“Mila! Stop! Come with me before this place turns to ash…”
Vera’s voice was a hiss in her ear, and she finally focused enough to realize it was indeed Vera, almost as scary looking as the shadows, come to help her. Vera. Helping her.
Her disbelief was the thing that cleared her mind. That and the fact that if Vera could remain calm and fight like a warrior, then so could she. She shot to her feet, drawing anger and righteous strength to her like a rich cloak.
“Lovely,” Vera said. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Around them shadows burned, their screams and moans a never-ending grotesque music she knew she would never forget. Vera tugged her onward, stopping only once to kick a burning shadow out of their path.
Mila caught sight of Lake in the middle of the room, facing off against the master. He was huge, her man, his sword in one hand and torch in the other. His muscled arms gleamed in the firelight, and love so fierce it was frightening overwhelmed her. She stood frozen to the spot, unable to move, but Vera pulled her through the door and into the world, and she was left with only that vision of him.
“I have to go back, Vera! I have to help him!”
Vera pinched her arm, hard. “Do you think he needs to be worrying about you right now? Help me get rid of the skulking little bastards still alive out here and let Lake and Slawomir handle the master.”
Gods knew she was relieved. She wouldn’t have admitted it aloud, but she’d rather have gnawed off her own foot than to have gone back into that room. “All right.” Then Vera’s words sank in. “Slawomir is alive!”
“Of course he’s alive. Now come on!”
She had no idea what Vera expected them to do to the shadows running around in confused circles, some of them beating at burning clothes, some of them staring with blank expressions into the distance.
“It’s chaotic in their minds,” Vera said, “because it’s chaotic in their master’s.”
“How do you know this?”
Vera’s eyes darted, her head twisting as she looked for something. Then her expression cleared, and she actually smiled. “Ponga. Ponga told me everything I didn’t already know.”
Mila took a hasty step backward when Vera’s shadow ran toward them, but he only wrapped his arms around Vera’s waist and looked as harmless and sweet as always. “How did he…how is he free of whatever has darkened the minds of his people?”
“He fought,” Vera said.
“I love her,” Ponga said, looking up at Mila. “With everything that I am, I love her.”
For a second Cho’s face flashed into her mind. She shook her head. No matter. “What do we do now?”
“This is the time to strike,” Ponga said, his face looking years older since the last time Mila had seen him. Or maybe it was just his eyes that looked older. And sad.
“They are as helpless right now as they’re ever going to be,” Vera said. “We’ll destroy them while Lake is holding the master’s attention.”
As though her earlier thoughts had conjured him, Cho stepped into the clearing, ignoring the fires and the dying shadows surrounding him. His sleeve caught on a dry, burning bush, and he casually slapped it out, his stare on Mila.
“Here is another one to worry us,” Ponga said, and hid himself behind Vera.
Cho smiled, his eyes empty of any humanity that might have once existed. “Mila. I’ve come for you.”
She looked around, desperate for something with which to protect herself, and snatched up a torch some unlucky human had dropped. She held it to a patch of burning brush until it ignited, and returned Cho’s smile. “Then come get me.”
Something flickered deep in his eyes, but he shrugged, never once dropping his dark, hideous smile. “All right.”
She remembered how fast he was a split second before he reached her, and holding the torch with both hands, she thrust it at him. The fire ate at his tangled, long hair, but didn’t stop him.
He jerked the torch from her grip and, with no warning and his inhuman speed, rammed the burning torch into little Ponga, who stood shaking and white beside Vera.
The torch went straight through Ponga’s chest like some sort of spear, and the only thing Mila could find comfort in later was that the little shadow seemed to suffer not at all. As the torch went into his heart, he simply dropped where he stood and melted into a black goo upon the ground.
She stood beside the motionless Vera, unable to comprehend what her eyes told her she’d just witnessed. “What?” she asked. “What?”
Vera dropped to her knees beside the puddle, her fists pressed to her mouth. “No!” she screamed. “No!”
Mila hadn’t thought Vera capable of feeling pain or caring about anyone other than herself, and this display only added to her shock. The surreal scene with Vera screaming and beating at her chest, the burning shadows who seemed less than capable of ending their misery by dying, Ponga’s…disappearance…it was too much.
Cho wrapped his hand like a manacle around her wrist. “Come, Mila.”
“What did you do? What did you do to Ponga?” And then she understood. “It’s your weakness, isn’t it?”
He shrugged, seeming to think her knowledge was of no importance. “It is the only way any of us will achieve true death. No matter what else you do to us, we will always come back.”
Gods. She had to tell Lake. She had to make him understand. Why Ponga hadn’t informed Vera of this, she might never know. What mattered now was telling Lake. This was their weapon. This was how they would destroy the shadows. Not fire. Not swords. A wooden stick right through the heart.
It all made sense, really. She remembered Cho’s fearful hatred of the sharp stakes they stuck into the ground for fencing, for vegetable vines to grow up, for the children to learn to hunt with, or fish with, or any of the myriad of other things the sharpened stakes were used for.
Getting away from him wasn’t going to be enough. She had to destroy him. And he had just shown her how to do it. Either he was stupid, or he had made the fatal mistake of underestimating her. She’d never known Cho to be stupid.
He read her eyes. “You cannot kill me, Mila.”
She jerked from his grasp and seized a thin broken limb from the ground. Its broken end was jagged and sharp. It would do. In the back of her mind, Vera’s keening voice of grief added to her determination.
Cho spread his arms and stood smiling up at her. His eyes were the eyes of the lost, the mad, the doomed. As though she were a small child and he wanted to get her tantrum over and done with, he prompted her. “Go on then, Mila. Can you push that stick into my beating heart? You loved me once.” He grabbed the end of the stake and held it against his chest. “Do it, then.”
“Cho,” she said, almost gently, “I’m pregnant.”
As the words hit him and understanding lit his eyes, she threw her entire body into pushing that sharp piece of wood into his heart. Screaming, her eyes screwed shut, she pushed.
It was as though this spot was thinner, more delicate than the rest of the shadow’s bodies. The stake went through so easily she lost her balance and fell upon him and had just time to see the bloody trail of tears on his cheek before he began to melt.
Cho’s death was not as quick or as clean as Ponga’s had been, maybe because Cho was older, or stronger. His death stabbed her own heart, twisted her mind.
Sobbing, she lay in the slowly cooling puddle of what had once been her friend, her shadow, and could not move.
Around her the fires burned, screams of pain ripping the day apart. Vera had ceased her howling and was now quietly crooning to the purple and gray puddle as she rocked back and forth.
After what seemed like hours but was only short moments, she roused herself and climbed to her feet. Lake and Slawomir were still in that terrible house with the master and his shadows, and Gods only knew what was going on in there. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing Lake.
She went to Vera. They had to do what needed to be don
e. There were still shadows about. Lots of them. And she needed to inform Lake and Slawomir of the true death.
The sight of Vera frightened Mila more than just about anything else that had happened so far.
She looked up at Mila, her eyes black and shiny, her skin so abnormally pale it had taken on a green tinge. The ends of her long, tangled hair dipped in the puddle of Ponga, and the black goo climbed the tresses, turning the red a sickly dark mixture of colors.
“Come, Vera,” Mila urged, gently. “We must help our men.”
Vera’s gaze was uncomprehending. “Men?”
“Lake and Slawomir. They need us.” She held out her hands. “Come with me, love.”
Vera’s eyes cleared, and ignoring Mila’s hands, she got to her feet. “Yes. Yes, let’s enter the fray.” Holding the ends of her long, filthy shift from the ash and death on the ground, she marched with purpose back toward the master’s house. “At least I still have Slawomir.”
Running along beside Vera, trying to ignore the dead bodies of her people, Mila could only hope they weren’t too late. She snatched up every sharp stick she could find on the path to the master, and thrust two of them into Vera’s hands.
If the master fell, so then would the shadows. She was almost sure of it.
Almost.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Forcing herself to return to the house of the master was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Still, her feet led her onward. Her entire life came down to this moment. This purpose.
She had to do her part in ridding the world of this evil that would, if left to grow, darken the days of her baby and her baby’s baby and so on and on forever. Those who devoured human life could not be allowed to exist with humans.
As they neared, the conflict inside became louder, the sounds clutching at her chilled heart. Lake was in there, and she knew the strength of the master.
They burst through the doorway much as their men had done, and into a room that appeared unchanged since they’d left it. Mila realized that, really, their time in the sweeter air of the outdoors had been short and swift.
Lake caught sight of her at that moment. “Mila, out! Get out!”
Taking advantage of his occupied attentions, the shadows surrounding him attacked, and Mila flinched when she saw one of them plunge a long knife into his thigh.
From his broken-down throne he’d shoved against the wall, the master also caught sight of her. He laughed and raised a hand in greeting, but his eyes were hungry and impatient.
“Lake,” she yelled, “catch!” She tossed a stake his way, but understanding neither what she wanted nor her reasons for wanting it, he fended off the shadows and ignored the stake. It fell forgotten somewhere in the midst of the shadows.
She screamed in a desperate rage. “Lake, look at me!”
Automatically, he glanced at her. Timing it perfectly, she plunged a sharp stick into the chest of a shadow closest to her. The shadow melted where he stood, and instantly, the whole atmosphere of the burning room changed.
For a long, hanging second, the only sounds were the crackling and hissing of the small fires in the room and the gasps from the shadows, aware their most dearly held secret was secret no more.
The master stood, his laughter gone. Now, he was dangerous. Dangerous and desperate.
Mila knew if they were to survive this day, they would have to fight like none of them had ever imagined fighting. “Kill the fuckers,” she screamed, and tossed Lake another stake. This one, he caught.
The shadows scattered in terror, and Lake went straight for the most critical foe. He went for the master.
No longer was victory sure, or even likely, for the shadows. They knew it, but their master’s will kept them in check, kept them in that room where stake after stake plunged into the thinly veiled protection over quickly beating hearts.
The master, however, would not be so easily destroyed. He was powerful and ancient. Puny humans would not end his life, not after he’d survived for Gods knew how long. He threw a lingering, regretful look at Mila, then like a streak of black lightning, he deserted his people, mowing them down as he shot from the room. He ran for the back of the house, into what Mila assumed was the kitchen.
Lake raced after him, but Mila knew the master would be gone before Lake reached the next room. She felt the master leaving, felt his departure like a quick breath of fresh air suddenly entered her lungs, felt it like an absence of darkness in her brain.
He was gone.
For now.
The few remaining shadows fled, and when the room cleared of movement, she saw Vera once again on her knees, her form wavering and wispy through the haze of choking smoke.
Mila ran toward her, her heart sinking as she saw the fallen body of Slawomir. Would the horror of this day never end?
“Vera, we must go. The house is burning down around us.”
She touched Vera’s shoulder, but the other woman shrugged her off, her gaze upon the lifeless body of the watcher. Her eyes were curiously devoid of tears, her face still. “Go,” she said. “Go, find Lake, raise your babe.”
“What of you, Vera? You’re coming with us, surely?”
“No.”
“But Vera—”
Vera jumped up and hit her, spittle flying from her bloody mouth as she screamed. “Leave me! Leave me before I destroy you! I am bringing curses upon the heads of all shadows, and if you are too close, my power will strike you. If you care for your babe, run, Mila, run.” And she laughed.
Mila recoiled in horror at the look of madness in Vera’s eyes. During the fight she had lost some teeth, and her mouth gaped like a black and red abyss. Her beautiful nose, once straight and fine, had been broken and listed to the side. Slender, delicate Vera had gone, and a mad crone had taken her place.
She scooped blood from her face and held her hands to the fire, to the sky. “They will walk under the sun no more,” she whispered. “They will burn beneath the brightness and beauty of the day. Only the night shall claim the shadows…”
Mila fled.
Once outside she tried to yell for Lake but could only cough the smoke from her lungs and clutch her pained throat. She would have to find him. She couldn’t bear the aloneness for a moment longer.
She needed him.
“Lake,” she croaked, surveying the vast empty bleak landscape upon which her people had once sweated, loved, laughed, worked…
Now, it was as if it had never been. Sporadic fires still burned, smoke hung thickly in the cold air, and the dead, villagers and shadows alike, littered the ground. But the shadows would live again, unless she had the heart and strength to stake each one of them.
She hadn’t.
She stumbled away, needing to be away. No villagers met her, not so much as a dog chased her. She’d seen much death that day.
She went as far as she could into the woods then sat upon a half-rotted log to rest. To try to recover. Her mind recoiled when images flashed through it, and at last, she was able to force them from her mind by concentrating upon her life, her child, and Lake.
“Mila!”
When his yell came, she couldn’t rouse herself to so much as rise from the log. She could only wait. He would find her.
He loped through the woods, dead leaves crunching underfoot, and was almost upon her before he finally saw her. He dropped to his knees before her and pulled her into his arms. “Mila, Mila.”
With his solid warmth around her, she sighed, and let the day go. “Take me home, Lake,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and her throat aching. She put his hand on her belly. “Take us home.”
He dragged her into his arms, his expression a mixture of rage and relief. “Mila, you stupid, stupid girl.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…I didn’t know…” Her voice broke, and she sobbed. Now that it was over, now that Lake was here and she and the baby were safe, her strength fled, and she could only lie with her head on his shoulder, sobbing.
“Hush, my sweet. It’s over.” He caressed her back, his big hands warm and steady. “The baby…?”
She pulled away from him and wiped her eyes. “Our baby is fine.” Somehow.
He stood, then leaned down to scoop her into his muscled arms. “I’m taking you home. We’ll use Slawomir’s wagon to return. You can rest.”
She flinched at the way his voice broke when he mentioned the watcher’s name. The tragedy was huge, and it would take them both a long while to put it behind them.
“You’ll have me back, then?”
He stared down at her, surprise in his eyes. “What?”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t want me back. That your people would cast me into the darklands after the baby is born. That—”
He kissed her then, a hard, fast kiss, a kiss full of promise. “You’re mine,” he said, his voice low and fierce. “There is nothing for you to be afraid of. Nothing.” Then he smiled, a teasing smile tilting the corners of his mouth. “Except maybe the spanking you have coming.”
She snuggled against him, tears wetting her face again. But this time, the tears were of joy, of relief. It would all be all right. “I concede to that point, Lake. I do deserve a spanking.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You sound awfully enthusiastic.”
She bit her lip, feeling heat climbing her face. “Maybe a little.”
His laugh rang out, and suddenly the barren, joyless woods seem to spring to life, no longer full of despair and terror as they’d been only moments earlier. “My girl.”
As he placed her in the back of the wagon, she clung to him for a brief, serious moment. “He got away, didn’t he?”
He sighed. “Yes. But I’ll be prepared for him next time our paths cross. I can’t allow you or my child to live in a world in which those creatures roam free.”
She lay back. “There’s nothing we can do, not really.”
“There is. When I return home, I’m going to gather some of our best warriors, and we shall hunt every last one of the bastards down. We will spread the word. The shadows will hide, or die.” His face was grim, his lips a hard, straight line. “I will avenge the lives taken here today. I swear it.”
First Night Page 12
