The Red Witch (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 6) (27 page)

He felt his skin stretch tightly against his muscles. “We were too late. I’m sorry. We figured out that there was a demon around, blocking us from getting in contact with you. Then Frank had a vision and… fuck, these guys can tell the story better. But you’re alive, and that’s all that matters.”

“I knew about the demon,” Amber said, “I saw it in the pictures.”

“Pictures? What pictures?”

“I can’t explain it right now. But you have to listen to me. I went to her, to Linezka, using a portal. And when I got to her… I found myself in an apartment in Seattle.”

“Seattle?” Frank said, “Sure, I can see it. Seattle makes for grungy, angst-filled witches. I blame Nirvana.”

Aaron could smell Damien’s fear escape his skin through his pores at the mention of Seattle. He looked up, found Damien’s face, held his gaze to try and get him to speak when that strange smell he had caught earlier came back.
What the fuck is it?
He started to sniff the air.

“No,” Amber said, “Just shut up and listen to me for a second. I think you’ve got it wrong. About the demon, I mean. I don’t think it was trying to isolate me. I think it was trying to isolate you.”

“Us?” Frank asked. “Why the hell would it want to isolate us?”

“I don’t know, but I think you’re in danger; and I know Aaron’s felt it for some time.”

Aaron’s attention went to her at the sound of his name.

“I have,” he said, “I haven’t been able to sit still for a long time.” He came to her and arched over her. He so badly wanted to kiss her, to press his lips against hers—even if she was only a ghostly mirage of the girl he loved. But he didn’t want to distort the image of her beautiful, radiant face. Not for a second. He realized, then, that he was trembling.

“It’s weird,” she said, “Lying here, speaking to you… everything’s so clear right now. Everything makes sense.”

Aaron nodded.

“I just wanted to tell you… to answer your question… from before.”

“Schhh,” Aaron said, “You don’t have to do that right now, okay? Do it in person when you get back. Right now just… just wake up and come home to me. To us.” He looked up. “Damien, is there anything you can do for her leg?”

“I think so,” he said, approaching. “I’ve never done this long-distance, though.”

“Try.”

Aaron stood up. Sniffed at the air again. The scent was still there, and stronger now. Floating on the back of the breeze coming… coming…
from the direction of our house.

“What is it, Scooby?” Frank asked. “Got a scent?”

Aaron sucked in air. His brow furrowed, alarm clearly visible on his face, and said “Fire.”

“What?” Frank asked.

“Fire! You two wait here!”

Aaron made a mad dash into the tree line, running headlong into the dark until he was only a blur, a spot, and then nothing. His speed was immense, like a bullet—
no, a bullet train
—shoulders bashing into and smashing wayward branches, leaping over fallen logs and shallow dips with the ease of a dancer—or a wolf. He caught the scent more fully, now and it had the heady, heavy, suffocating taste of fire; but also something else. It had sickly, foul taste like rotten eggs; and when he saw the plume of smoke rising from between the trees and glimpsed the glow of the fire at its source, the glow was green.

Not red or orange.

But green.

CHAPTER 26

Being unconscious isn’t like being asleep. When you’re out cold, you don’t dream. You don’t rest—not really. Your chest doesn’t heave lightly, your eyes don’t twitch with the entering of REM sleep, and you don’t smile and laugh like when you’re wrapped up in a good dream. In fact, unconscious people don’t dream at all—it just chemically doesn’t happen. Dreams happen when you sleep… so why, then, did I have Aaron, Frank and Damien on the mind when I came to? And why could I hear their voices at the back of my mind even as I blinked my eyes into focus?

The same edge of darkness that had dragged me into unconsciousness persisted, but the scenery was different. A soft, cool breeze was soothed my face, whipping thin strands of my lazy hair with it. Running water. The ground, hard and wet beneath my back.
Stone?
And in my hand, a clump of black hair held so tightly my knuckles were turning white.

Across from us, firefighters were working hard to smother the blaze that had broken out in the Berlin Cathedral. I struggled to rise, but my body gave out beneath me.

A hand pressed against my chest, gentle, tender. “Schhh, cherie,” Collette’s voice, sweet as an angel’s.

“Wh-what?”

“You must rest a moment.”

The blackness at the edges of my vision receded, but my headache persisted and I realized that I was shivering—a fever? Ahead of me was the river Spree, chuckling along slowly and hissing with the fall of rain. I was sitting on the ground with my back up against a stone wall in a nook, away from passersby. Across from where I was sitting, on the other side of the river, the Cathedral basilica rose up from the ground like an impossibly huge monolith, green and wet. We had escaped the church and gone across the river somehow.

Only that wasn’t entirely right. Collette had
pulled
me out of the church and gotten me across the river on her own.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

“Regrouping. Luther will be here with ze car soon, zen we will go back to ze hotel.”

Suddenly, I remembered. I hadn’t been able to find Helena in the chaos. Was she okay? Where were the other witches and had they been hurt? Had Collette been hurt? The questions fell out of my mouth like rushing water. Collette did her best to abate my fears, but my heart was still thundering hard against my chest, my head, in my throat.

Shit!
“My leg!” I said, in full alarm. I sat up with Collette’s help, brushed the dirt from off my jeans and… and… where was it? The jeans were cut, and the stain of blood was on them. In fact, my fingers came off a little brownish red when I touched the area, but the skin was fine beneath the torn up fabric. A little pink, but otherwise fine.

I sat back against the wall and rested my head.

“It’s gone,” Collette said, “But… I saw her cut you.”

“I know,” I said. I could almost feel the searing pain from the slice, the way the blade bit into my skin and drew back with a silent rip. “But you know what the strangest part is?”

“What?”

“I know I was unconscious, but just I had the weirdest dream...”

Luther swung around in the Renault to pick us up in the minutes that followed. I was surprised to find the car devoid of other witches and also a little worried. But there was no time for questions now. Collette and I hurried into the car, shut the doors, and Luther took off down the street in the direction of Alexanderplatz—away from the Berlin Cathedral and Museum Island.

As we made a left turn and the church disappeared behind more modern buildings I wondered how much damage we had done to it.

“Where are the others?” I finally asked. “And Helena? Is she alright.”

Luther nodded. “She’s hurt, but alive. The others are alive too. We all made it out.”

I clipped the seatbelt on and rested my head on the backrest, sighing deeply. “Thank the Goddess.”

“No,” he said, “Thank you. Whatever you did sent her and her minions running. What was that, anyway?”

Moonfire.

“Just instinct.”

“Sorcerers,” he said, shaking his head.

“Listen to me very carefully, Luther,” Collette said, “I need you to find ze other witches when zis is all done and go with them. Zey will need your power, and we will need it too—when ze time calls for it.”

“I thought you might,” he said, “I suppose I’m in this now.”

“You have been in this for a long time. But now you are an active participant rather than an observer.”

“I don’t much like participation, but I can’t say I’m not delighted by the prospect that we may have put a little fear in her.”

“We may have done more zan zat.”

Collette was right. I could feel the change in the atmosphere; the air felt lighter, somehow, and the pressure I had felt from the moment we had landed in Berlin was gone. Whatever imp had been sitting on my chest wasn’t sitting there anymore, and I could breathe a little more easily as a result.

“I’ll find them,” Luther said. “I’m finished hiding.”

Back at the hotel, contact with Aaron came like a surprise kiss on the cheek from someone you hadn't expected to see.

As soon as we crossed the double doors into the lobby and my phone hooked onto the Wi-Fi, a stream of messages came through. Some from Aaron, some from Frank, some from Damien. They were all different, and yet they were all the same.

There had been a fire at the Stevenson house, no one had made it out alive, and you have to come home
now
.

I read the messages as we made our way through the lobby, up the elevator, and into the room, eyes glued to the screen. The details were vague, but the urgency… it was immediate and all encompassing. It was as if I could feel their collective wish for me to come home oozing off the phone in my hand.

The Stevensons,
I thought,
dead…

Shaking, I wrote back to Aaron asking for more details, telling him that I was alright, that we were back at the hotel, and that we would be on the next flight home; assuming we could catch it. Our open ticket let us return whenever we wanted to, a choice we had made to allow us the flexibility of coming back at a moment’s notice for just this reason.

I hit send.

Waited.

I watched little blue bar slide across the screen until the word
sent,
and then
delivered
, popped up under what I had written. I swallowed. Then a speech bubble appeared on the left of the screen, with an ellipse blinking inside of it.

“Collette,” I said, “Come look at this. Messages are coming through.”

Collette, who had been in the bathroom preparing for a shower, hunched over my right shoulder to have a look at the screen in my hand. She smiled brightly, and when Aaron’s message came through in reply she let out a little gasp of excitement and happiness.

“Do you think it’s—the demon—is gone?” I asked.

Her face pinched. “I don’t know, but it seems as though we’re able to speak to ze others… zis is a good sign.”

Aaron:
Okay, I’ll let the others know. But it isn’t safe, Amber. It isn’t safe yet.

Me:
The fact that I can talk to you is progress, though.

Aaron:
Yeah, it is… and while I can talk to you, I want to tell you that I miss you…

Me:
I miss you too.

I was in the process of writing another message to Aaron, to tell him that we may be home for Halloween after all. Because now that the demon had released its hold on us, and Linezka had been sent screaming into the night, I would be able to shift Fate to my favor a little without fear of unholy retribution. But when the phone fizzled, blinked, and went dead in my hand, the feeling of dread—which had become all too familiar to me—settled into the pit of my stomach like a dead weight.

That’s when I saw, in the black screen’s reflection, the dark figure standing over my left shoulder, reaching for me. I jerked bolt-upright, and the phone jumped out of my hand to land somewhere on the carpeted floor. Collette turned too, alarmed by my sudden movement. But when I reached into the Nether in my mind, to feel for the presence I had only barely caught a glimpse of, it was gone.

My heart was pounding for all the wrong reasons now, and my shivering had returned. I was sure I had a fever now, but I had to push through. I had to go home.

“Fuck,” I said, and then I said it over repeatedly. "It's still here. The thing is still here with us.”

Collette licked her lips. “We have to get out of Berlin and go back home. Demon or not, zis is not where ze real danger is.”

“I can feel it too,” I said, “I wanted to believe it was over… but it isn’t, is it?”

She turned around to look at me and shook her head, her expression grave and heavy on her face, hanging like storm clouds.

I nodded. “Let’s just pack our things and get out of here. You work on protecting us; I’ll make sure we have a flight home to get to.”

And if I can’t do that, then we’re stuck here.

CHAPTER 27

Aaron hadn’t said a word since Frank and Damien arrived in the house. They had been considerably slower than he had on the run back, but that just meant they were in time to see green flames rising from the Stevenson’s place, licking at the night sky and chucking out plumes of thick smoke. There wasn’t even a house when they had gotten there; only an inferno of swirling, spinning, dizzying green fire.