Shadow World

by Gaja J. Kos

  “Sacred Skies?”

  The gleam in his eyes confirmed it. Reiner coughed, but the sound ended in laughter. The kind I didn’t like one bit.

  “If you’re such a grand spy, Crina”—he brought his face to mine—“it’s surprising you haven’t found the sack of shit that’s your father yet.”

  Every muscle inside me tensed—then became blissfully light as my power crashed through my body. Fuck Reiner and his fucking games.

  Blue fire blazed, cutting through the dense smoke and clearing the air in our immediate vicinity. This wasn’t over.

  If I had to spirit him away to torture Vuyasin’s location out of him, then that was fine with me. Reaching for my particle form, I shifted position to hold on to the slimy prick tighter.

  A split second.

  That was all the time my focus wasn’t at one hundred percent.

  It was enough.

  Reiner’s fist collided with my sternum like a damned sledgehammer. Heat licked at my back as I staggered and hit the desk with my ass. But just as I moved away from the fire, Reiner rushed towards it.

  A snarling yell died on my lips when the bastard sprang, propelling himself through the flames and shattering the window on his way out. I called to my alternate form and tried to follow, only to hit a fucking wall of smoke and fire.

  Incinerating my particles would help no one.

  As sirens rose in the distance, I reluctantly admitted defeat on the Reiner front and got the fuck out of the office. I slipped into the Shadow World as close as I could get to Hieraven’s place, bypassing Yelena’s territory entirely. Reiner might have made his fiery exit, but he wasn’t the only one in possession of the info I had to find. Just the quickest route to it.

  Shadows welcomed my presence as I approached the veiled residence.

  While Sacred Skies’s records had been quite extensive, there had been nothing to indicate where Vuyasin could be hiding. But Reiner had insinuated he knew. Of course, the way he was wired, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d withheld that info from his employers.

  Half of the time, I had no idea what went on in his head. But the fact remained—if someone without access to the Shadow World could track down a demon, then I sure as fuck could, too.

  Pissed at myself for postponing the summoning ritual, I cut through the last of the shadows and scoped out the building.

  No one lurked inside Hieraven’s place. Good. Now I just hoped the demon who’d been at the core of Sacred Skies’s interest right alongside my father provided the answers I sought.

  I regained corporeal form the instant I entered. Pain lanced through me where Reiner’s blows had connected, but I shoved it aside. I’d have time to heal properly when all this was over.

  The residence was much as it had been when I’d crashed their scheming party. I didn’t know why I expected anything else given that Reiner couldn’t reach the Shadow World unless someone explicitly brought him here. Thankfully, even the worst of our kind were wary when it came to letting outsiders in.

  I skirted around the couch and marched into the adjacent room I’d wanted to investigate the first time around. Documents, books, ledgers, and various objects I suspected were more than likely stolen took up almost every inch of the space. I sifted through the stuff.

  Hieraven wasn’t a young demon by any means, and the asshole hoarded paper as if his life depended on it.

  I set aside yet another contract that had expired in the previous century and groaned.

  For fuck’s sake, I knew painfully well how quickly shit like this could pile up. But having a drawer full of years-old bills was nothing compared to the repository of useless statements Hieraven had going on here.

  I leaned on the desk and calmed myself. I couldn’t lose patience now. Not when I felt it in my bones that my logic was right.

  With not only Yelena after him, but a bounty on his head, too, Vuyasin’s best bet was fleeing to the mortal world. He was a target there as well, but it certainly provided more options to hide than a place where his energy signature would be far easier to track. It was what I would have done.

  I frowned and moved over to the tall shelves dominating the adjacent wall. My father was working with Hieraven to get the amulet. Jobs like that required a fair share of trust between the involved parties, along with means of communication, and, if anything went wrong, a safe location to regroup.

  Sure, Hieraven had put out a bounty on my father’s head, but…

  But what if that had been a diversion?

  A nifty little way for Hieraven to direct attention away from himself while everyone was busy searching for a person they would never find?

  I ran my fingers along the uninterrupted line of haphazardly stacked binders.

  Vuyasin didn’t own any properties of his own beyond the confines of Yelena’s court.

  But Hieraven just might.

  It took me longer than I cared to admit to thumb through the binders. With no rhyme or reason to their contents—save for a red thread of eyebrow-raising agreements the demon had established with numerous individuals—I was just about ready to burn everything down to ash.

  But in the end, I found it.

  A deed to a house.

  I pulled the clipped papers from their plastic sheet and dropped the binder to the floor.

  This was it.

  I leafed through the pages. Apparently, Hieraven had purchased the property a few years back, just after the War, when the prices were ridiculously cheap given the general devastation. The place itself didn’t sound impressive on paper, nothing to draw the eye. Its location was just far enough away from Ljubljana to not attract any attention, but not as far as to be too remote. Perfect to conduct unsavory business.

  Or lay low.

  A hint of a smile curled up the corners of my lips, though it didn’t last.

  I should have thought about this sooner. Should have asked Simon to check the properties of every one of my father’s associates.

  But I had been too damn busy with Viktor—and Breccan, for that matter—to give Vuyasin’s case the attention it deserved.

  Before the anger ratcheting again could spread, I took particle form and returned to the mortal world.

  Time to kill several birds with one blazing blue stone.

  Chapter 18

  The stench of decay was the first thing that hit me.

  Even in my alternate state, the reek grazed my atoms and stirred my phantom senses until I had no choice but to reclaim my body and press a hand to my nose. My boots sank into the sun-kissed grass.

  Shit.

  The carnage—because it couldn’t be anything less than that—was at least a day old, and the recent warm, almost summerish, temperatures had done nothing to ameliorate the situation.

  There were no wards around the rustic house, no traps or alarms of the supernatural variety as I crept forward. A great way to keep up appearances, this was nothing more than a regular human lodging.

  But also a great risk.

  Judging by the smell, one that had brought lethal consequences.

  While my body adjusted to the stench, I took in the little oasis Hieraven had acquired for himself.

  Ensconced in greenery, the house was shielded from prying eyes, the only road leading to it distressed from either old age or the War. I squinted at the building bathed in golden light and inched closer. Patched-up cracks littered the facade like old scars, but the windows boasted that gleaming white polish—no more than a couple of years old.

  Slowly, I crossed the road, my steps uneven on the deep ruts that indicated something a lot heavier than a car made frequent visits to the place. Up ahead, the front door showed no marks of forced entry, so I rounded the corner and cut through the shade, then tried the back.

  The rank perfume of decay nearly suffocated me.

  No breeze slithered through the pocket of stale air, just the sun coming down hard on the building and the homemade cement patio jutting out beneath the back door. Flies buzz
ed their annoying tunes as I braved the stench and padded closer. The lock was busted—blunt strength rather than tools.

  Reiner.

  His name coiled through me, cold and foreboding. Which made me that much more pissed I hadn’t finished him off back in the office. But as I shouldered my way inside, another presence grabbed my attention.

  The energy signature was faded, speaking of someone who had long left the premises, but I recognized it nonetheless. The well-dressed slime I’d seen with Lebar. Albert’s unnamed contact.

  Either the man was keeping a tight leash on Reiner, or he didn’t mind getting up close and personal with the gore.

  Neither option sounded particularly thrilling, though it definitely moved the guy a spot or two higher on my kill list.

  Holding my breath, I passed through the rustic kitchen into the living room. My boot halted on a creaking floorboard.

  Hieraven was here.

  Rotting flesh, lying in a crusted pool of his own filth.

  What a fucking awful way to go.

  I tiptoed around the mess, stepped over a string of entrails with no indication of their former owner, then scanned the other corpses. A shock of peach-colored hair. A pair of tattooed arms. Ayil and Fyllan. Along with three others of Hieraven’s associates, all in various states of dismemberment.

  And then some, I thought as I peered into the next room.

  Shit, not even Sacred Skies’s intel had covered just how large the group actually was. Or had been, at least.

  Because the bastards had certainly made sure no one slipped through the cracks this time. Clean fucking house.

  Fighting off the nausea at the overpowering reek of death that seemed to have fused with the cream-painted drywall, I studied the corpses.

  Every single one of the bodies bore marks of Reiner’s work.

  Unlike my personal preference for tidy kills, Reiner liked to leave a mess behind. But he never made a mistake. Never left one shred of evidence in what seemed like utter chaos at first sight. If I handed the case over to the police, they wouldn’t find a single damn thing tying the werewolf to the killings.

  The bastard was nothing if not thorough.

  I blew out a breath and moved forward. While some bodies were so disfigured only a print or DNA match could confirm their ID, my senses relayed someone was missing.

  One man, I hoped, who managed to evade the slaughter with the amulet in hand.

  Though what kind of power Vuyasin wanted to harness badly enough to get sucked into this mess was beyond me.

  Consorting with demons from another court. Hiring a top-notch fence. Getting on Yelena’s radar. Faking a bounty. And…this.

  It was like stepping up from mini gigs of breaking and entering to a full-blown gang war. And it made no fucking sense.

  For the piece of shit person that Vuyasin ultimately was, I could always count on him to value his own life above everything else. He wouldn’t have gotten himself tangled into something of such proportions if he hadn’t made sure he would come out on top with benefits that would more than outweigh the risks.

  The bedrooms on the first floor provided nothing of interest, though someone had gone through all the drawers and hiding spots. The mystery man, I suspected, if Reiner had been busy reveling in the slaughter downstairs.

  Just as I wanted to turn around and get the fuck out, a rogue thread of decay wafted through the air. Frowning, I looked down the hallway, but I’d already cleared every room—

  My gaze lifted to the ceiling.

  The plaster appeared to be intact, but the ornamental lines created a pattern that seemed at odds with the rest of the decor. As if someone had put a little too much effort into it. I narrowed my eyes at one of the dark lines, then broke myself down to my most basic parts and floated up.

  Sure enough, the line was a crack, no wider than a hair.

  I pressed myself through it.

  After an encounter with the sound absorption mat and its sharply cut edges, I emerged in a dim attic. The part of what had looked like a wonky ceiling from the level below crystallized into a trapdoor up here.

  A safe house within a safe house, even for individuals without the ability of taking particle form.

  Hieraven had really thought this through, regardless of the little good his pricey upgrades did him.

  I hovered over the panel for a second longer. No latch—nothing to indicate a physical means of opening the door. This kind of shit was way above even my assassin pay grade. My atoms swirled around the state-of-the-art mechanism. Probably remote control triggered. I hadn’t seen any gadgets lying around, but then again, I wouldn’t have.

  Not if Reiner had snatched it after he was done.

  I closed my eyes as I altered my shape and landed right beside the trapdoor. As my magic unfurled and probed the space, I peered into the dusk.

  Details sharpened as my vision adjusted to the somber hue. My stomach rolled.

  Reiner had definitely been in here.

  A prone body lay on the ground at the far side of the attic, pierced by a thin ray of sunlight filtering through the roof.

  A fucking stage.

  I didn’t have to come any closer to know precisely who the leading role belonged to, but I walked over nonetheless, not entirely sure if it was my will or something else guiding me forward.

  I knelt on the floorboards.

  Devoid of emotion—devoid of anything but a hollowness reigning within me—I let my blue fire shine upon Vuyasin’s corpse.

  Chapter 19

  I tried not to think that it was my father’s throat the blade was cutting into.

  Just another corpse. Just a lifeless slab of meat.

  I focused on the mechanics of sawing through bone and sinew as I guided the knife I’d borrowed from the shed out back, not stopping until it scraped against the floor. Still, bile rose when I lifted Vuyasin’s head by his light brown hair and wrapped it in a plastic bag.

  This desecration of his body went against everything I believed in. My magic urged me to burn the remains and set the flesh free. If Yelena weren’t on my case, I would have without another thought.

  But a picture wasn’t going to cut it with the Bitch Queen.

  Only solid proof of the unfakeable variety.

  The bag hit my thigh as I straightened. I lost it.

  Dropping the head with a nauseating thud, I ran away from the body and vomited until there was nothing left to come up. Shit, I didn’t have the luxury to fall apart.

  I didn’t even have the luxury to mourn my bastard of a father.

  I braced one hand against the wood-paneled wall and breathed deeply, but the effect was ruined as decay singed my nostrils, along with the stench of my own sick. Out. I had to get out.

  Snatching the bag, I shifted into particles and slipped through the crack. I didn’t even bother to check the house more thoroughly as I flew down to the kitchen and flipped between states again. The amulet was gone. I felt it in my bones, in my very essence.

  My father had met Viktor on that plane. But he had been in Sacred Skies’s territory. Whether they managed to track Vuyasin from there or simply got lucky with this address didn’t matter. I knew who had the fucking thing now. I would retrieve it.

  Then get my vengeance.

  Setting aside Vuyasin’s head, I rinsed out my mouth until nothing of the foul taste remained. My hands continued to shake, though I was glad to note it was from anger, not weakness. Not any longer. I splashed some water onto my face, then grabbed the bag and walked to the door.

  I never made it past the threshold.

  My skin tingled with the presence of enough demons to fill Yelena’s throne room to the brim. I backpedaled, reaching for my magic—

  A blast of demon fire slammed into my back.

  I screamed as blistering agony ripped along my spine.

  My father’s head slipped from my fingers and rolled under the rustic table just as the oppressive weight of non-corporeal presence reached dangerous level
s. The demons popped into existence in groups of threes and fours, surrounding me from all sides. Fuck.

  Not only had I been right in judging their numbers, but the comparison had been more spot-on than I thought.

  Because these demons…

  They were Yelena’s.

  I ducked under an arc of green fire, then twisted away from a fist, a boot, all the while trying to center myself enough to pull my magic to the surface. But there were too many of them, and they didn’t give me that measly split-second reprieve I needed to change shape and not fucking die in the process.

  Fire whipped at me. I sprinted sideways, just to come face-to-face with another attack.

  As I blocked the demon’s arm and snapped her wrist, someone sliced at me from behind.

  A killing blow, if I hadn’t fed the blade to the demon I had still been holding on to. Her scream pierced the accumulating fog of magic.

  My body kicked into overdrive, instincts and training alike taking the wheel as I engaged the damn battalion.

  Yelena had gone back on her word. And she obviously wanted to make sure I wouldn’t live to tell the tale.

  I swore and lashed out at my nearest attacker, ramming him backwards into the fridge.

  A battle cry wrenched itself free from my throat.

  I was sick and tired of everybody being a lying piece of shit.

  Reiner. Yelena. Even Vuyasin, whose head I couldn’t see any longer.

  Not that it mattered.

  Five demons jumped me at once. I ducked and swept out with a leg while I raised one arm over my head to form a shield of demon fire. A bolt got through, singeing my hip. Then magic clashed with magic, the rapidly heating air thrumming with too much power contained in a single space. If we weren’t careful, we were going to turn the building to ashes.

  Someone sliced at me from behind with a blade, skimming the already injured flesh. I extended the demon fire to ensconce myself almost entirely in its protective cocoon. But while I was strong, I couldn’t hope to last much longer with all of them unleashing their full arcane strength.