“What?”
“So I should tell my mother not to bother coming?”
Offending Evdokia and the Witch Covens of Atlanta wasn’t on my agenda. I was on thin ice with them as it was.
“Your mother is invited.”
“What about the Pack? The Beast Lord is Curran’s best friend.”
Grrr. “The Pack is invited, too.”
“And Luther?”
“Luther?” What did Biohazard’s self-appointed wizard at large have to do with it?
“I ran into him on the way here and happened to mention the wedding.”
Aha. “You boasted that you would be officiating.”
“Yes, I did, and I regret nothing. The entire Biohazard Department will be coming.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to count to ten in my head. Sometimes it helped. One . . . two . . .
“Also, your father.”
My eyes snapped open. “What about my father?”
Roman blinked. “That was a bona fide snarl.”
Ascanio nodded, his eyes wide. “Yes, she gets scary sometimes. She’s very difficult to work for.”
“I can imagine.” Roman nodded at me. “Roland will be attending and he’ll probably invite some people.”
“By the time the wedding comes about, we may be at war. He won’t be attending, take my word for it.”
“Kate, you’re a good person. But you’re delusional. That’s okay. You’re getting married. You’re supposed to be delusional, irrational, and crazy.”
“Again, this wedding is for me and Curran. You’re not turning it into a three-ring circus.”
“No.” Roman got up off his chair. “The wedding night is for you and Curran. The wedding is for everyone else and it’s the price you pay so you can get to the wedding night. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. Anyway, we have bigger problems. The Witch Oracle wants to see you.”
“No.” When the Witch Oracle had something to tell me, it was never anything good, like You’ll live long, grow fat, and be happy. It was always, The world is ending. Fix it!
“My mother was very insistent.” The good-natured amusement slid off Roman’s face, and his eyes turned grave. “Sienna foresaw something.”
I bet she did. “I’m not going, Roman. I have my hands full here, and if something bad is about to happen, I don’t want to know.”
“It’s about your son,” he said.
• • •
“HOW FAR IS this place?” I peered down the overgrown road. The Jeep roared and spat thunder, squeezing miles out of charged water. Usually when the Witch Oracle wanted to see me, I met them at Centennial Park, once the site of an Olympic Games celebration and now a dense but carefully managed wilderness in the center of Atlanta belonging to the Covens. Meeting them there also involved climbing into the mouth of a magical tortoise, which wasn’t my favorite.
This time Roman said they were waiting for me at some place called Cochran Mill Park. According to Roman, it was less of a park and more of a forest now, and getting to it apparently required two hours of driving through hellish traffic and bad roads. We got stuck behind a camel for fifteen minutes because the damn thing came to a detour around a sinkhole and refused to walk on the wooden planks. Finally, the rider got off and pulled the reins, screaming and waving his arms, and the poor camel vomited all over the man’s head. Served him right.
Now we drove on South Fulton Parkway, which had long ago given up all pretense of fighting off the encroachment of the magic woods. The maples, hickories, and poplars crowded the crumbling pavement, braiding their branches overhead, and driving down its length was like entering a tunnel of green, with the sun a hint of brighter green above.
“Why here?” I asked. “Why not at the tortoise?”
“The park is being watched,” he said.
“By whom?”
Roman gave me a look.
Right. “Why would my father be interested in the Covens?”
“It’s not the Covens. It’s the Oracle. And especially you coming to see the Oracle. Turn off here.”
I turned right onto a dirt road and the Jeep rolled and careened its way to a small parking lot. I parked and got out.
“We go on foot from here,” Roman announced, and started down a narrow trail.
Around us the forest was filled with sound and light. Birds chirped, sang, and warbled, squirrels chittered, and foxes barked. A wolf howl soared to the sky, too distant to be a threat. A fat badger wobbled out into our path, looked at me with small eyes as if offended I dared to intrude into his domain, and took off, unhurried. This was a witch forest. It belonged to animals and those whose magic was attuned to nature. Normal humans didn’t visit often and weren’t welcome.
“Cheer up,” Roman said. “The sun is shining and the air is clean. It’s a nice day for a hike.”
If only I could get my father and the crosses out of my head. I really hoped I didn’t start a war this morning.
The trees parted, revealing a rocky basin of clear water, framed by huge boulders and cushioned with emerald-green trees. A sixty-foot wall of rock jutted above it. Atlanta didn’t really have mountains, with the exception of Stone Mountain, which was basically a huge boulder that had somehow gone astray from its friends, the Appalachians. This place looked like it belonged in northwest Georgia.
I glanced at Roman.
“It used to be less impressive,” he said. “During the next-to-last flare there was a magic explosion here. A mountain thrust out of the ground, and cracks traveled all the way up to Little Bear Creek, opening it up. Now it’s Little Bear River.” He pointed with his staff at the rocks. “We wait here.”
We sat on the boulders. I watched the water. The pool was crystal clear and small waterfalls skipped down the rocks at its far end. So beautiful and serene. Roman was right. It was a good day for a hike.
Three women walked out of the woods to the right of us. Evdokia came first; plump, middle-aged, her brown hair reaching to her midback, she moved along the path to the water, her simple white tunic brushing at the leaves. Roman did resemble his mother. It didn’t seem like it at first, with his mustache, beard, and the long horse mane of hair along his scalp, but there was a lot of Evdokia in him. It hid in the corners of his mouth when he smiled and shone from his eyes when he thought he said something funny. I’d met his father. He was a rail-thin, dour man. If Grigorii ever smiled, his face would crack and fall off his head.
Behind Evdokia, Sienna led Maria down the path. In the few years I’d known them, Maria had gone from a fierce ancient crone to simply ancient. She used to remind me of a raptor, gaunt, harsh, her claws poised for the kill. Now she emanated age the way very old trees did. The white tunic hung off her shoulders, the wide sleeves making her bony arms look fragile enough to snap with a squeeze of your fingers. Sienna, on the other hand, had changed for the better. No longer sickly, she moved smoothly now, her body lean but curved where it counted. Blond hair cascaded from her head in rich waves.
The three witches reached the water and I realized they were barefoot. They turned and followed the barely visible path toward the wall of rock.
“Come on.” Roman rose.
We trailed the witches around the stone fall to a small fissure in the granite, barely wide enough for two people to pass through shoulder to shoulder. The witches went in one by one.
“After you.” The volhv nodded at the opening.
Great. Come down to the witch forest, enter a deep dark cave. What could go wrong? Just once I would like to have an important meeting in a happy little meadow or an orchard.
I ducked through the opening and closed my eyes for a few moments to get them accustomed to the gloom. A small cave lay before me, almost perfectly round. A pool of water filled most of it, except for a narrow rim of dark boulders by the walls and a small wooden deck
with some benches. Above us, the dome of the cave split and a waterfall cascaded into the pool, backlit by sunshine.
The older witches arranged themselves on the deck. I picked my way toward them, Roman behind me.
Sienna waded into the water. It came up to her hips and her white tunic floated around her.
She shivered and rubbed her arms. “Cold.”
“You wanted to do this,” Maria told her.
“I did.” Sienna reached for a dark object floating in the water and pulled it to her. A wooden bucket. She dipped it into the water and poured it over her head. “Oh Goddess.”
“Is the turtle sick?” I asked to needle them.
Maria gave me a look sharp enough to draw blood. “Hold your tongue, evil spawn.”
There’s the old harpy I know. All is right with the world.
“This is a sacred place now,” Evdokia told me. “It’s easier to summon the visions here.”
“I’ve been looking into your future.” Sienna moved toward the waterfall.
“I don’t want to know.” I didn’t. Once you knew the visions, they chained you, forcing you down a predetermined path. It was best to make my own road.
“You do.” Sienna turned to me, her back to the cascade.
I sighed.
“Tell her,” Maria snapped.
“If you marry Curran Lennart, he will die.”
Someone reached through my chest and stuck a long needle into my heart. Sienna was almost never wrong.
“Show me.”
The young witch stepped backward into the waterfall. Magic moved around Sienna, like an engine turning over, and a light slowly appeared to the left of the waterfall, opening up like a fast-blooming flower. A battlefield. Bodies collided, some armored, some furry. Weapons clashed, arrows hit home with the shrill whistle of torn air, and magic boiled flesh. A din hung above the chaos, the kind of cacophony only a battlefield in the middle of a melee can produce: screams and wails, grunts, metal screeching against metal, shapeshifters snarling, inhuman shrieks, all blending into an overwhelming cry that was the voice of war. It hit me, visceral and raw, and suddenly I was there, in the heart of the chaos, gripping my sword and looking for a target. The air smelled of blood and smoke. Ashes swirled around the combatants.
Beyond it all a tower rose above a castle, the familiar half-finished structure I had seen this morning, now whole. A huge gray creature, half-man, half-beast, knocked vampire bodies aside as he charged toward it. Blood stained his fur. He didn’t roar. He just ran, pushing his body to the limit.
Curran.
The tower loomed. My father stood atop it in a crimson robe, holding a spear made from his blood. My heart skipped a beat.
Curran leapt, channeling all of his speed into a powerful jump. He shot up, finally snarling, his fangs exposed, claws out.
My father thrust the spear. It was an expert thrust. It punched through Curran’s chest.
Blood poured.
He didn’t grip the spear. He didn’t try to free himself. Why wasn’t he trying to free himself? I’d seen him take wounds that almost cut him in half. Why wasn’t he fighting?
Curran’s body collapsed into human form but instead of its normal color, his skin turned the dull gray of duct tape.
Oh dear God. The Lyc-V saturating his body had died. All of it. At once.
My father gripped the spear and turned it. The perspective of the vision shifted and I was right there, standing next to Roland. Curran’s face was slack, his eyes empty. The ground disappeared from under my feet and I fell down into a cold pit. I fell and fell and couldn’t stop. Dead. He was dead.
My father grunted and hurled Curran’s body back into the battle below. Past the field, the sunset was blood-red. Atlanta was burning, caught in the hot maw of an inferno. Black oily smoke boiled from the ruins of the city, melding into a funeral shroud above.
The vision ended, the other reality with the battle and Curran’s corpse tearing like a thin paper screen, and I landed in my own body back in the cave. My legs were wet. I was standing in the middle of the pool, holding Sarrat in my hand. Coils of pale vapor rose from the blade, reacting to the echoes of my grief.
My face was burning. My mouth tasted bitter.
I returned my saber to its sheath on my back, dipped my hands into the cold water, and let it cool my skin.
Nobody said a word.
I finally made my lips move. “Is it always a spear?” Spears could be broken.
“Sometimes it’s a sword,” Sienna said. “Sometimes an arrow. Roland is always the origin of it and Curran always dies.”
Damn it.
“What if I don’t marry him?”
“It’s worse,” Sienna said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve looked into your future over fifty times in the last month. I think that sometimes you waver, because you aren’t sure if you should marry him. The vision changes then. Do you want to see or do you want me to tell you?”
I braced myself. “Show me.”
She stepped back into the waterfall. The battle splayed out before me again, the blood and smoke, swirling around me. I spun around. Behind me Atlanta burned.
A cry made me turn.
My father stood in the same spot atop the tower. In front of him, on the wall, a creature knelt, swathed in rags. It held a baby up with clawed hands.
I had to get to the tower.
I ran like I’d never run before in my whole life. The air turned to fire in my lungs. Bodies bounced off me. My magic flared behind me, glowing.
My father held out his hand, his face twisted with grief. The older warrior who had knelt before me in the courtyard this morning handed him the blood spear.
No!
I was almost to the tower.
My father gritted his teeth, his face supernaturally clear before me. Tears welled in his eyes. He plunged the spear down. A baby screamed, his cry severing my soul. My father pulled the weapon up, raising it like a flag.
My baby boy jerked, impaled on the spear. His pain cut me like a knife and kept cutting and cutting, carving pieces off my soul. He was crying for me, reaching with his little arms, and I could do nothing.
His little heart beat one last time and stopped.
Heat exploded in me. My heart burst.
Water. Cold soothing water. I dived this time, trying to dilute some of the heat emanating from my skin. I stayed under until all of the air in my lungs was gone. When I surfaced, the cave was silent.
I waded to the rocky shoulder and dragged myself out onto one of the large dark boulders. Sienna stepped out of the waterfall, her hair plastered to her head, her face pale; she made her way to the other side of the cave and collapsed on her back.
“Are you okay?” Roman asked.
“She watched her child die,” Evdokia said. “Let her rest.”
Rest was a luxury I couldn’t afford. “Is there are any version of this that doesn’t end with Atlanta burning and my son or Curran dying?”
“No,” Sienna said. “I’m so sorry.”
“How long have you been seeing this?”
“Over the past month.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sienna sighed. “I hoped I was wrong.”
“Could you be wrong?” Roman asked. “These are only possibilities, not certainties.”
“Predicting the future is like looking into the narrow end of a funnel,” Sienna said. “The further in the future the events are, the more possibilities you see. The closer we get to the event itself, the clearer and more specific the most likely future becomes. These visions are too detailed. They are almost a certainty. As of now, one or the other will come to pass. The son or the father gives his life, Atlanta burns, and the rest of us suffer. I can’t see any other possibilities. Believe me,
I tried.”
She turned her head and looked at me. “I tried, Kate. If Atlanta burns in that battle, I die.”
“We all die,” Evdokia said. “Everyone in this cave, except Kate.”
“I can’t see you in this battle,” Sienna said. “It’s hidden from me.”
If she was seeing it in that much detail, these visions had to come from the very near future. “How long do we have?”
“A year at the longest if you don’t marry Curran,” Sienna said.
That meant sentencing our son to death. “And if I do?”
“Two weeks.”
Two weeks? What do I do? How do I fix this?
“You’re the wild card,” Evdokia said. “She can’t see you.”
“It means one of two things,” Sienna said. “Either you are irrelevant to what happens or you are the pin on which this future hinges. If it’s the latter, then you have the power to alter it.”
If only I knew how.
“This is just typical.” Roman raised his eyes upward. “The one time I try to do something good, like join two people who are long overdue in holy matrimony. The one time! And it all goes to hell, doomsday prophecies and death. I’ve served you for ten years. Would it kill you to have my back one damn time?”
“Yes, of course, make it all about you.” Evdokia sighed.
“Wait, you’re marrying them?” Sienna asked.
Maria chortled. “He’ll anoint them in blood. Should’ve asked Vasiliy.”
Evdokia turned to her. “There is nothing wrong with my son marrying them. It will be the best wedding and he will be the best priest.”
Maria opened her mouth.
“You better be careful what you say next,” Evdokia said.
I raised my voice. “This isn’t helping.”
“You have to defeat him,” Sienna said.
Nice how she avoided the word “kill.”
An odd anxiety claimed me. I didn’t want to kill my father.
It made no sense. He was a monster and a tyrant. If it was a choice between my life and his, he would take mine. I’d wanted to hurt him this morning. But he was my father. What the hell was wrong with me?