Before the Witches Read online

  Junie sobbed wildly, and with a last, desperate shake of his head, Jake flung himself into the cabin. Stacey caught his sleeve with one hand as the skids lifted off the swaying roof.

  Nigel watched Jake struggle to his knees as the helicopter rose. The ash-smeared officer reached for Junie, gathering her to his chest.

  A damn good father.

  Nigel turned away. “We need to get off this roof,” he said, forcing himself into the now. Katya changed everything. “Before the damned thing comes down.”

  Her face pale beneath a fine dusting of ash, Katya pointed to the side. “The fire escape is—”

  The rhythmic noise of the helicopter rotors fractured.

  McClintock shouted a warning, her grip white on the bent pipe, but it was too late. Nigel whirled, saw the helicopter tilt awkwardly in the air. He could just barely make out the shape of the pilot, reaching up to flip switches. Pull levers. Ash coated the cabin’s windows.

  Katya clung to his forearms, her eyes huge. Fearful. “What’s happening?”

  The engine above them sputtered. Nigel stared in shocked stillness as the chopper swung wide. Its engines coughed, revved once. Choked.

  Died.

  “It’s the ash,” he realized with dawning horror. The helicopter dropped as if in slow motion, swinging like a pendulum, its tail forcing the machine into a staggered spin.

  Katya screamed, wrenching out of his arms. She sprinted, half-lurching, half-throwing herself to the edge of the roof as the helicopter dropped below the roof’s edge. “Turn it on!” she sobbed. “Go, go, oh, God—Junie!”

  “Katya!” He pitched after her. There was nowhere for that machine to go but down. Straight down, to an already rickety foundation.

  There was a terrible crunch; the shriek of metal twisting, compacting, tearing into brick and mortar. Katya grabbed the lip of the roof, and Nigel swore as a dull boom tore through the oddly muffled air.

  He reached her just as Katya screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks, hands reaching for dead air. He snatched her back from the edge. Cursed again, over and over as a bloom of fire and smoke blossomed from the street below. The station shuddered; different from the earthquake.

  A hollow rumble resonated from beneath them, and fire licked over the edge, searing the air. Thick, black, oily smoke roiled into the sky, and Katya screamed and screamed, her grit-smeared features painted wicked orange as Nigel pinned her to the roof.

  With an eerie sense of déjà vu, he clenched his jaw as remnants of steel rained around them. Something hard and sharp slammed into his back, rebounded off his thigh. He grunted.

  Katya slammed a fist against the roof.

  The whole thing shifted.

  Chapter Seven

  It wasn’t over. Nigel raised his head, blinking away the stinging remains of the smoke-thickened air. Katya sobbed beneath him, and the chief clung to her pipe with obvious strain.

  But her gaze wasn’t on them. Or the edge where the helicopter had just impacted. She stared at her feet. Her lips moved.

  The building rumbled again, too sharp to be an earthquake. Too hard.

  Too . . . steep.

  “It’s coming down!”

  Nigel leapt to his feet, grabbed Katya and pulled her upright. “We need to get off this roof,” he roared. “Chief!”

  “Stairs?” she asked.

  He shook his head, cursed and reeled as the building banked sharply to the left. His stomach pitched. Katya choked off a shriek as he wrenched her towards the nearest pipe sticking out from a brick foundation. She clung to it.

  He tripped over his own feet as the building swayed again. Like a domino teetering on the edge. Back and forth.

  Gritting his teeth, he reached for the pipe. Swore, and then swore again as warm fingers grabbed his.

  Katya’s gaze was too bright in her filthy face. Her mouth set into a grim, dirty line.

  “The roof,” McClintock called. Years of running a station had groomed her voice to carry. She flung a hand toward the neighboring building. “Catch it on the backswing!”

  Nigel followed the line of her finger. His eyes widened, and then narrowed. “There’s no way we can jump—”

  “Yes, there is!” she cut in deftly. She inched around her pipe, clung to it with both hands behind her. Her eyes pinned on him. “Do it, or die here.”

  Nigel looked down at Katya, framed in his arms. Her jaw shifted, strong little chin mulish. “I can do it,” she said tightly. “What do I do?”

  Nigel’s chest swelled. She was so Goddamned brave. “The building’s swaying hard enough to topple any second,” he explained. “In a moment, it’s going to swing back around and probably crash into the one beside us.”

  She nodded, her face pale.

  “When that happens, we jump like hell for the next roof and use the momentum to carry us. You got it?”

  “Okay.”

  The roof tilted again, pitching him against Katya. He clung to the pipe as the world tilted on an axis. “Chief?”

  “Ready!”

  He grabbed Katya’s hand, clinging to the cold pipe with the other. She stared at the neighboring building as it lurched closer. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, God, oh, God—”

  He locked his jaw. Below them, the sound of the foundation walls splintering cracked like rapid-fire gunshots. The building slid sideways, tilted and wrenched lopsided as one cornerstone gave out. The roof slanted dangerously. Gravity swept his feet out from under him, wrenched Katya’s grip from the pipe.

  She screamed, the sound cut off as his grip tightened around hers. His arms snapped tight, wrenched all the way to his shoulder as he grunted a curse, a prayer, and held on with all his might.

  They weren’t going to make it.

  “Go!” he heard over the chaos.

  Nigel eyed the angle of the roof, gauged the building slamming towards them too fast. With his heart in his throat, he braced his feet, jerked Katya to the side, and let go.

  She screamed. Unable to catch her footing, she staggered; he caught her around the waist, hauled her half under his arm and tried to run the steepening incline.

  Gravel and grit skidded beneath his feet. The edge of the roof hit the building beside it, crumbled. Disintegrated. The aftershocks slammed all the way through him; his head, his bones.

  His balance.

  Halfway down the incline, he stumbled and fell. It was all he could do to curl his body protectively against Katya’s as they rolled and scraped and crashed down the rest of the way. Nailing the landing on his back pounded all his remaining breath out of him.

  Rock rained down, mixed with slick ash and remnants of the station. He gasped for breath, wheezing, his vision rolling through a darkening landscape.

  Katya coughed, groaning.

  “Nigel,” she managed between gasps. “Nigel?” Her fingers shook against his face.

  He forced his eyes open. “Fuck yeah, roof surfing.” It rasped.

  She sobbed out a laugh. “We have to go. Nigel, we have to—” She sucked in a trembling breath. “The chief? Where’s . . . Oh, God.”

  He forced himself to his elbows, wiping away the grit accumulating on his face. “Shannon?” he demanded. Katya helped him stand and every muscle in his body twanged in retribution. He swallowed it down. Lurched across the rooftop, now slanted from the impact of the taller station house. Rubble skated under him as he pushed his way to the splash of crimson caught between two brick prongs, pipes from two separate rooftops tangled together.

  Chief Shannon McClintock was pale and still. The blood smeared across her face was black with ash. Her hands hung beside her.

  One was just as black. Too much black, its edges crimson where the ash hadn’t clung yet.

  He reached for her neck. “Come on, Chief,” he breathed. No pulse met his searching fingers.

  Her mouth hung slack.

  Behind him, Katya’s fist curled into the back of his shirt.

  He closed his eyes. “Goddamn it!” Violence
surged through him; frustration and fear and so much regret, he choked on it.

  “I’m so sorry,” Katya whispered.

  He reached behind him. Took her hand. “We need to go,” he said.

  Wordless, her face soot- and tear-stained, Katya tugged him away. The building shuddered as the remains of the station house settled. The pipes trapping McClintock’s body bent, creaking.

  Pain didn’t hold a candle to the fury in his soul. Setting his jaw, Nigel firmed his grip on Katya’s hand and ran for the fire escape at the other end of the roof.

  One police car had survived the madness at least relatively intact. Although covered with a layer of ash, it was more than enough to get them away.

  Away from the ruined building. The mass grave site. Junie, her little face so trusting and sad. Jake, soon to welcome a new baby. So many others.

  So much destruction.

  Katya stared out the grimy window, her head lolling back on the seat. The wipers were barely enough to keep the stuff from sticking to the cracked windshield. It was all Nigel could do to see, much less drive through the wreckage that was Bellevue.

  The sky darkened in rapid increments. Katya watched, feeling as if she were trapped in a surreal dream as the last remnants of daylight faded to a night so thick, it was as if it were made of black paint.

  “This is Detective Nigel Ferris.” His voice cut through the silence, maybe for the thirtieth time. The hundredth. She didn’t know. He’d been droning into the handset for an hour, at least. “Seattle P.D. Is there anyone out there?”

  Katya rolled her head back to watch him. Her body ached. Her head hurt. Her heart felt as if it were full of red hot knives.

  Her arms felt empty without Junie in them.

  Nigel hunched over the wheel, as if that would let him see better through the rain of wet powder. “I repeat, is there anyone out there?” He met her eyes briefly; stark and raw.

  She touched his thigh. But what could she say?

  I dreamed this would happen.

  No, she didn’t. She dreamed about all her plans going up in smoke, that’s all. Ved’ma . . .

  Muscles locked under her hand. His grip tightened on the radio, and he brought it to his mouth again as he navigated the car slowly through the wreckage of what had once been an interstate onramp. “This is Detective Nigel Ferris, of the Seattle P.D.”

  Withdrawing her hand, she closed her eyes.

  The radio crackled. “Detective Ferris! Can you read me?”

  Katya bolted upright. “Was that—?”

  He blew out a hard, anxious breath. “Loud and clear,” he said into the device. “Where are you? What’s your status?”

  “This is Petty Officer First Class Winston Shepherd,” came the voice. “United States Coast Guard. There’s a small contingency of refugees gathering at the Port Authority station. Can you get to us, detective?”

  Nigel’s smile was flat, not so much a smile as a razored edge of grim determination. “Yes, sir,” he replied. “We’ll be there in less than an hour.”

  “Any women or children with you, detective?”

  Katya swallowed a raw sound as he glanced at her. Instead, she raised her chin, even as her throat ached from the effort.

  “One,” he said. “A woman.”

  “Copy that. We should have room for both of you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Nigel replied. “Over and out.” He hung the radio back in place. “Try to get some rest,” he told her, but he didn’t look at her. “We’ll be at the Port Authority before you know it.”

  “I wonder how many—”

  His fingers tightened on the wheel. “Don’t,” he cut in roughly. She flinched. “Don’t think about it.”

  “What am I supposed to think about?” she asked, knuckling her eyes. “I keep seeing—” Her throat clutched. “She was screaming for me.”

  He reached over, covered her hand where it braced on the seat. “Talk to me about something else,” he said softly. “Where were you born?”

  She sucked in a wild breath. “Nigel—”

  His grip tightened on hers. Warm. Strong. “Do you have any family?” he persisted.

  Katya turned her hand over. Her palm pressed to his, and she watched that muscle in his jaw leap again. The tight one that said he was forcing himself to do something. Not do something. She didn’t know. Shaking her head, she clung to his hand and said dully, “No family. Not anymore.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” She wiped her gritty forearm across her cheek, already knowing how futile the gesture was. She was coated in ash, gummy with sweat. “My mother was afraid of me.”

  Nigel frowned. “Of you? Why?”

  Ved’ma, ved’ma! The word echoed in her dreams, didn’t it? Right up there with whore. Her smile hurt. “She thought I was a witch.”

  “No such thing,” he scoffed, and she wanted to kiss him.

  Except he was wrong. Even if he believed what he said, she was living proof that he was wrong. “They called me ved’ma,” she continued. “It means—”

  “Witch,” he said, “I heard Ivan call you that.” She shook her head. “No?”

  “It’s kind of like witch,” she said softly, “but it literally means ‘one who knows’.”

  The smile he bestowed on her was indulgent. Just wry enough that she realized he was trying to defuse what she’d already accepted. Her optimist cop. “And what do you know, Katya?”

  She hesitated. Outside the ash fell in soft, dirty flakes, and the windshield wipers strained in the sudden silence. Then, quietly, she admitted, “I dreamed about this.”

  “What?”

  She gestured at the windows. “I started having dreams about the world ending, I thought it was just nerves.” She slanted him a glance, but couldn’t read anything other than indulgent attention in the dim interior light.

  “That’s all it was,” he said with a shrug. “The mind is weird. How could you possibly know this was coming?”

  She sighed. “If I knew that, I’d unlock a giant mystery, wouldn’t I?”

  He glanced at her, eyebrow slanted. “Is that it? Vague dreams?”

  “I can tell if you’re lying.”

  He laughed. “So you can read people—”

  “Try me.”

  He squeezed her hand. “My middle name is Thomas.”

  Truth. “I could have read that at the station,” she pointed out. “Try something I wouldn’t know.”

  His jaw shifted, and he let go of her hand to grab the wheel firmly. “I have a sister.”

  Lie. Katya shook her head. “No, you don’t.”

  His eyebrows rose. “I hate pineapple.”

  Truth. Her lips curved. “That’s a shame.”

  “I don’t usually like blondes,” he continued, his eyes on the blackened street in front of them. The headlights barely carved out a niche in the thick fallout.

  She blinked at him. “Truth.”

  His mouth quirked. “What do you know?”

  “Do you believe me?” she demanded.

  He didn’t look at her. “I don’t think it matters.”

  He believed that. But maybe it did matter. Maybe it mattered to her. Katya looked away, folding her arms over her chest. “If that’s all—”

  Crack! As if the whole of the world had split in half, the sound fractured through the oddly quiet murmur of ash and rain. She startled, biting back a scream, and jerked around in her seat. “What was that?”

  His expression closed, grim as he concentrated on the road. “I don’t know.”

  She reached for the window, hitting the automatic switch. The glass squeaked as it tried to shed the accumulation of ash. When it had lowered enough, she gasped.

  A dull, glowing ember hovered on the horizon to the southeast, just barely noticeable through the gritty darkness. She stared. “That’s . . . Oh, my God.”

  “Mount Rainier,” Nigel confirmed, his voice bleak. “Welcome to hell on earth.”

  Shaking, s
he raised the window again. But she couldn’t look away. The red glow flickered through the smeared glass, as if alive.

  “Paris,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “I remember the news.” Her throat hurt; too much screaming. Too many swallowed tears. She cleared it. “A storm ripped through it, right? Two years ago.”

  Nigel said nothing.

  “And Florida,” she continued raggedly. “A hurricane.”

  “For God’s sake, would people stop bringing up Florida? The damn state’s always got a hurricane,” Nigel said, his gaze hard on the road.

  “New Orleans?”

  He shook his head. “The city’s been a magnet for disaster since someone got the brilliant idea to build below sea level,” he said firmly. “It’s known for flooding.”

  She wanted to laugh. It came out as a fractured sob. “God wants to start over,” she said, and couldn’t keep the edge of hysteria from her own voice. “Did we build too high again? Is this our punishment?”

  Warm fingers slid over hers again. Tightened. “God has another thing coming,” Nigel promised tersely.

  Truth, she thought, and clutched his hand in both of hers.

  Maybe he was right. He believed what he said, but maybe there was something to it.

  Maybe Detective Nigel Ferris could take on God—Mother Nature, witches, or random chaos, she could take her pick. Maybe he’d take them all on.

  It was small comfort.

  Her palm to his, Katya leaned back against her seat and tried to sleep.

  A dull red glow burned behind her eyes.

  Chapter Eight

  Ved’ma.

  Katya’s voice echoed in Nigel’s head, punctuated by the soft rhythm of her breath.

  The one who knows.

  He didn’t believe in witches. Sure, there’d been the occasional media sensation over the years, this psychic or that voodoo queen or God only knew what else, but they’d eventually subsided. So-called “witches” were just people who knew how to play the odds.

  At least, he’d thought so until now. She’d been right. Every lie he’d given her, she’d been able to tell. And he knew his poker face wasn’t that bad.

  Was it possible? Did she actually see this coming?