Scorned by Shadows (Kissed by Shadows Series, Book 4)

by Lola StVil

  The air fills with crackling energy and flashes bright, and the picture before me is etched into my brain like a photograph. Langston on her knees, screaming with pain and exertion. The ground becoming charged and the demons. Oh my God, the demons. They are burning on the spot, bursting into flames and screaming in agony.

  I can smell them burning. It’s sweet and sickly at the same time, and I am absolutely horrified when my stomach growls at the smell of the charring meat. Their flesh begins to slough off their bones, falling to the ground in steaming heaps as they scream and scream.

  Only when the last demon has fallen does Langston stop. Her face is deathly white, and she falls to her side and lands with a thud that I can hear through the deathly silence. Her eyes slip closed. A wisp of white smoke curls from her head.

  I jump to my feet, ignoring my own pain.

  “Is everyone alive?” I yell.

  I can hear the hysteria in my voice, and I let out a bubbling laugh when four voices croak out “yes.” Regal staggers to his feet, and it takes all I have not to scream at the sight of him. One of his arms hangs on by a thread of skin alone, and his head lolls at an angle I can only call broken.

  “We have to get her out of here before she dies,” he croaks. “Sadie can save her.”

  He stumbles another couple steps until he’s by her side and drops to the ground, unconscious. That’s Kane, Langston, and Regal in touching distance of each other. I spot Perry dragging Saudia through the flesh and skeletons around us. His broken arm is still hanging limply at his side, and he’s dragging her one-handed.

  “She’s alive,” Perry whispers.

  I can’t see any wounds on her, but she’s not in good condition. I can hear her labored breathing from here, and I can see the trail of blood her body is leaving as Perry drags her toward us.

  I am level with Kane and the others now, and I look down at Kane. He gives me a pained smile. His face is chalky white, and I don’t think he can hang on for much longer either.

  I take a step towards Perry to help him with Saudia when the ground begins to shake again, and Eris’s manic laughter sounds from the sky.

  I see fingers grasping the top of the chasm. Another wave of demons is coming. I look at the demons’ fingers and then at Perry and Saudia and for a moment, I am completely frozen.

  “Atlas! Go. Just get them out of here,” Perry says.

  His words break through my utter panic, and I shake my head as I run towards him.

  “No fucking way am I leaving you two behind,” I say.

  I grab one of Saudia’s arms from him, and between us, we drag her backward. Now that I am this close to them, I see the gash that runs from Perry’s ankle right up past the middle of his thigh. It’s so deep I can see his shin bone. His face is a grimace of pain, and he’s sweating profusely. I can see the caved-in part of Saudia’s skull where the bloody trail comes from and I think I can see her brain through her matted hair.

  I can hardly breathe as I drag Saudia along, but I grit my teeth and ignore every warning my body screams at me. We are a couple of steps away from the others now. Just a couple of steps. I stumble a little and as I fall to one side, I feel one of my broken ribs pierce my lung.

  My breathing is instantly a wet, noisy mess and I can taste blood in my mouth. I cough, and bloody foam comes up, flooding my mouth and coating my lips.

  We cover the final distance as a thick glob of blood comes up. I am trying desperately to breathe, but I can feel the air escaping through my shredded lung, and I’m dangerously light-headed again.

  I fall to my knees.

  “Perry, everyone has to be touching each other,” I rasp out.

  Perry ignores his own pain, seeing that I can’t do anymore, and he quickly positions Saudia’s hands, one of them on Kane’s foot and the other one on Langston’s shoulder. He makes his way around the others, and my vision is swimming in and out so alarmingly that I can hardly see what he’s doing.

  A noise behind me forces me to turn slightly. The demons are out of the chasm, and they’re running at us at full speed. Already lasers, fire, and ice are swimming down onto us, and I’m just done. I’m dead.

  “Atlas. The dime,” Perry yells.

  He throws himself to the ground and clings to Langston. The demons are on us now, and they’re kicking at us, firing into us. I have to do this. I have to.

  I take Kane’s hand, and his eyes flutter open.

  “Take us home, Disney,” he mutters, and his eyes close again.

  His complete trust in me gives me the last ounce of energy I need to pull the dime from my pocket. I flick it into the air, and the world goes black.

  It’s been a long couple of days since the final battle with Eris’s demon army. The weeks dragged by as I slowly healed and then waited for the others to recover. It didn’t feel like days. It felt like centuries.

  It was touch and go for me for a while—it was for all of us—and even once it was clear I would live, no one was quite sure if I would ever walk again. I owe the healer who concocted a mixture to fix my Achilles’ tendons more than I will ever be able to repay them. And I guess playing the waiting game was a small price to be back on my feet.

  I talked to my mom once I was back in the land of the living about what happened from us landing back in the loft to me waking up. I don’t remember us leaving the valley. The last thing I remember was telling Atlas to bring us home, and then I flaked out. When I woke back up, I was in a spare room in the loft, and my legs were strapped up with the healer’s mixture working its magic.

  As soon as my mom found out I was awake, she came in to talk to me, and she told me that we arrived back in the loft in a heap of twisted, mangled, unconscious bodies and blood. She said we were all within an inch of death, and she and Pest just looked at each other with no idea where to start. She didn’t have enough magic to fix us, but she had enough magic to keep us clinging to life while she sent Pest to fetch the best healers from the Tamlo.

  The healers did a hell of a good job because everyone made it. We’ll all bear the scars for a long time, both physically and mentally, but we’re all alive. Fuck, no one knows how. Sheer will to live? Magic? I don’t know, but I don’t think it matters. I think all that really matters is that we’re all alive.

  Saudia spent some time in a coma. Her body pretty much shut down once her skull was crushed, but she’s a fighter through and through, and she woke up, and now there’s no stopping her. It’s like she wasn’t even hurt. The scars she will carry are mental. Finding out that we could have gotten past the Winter Demon without her having to kill Tracey will haunt her for a long time.

  Perry was fine once he was stitched up and his twisted arm was fixed. He’ll have a permanent scar down his shin, but it’s a small price to pay considering what he went through. The healers were amazed he had managed to walk on his leg at all, let alone drag Saudia’s unconscious body along behind him. Maybe he isn’t such a nuisance after all. No, I take that back. He is a damn nuisance, but he’s our nuisance, and he came through when it mattered and saved us all.

  Atlas’s ribs were fixed, and she was given a mixture to knit her shredded lung back together. My mom gave her antivenom to counteract the snakebite while she waited for the healers to come to the loft. That saved her life. The venom was only inches away from flooding her heart, and if that had happened, well, I don’t even want to think about that. The holes the demon blood burned in her are taking the longest to heal. They are almost gone now, and they don’t pain her anymore, but the healers think it’ll be another week or two before they close up completely, and her right ankle and shin were shattered.

  Regal had to spend a long time flat on his back while he waited for the mixture the healers gave him to take effect and his arm to begin to regenerate the joint that was meant to hold it to his body. He also had to have his broken neck set properly, and wait until it was all the way healed before he could even sit up.

  I spent a long time sitting in his room, and
we talked a lot. He told me that a part of him will always love Atlas, but seeing the real love we share, he knows now that what he feels for her is more of a friend love. He’ll be able to move on now, and I really hope he finds someone. Underneath it all, he’s a decent guy and—dare I say it?—he’s the closest thing I have to a brother now. Carla, the Valkyrie that dated Perry, came to see him a couple of times actually. I think he is even going to take her out—if the healers ever let him leave their sight, that is.

  We didn’t just talk about Atlas and Carla. We talked about our hopes, our dreams, and our fears. And unlike talking with Talon, I didn’t once get the impression Regal was storing anything up to use against me later, and he never once suggested I should go out and kill someone to make myself feel better. That should go without saying, but it’s what Talon would have said. And back then, it’s what I would have done. But not now. Not anymore. Maybe I am finally healed in more ways than one.

  Langston took the worst of the injuries. The wound in her stomach was easy to fix, and the cuts and bruises too. But the lightning was way more powerful than any current she has ever attempted to control before, and to stand any chance of controlling it, she had to take it into herself. All of her internal organs were burned, and no one thought she would make it.

  We had even all been in to say our goodbyes to her. Perry went last—he kept putting it off, finding reasons not to go into her room. He admitted to Atlas that he felt like saying goodbye to her was almost like giving her permission to die. Atlas gently convinced him that if she let go and he didn’t get to say goodbye, he would never be able to live with himself.

  Finally, he forced himself to go in there and let her go. He was back out in seconds, laughing and crying at the same time. Langston had woken up as he said his goodbyes and told him she wasn’t so easy to shake either. She was officially declared as good as new this morning by her team of healers. She is literally a fucking superhero. She saved us all.

  We spent the day together, rehashing the battle and asking each other what we could have done differently. When it got too depressing, Atlas called a halt to it all and brought out a bottle of champagne, then she smashed it, and brought out the good stuff. Over tequila shots and daiquiris, she gave a speech about how we should be celebrating our victory not beating ourselves up about split-second decisions that proved to be bad ones.

  She reminded us that we were one step closer to the final goal of beating Arken and that we should be happy.

  No one mentioned how the final goal was handing her heart over to him, but I have already vowed that no matter what the consequences might be, she isn’t doing that, and that hasn’t changed.

  We drank until we were all falling around, laughing and dancing. And letting go of all of the ghosts from the Valley of the Damned. We went to bed happily drunk, and Atlas and I made love for hours before she fell asleep in my arms.

  I smile down at her now as she lies there, breathing deeply, lost in her dreams. I never ever thought I could be saved, but she showed me I was worth saving. I never thought I could be loved, but she showed me that was bullshit too.

  If I’ve learned one thing from this whole mess, it’s that I am capable of love. Of both loving and of being loved. And yes, that I deserve to be loved.

  The universe has spoken, and any lingering doubts I had about Atlas seeing the light and leaving me are gone. The love we have is pure and true. And it’s real. Nothing can tear us apart now.

  Except for one thing. The thing that I am about to commit. Murder.

  My mind keeps going back to what Aphrodite said to Atlas. How her heart craves revenge, and she must let it go, or she will darken her soul. We talked about Talon as we recovered and she told me she’s trying to let go of it all, but I know she hasn’t. I don’t think she’ll be able to, no matter how much she might want to.

  I can’t just stand by and let it blacken her soul. And there’s only one way to stop it from happening. I will kill Talon. Atlas once told me killing Talon after what he had done was more an act of light than of darkness. I don’t know whether I truly believe that or not, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

  I am not afraid of fighting the darkness within me. It’s a battle I’ve already fought and won and a battle I know I can win again. What scares me is how Atlas might react. I don’t think she’ll care that Talon is dead. I don’t even think she’ll care that I killed him.

  What will be our undoing is me breaking my promise to her. I looked her in the eye, and I promised her that I wouldn’t do this. But I must.

  I see Talon flinch as I approach him, although he attempts to hide it. I smile at him, and he relaxes visibly. Before I kill him, I want to make him understand something. He has to know that he hasn’t won. And for that, I don’t want him on edge. I want him really hearing me.

  “Sit down, Talon,” I say, nodding to the ground. “Let’s talk.”

  Talon frowns, but he does as I say and I sit down opposite him. I knew where he would be tonight. The same place he’s been every night since he got word that our mission was a success. Drowning his sorrows in his favorite bar. I sent him a text message telling him to meet me on the roof.

  Every night, Talon has drunk himself stupid and then smashed up the bar, but he draws a big enough crowd that the bar’s owner lets it go and keeps letting him back in again. I suppress a smile when I think that tonight, the bartenders won’t have any mess to clean up. But the bar owner will see a massive drop in his takings tomorrow.

  “What is there to say, Kane? You chose her,” Talon says.

  I ignore the whiny tone of his voice, and I nod my head.

  “I did. And I need you to know something, Talon. You sent her to the worst place imaginable. You sent her there to send me a message. A message I heard loud and clear. You wanted me to come back to the darkness, to you. For us to be brothers again. But you didn’t break her. Nothing you can ever do to her will break her. Why? Because love will always beat hate and good will always beat evil.”

  Talon risks a sardonic grin.

  “You’re starting to sound like a greeting card, Kane,” he says.

  I give a small laugh that doesn’t really sound like me.

  “Maybe that’s true. But there you go. I embraced the light, Talon. For her. And her love keeps me going every single day. If that’s like something from a greeting card, then so be it. There was a time when I thought you could be saved too. That you could step into the light with us and we could still be brothers. Was that stupid of me?”

  Talon shrugs.

  “Maybe a little. You know I would do anything to have my brother back, Kane. I think I’ve proved that, but we both know there’s no light left in me. I don’t know if there ever was.”

  “I always thought the same about myself,” I say.

  I pause as the anger flares up in me as I watch his calmly reflective expression. I slam my fist down on the ground, making Talon flinch again.

  “How could you do that, Talon? After everything we went through at that place, how could you take her there?”

  Talon grins, and I resist the urge to smash my fist into his face. I need him to understand what he’s done, and he doesn’t. Not yet. But he will.

  “Where else would I have taken her?” he asks.

  It’s a simple statement, but I recognize the truth of it. Where else would he have taken her than the very place that broke him?

  “So, have you called me up here to gloat then or just to say goodbye?” he asks. “Because the night is almost over and I have time for another drink or two.”

  “Neither, Talon. I called you here to make you understand that nothing you can do can break Atlas. You’ve done the worst thing possible, and you didn’t break her. Do you understand that, Talon? Do you?”

  He nods, and I see the truth in his eyes. He knows now he can’t break her. He knows she is, and always will be, stronger than him.

  “I also came here to tell you that you did achieve something. You did mana
ge to send me back into the darkness. So congratulations on that,” I add.

  His face lights up.

  “Do you mean it? Why didn’t you say so sooner? Let’s go down to the bar and have a drink and cause some fuckery. Like old times,” he says.

  I shake my head sadly.

  “You don’t understand, Talon. You have brought me back to the darkness. You have managed to penetrate the light Atlas brings out in me and put darkness back inside of me. That’s not something to celebrate. I…I hate you for what you’ve done to me. You are not my brother. A brother wouldn’t do that. A brother would see that I had made something good of my life and they would support me, not try to destroy it. So yeah. You win. You’ve destroyed me, and you’ve torn Atlas and me apart for good.”

  “I don’t understand, Kane. How have I torn you and Atlas apart? Don’t think I don’t know that you’ve been living in the loft with them all playing happy families.”

  “Atlas is the one good thing in my life. She is my life. And you sent her to the darkest hell there ever was. The hell that you and I barely escaped from. You sent the girl I love to the Meat Market!”

  “Okay, I know. And I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too,” I reply sadly.

  “Sorry for what—”

  “This,” I tell him as I slice into his chest, and I watch as my best friend’s blood drips from my blade.

  THE END

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