Chapter 14: The Red Tornado Strikes
The silence after the van’s taillights vanished was brittle, broken by the low groans of downed True Root acolytes and the hiss of Jan’s dissipating green shield. The thorn constructs lay still, dissolving into mulch and foul-smelling sap.
Bethany lowered her wand, the tip glowing faintly. “Report,” she said, her voice crisp in the sudden quiet. “Casualties?”
“Just my dignity,” Rebecca said, brushing concrete dust from her blouse. “And possibly this copy of ‘Thaumaturgical Principles Vol. III.’ It’s seen better days.”
The Green Knight knelt, one hand clamped over the smoking hole in his armored shoulder. Photonic energy crackled around the wound, stitching it closed in a slow, painful-looking process. “The construct is neutralized,” he grunted. “The Urger core is inert.”
Yukio leaned heavily on her cane, her tattoos seeming to pulse in the erratic light. “They got away clean. My girl’s in that van.”
“Mandy’s driving,” Casey said, as if that explained everything. She looked at Mike. “So, we won?”
“We didn’t lose,” Mike corrected, peering at the bound cultists. “Which, given the usual metrics, is a win.”
It was then the air split.
Not with sound, but with a sudden, profound cold. A rift of violet shadow tore open near the shattered office door, leaking a sense of deep, gnawing emptiness. From it stepped a figure shrouded in ragged black robes, leaning on a staff of petrified wood. Her face was a roadmap of deep wrinkles, her hair sparse and white, but her eyes burned with the sullen, red-orange glow of banked coals. A dozen more figures, younger but clad in similar robes, filed out behind her. On each chest, glowing with sickly intent, was the reversed sigil: a green crescent moon on a black circle, its horns pointing west.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Hank muttered, hefting his tire iron. “Door-to-door salesmen now?”
Sister Morwen’s coal-fire eyes swept the scene. Her lipless mouth twisted. “The Rootlings failed. Predictable. All muscle, no subtlety.” She raised a gnarled hand toward the remaining conscious True Root acolytes. “You thirst for dominion? We offer oblivion.”
She made a clutching motion. A wave of palpable enervation, cold and greasy, washed over the cultists. They didn’t scream. They simply sagged, their struggles ceasing, their eyes rolling back as their life force was siphoned away into Morwen’s outstretched hand. The roots holding them blackened and crumbled to dust. The acolytes collapsed, breathing but empty, their faces slack and aged.
The Green Knight surged to his feet, his photon blade flaring back to life. “Setting Sun filth!” He charged, a battering ram of golden light.
Morwen didn’t even look at him. She gestured with her staff. A thick, blackened thorn-vine, dripping with shadow, erupted from a crack in the concrete. It moved faster than sight, spearing upward. It caught the Knight just below his pauldron, punching through the advanced armor with a sound like shredding metal. He roared, not in pain but in fury, as the vine lifted him off his feet and then slammed him down onto the scale platform. His blade flickered and died. He lay pinned, the shadowy thorn pulsing as it drank his energy.
“The Vigil claims this nexus,” Morwen hissed, her voice like dry leaves scraping stone. “The artifact’s echo-passage has thinned the veil here. It will serve as an excellent harvesting ground.”
Jan O’Connor stepped forward. Godfrey III trotted at her heels, gave the shadow-vine a disinterested sniff, and sat down. Jan’s braid was coming loose, red tendrils framing a face that was no longer mischievous, but dangerously calm.
“You know,” Jan said, her voice carrying easily. “I’ve never much liked your crowd. All doom and gloom and sucking the fun out of the room. It’s tacky.”
Morwen’s burning gaze fixed on her. “A Green Moon hedonist. You spread your cancer of meaningless connection. You weaken the spirit with pleasure.”
“Yeah, it’s a real chore,” Jan said, rolling her shoulders. A shimmering, rose-colored aura began to emanate from her, pushing against the clinging violet cold. It smelled like spring rain, like warm skin, like laughter in the dark. “You feed on despair. I get it. Despair’s easy. It’s lazy. Any half-wit with a bad attitude can make someone miserable. Bringing real joy? Making someone feel so fucking alive they can’t stand it? That takes talent.”
The two magics met in the center of the weigh station with a soundless concussion. The air warped. On one side, a chilling shadow that promised the comfort of nothingness. On the other, a vibrant, relentless pressure that insisted on feeling everything.
“You are a child playing with forces you cannot comprehend,” Morwen spat, but her staff hand trembled.
“I’m the Red Tornado, sweetheart,” Jan grinned, a wild, sparkling light in her green eyes. “And you’re about to get blown away.”
Morwen thrust her staff forward. A lance of concentrated necrotic energy, the color of a bruise, shot toward Jan’s heart.
Jan didn’t sidestep. She caught it.
With a flick of her wrist, she wrapped the roseate energy around the bruise-colored bolt, twisting it, weaving it into her own. She didn’t block the attack; she seduced it. The necrotic energy fizzed, sputtered, and transformed mid-air into a shower of glowing, pink sparks that fell harmlessly around her.
Then Jan struck back.
Not with a bolt, but with a wave. A tsunami of pure, unadulterated want. It wasn't aimed at the body, but at the core memory of sensation. It bypassed willpower, bypassed thought, and went straight for the primal nerve endings that screamed for touch, for friction, for release.
It hit Sister Morwen like a physical wrecking ball.
The crone gasped. A full-body shudder wracked her thin frame. Her back arched. The coal-fire in her eyes guttered, replaced by a stunned, glassy sheen.
“No,” she whispered, the word a ragged plea. “This… this is not…”
But her body was betraying her. Jan’s magic was an invasive command, a forced reminiscence of a youth long ash, of sensations she had devoted centuries to denying. Her free hand, knobby and veined, flew to the front of her robes. She clawed at the rough fabric, a low, desperate moan tearing from her throat.
“You feed on emptiness,” Jan called, her voice steady, a conductor of this symphony of forced ecstasy. “So feel how full you can be.”
Morwen’s staff clattered to the concrete. Her other hand joined the first, both now shoving under her robes, fumbling between her own thighs. Her breathing became ragged, hitched pants. She collapsed to her knees, a puppet with her strings cut, but her hips began to grind furiously against her own searching fingers.
“I… I resist…” she choked, but her fingers were working frantically, rubbing her withered cunt through the parchment-like skin. Her back bowed, her head thrown back, a string of saliva stretching from her lip to her collar.
Jan took a step closer, the rose-glow intensifying. “You don’t get to resist. This is what you’ve been starving. This is the life you tried to steal. Now eat it.”
It was grotesque. It was violation painted in vivid, visceral strokes. Morwen’s fingers pushed inside herself, a dry, scraping sound accompanying the motion. She fucked herself with a frantic, mechanical rhythm, her breath sobbing. “No, no, no, yes, yes, YES!”
Her body seized. A sharp, anguished cry ripped from her, part agony, part unbearable release. Her hips bucked against her hand. A thin, clear fluid slicked her fingers. She shuddered violently, once, twice, a third time, each climax wrenched from her by Jan’s inexorable will.
Before the first could fully fade, Jan poured more power in. The cycle began again. Morwen’s hand, now slick, resumed its frantic pace. She was crying openly, tears cutting through the grime on her cheeks, even as her body arched and convulsed with another wrenching orgasm. Then another. She collapsed onto her side, curled fetally, but her hips kept jerking, her fingers still moving inside her, a pathetic, endless mimicry of pleasure turned into a torture of sensation.
The Setting Sun acolytes stared, frozen in horror. Then, as one, they broke. They fled back into the violet rift, which snapped shut behind them, leaving their leader twitching and mewling on the cold concrete.
Jan let the power fade. She was breathing heavily, a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead. The rose-colored glow dimmed and vanished. She looked down at the sobbing, shuddering form of Sister Morwen, who was now curled around her own hand, exhausted and utterly broken.
“Joy’s a bitch,” Jan said quietly, not with triumph, but with a grim finality. She turned to the stunned onlookers. Her grin returned, though it was weary at the edges. “That’s how we do it in Chicago.”
A beat of silence was broken by Mike Williamson. He cleared his throat. “So… are we supposed to, like, offer her a cigarette or something? What’s the protocol here?”
In the fleeing van, the artifact’ glow had subsided to a soft, steady pulse. The air was thick with the scent of sex, sweat, and ozone.
Mandy drove with a focused calm, her knuckles white on the wheel. Ben had crawled back to the bench seat, avoiding everyone’s eyes. Felicity was studying the artifact through the cloth of the bag, her scientific curiosity wrestling with shell-shock. Bruce kept watch out the back windows, his wrench on his lap.
Mai looked at the golden leaf on her palm. It was no longer throbbing. It was pointing, like a compass needle. “South-southwest,” she murmured. “It’s not just a direction. It’s… a pull. Like a homing beacon getting stronger.”
The Echo Thief, still cradling her silent lute, hummed a tune that seemed to make the van’s engine harmonize. “The heart remembers the hearth,” she said, her voice dreamy. “The vessel seeks the source. The road is the river, and we are the current.”
“Great, she’s a poet,” Mandy muttered. She checked the GPS on her phone, a blinking dot showing the RV’s location far behind. They were on their own, on a dark highway, heading toward God-knew-what.
But the artifact was charged. They were moving.
And for now, in the strange, tense quiet of the van, that had to be enough. The weigh station, with its horrors and its shocking victory, was receding in the rearview mirror, another strange mile marker on a road that was leading them all into the deepening unknown.
The weigh station, with its horrors and its shocking victory, was receding in the rearview mirror, another strange mile marker on a road that was leading them all into the deepening unknown.
Inside the van, the tension was a live wire. Ben’s come was slick between Mandy’s thighs, cooling uncomfortably against her skin. She adjusted her grip on the wheel, the silence broken only by the thrum of the engine and Felicity’s measured breathing from the back.
“Exit coming up in two miles,” Calista said, her elven eyes scanning the dark ribbon of road ahead. Her head then snapped to the left, tracking something moving fast in the opposite lanes. “That old truck.”
“What?” Mandy flicked a glance.
“Going the other way. Towards the weigh station.” Calista’s voice was certain. “Franklin’s driving. I saw his cousin and his great-grandpa in the cab. The bed’s full—Vivian, Dale, and three others. Looked like the kids you said attacked you earlier. They’re boxed in by some kind of containment spell.”
“So they’re safe, and they’re going to help,” Kay said, her voice tight with a fan’s relief. “We can’t turn around. We’d lose the trail.”
Felicity piped up from behind Mandy’s seat, her tone analytical. “I’m mostly impressed with the vehicular coordination, Mandy. The statistical probability of maintaining control during coitus at highway speeds is remarkably low.”
A slow, tired smirk spread across Mandy’s face. She didn’t take her eyes off the road. “I don’t crash.”
Bruce let out a long breath, rubbing his stubbled jaw. “Aye, that’s a comfort. But does anyone actually have a plan, or are we just following the magical breadcrumbs into the dark?”
Mai lifted her palm. The golden leaf seemed to burn brighter for a moment. “It’s not just crumbs. It’s a… a calling. We need to find the right soil. The place where this leaf belongs. Then we plant it. We perform the ritual of return.”
“What ritual?” Ben asked, his voice rough.
“I’ll know it when I feel it,” Mai whispered, sounding far less sure than her words.
From her corner, the Echo Thief plucked a soundless string. “Evelyn Shaw would cage it. The Setting Sun would burn itself out trying to consume it. Their corruptions are finite.” Her pale eyes found each of them in the dim light. “But the True Root? Their ambition is to reshape the world’s foundation. With this heart in their hand, they would not just own life. They would become its sole authors. Every forest, every field, every beating heart in every chest would grow only by their permission.”
The weight of those words settled into the van’s upholstery, into their lungs.
“Oh, brilliant,” Mai sighed, her British accent clipping the words. “No pressure at all.” She leaned forward, pointing at a green sign reflecting their headlights. “There. Next exit. It leads to the Shawnee National Forest. That’s the pull. It’s coming from in there.”
Mandy signaled and guided the van onto the off-ramp, leaving the interstate’s electric glow for the profound darkness of two-lane blacktop. The artifact in the bag at Felicity’s feet pulsed once, like a quiet, eager heartbeat.
In the old pickup truck barreling in the opposite direction, the mood was no lighter. The magical cushioning in the bed kept Vivian, Dale, and the three rescued siblings from being thrown around, but it did nothing for the anxiety.
Franklin drove with a steady focus, his inky fingers pale on the wheel. In the crowded cab, Jesse was a tense presence beside him, while Grampa Joe rode passenger, his eyes closed but not asleep.
He was listening to the land.
His walking stick lay across his knees. His breathing was deep and slow, attuned to the deeper rhythms of the soil and stone passing beneath the tires. He heard the frantic, fading echoes of the clash at the weigh station—the sharp, greasy cut of Setting Sun magic, the explosive bloom of Jan’s Green Moon power, the solid thump of the land itself being used to bind and hold.
Then he felt the deeper tremor.
It was not from ahead. It came from behind them, from the direction of the dark forest they had just skirted. A sense of something ancient being clumsily, brutally pried at. A psychic scent of greedy roots and chlorophyll turned toxic.
His eyes snapped open. The easy humor was gone, replaced by a flinty sharpness.
“Franklin,” Joe said, his voice calm but carrying an edge that made the young man stiffen. “Turn the truck around. Now.”
“What? We’re almost—”
“Now,” Joe repeated, the word final. “The worst of it isn’t at the weigh station. It’s behind us. They’re digging where they shouldn’t. And they’re in a hurry.”
Franklin didn’t argue. He scanned the empty highway for a wide spot, his jaw set. In the bed, Dale felt the change in momentum and looked toward the cab, meeting Vivian’s worried gaze.
“What’s happening?” Caleb asked, raising his voice over the wind.
“Grampa Joe senses something,” Vivian called back, her shadows beginning to stir instinctively around her wrists. “Something dark.”
Dale nodded, his fighter’s calm settling over him. He checked the hefty pistol holstered at his side, a mundane but reliable tool. “Then we go toward it,” he said, simple as that.
As the truck’s tires squealed in a tight U-turn, pointing them back the way they came—back toward the forest, back toward the path Mandy’s van had just taken—the two groups became unknowingly aligned on a collision course with the same buried truth. The artifact was the lure. The forest was the arena. And the True Root was already inside, digging their hands deep into the sacred dirt, ready to plant a nightmare.