The silence warned me back, something unnaturally still and empty even though three live animals stood waiting patiently where they’d been tied. Not so much as a stick cracked to warn me as cold metal pressed to my neck even as I hesitated.
“How about you come inside, lady,” a low male voice said. “Drop the bag.”
I didn’t need magic to know that was a pistol at my neck. A number of small tricks I could try to get him away from me flashed through my mind, but I didn’t know if his finger was on the trigger or what startling him might accomplish, so I set the bag down, trying to bend away from the gun as I gathered power inside me.
The butt of the pistol came down on the back of my head and then the only thing going through my mind was nauseating pain and dancing red spots. He hit me again and I slumped, not quite unconscious but all the strength sapped from my limbs. I tried to struggle as he lifted me and half dragged me across the clearing, but a second, bigger man came out and grabbed my legs. Something wet trickled down my neck and I was sure it wasn’t sweat.
The main room of the lodge had a bunch of tables pulled to thesides with benches stacked on each other. The men dumped me in the middle of the room like a sack of grain and I struggled to my knees, tentatively feeling the back of my head between my braids. My hand came away bloody.
“Hello, little witch.” A man approached me, his posture and the way the four others followed him with their eyes telling me he was likely the boss.Paulie.I could see why our daughter hadn’t liked him. His face was narrow and mean with a pinched look that came from temperament and not breeding; his pale eyes were bloodshot and held no warmth. It was the hunger on his face that scared me the most, that and the spiky red aura around him that was like nothing I’d ever encountered before.
“You’re Paulie,” I said, the room swimming in and out of focus. I tried to stand but slipped down again.
“You look like her a bit, mother maybe? Your little bitch ruined my life. But I guess you are here to make it all better.” He chuckled and bent over me, gripping my chin so tight I felt my teeth shift.
“What did you do to my daughter?” I spit out, trying in vain to dislodge him.
I was too disoriented for magic, nothing but my own blood on my hands making them slippery as I clawed at his arm. Where in the cold hells was Raina? She should have beat me here. Rot filled my nostrils and heat traveled down my arms as Paulie’s aura turned to crackling rusty lightning.
“How about I show you?” His eyes bored into mine and a headache that had nothing to do with the blows I’d taken exploded between my ears.
The room swam and re-formed. The tables were gone, the walls bare of hangings and mirrors, the floor dirty with a layer of grime saying the empty place hadn’t been well-trafficked in years.Mairi stood right in front of me with a revolver in her hand, so real I could almost touch her, but when I tried my arms ghosted straight through. I heard Paulie laugh but it was a younger, less worn down and sallow version of himself who confronted my daughter, standing where I had been standing.
“They know, Paulie,” Mairi said. Her face was bruised, her lip swollen and bloodied, but her eyes were clear and focused. “You’re done. There’ll be no robbing that train, and there will be no leaving here, not for you.”
“You ain’t strong enough to hold me, baby witch. You should have minded your own business.”
“I know what you are, demon,” Mairi said, her words striking me to my soul where I hovered inside a memory not my own.
He moved so quickly it was a blur but she evaded him, flipping to the side, her head cocked as though she was waiting on something. A distant rumble filled the air, like thunder from a storm not yet arrived.
“With blood I bind you,” Mairi said, spitting her own blood at the demon.
He howled and came at her again, managing to knock the revolver from her hands as two other men closed in behind.
“With wind I bind you,” my daughter gasped as she forced the air from her lungs in a gust aided by her magic.
“Hold her down,” Paulie yelled in the memory as the men dragged my baby to the floor. The rumbling grew louder and with it the sound of kindling splitting and snapping. Trees caught in the rock slide, I realized.
Over this din, Mairi yelled the final words of the spell. “With earth and fire I bind you, demon.” Her blood, the power of the explosion she must have set before confronting him, it was enough. I felt what Paulie had felt those ten long years before as the spellfound its target and iron bands of power locked around the demon, binding it to this place.
Only a Reaper could kill a demon and send it back to the underworld, but our daughter had found the next best way, trapping the demon in a body that would age and rot until Death could reclaim it.
Paulie’s memories skipped around as the demon exited my brain and I used that moment to grab hold to what I could, searching for Mairi in them, taking more than the demon wanted me to see. I saw her fate, what he’d done to her after the roar and tumble of earth and stone stopped. I saw too, just before he shoved me backward and his hand descended to strike my face, what he intended. He was going to try to take my body and walk free of Mairi’s spell with my witch powers.
“You’re going to fail,” I said to his gloating face. I spit blood at him, trying to summon enough sense and power to do anything. I had no salt nor my sacred wood and I’d never been as easy with magic without proper ritual as Mairi had, but I could always start a fire.
I spit again, using my rage and pain to fuel the flames of magic. My blood hissed like sparks from a campfire on wet wood as the droplets spattered the demon. Smoke trailed from his shirt. Orange flames flickered to life, then caught.
“Put it out,” the demon hissed as flames I’d conjured licked at his shirt. They leapt from him to the man next to him as my will directed. I struggled to my feet, knowing the magic wouldn’t last long.
This time when the man behind me tried to hit me with the butt of his gun, I was ready. Twisting, I slapped the gun to the side and launched myself into him. I got my hand around the revolver as we wrestled with the gun between us. He kicked my leg and Inearly let go, the barrel swinging back. Pointing straight at my chest.
Then the doors exploded inward and Death came to save me.
Raina flowed into the room like a river of steel and vengeance, her long body and sparking cold eyes an extension of the glowing blue blade in her hands. She cut through the two men in front of her without stopping before they even had a chance to reach for guns. Distracted by the arrival of his doom, the man I was struggling with let go of the revolver and I fell backward.
“No you don’t,” I said, pointing it at him as he tried to run. I recognized this man’s face from Paulie’s memories. He’d been there, he’d been one of the ones who dragged my daughter away.
