The Witch with No Name

“Sorry about the beating,” I said as I melded my aura around Ivy’s to shift her with me to the ever-after.

“Beating?” The vampire leaned closer, not knowing what had happened. “That wasn’t a beating.”

I tightened my hold on the line, feeling it start to take us. “No, the one your master is going to give you.” Thank you, Jenks. I will keep her alive.

The man’s eyes became round, fear shimmering his motion for the first time, making him somehow more captivating with the contrasting shadows of fear and power. We’d bested him, and he was going to be punished.

“No!” he shouted as I shifted my aura and the world moved around us. The red of sunset became the harsh red of the ever-after sun. His howling cry of denial evolved, peaked, and became the scream of the gritty wind. The image of his crooked fingers reaching for us dissolved, and I saw it mirrored in the broken rock surrounding us. The sound of Jenks’s wings was gone. We were alone and the world was broken—just like me.

My heart thumped and I shifted Ivy’s weight until she hissed in pain. I squinted at the distant, red-smeared horizon, then brought my eyes closer, sending it over the remains of the Hollows, already in shadow. The spires of the basilica rose over it all, the bastion carefully preserved where most everything was left to crumble. The space where my church would have been was nothing but rock and grass. My idea to walk to it vanished. Ivy was done.

“You can rest now,” I whispered. “It’s going to be okay.” Heart aching, I eased her down against a boulder, and she gripped my arm, refusing to let go. My eyes shot to hers, and the utter blackness in them stitched all my fears into one smothering black piece. I couldn’t kill her to prevent her undead existence. If Bis didn’t find us in time . . . I . . . I didn’t know.

My throat was tight as I sat beside her and pulled her head to rest against me. She could move no farther, and this was as good a place as any, better than some. Whatever happened, we would face it together, away from the filth she’d struggled her entire life to escape.

Chapter 3

The gritty wind had rubbed the skin between my short boot and pants leg raw. I huddled closer to Ivy, trying to get into the lee of the stone, but the boulder wasn’t large enough. Ivy didn’t move as my weight shifted, and I twisted my leg almost under myself to hide it. It would be asleep in about three minutes, but the respite from the wind was worth it.

Ivy’s shallow breath came and went, her scent obvious under the choking burnt amber reek that permeated the ever-after. I listened for the clink of rock or sliding rubble that would mean a surface demon as I looked over the dry bed of the Ohio River and to the crumbled remains of the Hollows below. The sun was almost down, and the light was vanishing from the basilica’s steeple inch by slow inch. Elsewhere the shadows were already thick. Behind me where Cincinnati would be, things moved, howled, and hooted as the sun vanished.

Surface demons. The large circle I’d put around us would keep them at bay, but they were gathering. No one, not even Newt, stayed still on the surface after dark—and we’d been noticed.

The horizon was still bright, but directly overhead the sky was that peculiar ever-after shade of reddish black that reminded me of old blood. A tiny sliver of moon would set just after the sun, and it glowed an eerie silver. It was the only pure thing, but so distant as to depress rather than uplift.

Experience told me the wind might abate with the sunset, a prospect I both welcomed and dreaded. It got cold when the sun went down, and Ivy was suffering, drifting in and out of consciousness. We were both thirsty, but she’d never said a word, happy that I was here with her.

Vampires suck, I thought, not for the first time as I rested my head against her shoulder and closed my eyes against the upwelling grief. How had we gotten here, playing a deadly game of waiting where Ivy’s life hung in the chance between time and pixy wings?

Black traces of smut ran over the gold glow of my aura hazing my protection circle, arching like electricity between poles. The surface demons were gathering outside, not so patiently waiting for my circle to fall. One of them stood so his silhouette would be obvious against the darkening sky. He was taller than the rest, and the way he held his staff made me wonder if he was the same one Newt had tormented last summer in her calibration curse.

“You should go,” Ivy whispered, and I started, not having realized she was awake.

I tugged her coat closer around her, careful not to hurt her. “No,” I said simply, and she turned her black eyes to me, unblinking and catching the faint light from the sky.

“I’m going to die compromised,” she said, as if she were talking about cutting her hair. “Without medical intervention, I’ll wake hungry and incoherent. You should leave. I don’t want to hurt you.”