The Shadow Court

by Jenn Stark

  Nikki. Drawing on the deep pool of rage, I wrenched my body back, tumbling ass over teakettle with a speed and grace I didn’t know I had in me, whirling like a dervish. Something hard and metallic cut into my chest, and I gasped, assuming I’d been hit, but the guy was nowhere close enough to me to be able to hit me like that. I caught a glimpse of gold as I glanced down at my shirt and thought—Guabancex. The storm goddess token had finally made herself known by stabbing the crap out of my sternum.

  “Not the time.” I ducked to the ground, missing most but not all of the flying attack from the assassin. The parts of him that did hit me, though, were a doozy. My entire body lit up on fire as I received the same kind of dose of electricity as I’d been doling out on the pallets in the Hamburg shipyard and, lethal weapon or not, that shit hurt.

  “Enough!” I barked to no one but my own hesitation, and I blasted him before I even caught my own breath. Only now my energy was stronger, harsher, spilling forward not in clear blue but in a murky red and purple haze. It was energy born of the spray of Nikki’s blood, the brightness of the reflective blanket wrapped around Emma Fearon, the startled eyes of a Mongolian general who’d done nothing but do what I asked him to do, to serve and protect and—

  “Enough!” I roared again and leaned into the blast of magic, blowing the man clear across the street. Somewhere, a car screeched its brakes, and then the sound of a crash and explosion sounded, but I was well beyond caring about that. I kept the red-and-purple fire flowing from my hands steady as I stalked toward the man, whose guns came up—and they were no ordinary guns—and blasted at me full-bore.

  The fire I hurled back at him, however, roared straight up toward the sky, blocked by some kind of temporary wall of power that was enough to stop me in my tracks.

  That was all the time the guy needed. He flipped over onto his feet, staggered upright, and was gone. I’d never seen anyone run so fast.

  Other than me.

  I took off after him at full speed.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I had to hand it to the guy, he could absolutely motor. My unnamed nemesis turned once, then again, and then a third time, weaving through the streets of Hamburg like a man on a mission. I was gaining on him, though. It felt good to run, to race so quickly over cobblestones, asphalt, and concrete that the world became a blur and I was safe in a cocoon of action for at least a little while. We burst out into a bricked street that ended abruptly at the edge of some sort of canal. The assassin in front of me started flagging abruptly, and I poured on the speed—realizing too late what he was doing.

  I ran smack into a vat of gravy.

  Instantly, my arms went out, flailing in exactly the same way the goddess Guabancex had been rocking it hurricane style in the minds of her believers, and managed not to face-plant into the bricks. But there was no doubting that I’d hit a dead zone. My fingers didn’t kindle with electricity the way they needed to, and the fire in my belly had more to do with raw panic than anything more useful.

  I rolled away and scrambled to my feet, staying in a crouch, yanking one of the stolen guns from my waistband and bringing it up in both hands. The assassin did the same thing, and we circled each other warily, trapped between a large, gorgeously bricked building and the picturesque waterway, but he hadn’t shot yet. I eyed his weapon and figured maybe it was a teched up gun. If that was the case…was mine too? Maybe I should’ve gone for the knife.

  The guy stepped toward me, and I realized another problem. I had Great and Awesome Powers in the body of a five-foot-six American woman poorly trained in hand-to-hand combat. I wasn’t John Wick; I couldn’t do anything with a pencil other than tank the SATs. And this guy knew that—knew it! Which was why he’d brought me here.

  “You wanna die fast or slow? You’re kind of boring me with this dance,” I pointed out, because if nothing else, at least my mouth was still supercharged.

  His gaze flickered, but only slightly, and I sighed, layering on the line of bullshit like graffiti on an overpass. “You know I’ve got tactical gear on, and you know my skin’s been treated with straight-up non-Connected body armor. Say what you want about our breakfast bar, the Council’s got way better toys than you do.”

  “Body armor,” he sneered, and I edged farther to my right. When had I entered the dead zone? Had it really been across the street or was it closer? And what were the parameters of it? I flicked my third eye on, trying to get my bearings, and squinted. My third eye still worked, sort of, but it was definitely going to need bifocals if I planned on spending any amount of time in dead zones. Nevertheless, there was a definite bowing in the energy field brownout—the zone didn’t fall along exact lines. If I could just get close to that wrinkle of energy…

  “I suppose you’ll tell me your saliva is poisoned too?”

  My regular gaze sharply refocused on the guy as we circled each other, and I could tell immediately he was getting closer to me. He knew what he was doing. He only needed to have a few steps’ jump and he’d be able to take me down flat. His body weight and obvious training would totally win out in that confrontation.

  A rhythmic whooshing noise rattled the street beneath us, and I almost lost my balance. The assassin took a step forward. I fired my borrowed gun.

  The bullet missed, but it still had the effect I wanted it to. The guy stopped and backed up a half-step sideways, suddenly far warier. “Guess you didn’t outfit your whole gang with your newest and fanciest pistols,” I said, taking full advantage of my turn to sneer. “There’s still value in going analog, looks like.”

  “How do you know my gun isn’t analog as well?” he countered, once again doing his crab walk to the right, circling in.

  “Maybe because I’m still alive?”

  “Fair. But I know something else about you, Justice Wilde. You never finish the job.” Then, moving faster than he really should have given the lapse in our psychic abilities, he reached into his pocket and withdrew something bright and fierce—a blade, I thought, a knife—and I did the only thing I could. Locking both hands on my gun, I sprayed the man with bullets in one violent sweep to the left, then the right. The Shadow Court’s assassin stumbled back as if the stuffing was knocked out of him, and I screamed and rushed forward, knocking him the rest of the way to the ground as I straddled him, then pistol-whipped him once, twice, with my gun, blood spraying across the wet bricks.

  Unfortunately, Captain Nemo was apparently wearing a bulletproof vest, and he was no slouch in the self-protection department. He twisted beneath me, scissoring his legs, and suddenly, he was on top and I was sprawled out over the pavement, sucking wind. I yanked one of my stolen knives out of my jacket, and he knocked it away as if I was his six-year-old little sister, then drove his own blade deep into my shoulder.

  “Aigh!” I screamed, and though we were admittedly in a psychic dead zone, the exigency of my pain blew through at least a couple of those barriers. I could feel the tingling of power, however faintly, as the whooshing repeated far beneath me in the bowels of Hamburg’s subway. Bringing my hands around, I clapped them to either side of the assassin’s head, effectively boxing his ears. I didn’t bother reaching for another knife but instead pulled out the blade he’d sunk into me. Warmth spread out over my shoulder, not all of it blood. Apparently, my sudden spurt of healing energy at least managed to cauterize the shit out of the wound, even if it didn’t fully heal me. I’d take it.

  The guy once again slashed out at me with a new sharp and pointy object, and this time when I saw crimson, it wasn’t the memory of Nikki’s arterial spray but my own actual blood. The pain was overwhelming, followed by a ferocious fire that seemed to blossom up from my heart and billow out. Once again, I didn’t feel entirely healed by the internal wave of haterade, but the adrenaline that jacked through my bloodstream helped convince me that didn’t really matter anymore.

  “Enough,” I gritted out, and with a strength neither one of us expected me to have, I head-butted th
e guy right in the nose, breaking it and then following his flopping body backward, clawing and screaming and punching as if I had been trapped in a schoolyard brawl with a bully who wouldn’t back down. I saw nothing but a curtain of dark purple haze in front of my eyes, with steaming red smoke and sizzling blue energy bursting forth in trickles and shots, not full on, but enough—enough!

  The man flailed upward, and I rolled to the right—directly into a golden beam of sunlight that was so invigorating, I could feel all my senses fire—

  And then the bastard punched me right across the jaw, sending me sprawling back into the darkness of the dead zone. Damn, that was fun while it lasted.

  The whooshing in the street beneath me made all the hair on my skin stand on edge again as the entire surface vibrated in three quick bursts, then the guy was on me once more. I scrambled to get away, to get back to the safe haven of the street corner, but he was faster. Faster, bigger, and with something to prove.

  I tried to dig down deep into my gut for the same fury that had propelled me the last time, but it was far more difficult. I lurched forward and he grabbed my ponytail, whipping my head around. It was only by using my momentum to propel my feet in an arcing circle that I was able to get in a glancing kick to his temple, allowing me to wrench myself out of his hold and hit the ground.

  My hands connected with the bricks, and the whooshing hit again, and I realized—it was warm. The street’s surface was unnaturally warm. There was energy there. Deep underground, but energy. Just as in one breath along the streets of Hamburg there was no dead zone, and the next there was, it seemed like at ground zero, I was shorted out, but below us—below us, something was happening that was being powered by Connected energy. A lot of Connected energy. And if there was something below us, then it followed that as below, so above—

  The beauty of this mental construct was forcibly shattered as my head connected with the very hard, very dead-zoned pavement, and I bounced up, curling into a ball of self-protection as the assassin kicked me hard in the rib cage, driving the totem of Guabancex once more into my skin. The sudden double shot of pain spiked my rage meter again, giving me the energy to get the hell away from the flurry of kicks. I jacked to the right, rolling several feet into the center of the street—away, unfortunately, from the edge of the dead zone. I didn’t stop until I crashed into a parked car, then flinched away as the asshat flung a knife at me that connected with the metal and clattered to the ground.

  Using the last bit of sheer willpower I had, I hauled myself up against the car, dragging myself up onto the hood with my arm, still-numb from the asshat’s knife to my shoulder, trailing behind me like a weird, S-shaped noodle. With my other hand, I wrenched the totem of Guabancex out of my jacket. I had no more energy myself. I had nothing left to give. I didn’t even know if what I was about to try would work, but the Shadow Court hadn’t been the only thing to follow me out of the jungles of Guiana. The wind had followed me as well. From eddying breezes to rushing wind to pounding storms, Guabancex had been making herself known to me, and if she still wanted to catch my attention, now would be a really great time to show me how much she really cared—

  The knife that ripped across the street and buried itself in my thigh was brutal and wide bladed, and my eyes popped open, a curtain of dark purple haze once more in front of me.

  “Enough!” I howled, half in agony, half in fury, and with a violent burst of my own residual Connected energy, I planted the leg that wasn’t gushing blood on the windshield and launched myself off the hood of the car—out into the open air.

  Above the dead zone.

  There was no lightning, no thunder, just a roar of hurricane-strength wind so strong that it practically levitated me off the ground and sent the assassin sprawling. Signposts bent and broke free, rocks flew off the ground, bricks loosened and dislodged, all becoming shrapnel that roared through the tight space in a raging storm. Energy rushed back into me, healing me with fire and light, and I flung my hands wide, sailing on the gusty torrent until I crash-landed once more, this time into the body of the assassin. He’d clearly had the breath knocked completely out of him as he bled from a dozen different places, his arm sliced open by a Stop sign now lying a few feet away. Worse than that, he was bleeding out.

  “Oh no, you freaking don’t,” I hissed, covering him with my body long enough to shoot him full of healing power as well, as the roaring wind lifted off us both and rushed up into the sky, the vortex of destruction dissipating almost as soon as it began. The assassin was unconscious, but he would live. He might not want to live after Gamon got done with him, but he’d live. And we’d have the added benefit of more information about the Shadow Court. I was kind of a pansy when it came to getting the information I needed out of people, but Gamon, Judgment of the Arcana Council, had once been an agent of Mossad. She’d get the job done.

  Meanwhile, I collapsed on the bricks, sucking in oxygen as the storm raced away above me. Thunder cracked in the distance, and lightning, but none of it compared to the rhythmic rush of energy beneath me.

  Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  I felt the energy of the city street beneath me, the energy of the Connecteds of this city, pulsing like a living thing. I didn’t know these people, their troubles and their hopes. I didn’t know them; they didn’t know me. But today, I’d stood for them anyway. I’d used not only my magic but the same grit and determination that had kept me alive as a seventeen-year-old girl with a Tarot deck in her backpack and her home in fiery ruins, the same resourcefulness that had taken my twenty-two-year-old self down tunnels and into bunkers and long-forgotten caves, searching out relics to sell to keep Connected children safe. I wasn’t just some righteously mighty member of the Arcana Council, weaving the energies of the world—I was still that little girl, still that lost young woman, still that brokenhearted loner who’d lost the mentor who’d first shown me how to use my abilities for the greater good.

  Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  I peeled open an eye, staring at the beautiful building in front of me as the cobblestones shook beneath me. I realized, blearily, the letters that were written across it, in English, oddly enough, said HAMBURG PORT AUTHORITY. And I finally made the connection of how the Shadow Court was transporting its drugs so quickly and efficiently that they were in the port area one moment and gone the next.

  Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

  Elon Musk’s hyperloop tubes, the technology stolen and repurposed by the Shadow Court. Hidden deep underground and extending for hundreds of miles, this magically enhanced supply chain could deliver its contraband from the storied port of Hamburg to the distant heart of Europe, as efficiently as the pneumatic tubes in Justice Hall.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  That wasn’t the only connection I made either.

  I closed my eyes and lay on the ground and let my mental barriers ease…and suddenly, he was there.

  I’ve got you, Miss Wilde, Armaeus said in my mind, his voice filled with wonder and surprise—and a fierce, unmistakable strength I hadn’t felt in him for far, far too long. I’ve got you.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “So…does Elon Musk have any idea his hyperloop invention has been co-opted?” Nikki stared at me over the top of her laptop, while the screen of the machine next to her shifted, Simon’s face coming into view. We were sitting in Armaeus’s conference room back in Las Vegas, and it was almost like old times. The wide view of the Strip stretched far beneath us, baking in the summer sun, and Nikki, Armaeus, Kreios, and I were ranged around the table. Simon spoke from his hospital room at Dr. Sell’s clinic, but at least we were all in the same city again. Progress.

  “Well, other than the fact that someone was using it to pump Europe full of technoceuticals, I think he’d think it was awesome,” the Fool declared. “I mean, are you kidding me? A fully functional hyperloop using his specs that jettisons canisters
of organic materials and nanotech halfway across Europe in the blink of an eye? That’s man-made ingenuity right there, no Connected ability required.”

  “Well, there’s some Connected ability required,” Armaeus corrected from his position next to me. “The energy source, for one. The electric propulsion system Musk is testing now is nowhere near adequate for large-scale loops. For that, psychically enhanced circuits are required. Musk will get there, but it will take time. And the money necessary to build the loop remains problematic. Not everyone is able to co-opt ancient cave systems and little-known aqueducts and abandoned subterranean passageways to transport canisters not much larger than the pneumatic tubes employed by Justice Wilde. The hurdles to putting the hyperloop into play for human transport, in a predominantly aboveground, highly regulated tube system, remain significant.”

  “And it looks like the Shadow Court’s gonna be encountering some of those hang-ups as well,” Nikki put in. She tapped several keys on her laptop and grinned. “Brody reports that Hamburg’s finest found the technoceutical launch zone directly beneath the port authority’s main building. Apparently, there’s an entire rabbit warren of corridors and passageways beneath that building and throughout Hamburg that’ve been used by the richest and most powerful traders throughout the centuries as a secondary shipping route for the most precious and illicit cargo. The Shadow Court, whoever they are, just took it one step further.”

  “Whoever they are,” I said grimly. I sat at the end of the table, a glass of scotch untouched beside me, hunched into my jacket. In my lap, I clutched the totem of Guabancex, bringer of storms.

  Almost as if I’d summoned her, the wall of Armaeus’s conference room shuddered, splitting wide. The dark, fierce figure of Gamon stalked through it, her face grim but satisfied.