It sank into his flesh seamlessly with a familiar burn, and he then pulled on the plunger to draw his own blood up into the basin until it couldn’t go any further.
Kit blew dust off the lines of the basin and looked at the vial which now held equal amounts of his blood and witchsbane. A few millimeters of air separated the two. The magic in his blood repelled the witchsbane and vice versa, but it was the amount of the repulsion which told him how successful his vent had been.
The silver meniscus curve read 20 millimeters of witchsbane, or 20 mmWb, which put him at about the same level as a non-magical human. He’dfinallyhad a clean vent.
Sighing in relief, he fell back into the sand and stared up at the cloudless, azure sky. Months of hoarding magic in his body had poisoned his very cells. His body needed time to be magic-less, to heal. After killing the last of the Redbacks, he could finally afford to be weak. At long last. He closed his eyes, content with taking a dirt nap.
“Kit? What are you doing sleeping on watch?” a familiar voice asked.
Kit didn’t need to open his eyes to know his friend Samar had found him. “We’ve gone over this before, Sam,” he replied sleepily. “I’m not taking any watch because I’m leaving after this. I’m not in the coven anymore.”
“The kid at this post abandoned it because he’s scared of you,” Samar sighed.
“You should train them better then. Not my fault he damn near pissed his pants when he saw me.” It stung, in a way. Kithad become a monster to save the coven, after all. He’d never hurt a witch of the Jumper coven. It was the one loyalty he hadn’t betrayed, the one line he hadn’t crossed.
The sand shifted in such a way where he could tell Samar had sat beside him. His muscles protesting, Kit straightened up and looked out in the great distance where sand met sky. The brightness burned his corneas, made his eyes water. He was sick of the desert, he decided.
Perhaps once he went rogue, he’d strike out to a city with beaches and that was ruled by the magic-less. A little magic went a long way there, as long as he didn’t let the government imprison him.
“Leaving the coven, huh? Visha would throw a bitch fit if you actually did. Can’t say I believe you, though.”
Kit grunted, not wanting to admit that he didn’t know if he could leave the Jumpers. His coven relied on him. Visha had plans now that his years-long mission of eradicating the Redbacks was complete, and his ex-girlfriend always got her way.
She’d been more than a little pissed when he’d broken things off with her as soon as he’d returned to base two weeks ago.
“Visha wants to speak with you,” Samar said after another minute. “It’s probably so she can get her claws into you again. You should just leave.”
Kit looked at his friend for the first time. The other man was dressed in a stained smock, which meant he’d been showing the new recruits how to brew their signature explosive potions in one of the makeshift sheds. He had an arm draped over his head. Kit knew from all the shared shifts of staring out into the desert that his friend’s black hair attracted the sun, gathered too much heat. His own sandy brown hair had no such problems.
“You should leave too,” he told Samar honestly, “or take over the coven. You do most of the work anyway.” It’d taken him along time to notice Visha’s laziness because he’d been gone for so long, but he’d seen Samar with the recruits. They looked to him for leadership.
Sam stood up and brushed his jeans off. “Most of the grunt work,” he corrected. “Visha still has a mind for business. She’s made us a reasonably successful coven while you’ve been out killing. Besides, I suspect she’ll be a little more reasonable once you’re out of the picture. Having a witch as strong as you at her beck and call gives her a big head.”
Kit frowned at the resignation in his friend’s voice. “You’re not giving yourself enough credit.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever”—Samar waved a hand at him as he climbed up the wooden rungs of the watchtower—“now, get out of here while I take the next watch. Leave the coven. Or run back to her like always. Heavens know I can’t judge you either way.”
Dismissed and a little annoyed by Samar’s sarcasm, Kit used the post of the watchtower to stumble up to his feet. Venting always took it out of him, and it was with more than a little disgust he realized he wouldn’t be able to fly with the minuscule amount of magic left in his body, at least not for a few hours. A slow accumulator, it would take Kit a full forty-eight hours to recover his magic fully.
Fucking embarrassing, but the clean vent was just what he needed to recover. It’d been a close call.
Now his body had a fresh slate, and Kit didn’t plan to ever let himself reach such a critical state again. Monthly vents like a normal, healthy witch.
The Redbacks were dead. Every last one. He could afford to be vulnerable for a couple days per month.
He walked with unsteady legs into the small town square of the Jumpers, the cleared area surrounded by trailers and tents, their cars and brooms parked on the inside to keep other covens from tampering with their modes of transportation. Acommunal bonfire pit lay scorched at the very center with a hodgepodge of lawn chairs. The distant glinting glass of skyscrapers and darting brooms of the Sky Road peeked from the top of the trailers. The witch city of Skadra.
The Jumpers had once lived in the city with the more successful covens, but the Redbacks had killed their senior members in a turf war four years ago. So now they lived banished in an encampment like so many other small-time covens.
Their encampment looked far nicer than the pile of trashed tents it had been at the start. Their trailers were brand new, the tents for the new recruits shiny and without holes. Visha had even paid to have the pathways to the houses graveled, the crunch of rock underneath his boots far more soothing and less transient than the reddish mix of dust and sand.
Witches, ones he’d grown to know during initiation or the newbies, were spread about the complex. Some working on goods such as potions, charms, and the illusion bombs that made up a good portion of their revenue. Others lounging or playing games, the younger ones even daring to toss a ball in the midday heat. All paused in discernable ways as he passed. Watching.
Kit felt those eyes on him as he paused at the sight of the one non-trailer in the encampment — Visha’s house. He needed a car if he wanted to leave camp today because of how drained he was, and only his newly minted ex had the keys.
Fucking perfect. He sighed and kept trudging forward, each step dragging.
Visha’s house was nice. It had slate gray siding, a black metal roof, and white trim. Its colors were darker than the pale pastels and blues of the trailers. Visha had always liked color schemes.
