Chapter Eleven
I looked around with the night-vision goggles and decided there were no more bad guys. I called out to Julie, expecting another attacker to join the fray. Luckily for us all, no one stepped up. With a grin, I walked around to the front door of the house. We’d totally kicked their asses.
“Julie,” I called. “I think we’re …” That’s when the night exploded. Of course, there was another attacker. That was totally fair.
Dumb luck saved me in that moment. I guess my senses were heightened by the runes on my body, the sword in my hand, or the connection I had with Nidhogg, the mother of all dragons. Enough of a push, anyway, to turn my head at the very last second and avoid painting the side of the house with my brains.
The shot exploded by my right ear, rocking my head to the side and into the wall, dazing me. The bastard had been playing dead.
I hit the ground hard with my ears ringing and the side of my head on fire. As I lay there, trying to blink away the pain, a crash came from the back of the house. The shooter didn’t even look around. He just straddled my body and aimed the pistol at my face. I started to say something sarcastic, but my biting wit was superseded by Julie unloading both barrels of her shotgun into him.
He flew a good six feet before hitting the ground. Double barrel shotgun packs quite a punch. I bet a giant would feel that.
I crawled toward the kitchen door. Before I could reach up and grab the knob, Katie flung the door open and grabbed me by the shoulders. She was strong, and the adrenaline didn’t hurt the situation. She rolled me into the house and kicked the door shut.
At least she was dressed. My nakedness seemed far more awkward now that I was in the house again.
“Jai Li is in the bathroom,” she said, kneeling by me with a pair of flashlights. “It was her idea to hit the shooter with these.” She held two high beam LED lights. I could tell from experience that they put out a lot of candles.
“Thanks,” I said. “My head hurts.”
“Someone broke into the house,” Edith called from the back.
I tried to sit up, but Katie held me down. “Jai Li,” she whispered, and moved to peer around the kitchen doorway and down the hall.
“They did not stay for long,” Edith answered.
“Do we call the police?” Mary called from the kitchen.”
“No,” Edith said, coming through the house with a squirrel rifle and a hatchet. “No police.” She pointed at me. “Call your witch friend. This is her problem to fix.”
She went past the kitchen to the front door and yanked it open. It took her two tries because the bullets had smashed the frame.
“Where are you going?” I called after the old woman. Katie took that moment to scurry down the hall and pull Jai Li out of the bathroom. The girl clung to Katie like she was drowning. I turned back to Edith and saw she was watching the two of them.
“One of those who attacked us is a witch,” she said, and stalked out of the house. Julie glanced at me and followed her.
“I’ll get the med kit,” Mary said, hurrying down the hall.
“Can I get some clothes?” I asked. “Or a blanket?”
“You were grazed,” Katie said, returning with Jai Li in her arms. She kissed me quickly. “There’s too much glass back here, let me bring you some things.”
She sat Jai Li on the couch, covering her with one of Edith’s quilts, and hurried out of the living room and down the hall.
“Underwear would be nice,” I called after her. She’d deliberately forget it if I let her.
Jai Li peeked over the arm of the couch and signed, “You’re naked,” and giggled. Children amaze me.
“Someone ransacked our room,” Katie said, handing me a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. “Window gone. Not broken, just gone.”
Of course, Katie didn’t bring me a bra, hussy. I got dressed and she went to sit with Jai Li. Mary cleaned the burn across my scalp and wrapped a bandage around my head. I looked like that kid out of The Red Badge of Courage.
Mary got the generator going, and the floodlights around the farm showed us the horror of the night.
The worst part was Edith. She was out with the young woman who’d shot herself before I’d had a chance to stab her. Edith stood over her, the hand axe down to one side, reminding me of that spirit who killed Jimmy. It was a fleeting image, broken when she turned to look at me coming across the yard.
“Stay here,” she said with a shudder. “Do not let her leave.”
I glanced down at the dead young woman. Blood and brains painted the side of the shed. Unless there was another necromancer nearby, this girl wasn’t going anywhere.
I called Qindra while I waited and, amazingly enough, she answered.
“Yes, I know,” she started. “Stuart said—”
“We’ve been attacked out at Circle Q. There are dead mercenaries and a witch who committed suicide here.”
The phone went quiet for half a second.
“I’ll get a cleaning crew out there as soon as possible,” she said, obviously tired. “I’ll report some kids out firing off fireworks to the local police. In case anyone calls it in.”
Julie and Mary investigated the barn. Everyone in there was dead. Bub hadn’t been messing around—we’d need a shovel to collect all the parts. I’d need to cleanse the place with sage and lavender again. The horses were going to be spooked.
Turns out my group was only mostly dead—the guy with the smashed throat managed to survive. Apparently, I’m not as good as I thought I was. He had a pulse, but he was unconscious. Julie made sure to remove all of his weapons. He was a fairly large guy. I guess he had a thicker neck than I’d imagined.
Katie came to where I was watching the very dead suicide girl and plopped a stool down next to the body, insisting I sit down. Seems I may have been swaying on my feet a little. Only a little.
The seven jacked-up dudes were obviously standard ex-military types: trim physique, hair high and tight, and tattoos that reminded me of things my father sported, though he didn’t know I ever saw them. These guys were definitely mercenaries. None of them had any identification of any sort.
The young woman Edith called witch was a totally different story. She seemed soft in comparison, used to a life of leisure and lattes. She was armed, that much I’d witnessed, but really, she was dressed like a civilian. How did she fit into this puzzle and why had she killed herself?
The mercs were a distraction. Before they even started firing, Witchie-poo had done some mumbo-jumbo that had alerted Edith. But what or why, I wasn’t clear on yet. She’d held back when they thought they had the house under control, waited until Bub and I dropped like a buzz saw in the midst of her hired guns before she’d vanished our window and ransacked our room. And it had been quick. She had to be looking for something particular, and I could only think of two things a witch may be interested in: Gram or Olivia Cornett’s diary.
How close had Katie and Jai Li come to being murdered while I was running around naked? Not a trail I needed to run down. I was just glad the book was not here.
Edith reappeared with a small knapsack. She had me help her lay the young woman’s body flat on the ground a distance away from the shed and began to draw a circle around it with a bag of salt, setting up and lighting candles, reminding me of the ritual circle the asshole necromancer had used to kill Mary’s prized high-stepper, Blue Thunder.
Edith then muttered a few phrases in Russian over the body and rocked back on her heels as three small items began to glow—a bracelet, a brooch, and a fat turquoise nose ring. That’s when I recognized her. The nose ring gave her away.
She was one of Madame Gottschalk’s—had served me water when I was at the old witch’s house in Kirkland, back before Jimmy died.
I reached down and lightly touched the nose ring before Edith could stop me. Like a flash I saw her on the battlefield where we had fought the blood cult last fall. She had been with the necromancer Justin out in Chumstick. She’d been one of those who used magic to raise the dead.
Son of a bitch.
While I watched, Edith stripped the three magic items from the dead girl and handed each of them to Mary, swearing under her breath as she did so. Then she pulled out a small, very sharp knife with a pearl handle and a serrated back. It was a fish boning knife and it had been sharpened so many times it was barely a sliver in the halogen lights.
“She’s already dead, right?” I asked, not wanting to watch her debone this young woman. “She killed herself.”
Edith glanced at me and shook her head. “Watch,” she said, and cut a long, shallow gash in the woman’s left arm. She pressed the bloody flesh open wider with her thumb and pulled out a long thin wire from just inside the elbow.
“Witch,” Edith says. “Old school. They drink certain draughts to give themselves power. The longer they’ve been at it, the more of this they have in their bodies. Essentially it turns their veins to silver or gold, depending on the school of magic. This is why they burned witches in the old days, to find the witch bane. Amulets and such can be made from this stuff which will protect the wearer from magic.”
“Yuck?” I asked.
“We will have to burn her,” she said, standing and wiping her hands in the dirt. “If we don’t, she will heal from her wounds.”
I looked over to the brains that splattered the shed and shuddered.
That would be a good trick.
While we waited for Qindra to show up, I called Gunther and Stuart. They both agreed to come out to Circle Q. They arrived ahead of Qindra, which surprised me. I figured Stuart may have been with Qindra. When I said something to him, he blushed and said she’d been at his apartment when I called.
“She had to go home and get a few things,” he said, chagrined. “I was already on my way here when you called. I’d given Gunther a heads-up as well.”
“Good enough,” I said. Mary and Julie were in the house, sweeping up. “Maybe we should get them to a hotel or something?”
Gunther shook his head. “No, they are better off here. At least there will be reinforcements here soon. Besides, if you asked Mary to leave this farm, I think you’d be surprised by the answer.”
I got where he was coming from, but this was not her battle.
“Not just no, but hell no,” was her answer. She delivered it with that derision one reserved for drunks and fools.
She kept sweeping and Julie just shrugged at me.
As I came back out of the house, Gunther nudged Stuart and smiled. “Told you,” he said.
“We have to protect them,” I said. “Like the fence out at Black Briar. What do you think?”
“Black Briar has new fences,” Stuart said, “but the magic there is waning. None of the Cornetts live there now. There’s nothing to anchor the magic.”
Why the hell hadn’t I thought of that?
“What about Katie or Deidre?” I asked.
“Next solstice,” Gunther said. “I’ll take Deidre out, see if we can make it work. Not the same, though. Not sure if the farm will recognize Deidre as family enough.”
That was a dreary thought. The farm knew the Cornetts? Magic was strange. Would she have to leave? Or live there with the proverbial shields down?
Gunther went into the house to help when the white trucks of the cleanup crew began to arrive. Qindra was at the tail end of the caravan, her Miata glowing neon with all the magic jewelry she was wearing. She was ready for battle and didn’t care who knew it.
Stuart walked over to the car, leaning in to whisper something for her ears only. She kissed him quickly and hurried after the cleaning crew, barking orders.
“We’ll need the power company out here,” I said to Qindra as she approached the house. “They cut the lines.”
“We’ll take care of it,” she said, taking off her gloves, exposing freshly painted nails. She’d got those runes on pretty quickly. I bet they were press-on. Breaking one would give her a sudden and powerful burst of energy. I’d seen her blow up an attack copter by breaking a similar rune. Too bad I didn’t know details on how she’d done it.
Edith stood over the fallen witch, her fist a bloody mass of wires. I didn’t even look down at the girl. I had no idea how she’d come back from that.
“Witch,” Edith said, acknowledging Qindra with a look of wary respect.
Qindra nodded.
“This is another one,” Edith said, pointing at the girl with her knife. “You need to burn her.”
“Not here,” Qindra said. “It would taint the farm.”
Edith nodded and walked away. “She’s on your hands now.”
When she’d walked around the side of the house, Qindra looked at me.
“Who is that?”
“Long story,” I said, glancing down at the girl. The cuts on her arms were already healing and her head was remarkably head-shaped once again. Not healed by any means but getting better.
“And this one?”
“She’s one of Gottschalk’s,” I said. “Also worked with the necromancer.”
“Oh, one of the fish that got away?”
“Ran or somehow healed after we thought we’d killed her.”
Qindra walked around the circle, drew a few runes in the air with her wand. “Powerful one,” she said, looking back at me. “Not Gottschalk’s though.”
“Oh, I saw her there, back when we visited with Jimmy.”
Qindra drew a few more squiggles and shook her head. “She belongs to someone much more powerful than this Gottschalk woman.”
I thought back to the events of that day. This young woman was in no way cowed by Madame Gottschalk. In fact, she seemed to treat her with some level of contempt.
“Could she belong to Baba Yaga?” I asked.
Qindra’s head snapped around. “What did you say?”
I remembered Charlie’s freak-out when I said the name out loud.
“You know, that old Russian folk tale about the witch in the hut with the chicken legs.”
Qindra staggered, nearly fell. I caught her elbow, steadying her.
“I need to call Nidhogg,” she said, nodding at me.
I pulled back, and she walked back around the house, calling out to her people. Soon three burly men arrived with a large Shop-Vac type container, a body bag, and a stretcher. Two of them put the witch girl in the bag and trundled off, while the third guy began to assemble something that looked a lot like a flamethrower.
Which was exactly what it was. Holy shit!
He didn’t even ask what was in the shed, just turned the hose on, fired the starter and sprayed jellied gasoline over the side of the shed and across the ground where the witch’s blood had fallen. It reminded me of dragon fire more than napalm, and it was damned effective. The shed was burned to the ground in a matter of minutes, and the surrounding area was melted glass.
That was some powerful heat.
“We’ll be back to dig that out,” he said, bobbing his head at me. “Needs to cool first.”
“And the shed?”
“Send Qindra a list; we’ll replace whatever was inside.” And he was off around the house again, leaving me to stare at the ground.
Finally, I turned to see the white trucks driving away.
“We’ll have a crew out tomorrow to fix the house,” Qindra said, handing Mary a business card. “This is the gentleman who will be calling on you. I promise you he does good and discreet work.”
“Thanks,” Mary said.
Qindra stopped and hugged Stuart before climbing in her car and following the white trucks.
“She gonna be okay?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Asked me to stay out here with you until she can check on something.” He glanced at me, his eyes red and tired, but his face was stern. “She’s worried about something, and that should scare the hell out of all of us.”
“Amen to that.”
He went into the house and I followed him. Most of the furniture was back in its normal places. All the glass was cleaned up and Julie had made coffee.
“No milk,” she said, handing Stuart and Gunther steaming mugs. “They shot up the fridge.”
Jai Li was asleep on the couch with Bub, who’d had his arm bandaged. Katie sat on the floor in front of the couch and Edith sat in her rocker with her hand on Jai Li’s back.
“I know her,” Edith said, not looking at me. “That witch friend of yours.”
“Qindra?”
“Yes. I knew her mother.”
This night just kept getting weirder.