Balancing the Scales

  Balancing the Scales

  The Twenty-Sided Sorceress: Book Ten

  Annie Bellet

  Copyright 2020, Annie Bellet and AnneMarie Buhl

  All rights reserved. Published by Doomed Muse Press.

  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to doomedmuse.press@gmail.com.

  Cover designed by Ravven (www.ravven.com)

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)

  Electronic edition, 2020

  If you want to be notified when Annie Bellet’s next novel is released and get free stories and occasional other goodies, please sign up for her mailing list by going to: http://tinyurl.com/anniebellet Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  This book is dedicated to Una.

  She was the first to tell me it was okay to make things up.

  Go raibh míle maith agat.

  Table of Contents

  Harper

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Harper

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Harper

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Harper

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Alek

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Alek

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Also by Annie Bellet:

  About the Author

  Harper waved at the retreating backs of Softpaw’s pack as they disappeared into the trees. The wolves were heading to the Den to report on the fight and its outcome with the sorcerer in the Frank to Freyda. Harper squinted toward the buildings on the edge of Wylde, debating if she could get away with being a fox to make the run ahead easier. With a heavy sigh she decided it was too far into daylight to risk. Too many potential humans around on this bright summer morning. Her clothes weren’t the cleanest after she’d helped the pack get rid of bodies half the night, but while she could still faintly smell blood, she couldn’t see too many obvious stains.

  The day after a huge fight was always strange. Her world had shattered when she thought Jade was lost under a ton of rock and dirt, and then rebuilt itself again when they finally defeated the evil sorcerer who was severing shifters from their animal halves. The aftermath was burying bodies followed by a quick sleep on the forest floor. Harper knew she hadn’t processed what had happened yet. Or perhaps she was growing used to this. Oh, another evil bastard showing up needing a kick in the ass? No problem. ‘Round these parts we call this “Tuesday.”

  Harper swallowed a giggle. Yeah, she was definitely short on sleep and maybe sanity. She squared her shoulders and took off at a jog. She needed to go see Jade, make sure her friend was all right. She’d looked pretty smashed but she had Alek to watch over her. Odds were Jade was still sleeping off the big magics. Harper figured she had time to grab some food. Or maybe a shower first. Harper sniffed her shoulder and nodded. Definitely shower before food.

  Harper pulled her phone out and turned it on as she climbed the steps to her apartment. There was one text from Ezee asking if things were good and if they were coming back yet. Harper sent a smiley face and a thumb’s up. Then she added “back from honeymoon?”

  “Had a weird feeling.” Her phone buzzed almost immediately. “Also mosquitoes.”

  “Sounds like paradise,” she texted back, adding a few flower emojis. Part of her wished that Ezee and Iollan had stayed away, stayed in their happy newlywed bubble a little longer. She imagined that Levi had filled in his twin and the druid on the new shitstorms circling Wylde by now.

  “Paradise for mosquitoes. Where are you? Safe?”

  “Totes safe. At apartment. Heading to Pwned after shower.”

  “Meet you there.”

  Jade, or more likely Alek since Harper would bet Jade hadn’t been awake when they arrived, would have explained most of it, but it felt weirdly good that her friends were worried about her, too. She’d learned the hard way that pulling away from people after stressful situations or times of danger ultimately made the trauma worse. It was good to have people and she had the best people. Even if she was a terrible friend for being glad her newly-wedded bestie was home to fight whatever ugly came next. Facing down evil just wasn’t the same without friends.

  An hour later, showered, changed into clothes that hadn’t been within two feet of multiple dead bodies, and with a Hot Pocket making a lump in her stomach, Harper pushed through the door of Pwned Comics and Games. Lara looked up from behind the counter and the relief in her brown eyes was obvious even from the doorway. Levi and Ezee leapt up from where they’d been lounging in the big chairs Jade had installed toward the back by the new release racks. Concern lined Ezee’s handsome face and Harper swore she saw at least two wrinkles in his normally impeccable button-down shirt. Levi was chewing on one of his lip piercings and his mohawk looked as though he’d been running nervous fingers through it all night. His teeshirt was rumpled as well. He had to have been worried if he’d left Junebug’s side at the Den.

  All three of her friends looked past Harper as though they expected someone to come in behind. It was obvious enough that she paused and looked over her shoulder, even though with her keen senses she knew nobody was there. What the hell was going on?

  Then she looked around again, peering past the twins. No Jade. No Alek. Harper hoped Jade was still asleep and Alek was upstairs watching over her. Sometimes Jade slept for a day or more after draining her magic reserves. But Harper’s friends looked as though they’d been keeping a damn vigil all night and their concerned faces scared her. It was so at odds with the joking demeanor of Ezee’s texts. Harper tried to shove away the hot thread of worry that wrapped itself around her throat.

  “Where are Jade and Alek?” Ezee said, and the thread turned into a noose.

  “What do you mean where are Jade and Alek?” Harper said, searching their faces. “They left last night, should have been back late. Did you knock upstairs?”

  “Nobody is in, we’re sure of it. Jade and Alek aren’t answering their phones, either,” Levi said.

  “Why didn’t you say that before?” Harper waved her phone at them. There had to be a good, reasonable explanation for why Jade and Alek were out of contact. Maybe nobody had knocked loud enough. That had to be it.

  “We figured they were right behind you, and you sounded fine, so I guess we assumed everything was fine?” Ezee said.

  “Everything was fine.”

  Harper pushed past them and made her way to the back of the shop. She unlocked the rear door and leaned out, looking around the parking lot. No truck. Jade’s car was there but the truck they’d borrowed from the logging camp the night before, the truck that Jade and Alek should have arrived home safe and sound in, it wasn’t there. A million justifications started piling up in Harper’s mind as she stalked back down the hall to her friends.

  “We defeated the sorcerer,” she said. “Jade was how she gets after a big fight, especially cause she got a mountain dropped on her at one point, but Alek was driving. I mean…” Harper paused to take a breath, feeling the weight of everyone’s worried gazes on her. “We won. Everything was fine.”

&nb
sp; “Maybe they hit another moose,” Levi said with a forced smile that was more grimace than grin.

  Lara shook her head. “I can try calling her phone again?”

  “What if Bob got her?” Levi said, jumping straight to what everyone was thinking.

  “Bob?” Harper said, even though she had a feeling who he meant.

  “Yeah, we decided the First needed a name. Bob. Big Old Bad.”

  “You decided,” Ezee muttered. “Besides, his name is probably the old timey European equivalent of ‘John’.”

  “I think John is the old timey European equivalent of John,” Lara said.

  “Johnbob?” Levi’s smile was almost convincing this time.

  “No.” Ezee glared at his twin.

  “We don’t have to assume the worst. Shit happens. They were tired, it was a long day. Maybe they stopped somewhere to rest?” Harper said. She stepped between the twins, hands up in a placating gesture.

  Levi and Ezee both gave her flat, disbelieving looks but that was the best explanation she could come up with that didn’t involve Bob. All the others ranged from bad to really fucking bad. Sure, the First was still out there and who knew what minions of evil he had running around but not everything had to be terrible all the time.

  Maybe. Probably. And yet Jade had been so tired, so weak, and while she was immortal, Alek wasn’t, and the First definitely had it out for the former Justice.

  “She had her phone, yeah?” Lara tapped her fingers on the counter, drawing Harper’s attention back to reality.

  “Yeah, pretty sure.”

  “It’s ringing before going to voicemail, so I think it isn’t shut off. Hang on.” Lara went to the main computer and pulled up a search page.

  “You are searching ‘where’s my phone?’” Ezee asked as he crowded up beside Harper at the counter.

  “Jade leaves her email logged-in on like everything,” Lara said.

  “There!” Harper pointed and then put her hand down, feeling like a dork. On the map a dot had popped up, showing Jade’s phone’s location.

  In the middle of nowhere, Idaho. Well, not quite nowhere.

  “Zoom out a bit,” Harper said.

  Lara complied.

  “There, that road, that’s what they would have hit after leaving the woods. See? It connects up with the highway into Wylde there.” She wished she had a laser pointer but stabbing her finger at the screen seemed to get the point across. “So Jade’s phone is kind of along the route they would have taken.”

  “But why there? There’s no there there.” Levi leaned over the counter for a better look.

  Lara zoomed way in and set the map to satellite view. There was the road and the bumpy hills of the Frank.

  “So something happened. Maybe there’s a cabin or something we can’t see. A quaint little B&B?” Harper was still reaching for optimistic straws. Her breakfast was a greasy lump in her belly and her heart raced like it could somehow catch up to a version of reality that didn’t suck if it just beat fast enough.

  “Maybe,” Levi said but he was already reaching for his keys.

  “I’ll stay, keep the place open, and call you just in case they show up, cool?” Lara said.

  “Send the coordinates to me,” Ezee said, following Levi toward the back of the store.

  “You gonna be okay?” Harper said, realizing they were all leaving Lara alone in the store.

  “Harper, go,” Lara squeezed Harper’s hand quickly. “Go get our girl.”

  “She’s probably fine. She’s like immortal and shit.” The words felt weird in her mouth, as though even her own tongue was aware how thin and hollow the sentiment was. How unlikely.

  “It’s gonna be fine,” Harper said as she climbed into Levi’s car.

  Levi drove like the world was cop-free, speeding tickets were for other people, and his tires were aflame. It still took an hour to get to the turn-off from the main highway and another silent, tense fifteen minutes to find the coordinates.

  Levi slowed finally as they approached where the phone should be. Nothing. They crept along, nobody speaking. Harper rolled down her window and Ezee and Levi followed her lead.

  “Smell that?” Harper said, her heart trying to kick out of her chest again.

  “Like Fourth of July,” Levi muttered.

  “Shit,” Ezee said as Harper’s gaze fell on the swath of ripped up vegetation to the side of the road ahead.

  The road climbed a small hill here and the brush to either side was thick with summer green and growth. A large section had been torn up on the downhill side as though something huge had smashed right through.

  Something like a truck.

  Levi pulled over onto the uphill side across from the torn-up section. The smell of gunpowder was there, but faded, as though it had been hours since whatever caused it had gone off.

  Harper forced her fists to uncurl as she looked around. “Tire marks,” she said, pointing to the ground near where they’d parked.

  “Someone accelerated hard here—see how the dirt is kicked up?” Levi bent and touched the furrows.

  “Like they were going straight at the road,” Harper said, turning and looking across to where the broken branches and smashed leaves lay open like a gash.

  Without speaking, the three of them picked their way across the road and started down the hill.

  “No, fuck no,” Harper sobbed as she accelerated, more sliding than running down the hill. “That’s the truck.”

  The sickly sweet scent of blood, too much blood, vied with the strengthening scent of gunpowder. The land flattened almost immediately and there, in a heap of bullet-scored metal and broken glass, lay the truck that Alek had been driving. A long smear of semi-dried blood buzzing with flies stained the ground brown and black and greasy. The truck had flipped and gone upside down, the passenger side crumpled almost completely in by outside force.

  There were no bodies, but a dozen or more boot prints in the dry dirt told a story along with the hundreds of spent shell casings.

  “No bodies,” Levi said, echoing Harper’s desperate thoughts.

  “Jade’s phone,” Ezee said as he ducked into the half-collapsed truck cab and fished it out of a pile of blood-smeared glass. “Still on.”

  “What is, oh,” Harper started to say as a clump of stringy black hair and greyish goo slid off the phone and hit the ground with a splat. Her Hot Pocket came up in a lump as she stumbled away to vomit.

  “Is that Jade’s hair?” Levi asked even as he shook his head, denying the obvious. “But, no. Look, no bodies. We can solve this. We can fix this.”

  Harper wiped her mouth with her teeshirt and forced herself to turn back to the carnage. Levi’s fists were clenched as though he could fight time itself to change the past. Ezee stood by the truck, still holding Jade’s phone as though it were a puzzle he could solve. They both looked at her with dark, despairing eyes. There were no dice here to reroll. No books with answers. Just the wind muttering in the trees and flies buzzing over too-large bloodstains.

  We’ve survived worse, Harper told herself. We can do this.

  “Right. No bodies, okay?” She licked her lips and regretted it immediately as the taste of vomit mixed with the smell of blood and gunpowder.

  “They might be hiding somewhere in the woods, licking wounds, something.” Levi spun in a slow circle, nostrils flared.

  “I’ll call my husband,” Ezee said. “This is wilderness enough that he could help.”

  Harper rubbed her palms on her jeans. “Okay. And we gotta call the sheriff. They’ll have forensics. Let’s not touch anything else. We know smart people who can solve this with us. Together.”

  But even as she said that, a silver glint inside the truck caught her eye. For a moment she thought it was just more windshield or window glass, but then the all-too-familiar shape compelled her forward. Crouching, Harper gingerly reached into the blood-stained shards and pulled out Jade’s necklace.

  Jade’s D20 talisman. Hanging fro
m its broken chain.

  Harper stopped breathing. The buzzing of flies faded. It was as though the world held its breath with her as she turned the talisman to the one spot.

  The divot that had held Samir’s heart was empty.

  “I hate to alarm y’all,” Harper released the words in a gasp as her heart started beating again, “but we’re super fucked.”

  Ice rimed the picnic table beneath me as I paused to perch there and watch half-frozen surfers catching waves on Lake Michigan. One had to admire their dedication, I supposed. From this distance they were gliding black shapes in the late afternoon sunlight. There were chunks of ice among the rocks on the shore as well, but the last snowfall had mostly melted away. It was cold and clear and my head felt like an axe had split it open. The waves were bottle brown turning to glassy green as they crested and caught the sun.

  “There’s a certain beauty in it, no?” Samir stepped up beside me and draped an arm around my shoulders.

  “More like a certain crazy,” I said, leaning into his warmth. I tipped my head back to look up at him, confused for a moment why my brain had expected blue eyes instead of gold. Blond hair instead of black. I gave myself a mental shake. I’d woken up with a headache and it seemed to be getting worse, not better, despite the fresh air and exercise that Samir had promised would do me good.

  “Still in a mood, I see.” Samir chuckled.

  I winced, for somehow the sound of his laugh made the headache worse. I pressed my fingertips to the bridge of my nose and was surprised to feel skin. I’d put on gloves before we went out, hadn’t I? I stared at my hand as though it had done something offensive.

  “Something is wrong,” I said. Was this some kind of sorceress flu? I’d pushed my magic hard in our last couple training sessions though I couldn’t quite remember why or what we had done. But my muscles were leaden and my magic… my magic… I tried to reach for it but only pain answered, like my blood was full of tiny razors. I stumbled to my feet, throwing off the weight of Samir’s arm.