Bitter Night: A Horngate Witches Book Read online

  Praise for BITTER NIGHT

  “This lush urban fantasy populated with witches, angels, Sunspears, and Shadowblades contains all the decadent delight of dark chocolate. One taste, and you’ll devour this book.”

  —Ann Aguirre, national bestselling author of Blue Diablo

  “In Bitter Night, Diana Pharaoh Francis has created a dark, unique, and electrifying world in the urban fantasy genre... Max is a Shadowblade warrior to die for.”

  —Faith Hunter, author of Skinwalker

  ...And for the Novels of Diana Pharaoh Francis

  “An original world, real people, and high-stakes intrigue and adventure. Great fun!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Patricia Briggs

  “Francis grabbed me with her very first sentence and didn’t let go.”

  —Lynn Flewelling, author of the Nightrunner series

  “Diana Pharaoh Francis caught me with a compelling story, intrigued me with the magic ...and swept me away with her masterful feel for the natural world.”

  —Carol Berg, author of Breath and Bone

  “Well-plotted and exhibiting superior characterization.”

  —Booklist

  “As tasty as toasted almonds.”

  —Speculative Romance Online Magazine

  “One of fantasy’s most promising new voices.”

  —David B. Coe, award-winning author of The Horsemen’s Gambit

  BITTER NIGHT

  A HORNGATE WITCHES BOOK

  Diana Pharaoh Francis

  Pocket Books A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Pocket Books paperback edition November 2009

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Designed by Jacquelynne Hudson Cover illustration by Chad Michael Ward

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-4165-9814-5I

  SBN 978-1-4165-9819-0 (ebook)

  To Tony, Q-ball and Syd.

  Acknowledgments

  AS USUAL, I HAVE A LOT OF PEOPLE TO THANK FOR HELP-ing me create Bitter Night. So many, in fact, that I may have inadvertently forgotten someone. If so, I apologize and please know it was not intentional.

  To start with, I want to thank Lucienne Diver and Jennifer Heddle for believing in this book and giving me the chance to tell this story. Without them, you wouldn’t be reading this book right now.

  Next, I want to thank those of you who helped me in my research. First off, thank you, Traci Castleberry. She kindly went and took pictures of locations in San Diego and also gave me a great deal of information about the place. Thanks also to Maryelizabeth Hart, Anne Ugaretechea and Jessica DeMilo. Thanks also to Fighter Guy for his usual amazing help with fighting and guns.

  Next, I have to thank those of you who read this book in draft and gave me brilliant feedback to improve it: Missy Sawmiller, Megan Schaffer, Christy Keyes and Kenna. But most of all Ilona Andrews, whose feedback gave me the tools to dig much deeper into my characters and make this book so much better.

  I want to thank also those people who read my blog and answer my desperate calls for information. You have been invaluable, and not only for information, but also for encouragement and support. Writing is a lonely business and you have made it far less so.

  As always, my family has been incredibly giving and supportive and amazingly patient with me and I thank them with all my heart.

  Finally, thank you, my readers. Thank you to all who picked up this book and gave it a chance. I really hope you enjoy it and I would love to hear from you. Please visit my website and leave a comment on the blog or send me an email: www.dianapfrancis.com.

  BITTER NIGHT

  1

  MAX’S PHONE RANG. IT WAS SET TO A HIGH-pitched tone that most humans couldn’t hear. But being human hadn’t been Max’s problem since 1979. She eyed the cell, then reluctantly picked it up out of the console. The caller ID said it was Giselle. Instantly Max’s body seized tight. All the Zen detachment she’d scraped together on the long drive from the covenstead in Montana shattered apart as craptastic reality returned in a shitflood.

  She drew a deep breath. Her lungs felt like rocks. She exhaled slowly before flipping open her phone. “Yeah?”

  “Where are you?”

  Max grimaced. Just the sound of the witch’s voice ignited familiar hate in her gut. It was like a bottomless volcano. She swallowed the heat down, tasting its bitterness with determined satisfaction. She banked it like a campfire. It belonged to her’the only thing that did, and the witch-bitch could never take it away. “Coming into Barstow. Why?”

  “I want you to go check out a nasty little murder near Julian. It tastes of both the Uncanny and the Divine.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little stupid? You can’t just go fucking around in another witch’s territory. It could mean war if I get caught. Are you ready for that?”

  Giselle didn’t hesitate. “It’s a risk I have to take. The vision was’”

  She broke off and Max wondered what it was she’d stopped herself from saying.

  “It was too powerful to ignore,” Giselle continued. “I have to know what’s going on there. Just look around and get out.” She gave a pained sigh. “And, Max, I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but do not accidentally on purpose let anyone see you.”

  “Why would I do that?” Max replied all too innocently. “I couldn’t anyhow. You tied me up in compulsion spells. They would never let me do anything you didn’t want me to do, right?” Except there were ways around the spells. And Max had made herself an expert at them. “Besides, you know how I feel about you. Your wish is my fondest command.”

  Silence. “Then I wish you wouldn’t be such a pain in my ass all the time. Stop trying to sabotage everything I do. This is important, Max. Don’t screw it up.”

  The tense uneasiness in Giselle’s voice triggered a cascade of alarms inside Max. It was like a switch was flipped inside her as her compulsion spells took over. Her anger cooled instantly and every one of her magically heightened senses strained to hard alertness. She sat up in her seat. If one thing was true about Giselle, it was that the witch-bitch didn’t get nervous. As far as Max knew, she didn’t have the gene. Just what had been in that vision? What sort of apocalypse was going down in Julian?

  There wasn’t any point in asking. Giselle would already have told her if she was going to say anything. “Anything else I need to know?” Max asked, turning businesslike as she allowed the predator inside her to take over. Cold detachment slid over her like armor, and her mind focused into sharp, clear lines. It wasn’t that she couldn’t feel. She just didn’t want her emotion
s to interfere with what she might have to do. She gave a slight shake of her head. No, it was that her spells wouldn’t allow her feelings to get in the way, which only made doing what she had to do that much worse. Better to become ice and deal with the thaw later. Much later.

  “There’s an orchard north of town,” Giselle said, interrupting her thoughts. “That’s where it’s going to happen.”

  “Going to?”

  “In a couple of hours, give or take. It’s fixed, you can’t stop it. I’ll see you in San Diego tomorrow.” Giselle stopped, but didn’t hang up. Then: “Max’be careful. This might be ugly.”

  The phone went dead. Max looked at it a moment, hesitating, then speed-dialed a number. Oz answered in one ring.

  “Max? What’s wrong?”

  “Does something have to be wrong for me to call you?” she asked, then winced. Ask a stupid question ΓǪ

  “I’ve been with Giselle almost as long as you have. In all that time, you’ve never called me except when the shit’s in the fire. So what is it?”

  Max lowered her phone to her lap, thinking. Oz said her name impatiently. She stared down the freeway. Should she say anything? But the undiluted worry in Giselle’s voice prodded her. She lifted the phone back to her ear. “I’ve got a feeling something bad’s coming, and I can’t shake it. Just make sure you and your Sun-spears stick tight to Giselle. Have my Blades do the same.”

  She could almost hear his grin. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you actually cared about her.”

  “Don’t make me kick your ass. I told you, if anybody gets to kill Giselle, it’s going to be me. In the meantime, keep her in one piece until I get there.”

  “When is that?”

  “By morning, if nothing goes wrong. I’ve got a stop to make first.”

  Max didn’t give him the chance to answer or ask questions. She snapped her phone shut and dropped it back onto the console before swerving off onto the shoulder and grinding to a dusty halt in the desert darkness.

  According to her atlas, Julian was about a hundred and fifty miles away in the mountains. The drive would take her almost three hours, but it didn’t matter when she got there. The murder was fixed. She closed her eyes, leaning her head back on the headrest, rubbing her fingers over the spot between her eyebrows. It wasn’t her job to help people. She was no one’s knight in shining armor. She was a killer, Giselle’s favorite weapon. Besides, even if she could get to Julian in time, nothing said that anyone there was worth saving. She swallowed hard. Giselle had said the murder tasted of the Uncanny and the Divine. So that meant that whoever was mixed up in this likely deserved it.

  Her stomach didn’t believe it. She reached for the steering wheel again. Her stomach didn’t get a vote. Besides, she hadn’t eaten for hours. She was just hungry.

  Max pulled back onto Highway 15 and hit the gas. It was nearing ten o’clock, and behind her lights beaded in the darkness coming down the hill from Las Vegas. In Victorville she pulled off and stopped at a McDonald’s.

  In the parking lot, she considered going through the drive-through, but her bladder had other ideas. She glanced through the dark-tinted windshield, considering. It was a night short of the full moon and not a cloud in the sky. Grabbing her leather jacket from the backseat, she pulled it on and zipped it up to hide the .45 in the holster against her left ribs and the knife sheaths on her forearms. She had a .380 strapped to her right ankle and another double-bladed combat knife in the small of her back.

  She yanked her Big Sky Brewing Company hat down low over her sunglasses and short silver-blond hair and pulled up the collar high on her coat.

  Pocketing her keys, she opened the door of the Chevy Tahoe. Instantly she felt the burn as the brilliant moonlight bubbled her skin. The reflected sunlight seared the backs of her hands, a seam on her neck, and the unshadowed portion of her face. There was a faint sizzle and the nauseating smell of burning hair. She grimaced and strode quickly to the door, heading straight for the bathroom. There was no one in the dining area to notice the blisters, or that as she walked between the tables, her skin smoothed back into flawless marble. She ignored the unrelenting itchiness that followed after, a side effect of her healing spells.

  Inside the bathroom she peed and splashed her face. The compulsion spells that required her to protect and obey Giselle sent pulsing aches down Max’s spine to her heels. They read her worry and wanted her to hustle off to the witch’s side to protect her. They didn’t care much about what Max’s orders were, only that Giselle be kept safe. She’s got plenty of protection, Max told herself. Oz and his Sunspears and all of my Shadowblades are with her. My absence won’t do any harm.

  She returned to the dining room and ordered forty double cheeseburgers and a large Coke. Todd, the pimple-faced cashier, lifted his brows.

  “You gonna eat all those yourself?”

  Max laid a fifty and a twenty on the counter, her brows flicking up. “Do I look that hungry?”

  “Naw. You don’t look like you eat much.”

  His glance was admiring. Max could imagine what he saw. A pretty girl a few years older than him, looking sly and tough and wild like a biker chick or a metal band’s roadie. She was taboo and exotic’every high school boy’s wet dream. If only he knew what she really was’how many people she’d killed. He’d start running for the hills and wouldn’t stop until he hit Canada, and maybe not even then. She did her best to look sweet and harmless.

  “So you going to a party or somethin’? I get off soon. Maybe you want to go together?” he asked hopefully.

  Her gaze ran over him. He was maybe seventeen and cute beneath the ugly uniform and acne. His face was still curved with baby fat, but in a few years he was going to be a lady-killer. She felt her face hardening. In a few years, he’d be a tempting target for a witch. He blanched at the sudden violence in her expression and took a step back. She heard his heart start to race and smelled the sour scent of fear. In a minute he’d pee his pants.

  Fuck. She grabbed her change and the Coke cup and went to fill it. She leaned her hip against a bolted-down chair and studied the floor until her burgers were ready. No danger here. No danger here. She repeated it to herself, hoping Todd would feel it and believe. When he plopped the two grocery-size sacks on the counter, she grabbed them without a word and strode out the door.

  In a few minutes she was back on the freeway. With effort she put Todd from her mind and began eating. The burgers were hot, greasy, and tasty. She gobbled one after another. The magic in her body sped up her metabolism so that she required around twenty to thirty thousand calories on a normal day. That was if nothing tried to kill her, if she didn’t have to pick up a car and throw it, if she didn’t have to run fifty miles in a couple of hours ...in short, if she didn’t have to use the spells that made her what she now was’a Shadowblade.

  In forging a coven, a witch created warriors to serve and protect her. Some took their power from the sun, the dark poisoning them. Some took their power from shadows, the sun’even reflected from the moon’burning their flesh. Sunspears and Shadowblades. Max was Giselle’s Shadowblade Prime’leader of the thirteen Blades in her crew. Oz was her Sunspear counterpart.

  She sighed, finishing the last of the burgers and fiddling with the stereo. Guns N’ Roses’s “Mr. Brownstone” began pumping through the speakers. Max turned it up so that she couldn’t hear anything else. She had a bad feeling that in the next few days, she was going to need a whole lot of calories. This trip was going to be nothing but trouble.

  SHE PULLED INTO JULIAN JUST BEFORE 2 A.M. IT NESTLED in the desert mountains northeast of San Diego. It was small and dusty’there hadn’t been a lot of rain this year. The moon had gone down and Max had the windows open. In the distance she could smell the salt brine blowing up from the Pacific Ocean. Overlaying it were the scents of pine, juniper, and oak, along with the hot tang of apples and grapes from nearby orchards. Signs all over the small town invited visitors to come to Harvest Days and the Gra
pe Stomp Fiesta.

  Max had turned off her stereo and lights as she came to the city limits and began driving slowly through town. She sifted through the air and eventually found a hint of what she was looking for’the earthy, metallic flavor of the Uncanny, and the creamy, caustic flavor of the Divine. It’s not that the two couldn’t be found together’she was Uncanny and Giselle was Divine. The basic division between the two was that Uncanny beings lacked the ability to cast spells or share their magic in any way. The Divine could. The obvious conclusion was that a witch was here with her Shadowblades and whatever other pets she might have in tow. And they had killed someone. Why? was the question. And what did it have to do with Giselle?

  She followed the trail to the other side of town. When she turned north on Farmer Road, the smell of magic billowed suddenly and her hackles rose, cold sliding like oil down her spine. Giselle was right. Something big had happened here’maybe was still happening.

  It was time to get out and and go on foot. Max slowed and eased off onto a dirt lane, rolling across an irrigation creek and parking behind a mounding blackberry tangle on the fringe of an apple orchard. She killed the motor and donned her hat again before quietly lifting herself out the window. She reached for and grabbed her cell phone, thumbing it off before tucking it into a roomy thigh pocket on her black fatigues. Next she opened the back door and popped up the bench seat. Beneath it was a small armory of weapons and ammo that included guns and steel knives, flash bombs and grenades, bags of herbs and salt, knives of rowan, hazel, willow, and silver, and a collection of charms. Max ignored most of it, opting for the pistol-grip sawed-off shotgun. It was lousy for distances, but most fights were up close and personal, and it would make enemies of most stripes’magical or human’think twice. She loaded it and shoved a handful of shells into her front pocket before pushing the seat back down and shutting the door.