Dark Vengeance Vol. 2: Winter, Spring - Softcover

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Jeff Mariotte is the award-winning author of more than seventy novels, including thrillers Empty Rooms and The Devil’s Bait, supernatural thrillers Season of the Wolf, Missing White Girl, River Runs Red, and Cold Black Hearts, and horror epic The Slab. With his wife, the author Marsheila Rockwell, he wrote the science fiction/horror/thriller 7 SYKOS, and numerous shorter works. He also writes comic books, including the long-running horror/Western comic book series Desperadoes and graphic novels Zombie Cop and Fade to Black. He has worked in virtually every aspect of the book business, including bookselling, marketing, editing, and publishing. He lives in Arizona, in a home filled with books, art, music, toys, and love.

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Dark Vengeance Vol. 2

1

Mother Blessing’s door slammed again.

She’d been doing this for an hour—coming out of her room, rolling around the halls, the rubber wheels of her scooter squeaking on hardwood floors, then going back in. Slamming doors like an eight-year-old throwing a tantrum.

Except most eight-year-olds weren’t potentially lethal.

Is she in for the night this time? Kerry wondered. Or just for a couple of minutes?

The answer could, literally, be that proverbial matter of life and death.

Gotta get out of here gotta get out of here gotta get out . . .

The door opened. Wheels squeaked. Barely breathing, Kerry closed her laptop and listened. Mother Blessing had stopped shouting so much, but she was muttering something under her breath that Kerry couldn’t make out. Panic gripped Kerry for a moment—the scooter was coming all the way down the hall to the guest room, the room in which Kerry had spent much of the autumn, learning magic at Mother Blessing’s side. Given what had transpired earlier—Season Howe informing Kerry, in front of Mother Blessing, that most of what she had been told about the mutual history of the two witches was wrong—Kerry couldn’t help feeling that Mother Blessing would not be in a jovial mood when next they met.

Kerry had power. She knew that now. She had learned well, and magic seemed to come naturally to her.

But she was nowhere near Mother Blessing’s level. If the old witch decided that it would be advantageous now to just take Kerry out, there would be little Kerry could do to dissuade her.

She held her breath for several seconds, but then the scooter’s wheels squeaked again as Mother Blessing turned away from her door. Kerry heard the door to Mother Blessing’s room open, and then slam shut again.

Is she working up her courage? Kerry thought. Why? What kind of threat could I be to her?

Sounds from Mother Blessing’s room filtered down the hallway to her. They could have been the sounds of Mother Blessing preparing for bed—it was past ten now, her typical bedtime—but rain still hammered the roof, and it was hard to be sure.

Kerry waited another half hour. The minutes dragged by like days, weeks. Finally the noises from Mother Blessing’s room died out.

Kerry was convinced that if she stayed, tomorrow would bring a confrontation with the old witch that she would probably not survive. She had successfully dodged it for tonight, probably because Mother Blessing herself was so weakened from the afternoon’s magical battle with Season that she hadn’t wanted to force the issue.

By morning Mother Blessing would have regained her strength. She would want to discuss the things Season had said—a discussion that would lead inexorably to Kerry’s concerns that she had been lied to since arriving at the cabin in the Swamp earlier in the fall. If Kerry lived long enough, she would most likely accuse Mother Blessing of having lied to her own sons as well—of sending them off to kill a witch they didn’t even know was their grandmother.

If Kerry was to get another day older, she had to leave tonight.

She had been ready for hours now, but she waited still longer. She wanted Mother Blessing to be deeply asleep. The old house’s floors could creak when she walked across them, and the last thing she wanted was for Mother Blessing to wake up and find her on her way out. That would precipitate the very confrontation Kerry was trying to avoid.

Every minute was torture, every tick of the guest room wall clock agonizing. She almost took out her laptop to write some more in her journal, but then stopped herself. She wanted to be alert, aware, in case Mother Blessing woke up. Losing herself in her diaries was a distraction she couldn’t afford. She couldn’t even pace, for fear that her steps would wake the witch whose house she shared.

Midnight passed. The witching hour, she thought. Except for Mother Blessing, who, witch or no, almost always slept right through it.

But then, I guess I’m a witch too, now. Not as skilled and practiced as Mother Blessing or Season Howe. But if being a witch is defined by doing witchcraft, then I am one. So I can observe the witching hour all by my lonesome.

She waited, and let Mother Blessing sleep.

When the clock ticked over to twelve thirty, Kerry decided she had waited long enough. Her bag was already packed. She tied her long black hair back with a leather thong, pulled a coat from the closet, wrapped it around herself against the cold and rain she knew were waiting outside in the dark, and opened her door. Her room was at the end of a hallway, and she had to go past Mother Blessing’s room to get out of the house. She stepped as lightly as she could manage, holding the duffel away from her body so it didn’t rub against her jeans. In her other hand she carried boots, which she would only pull on when she was at the door.

She had almost made it when Mother Blessing’s bedroom door opened, spilling light, and her scooter nosed out into the hall. Kerry’s heart leapt into her throat as she spun around to see Mother Blessing glaring at her over her oxygen mask. The woman’s breathing was labored, her voice muffled when she spoke.

“Where are y’all goin’?”

This was precisely what Kerry had hoped to avoid. She hadn’t wanted a confrontation or a scene. She simply wanted to vanish, as she had from Northwestern University when she had decided that she wanted to come here, to the Swamp, to have Mother Blessing teach her magic so she could take revenge on Season Howe.

That worked out great, huh? she thought.

Now, facing Mother Blessing’s glare, Kerry delivered the line she’d been practicing. “I’m . . . uh . . . going after Season,” she said. “She can’t be too far away yet.”

Mother Blessing just stared, her breathing Darth Vader–esque through the mask.

“You’ve taught me a lot,” Kerry went on. Her mind screamed at her to shut up, already! but her mouth didn’t comply. “I think it’s time to move on, though. Got to stay on Season’s trail until I can kill her.”

Mother Blessing stared. Finally she spoke again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Yeah, well, I kind of do,” Kerry returned, defiance starting to rise in her. “So, thanks a lot and all, but I’ve got to get going.”

“No.”

Obviously conversation wasn’t a good idea. Kerry dropped the duffel, tugged on her boots, picked it up again. Another glance at Mother Blessing, who was rolling in her direction now, her mouth scowling behind the oxygen mask, and Kerry stepped out the door.

“No!” she heard Mother Blessing cry behind her.

Kerry slammed the door and ran through driving rain to the shallow-bottomed skiff Mother Blessing kept for traveling out of the Swamp. She hurled the duffel in, pushed it off the bank, climbed in, and shoved the oars into the oarlocks. As she started to row, she glanced back toward the house—which always looked like a tumbledown old trapper’s cabin from the outside—and saw Mother Blessing silhouetted in the doorway, her arms raised in the air.

That, she thought, terrified, is not good.
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