could only hear my heart now—
Wh-whack!-Wh-whack!-Wh-whack!
—and the steady hiss of air being pushed out of my nostrils with every heave of my chest.

Linezka blinked, and then peeled herself off the column. Behind her head, where the impact had cracked the marble, was a trickle of blood. She felt the back of her head with her hand, smiled, and brought her eyes to bear on me. I felt like a deer in a hunter’s scope; fully aware of the danger about to hit, but frozen and unable to react to it.

“Not bad, Amber Lee,” she said, “Maybe I won’t kill you yet. I haven’t been tested in years, and you may prove to be a good distraction. At the very least, you’ll be a conversation starter.”

“Fuck you,” I said through gritted teeth. “You’ve tried to have me killed before and failed, and you’re failing again now. You can’t win. I have Fate on my side.”

“Fate?” she said, laughing like I had just told a hilarious joke. “My dear, Fate isn’t a hand one should fear to bite; it’s a string, and strings can be cut.”

She came at me with the knife again, her mouth opening wide—wider than any mouth should—her lips peeling back to reveal wickedly sharp teeth. I moved to the left, twirling out of the way of her first blow, then the second. My movements were fluid, guided by an instinct I hadn’t possessed until I came here, to this place. Never in my life had I moved so quickly and gracefully, never had my calves and thighs been so strong and nimble, but being nimble wasn’t enough. Linezka was tireless, and I wasn’t.

The bite of the blade was like being cut with a knife of ice… cold and numb until hot blood came spilling out of the wound. Pain came after; pain like I had never before felt. I had been stabbed in the past, but this wasn’t the same. It was like the blade wanted to make me feel pain, like the blade was somehow capable of wanting. A scream fell out of me and filled the church, echoing into the darkest corners and most carefully hidden rooms. A stain was appearing on my thigh, growing and growing around the straight-line wound Linezka’s knife had opened on my skin.

Blackness was coming now. I could see it riding piggyback on the pulses of pain shooting out from my leg and searching for every single nerve in my body. But I couldn’t let her win. If she won, everyone here would die. And yet I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but press my hands down on the gash in my leg and react. Feel. Scream. Cry.

“See?” Linezka’s voice came as sharp as a razor. “Everything can be cut down; even the Red Witch.”

Get up.

A whisper, this time. Was it instinct, or something else? I wasn’t sure anymore. I blinked. Around me the church had fallen still. Collette’s powerful Necromancy had the hooded men under control, and Luther was circling around with his shadow blade still clutched tightly in his hand. But I couldn’t see Carolina or Regina anymore, and that worried me. But the worry distracted my mind from the pain and I was able to rise to my feet, one leg shaking.

Linezka cocked her head to the side, spied Luther, waved at him, and then she turned to me again. Her wide-set eyes blinked across,
like a lizard’s eyes
, I thought, and then,
Moon Fire
.

The first thought was mine, but the second thought was… also mine. Yes, I was sure that it was this… instinct I now had. Or maybe I had always had it and just not known about it until now. There was little time to think, and my leg was bleeding and throbbing. I wiped blood off my face with the back of my hand.

“Magick may be able to cut the string of Fate,” I said, “But the sword of Magick cuts both ways… witch.”

A grin spread across her face as if she had just been issued a challenge she was only too happy to accept. But when she saw the silvery light burst out from the palms of my hands her brow furrowed, then her face twisted into a grimace, then finally it morphed into an angry scowl. She came at me again and brought the knife down in an arc over my head. My bare hand came up, palm to the sky, and when the knife impacted my skin, the metal snapped and shattered.