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“Neither is leaving up black magick symbols,” Lana shot back. “Last month we found a ritual site—dark, dangerous. And again too close to the house. We purified it. And that’s what we’ll do with whatever this is.”
“You didn’t tell us,” Kim accused.
“No, and maybe that was a mistake.” When Eddie stopped, she looked at the trampled snow to the left. “Angling closer to the house.”
“Yeah. It’s rough going—a lot of brush, downed branches, rocks. It’s why we stick to the trail.”
“If we wait for Max—”
Kim rounded on Shaun. “Lana’s as much a witch as he is.”
To settle it, Lana moved forward on the broken snow. She’d gone no more than two yards before she stopped. She felt it pulsing, pumping, oozing. Darker and more potent than the circle, she realized as her skin went clammy.
That had been an offering. This, she feared, a realization.
She pressed a hand to her belly, to her child, and swore she felt a pulse in there as well. The light beating.
Trusting it, she continued on.
Blood, death. Sex. She smelled it all, mixed and smeared together.
Then she saw. Inverted pentagrams dangling from branches. Thirteen by thirteen by thirteen. Blood splashed red over the white snow, and the gore was piled on a makeshift altar of stones where something had been gutted.
The dolls: six human dolls and one four-legged.
With the black beating against her, the white pulsing inside her, the absolute silence of air gone bitter-thick and still, she knew.
And grieved.
To test, power to power, she lifted a hand, pressed her light to the dark, felt the shock as it all but licked greedily at her palm.
“We need to go back,” she said with absolute calm. “There are things I need.” Max was one of them.
“Good idea!” Shaun took a step back, but froze at the sound of thrashing.
“Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, that’s a bear.” Kim took a stumbling step back.
“Something’s wrong with it,” Eddie stated. He unstrapped the rifle from his back as Joe stopped quivering and growled low.
The bear twitched and convulsed as it plodded forward. Its eyes gleaming a sick yellow as it snapped at the air.
“You’re not supposed to run.” With a shaking hand, Shaun gripped Kim’s arm. “Don’t run, or he might chase you. And he’s faster. Maybe just back up slow, give him room, but stick together so we look bigger. It’s a black bear, and they’re not aggressive, but this one…”
“It’s not right.” Eddie breathed slow. “Is anyone else packing?”
“I am.” Kim fumbled to get the gun from her hip.
“Shaun’s right about not running. Let’s try the backing up. Nice and easy,” Eddie added. The bear reared onto its hind legs, roaring.
“Shit. Shit. That didn’t work.”
“It’s infected. You have to kill it. Shoot it,” Lana ordered, throwing out sharp power.
The first shot struck its chest. It screamed, dropped to all fours, and charged.
Shots—the rifle, the handgun—blasted. Lana pressed a hand to her belly, drew on what she’d been given, and hurled a jagged sphere of light.
The bear howled, letting out a cry of pain that tore through the air as its front legs crumpled. With pity, Lana saw its eyes go blank—not with death, not yet, but with fear.
Then Eddie ended it.
“Back to the house,” Lana ordered. “Everyone back to the house. There may be more.” Going with instinct, she threw out a hand, setting the hanging symbols ablaze. “Hurry.”
“Eric and Allegra,” Kim managed as they ran through the wet snow. “They might still be out here. We need to find them, get them inside.”
“Eric and Allegra did that. Hurry,” Lana repeated.
As they broke into the clearing around the house, Eric and Allegra stood on the path, their hands linked.
“You’ve spoiled our surprise.” Allegra tossed back her hair, smiled.
“You held back on us.” Panic skidded down Lana’s spine. She didn’t have to test power to power here, not when she felt it churning.
She needed Max. They all needed Max.
“I didn’t want to brag.” On a laugh, Allegra tipped her head to Eric’s shoulder. The flirty, female gesture in contrast with the cold pleasure on her face. “It was so much fun to watch you play with your inferior talents while ours grew bigger, darker, sweeter. Now.”
She circled a finger in the air and ringed them all in a circle of black fire. “We’ll just wait here for the last of our happy group to get home.”
Lana held up a hand as Kim raised her gun. “It won’t get through the circle, and may hit one of us.”
“You’re so clever. We’ll sacrifice you last.” His face flushed with power and glee, both deathly dark, Eric smiled. “Max is first.”
Everything inside Lana feared, everything inside her sickened as she met Eric’s gaze and saw his glee.
“He’s your brother.”
“Fuck a brother.” With a flick of his fingers, he shot darts of black light toward the sky. “All my life he’s come first, and I was supposed to just follow along behind him, never quite measuring up
. The good son, the dean’s list, the important writer. The power. I’m so much more than he is now. And he thinks he can lecture me? Teach me? Train me?”
He shot out a hand, tossed an oily black bolt at a pine at the edge of the forest. It cleaved in two, and the jagged halves smoldering in the blackened snow.
“He thinks his soft, white, weak power can measure to mine?”
“He—he’s gone to the dark side.” Shaun stuttered it out. “Like, like Anakin Skywalker.”
Mouth curling into a sneer, Eric flicked a black dart at the fire ring. “God, you’re such a fucking geek.”
“This isn’t you, Eric.”
He turned that sneer on Lana, then looked at his hand. Now something black and sinuous curled around his arm. When he lifted it, crows streamed over the sky, began to circle.
“It is. Finally, it is, and I have what should’ve always been mine. Humanity’s dead. I’m standing on its rotting corpse, and am. We are,” he said, turning to Allegra. “We are what lives now.”
“Thrives and takes. Whatever we want. Whoever we want.” Leaning into Eric, Allegra rubbed her cheek to his. “Maybe we should keep one for a pet.”
“You’re sick, man.” Eddie gripped Joe’s collar to keep him close. “You’re way sick.”
“Maybe him,” Allegra considered. “After we roast his dog on a spit.”
“Let’s do one now. Our rule-making hero’s taking too long. Let’s just do one now, have some fun. You pick, baby.”
“Hmm.” Allegra stepped forward, pale hair streaming behind her as she strolled around the circle. “It’s hard to choose. They’re all so boring. Except her.” She stopped in front of Lana. “But she needs to be last—her and that bitch she’s growing inside her. She needs to see the rest die.”
“I thought you were just a little stupid.”
Off balance for a moment, Allegra blinked at Lana. “What?”
“You heard me.” Whatever it takes, Lana thought, she’d protect her child. So she smiled dismissively. “A little stupid, a lot whiny, and mostly useless. I can see I underestimated you. You’re really stupid, whiny, and useless. I’m not sure what that makes Eric, as you’ve been able to use sex and some clumsy power to pull him in with you.”
“A man,” Kim said from behind Lana. “A man who loses his shit over a pair of tits. Sorry, guys, but we’ve got a case in point here.”
As she stood, legs spread, Allegra’s hair began to fly in a rising wind. “You have no idea what I am, how long what’s in me has waited for this day. But you’ll know, before I rip that wriggling mass of cells out of you, you’ll know. You’ll see.”
Allegra spread her arms, and they became wings, pale as her hair, with edges toothed and keen. She rose up on them, spun. In the whirl of wind, smoke rose from the flames.
“There she is!” On a laugh, Eric lifted his arms. His wings were black, oily like the bolt, gleaming in the haze.
“What are they?” Shaun choked out. “What are they?”
“Death. The dark. Desolation,” Lana murmured. And arrogant, she thought.
While they, like their crows, circled, Lana drew on what she was, what she had, prayed it would be enough.
“When I say run, run. To the house.”
“We’re trapped here,” Shaun began.
“We won’t be.”
She cast out her light, beat it against the circling dark. Cracked it. “Run,” she snapped, shattering it.
She dug for more, hurled it upward. She heard a sound, like the sizzle of bacon in a hot skillet, a roar of pain and insult, as she ran with the others.
Those bolts rained down from the sky, turning the house into an inferno. The heat, the blast, knocked her back. Before she could push herself up, one of Allegra’s singed wings swooped down. Desperate, Lana gripped it, twisted it, even
