The Order of Shadows

by Tess Adair

  The Order of Shadows

  Choronzon Chronicles Book Two

  Tess Adair

  Copyright © 2019 by Tess Adair

  All rights reserved. Published by Tower Park Press.

  This book 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 the written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to femme.fiction@gmail.com.

  Cover designed by Ravven (www.ravven.com)

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)

  Published in the United States by Tower Park Press

  ISBN: 978-0-9977500-2-7

  If you would like to get access to free content and be notified when Tess Adair’s next novel is released, please sign up for her mailing list by clicking here: https://www.tessadair.com/jointhesummoning

  Table of Contents

  Origins

  Chapter One - Failure Makes Perfect

  Chapter Two - Down on the Estate

  Chapter Three - The Working Week

  Chapter Four - Legacy

  Chapter Five - Ghosts

  Chapter Six - Homme Fatale

  Chapter Seven - Call of Evil

  Chapter Eight - The Human Beast

  Chapter Nine - Bait and Hook

  Chapter Ten - Mask and Sword

  Chapter Eleven - Revelations

  Chapter Twelve - Inner Demon

  Chapter Thirteen - A Brief Interlude

  Chapter Fourteen - Confessor

  Chapter Fifteen - Into the Woods

  Chapter Sixteen - The Way Back Down

  Chapter Seventeen - First Impression

  Chapter Eighteen - A Glimpse into the Shadows

  Chapter Nineteen - Teacher’s Pet

  Chapter Twenty - The Shield of Morgana

  Chapter Twenty-One - Running the Gauntlet

  Chapter Twenty-Two - High and False

  Chapter Twenty-Three - Blind Leading

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Champion Bound

  Chapter Twenty-Five - A Dance for Three

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Shadows and Whispers

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Into the Long Grass

  Chapter Twenty-Eight - Fly in the Ointment

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - High Secrets

  Chapter Thirty - Deep in the Dark

  Chapter Thirty-One - The Wolf at the Gate

  Chapter Thirty-Two - Rise and Fall

  Chapter Thirty-Three - The Wolf and the Heirophid

  Old History

  About the Author

  Origins

  I used to think I was a factory defect. That I’d come out wrong, somehow. Wasn’t normal, wasn’t made like girls are supposed to be made.

  My teachers used to say I had discipline problems. At recess, I’d wander too far from the group, and inside, I’d get so worked up during any kind of activity that I’d inevitably knock something over—potted plant, desk, classmate. We don’t mind that she’s excited, one said. But it would be nice if she weren’t quite so exuberant. Maybe you can get her tested for ADD.

  What they wanted was for my parents to put me on medication. My mother was against it immediately. She felt sure her own discipline would be enough to tame me. Every time I misbehaved, she saw it as an affront to her, a deliberate offense. A deliberate show of disrespect. From a six-year-old. In my mother’s world, disrespect doesn’t go unpunished.

  Every night before I went to bed, I had to visit my mother in the study. The first time, she gave me careful instructions. After that, I knew what to do.

  I sat on the hard wooden bench she put out. I placed my hands in a neat line on the desk in front of me, and I closed my eyes. My mother would stand behind me, and when my eyes were closed, she’d take a long black scarf and tie it across my face to be sure I couldn’t peek.

  I’d enjoy a moment of silence then. Sometimes it stretched for minutes, other times only seconds.

  Then, inevitably, in quick succession, a switch would deliver ten hard raps across my knuckles. Sometimes that was it. Ten and done. But other times it was more. Ten, then a pause, then ten, then a pause. A set of ten for every sin she’d attributed to me that day.

  When she was done, I had to wait. Sometimes I would hear her leave the room, sometimes I wouldn’t. But I could not leave until she took the scarf off. I never knew exactly how long I’d waited, but there were days when it felt like hours and hours.

  This is how she taught me discipline.

  I wish I could say it worked out for her, that my behavior improved. It didn’t. I didn’t. I went into the study every single night…for years.

  Every time I shut my eyes, I wondered what would happen if my mother decided not to come back. If she left me there, wrapped in a blindfold, waiting for her to return.

  I wondered how long I’d be alone in the dark.

  When she was five years old, Judith Li set another girl on fire.

  She didn’t mean to do it, though perhaps that particular phrasing is a little misleading: she did want it to happen. She just never thought that wanting could be enough to bring it to fruition. On that day, she discovered she was wrong.

  Judith had a hard time fitting in right from the beginning. When she first started school, her family lived in Billings, Montana, in a tiny, one-bedroom house on the edge of town. Her parents never bought anything new; they were trying to save money, so that one day they could open a restaurant. So, everything that Judith Li played with, wore, or owned had once belonged to somebody else. Before she started school, the reused belongings never bothered her. Playing alone in their little backyard, woods and mountains to her back, it didn’t matter to her one bit where her toys came from or what she wore.

  On the first day of school, when everyone else was dressed in their nicest, newest clothes, Judith wore nondescript brown pants and a free t-shirt several sizes too big. Her backpack had holes in it and her shoes smelled like someone else’s feet. As soon as she walked into the classroom, she could sense that everybody else was different somehow. They all seemed so excited to be there, and they were so colorful and shiny. She felt like a little brown dot of nothingness stuck to the corner of the page—a mistake that no one wanted.

  She tried to make herself invisible, but it didn’t work. That wasn’t a power that came easily to her. Instead, she seemed to shine like a beacon to everybody else—to one other girl in particular.

  That girl’s name was Maddy Simpson, and by the third week of school, her favorite playtime activity was tormenting Judith.

  “Judy smells like poopie!” she called out as she ran through the playground. Judith was sitting on a swing, but she wasn’t swinging. She could feel a tightness in her chest that she couldn’t quite name.

  Later, when they were walking back inside, Judith passed by a puddle and stopped for a moment, gazing down at her own reflection. Her brown, nondescript, nothing reflection. She only stopped for a moment, but a moment was enough.

  Maddy ran up behind her and barreled into her, toppling her over and sending her into the puddle. Maddy’s laughter rang through the air, clear as a bell.

  “Is that why you always wear brown, Judy-doody? Because you roll around in poop!” Another laugh, another bell chime.

  Judith slowly pushed herself back up, wiped her useless hands against her sodden pants, and started her reluctant march back inside.

  “Judith? Didn’t you hear the bell ring? Why are you so late?” Her teacher was tall, and she had a disapproving look about her. Judith tried to walk by her without answering, but the woman held out her arm and woul
dn’t let her pass. “Judith. What happened?”

  The tightness in her chest constricted even further.

  “Maddy pushed me into a puddle. She said I smell like poop.”

  The teacher’s eyes searched the rest of the class, gathered on just the other side of the door. She didn’t see it, but Judith did: Maddy, grabbing her friend’s hand, giving it a shake. A child’s signal.

  “Maddy, is this true? Did you push Judith down?”

  “No, I didn’t, I swear. Tell ’em, Tina!”

  Maddy’s friend, the girl whose hand she still held, nodded solemnly.

  “Yeah, she didn’t do it.”

  Judith could feel the tightness swell. It threatened to take her over.

  The teacher sighed. “All right, kids, everybody go back to the classroom right now. Go on.”

  Judith started to walk with them, hoping that maybe the movement would help her breathe, help ease away the tightness. But her teacher reached out again, stopping her one more time.

  “Judith, you mustn’t lie. It’s not nice to tattle on someone if they haven’t done anything. Do you understand?”

  By now, the tightness in her chest had begun to burn. This isn’t fair, she thought. I know she did it. I know she did.

  “But,” she sputtered, “but I’m not lying! Maddy’s lying! She is!”

  “Judith, stop.” The woman shook her head. “Lying isn’t nice. Don’t you want to be a nice girl?”

  The burning in Judith’s chest began to spread, and her breaths came in huffs. But she knew nobody would believe her now. The teacher had been her only hope, and that slim hope had blown out before her eyes. She let her head hang forward on her shoulders and she followed the woman in silence all the way back to the room. On the inside, her rage still burned.

  When she sat back down again, she didn’t look at Maddy. Instead she stared out the window, at the rain that kept stopping and starting up again. She wished she could leave school and never come back. She didn’t want to be there…although she didn’t exactly want to go home either.

  There’s nowhere for me.

  She heard Maddy’s name come to her in a fog, and her whole body lit up in an instant. She turned back to the classroom just in time to watch Maddy get out of her own chair. When she passed by Judith, she turned to her and smiled, and stuck out her tongue as far as it would go.

  The fire in Judith’s body roiled, rose, and spilled over. Maddy had just made it to the front of the classroom when a brilliant blaze erupted from her back, nearly engulfing her.

  At first, Judith thought she was imagining it.

  Then everyone started screaming.

  Chapter One

  Failure Makes Perfect

  Even before she began to run, Jude could feel her heart beating a mile a minute. This was her first time, and she didn’t know what to expect yet. She steadied her stance and clenched her fists.

  “And go!”

  The shout came from somewhere to her left, but she didn’t turn to look. Ahead of her, a shimmering white shape appeared right in front of the trees. It hovered only a moment, and then it was gone—nothing but a silvery streak through the foliage.

  Jude wasted no time. She launched forward, running at the highest speed she could manage. To her left, someone else was running, too—Logan. There was little doubt in Jude’s mind that Logan’s speed far surpassed her own, but she pushed forward anyway. More than a decade of soccer practice kicked into gear, and her leg muscles worked like pistons to carry her onward.

  Ahead of her, she could see the silver specter that had emerged only moments ago. As she gained on it, she got a better sense of its shape. Like a monstrously oversized bulldog, its front end bulged compared to the back, resulting in massively long legs to keep it upright as it ran on all fours. It snapped its head back in her direction, and Jude got a brief glimpse of its face. She saw a gaping jaw, short but powerful, with two sharp, sweeping tusks on each side, and six small, beady eyes glinting wildly in the darkness. Its thick neck prevented it from turning for long, so in a moment its face was gone again, its body rocking as it barreled along through the underbrush.

  Jude knew she was gaining on the monster, and she knew it would soon hit a wall—literally. She gripped the hilt of her knife and slipped it out of its sheath. She was as ready as she’d ever be.

  Within moments, she burst into an open field. Just as she’d known it would, the beast stood just on the other end of the stretch, its way blocked by a brick wall on the far side. It gave a roar of frustration as it reached the wall, then spun back around toward the clearing, snarling and spitting.

  This is it. You can do it.

  Probably, anyway.

  She ran a few paces closer, planted her feet firmly on the ground, and stuck the edge of her knife against the soft skin of her elbow, just like she’d been shown over and over again for weeks.

  The tide of panic threatened to overwhelm her, so just for a moment, she paused and glanced around the clearing, searching for a sign of Logan. Spotting her just behind the line of trees, she felt her anxiety loosening its harsh grip.

  Concentrating on the spell again, she drew a thin line of blood.

  “Invoco ignis!” she cried, slashing the knife through the air so that tiny droplets of blood flew off in a wide arc, heading toward the beast.

  For one shining, glorious moment, the spell worked perfectly. Fire burst through the air, tunneling right toward the monster before her, standing frozen in its spot.

  But a moment was all she got. Just like that, the spell went out again. The monster blinked, uninjured, and turned its six cold eyes on her. She stumbled backward, trying to remember Logan’s advice about how to throw a knife at a moving target.

  Imagine a long bow? Or was it—was it—oh no—

  The monster pawed one leg at the ground, rearing up to head straight for her.

  “Ignis,” she stammered, her voice weak, “invoco—invoco ignis—”

  But she knew it was no good. The beast was too fast, and she wasn’t ready for it. As she realized how completely unprepared for this she was, she froze in place, no longer able to remember anything she’d been taught. It advanced, and she retreated, finally tripping over the uneven ground and sprawling backwards onto hard earth. The monster crouched back on its haunches, then sprang forward—

  Right onto Logan’s waiting sword. While Jude had hesitated, Logan had closed the distance, slipping in between Jude and the beast and holding a broadsword firmly out ahead of her. The demon impaled itself on the blade, roaring furiously as it did so.

  With a calm collectedness Jude doubted she would ever understand, Logan drove the beast backward before pulling a round stone disk out of a hidden pocket in her leather jacket.

  “Finite,” she commanded.

  The stone glowed, and so did the now-immobile beast. In a moment it was gone—sucked back up into its resting place. The stone continued to radiate a silvery light for a moment more before extinguishing. Logan slipped it back into her pocket and sheathed her sword.

  “Okay,” she said patiently as she turned back around to face Jude. “Can you tell me what went wrong there?”

  “I fucked up the cast,” mumbled Jude, trying to maintain her dignity as she scrambled to stand again. “I wasn’t ready for it, I haven’t practiced enough—”

  “There were issues with the cast,” said Logan with a dismissive shrug. “But that’s not why you failed.”

  Failed. Jude knew it was the right term, but it still felt like a blow to the chest.

  “I mean, if I can’t cast, then I can’t cast,” said Jude, the defeated feeling infusing her tone. “I just—I need to train more, I need to—”

  “The skills will come with practice, yes,” said Logan. “That’s not the real problem. You failed because you expected to fail. You stopped in the middle of what you were doing, and you looked at me.” She cocked her head to the side, raising one eyebrow as she gave Jude an appraising look. “You knew I woul
d be there to bail you out, so you chose to rely on me, instead of relying on yourself.” She folded her arms tightly over her chest. “If you do that in a real fight, you’ll get yourself killed.”

  Jude slipped her own knife back into its sheath and gave a resentful shrug. She hated feeling like a failure, but she got the sense that she might need to get used to it if she ever wanted to get any better at this.

  “Fine,” she said. “But I still think the big issue is fucking up the cast.”

  A wry smile took over Logan’s face. “Do you think every demon hunter in history has been a letha caster?”

  Jude hesitated, uncertain. “Um…yeah? Who in their right mind would hunt demons if they couldn’t do magic?”

  Logan’s smile broadened.

  “I never said they were in their right minds.”

  Jude felt her jaw drop open. Logan laughed quietly and shook her head, then she started forward, heading out of the clearing.

  “Let’s get back to the house,” she said, as she passed Jude’s still unmoving form. “I think this lesson is over.”

  Jude nodded reluctantly before turning to follow her.

  “Wait,” she said as she rushed to catch up. “You didn’t tell me what was wrong with the cast.”

  “Ah,” Logan nodded. She pushed aside a stray branch as she stepped into the trees once more. “It’s the same problem you’ve had a few times. You’re trying to access eira powers with a letha cast. Letha can’t summon fire, remember?”

  “Oh, right,” said Jude with a sigh. She should have known that by now, but it was all a little confused and muddled to her. After all, Hugh Knatt had told her that on rare occasions, particularly powerful letha casters could summon eira abilities—but, of course, she couldn’t fool anyone into believing she was a particularly powerful letha caster. She could barely hold onto a cast even when she did it the right way. So even if it could be done, there was little point in her attempting it now.