The Shadow Project

by Cecilia Dominic

  The papers in the folder made almost all of my distracting thoughts about Lawrence flee. I looked over the charts and figures—it was some sort of trial, and it had numbers for the CLS vector, which I’d expected. But there were others. One vampire chart. One cat shifter one. And one for witches. The one for Fae was blank, but a handwritten note said, "subject's arrival imminent."

  Suddenly cold, I looked at the top of the chart and saw that particular page was dated a week previously, which matched up to when the invitation had been sent to Gabriel and Lonna.

  Selene, who had moved to the other side of Lawrence, apparently had the same thought. She and I locked gazes, and it was evident we shared the sudden suspicion that we had been set up. Sir Raleigh's purr faded into a low growl. She and I both stepped backward out of the small room and into the main lab.

  "What is it?" John asked. "Doctors, is something wrong?"

  Selene and I didn't wait. We broke into a run and darted as fast as we could through the lab.

  "What the…?" Corey said. "Lawrence, come on!"

  A wave of shifter energy propelled me forward. Oh, Hades, they were coming after us. We'd almost reached the door to the outside when Sir Raleigh dug in with his claws. Instead of holding on, he leaped off my shoulder backward, landing behind me. I skidded to a stop.

  "Raleigh!" I yelled and grabbed for him, but my hands passed through him.

  Selene reached the outer door and yanked it open.

  "Reine, come on!"

  "I can't leave him." I didn't know what he was doing, but he'd folded into a ball of dark energy that glowed purple and white around the edge, like I'd always imagined a black hole doing. And like a black hole, he seemed to have incredible mass because I couldn't move.

  Lawrence could barely make it through the hall in his gargoyle form. His half-folded wings scraped the walls, leaving scratches with the claws at the ends of his wing bones, but he wasn't the one who worried me the most. No, it was Corey, a mountain lion, who rounded the corner, his lips drawn back in a snarl to show his sharp teeth.

  And, like in nightmares, I couldn't move.

  The ball of energy that had been Sir Raleigh expanded to fill the width of the hall, and both the pursuing shifters halted on the other side of it. The dark sphere coalesced into a panther-like creature with bat-like wings and one white paw, and its snarl made the walls rumble.

  Well, damn. My kitten had a major intimidation factor.

  "Reine, please," Lawrence said. "I need to explain."

  I arched an eyebrow. "You have an interesting way of showing it." But Hades, he was sexy. He'd come out of his turtleneck, the shreds of which still ringed his neck, wrists, and waist, and his dark jeans strained over his muscles and, er, yeah. Apparently changing was a turn-on for gargoyles.

  Sir Raleigh and I backed up, and I resisted the urge to touch his soft gray fur to make sure he was, indeed, the sweet little cat who had somehow come to me from…well, I didn't know where. But now I had more proof that he had been sent to protect me, and the thought that someone, somewhere was watching out for me made an unfamiliar warmth come to my chest. And fear—what would they want in return for this gift? That's how things worked in Faerie, among all Fae—nothing came free. It's how we protected ourselves from going soft. Going human.

  "I'm listening," I said, although I really wasn't.

  "We knew someone in our company had betrayed us," Lawrence said. "But we didn't—don't—know who. We need you to help us flush them out since they obviously need a sample of your DNA."

  "No way, Jose," I said. "I'm not here to be a trap." And I definitely didn't want to give them any of my genetic material, even as part of a trap. That would go counter to my Fae mission.

  Corey tried to sneak around, but Sir Raleigh blocked him, and with a snarl, sent him flying backward, claw marks across his chest.

  "I'm serious," I said. "I'm not going to cooperate and I sure as Hades won't be forced."

  "Please," Lawrence said. "Can we sit down and discuss this rationally? Call off your pet?"

  "Nope."

  I had reached the door and had almost made it through when Selene came running back in.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "The soul-eater is out there," she said and steadied herself against the wall, breathless.

  I grabbed her by her shoulders and looked into her eyes, inhaling her energy and scent. Satisfied it was truly her, I let her go.

  "How do you know?"

  “The security guard…” She gulped back a sob. "There was something odd about him, and he kept asking for you. He shouldn't have known about you."

  I turned to see a dark shape at the door. The translucent glass may have made him look bigger than he was, but I didn't want to find out.

  "I'm glad he didn't hurt you," I said, "but I'm not sure what to do."

  The door opened inward with a bang, and the security guard came in, his pistol—they issued those to security guards?—raised. He started firing, and I grabbed Selene and pulled her into a doorway. The unlocked door gave way, and we tumbled into a custodial office.

  The sounds of gunfire, snarling, and growling resonated through every cell of my being, and I cursed in every language I knew as Selene and I took cover behind a desk. Not that it would give us much help if a gun-crazy soul-eater were to come in, but at least it was something.

  Then everything went quiet. Like, deathly, press-on-your-ears absence of noise that in itself made its own racket and faded into silence.

  Tomb silence.

  "Shit," Selene whispered, barely audible.

  I nodded. "Wait a few minutes."

  The sound of scampering footsteps heralded the arrival of Sir Raleigh, who looked like he had blood around his mouth and on his white paw. He stopped in front of us and proceeded to clean himself. I couldn't watch him—he seemed to be relishing the grisly task. He was indeed a grimalkin, which meant he'd been sent by a dark or gray Fae. But who? And what would my debt be?

  We waited ten minutes, and I crept into the hallway. The lights were out, even the emergency ones, and my eyesight, although good, could only make out dark shapes. The one in front of me groaned, and I found it was Lawrence. Part of me was relieved he still had his throat intact.

  "Lawrence," I whispered in his ear.

  He rolled over, and my hand met his shoulder. He had returned to human.

  "Reine?" he asked.

  "Yes, come on." I brought him into the office, which, for some reason, I could see better in. "Where's Corey?"

  "He was battling that thing that came in." He shook his head. His voice sounded thick. Had he been injured internally? "They knocked me over, and I blacked out."

  "Great," I said. "Soul-eater's still on the loose." Not good news.

  "How did it get in?" Selene asked. "This building is supposed to be warded."

  "It must have gathered enough energy from the security guard, who I presume is welcome to patrol in here," I said. "Hades, that means it's getting stronger. I'm guessing the real guard is knocked out or dead somewhere outside."

  "This is going to be a mess," Lawrence groaned.

  "Way to have sympathy there, gargoyle," Selene told him.

  "I do feel bad for him. His name is—was?—Oscar. He was a nice guy. It's going to be a mess because he protected us from the rest of security getting too nosy."

  "Oh." Selene didn't say anything else.

  "What now?" Lawrence asked. I realized he was looking to me to be the leader.

  "Can you, uh, shift again?" I asked. "I hate to burden you since you're probably weak from earlier, but I'm hoping that you can protect us better if you're in your gargoyle form."

  "I can't." He grabbed me, his hand cold, and something pressed in on me, making me feel like my spirit was being compressed.

  "Oh, shit." It was the soul-eater. I hadn't checked.

  Sir Raleigh jumped on not-Lawrence's head and wreathed him in black smoke. The creature disappeared with a howl, and the air around us
seemed to lighten. I almost choked on my heartbeat, it was so strong, but I ran into the hallway. There I found real Lawrence, still in gargoyle form, lying unconscious and barely breathing. I took a deep breath and probed his energy to make sure it was him. He smelled of sweat and shampoo and the earthy, stony odor of marble after a rain. I'd never found gargoyles to smell good before, but this one did. Damn.

  "Come on," I said. "Selene, can you help me?"

  "Yes," she told me and knelt on his other side. "What do you need?"

  "Can you do chest compressions? Wait." I touched her and confirmed she was her. Sir Raleigh trotted out to join us, and somehow he relayed the message to me that the bad creature had disappeared into the ether, which I took to mean whatever dimension it traveled through. Hopefully it had been knocked outside of the wards and wouldn't be able to get back in.

  "Right, chest compressions. What about you?"

  I took a deep breath. "I'm going to breathe life back into a gargoyle."

  She started with the compressions and hummed the "Stayin' Alive" song. I tilted his head back, which opened his mouth slightly. When I pressed my lips to his, a jolt went through me, like two puzzle pieces clicking together.

  Perhaps there was something to his tale of gargoyles protecting Fae, after all. It wasn't unheard of for princesses to mate with their guards. It figured that prejudice would cause certain details to be left out of the old tales.

  I closed my eyes and reached for the energy surrounding me, of which there wasn't much. The wards blocked what I could get from the trees outside, and the cinderblock walls around me had long had the life ground out of them. But that didn't mean I couldn't pull a Fae trick, although it might drain me. I placed my hands on either side of Lawrence's head and felt through the linoleum, concrete, and various plumbing and sub-structures to the red clay earth below. Metaphysical roots grew from my hands into the space beneath, and I pulled the energy from the earth to heal the stone man whose lips lay slack under mine. I breathed healing and light into him, a life force generated by the growth of the roots and wriggling creatures underneath.

  With each breath I blew into him, his body inflated, and Selene continued to count. I was almost ready to give up in despair when he lurched up and took a deep, rasping breath. We backed off, in my case with a wrenching feeling as I released the roots I'd made into the earth below, leaving two holes in the floor. I rubbed my palms together, then held them over his chest and allowed the last of the healing energy to seep into his chest.

  He continued to breathe, and each inhale and exhale went smoother. Finally, he opened his eyes.

  "What happened?" he asked, his gargoyle voice again deep and resonant.

  "The soul-eater got you," I said. "It stole your energy and impersonated you. The only way you're not dead right now is because you're in your strong shifter form."

  He rubbed a hand over his chest. "I tingle. What did you do to me?"

  "Selene did CPR on you. I breathed for you until you could do so on your own." I didn't want to explain more than that—for it to become another data point about the Fae in his never-ending study of me. Hopefully no one would notice the tiny holes in the floor. Probably not since bullet marks now riddled the hallway.

  He didn't look like he believed me, but he didn't press. Selene and I helped him to stand, and we limped further into the building, followed by Sir Raleigh. We found the lab in disarray and the door to the secret office closed. It lay flush against the cinder-block, so it was no wonder we hadn't noticed it. Now that I knew it was there, I would hopefully be able to open it.

  "John? Corey?" Lawrence asked. No answer. They weren't anywhere else in the lab, so where else could they be?

  "Can you open it?" Selene asked.

  "I can't," Lawrence said. He looked at his clawed hands. "I could perhaps force it, but it's designed to make that impossible."

  "Let me try," I said. I placed my hands on the walls and again felt inside them. The cinder blocks felt like stone sponges, dead and hollow, but the metal of a locking mechanism beckoned to me. I followed its signal and coaxed the tumblers to open. Luckily, I'd done some training with an unlocking witch, so I knew what to do.

  The wall swung inward to reveal Corey and John standing behind the desk, each of them pointing a gun at us. Kestrel stood between them looking miserable.

  25

  My nostrils flared to take in the smells and energies again, but a pain traveled through my right nostril and into my eye socket. I clutched at my face with a groan. I must have used all of my strength rescuing Lawrence. As if to agree, my stomach growled.

  "I can't tell," I gritted out, "if it's the soul-eater." But I hoped it had exhausted itself as well. What was I to do? It seemed to grow in strength while I remained the same or weakened.

  "It's all right," Lawrence said. "They're them. I can tell."

  It pained me to say it, but I told him, "I trust you. And Doctor Graves and Corey, we don't mean to harm you."

  Both men lowered their weapons but kept wary eyes on us.

  "What was that thing?" Corey asked. He was shirtless, and scratches showed on his broad chest. Damn, did all these men have impressive physiques?

  "Sorry about that." I pointed to his chest. "Sir Raleigh is protective of me."

  "Not him," Corey smiled fondly at the kitten, who had resumed his place on my shoulder. "He's a good kitty, protecting you. No, what was that thing that came in? It looked like Oscar, but not."

  "That was the soul-eater we encountered earlier." The weight of the words made my tone grim. "It's getting stronger and better at impersonating energy. It fooled me for a few minutes just now. Are you all right?"

  "Yes," Corey said. "I fought it off and came back in here to protect the lab and John."

  "Thanks," John said, although he didn't look happy to be rescued. Must be a man thing. "Why did you two run earlier?"

  Selene cleared her throat before I could reply. "Come on," she said and put her hands on her hips. "You showed us a file indicating that Reine was the object of someone's intense scientific curiosity. In every book, movie, and television show, that's when the trap gets sprung."

  "Perhaps it was," I said. "But by the soul-eater. Doctor Graves, the situation is getting more dire by the second. Who was this anonymous tip from?" I air-quoted ‘anonymous.’

  He sank into the chair and rubbed his eyes. "Would you believe Kestrel?"

  He couldn't see Corey's reaction, but I could. A guilty look flashed across his face.

  "How would Kestrel know anything about this?" I asked. But I had already answered my question that afternoon—she was a clever girl and noticed things.

  "Cimex sometimes lets her use his office for homework when she comes to visit us here and observe. She has clearance through her school, and Beverly and I may have pulled some strings to have some of her field observation be here."

  "You're overprotective of her," Selene said. "You worry that since she's not come into her complete witch powers, she's vulnerable as part of the PBI."

  "It's more her mother than me," John said, perhaps too quickly. "I know she's a strong and capable young woman." He glanced over his shoulder at Corey. "And I know Corey keeps an eye on her."

  Corey nodded, and his facial expression looked too stony. I felt for him. It must be hard for him and Kestrel to hide their feelings for each other from everyone, especially her helicopter parents.

  "So, she found these in Cimex's office?" I asked. "What's the point of having a secret laboratory, if that's the case?"

  "She didn't find the files. She discovered the presence of the office. There's a door between here and his office. One of the file cabinets moves outward. She had a flare of unlocking power, which allowed her to discover how to release the security mechanism. Thankfully it went better this time than during her last flare."

  "That must have been when the top-security storage lock got broken," I said. "And why it hasn't been repaired—you don't want her to lose her clearance by letting
someone outside the lab know." Yet more than one person did know.

  "Right," he said with a sigh. "So now what? You report me? You figure out what Cimex is up to?"

  "Nope." I assumed my best drawing room detective pose, which might have made me look like a little teapot with one hand on my hip and the other gesturing to Graves and Lawrence. "I think the bigger question is what you two were up to. I found the notes."

  "What notes?" John asked at the same time Lawrence exclaimed, "What?"

  This time John wasn't lying, and Lawrence looked pissed. Whoops.

  "Um, never mind," I said. I gathered up the last of my dignity. "I was trying to bluff. Didn't work. Sorry."

  John shrugged and laughed. "Well, I hope you found out what you needed. I'm innocent of whatever you were going to accuse me of."

  He might be, but Lawrence glowered at me.

  "Would you mind if I had a private word with Doctor River?" he asked.

  I'd never been called to the principal's office, but I had the feeling I was about to experience something like it.

  "What the hell were you thinking?" Lawrence asked once we got down to his lab. Human angry Lawrence looked even more frightening than angry gargoyle Lawrence, if that was possible. And it didn't help that his turtleneck hung around his torso in shreds, reminding me of his potential rage.

  "Um, when?" I asked. I tried to muster some sort of indignation—I was a Fae princess and not subject to the interrogation of a gargoyle. But I'd made a pretty big mistake, so, also, I needed to own up to it.

  "Oh, I don't know," he said. "When you looked through my files? When you decided to accuse John Graves of something you had scant evidence for? When you kissed me?" His mouth worked for a second. I guessed he hadn't meant for that last one to come out.

  "I knew something was up, that someone wasn't telling me something, so that was self-preservation. Two, I thought for sure you and John were up to something, so I've now established his innocence." And all fingers pointed to Cimex plus a female accomplice—maybe Leah? But something didn't feel quite right about that, either. "And three, I wasn't kissing you, I was giving you mouth-to-mouth."