I needed to get away from the FA—from him—from the fae—from that part of me I refused to acknowledge for fear it would gobble me up and I’d be Alina no more.
The sun had dipped behind Camden’s apartment blocks, casting vast shadows across the street by the time I reached Andrews’s part of town. It was easy enough to hop a fence and climb a fire escape onto a flat roof of a storage warehouse opposite Andrews’s block.
I sat near the edge, not too close, pulled my legs to my chest, and rested my chin on my knees as I tried to figure out which window was Andrews’s. Sirens wailed somewhere nearby, normal London life, from which I felt so distant and detached. So alone … but not for long. Kael would likely send his warriors after me. I couldn’t stay away long, just long enough to feel free, for a little while.
I filtered out the background city noise and hugged my knees closer. After five minutes scanning the windows, I spotted the detective striding back and forth in his front room. He held a phone to his ear, and from his expression he wasn’t pleased with whoever he was speaking to. He’d untucked his shirt and unbuttoned his collar. He’d always been so clean-cut. Now though, now he looked ragged and worn out. He looked like I felt. Beaten.
He tossed the phone down, pushed his fingers through his hair, and turned to the window. I froze. He couldn’t see me, backlit by his lights as he was, but he appeared to look right at me.
I hadn’t meant to hurt him. I’d have given anything to take back what I’d done.
He closed his blinds, loneliness hollowed out my chest, and my heart sank.
I dared not go to Under to face Reign’s questions and betrayal.
I couldn’t ask Andrews for help. It would be dangerous and selfish to go near him. I knew that, even when I knocked on his door, chewing on my lip because I was a damned fool and this was a terrible idea.
He opened the door. For a few seconds neither of us moved. His eyes widened. I’d forgotten the bruises and how I’d gotten them, but I touched them now, and with the touch came the memory of the assault. I tried to keep the pain off my face, but he saw it. He always noticed the little things.
“Alina?” He didn’t move, trapped between indecision and fake loyalty.
I had no right to be there. No right to ask anything of him. I saw the hesitation on his face, the doubt in his eyes. He should send me away, and we both knew it, but neither of us would say it.
He closed his eyes for a moment, drew in a breath as though to steel himself, and then stepped aside. “I suppose you’d better come in.”
“I can’t say long.” I shouldn’t be here at all.
He mumbled something about the mess as he closed the door behind me. I inched around stacks of folders, newspapers, and fae reference books. Wherever I looked, evidence of his obsession collected dust. I stopped in front of the fireplace mantelpiece and picked up a framed picture of Andrews and his sister. He had his arm slung around Becky’s shoulders and both wore the easy smiles that came with knowing and trusting someone so completely. She couldn’t be much older than twenty. There wasn’t much of an age gap between them. I could imagine her breezing about this very apartment. If she was anything like Andrews, she’d have been quick to smile and easy to laugh with. At least, that’s how Andrews had been, before I’d gotten inside his head.
“Did Sovereign do that to you?” Andrews asked, gesturing briefly at my face but hardly meeting my eyes.
I set the picture back down and touched my cheek. “Reign? No. He would never …” I was about to say he’d never hurt me, but Andrews knew how dangerous Reign was. The denial stalled on my lips like all the other things I wanted to say to him. So many sorrys.
“I’m getting close to the general,” I said, a little too brightly.
Andrews cleared a spot on the couch, gathering up newspaper articles and magazine clippings. “So I heard.”
“Yeah?”
“Someone took a few blurry pictures of an FA patrol near Trafalgar. SO-Thirty filter everything fae related in London. Facial recognition pulled up your details.” He ran a hand through his chestnut hair. “They did that to you?”
There was little point in denying it. “A test.”
“For what?”
Detective Danny Andrews was a good guy, fair and honest. I’d known that before I’d stolen his draíocht. But now there was a new heat in his glower, and a tightly restrained tension to him that hadn’t been there before. Like he was holding himself back. I knew that feeling. I lived with it every minute, of every hour.
“There’s something inside me, Andrews. Something dark and hungry. Worse than before. It’s changed. I’ve changed. They—Kael had his people do this to me to wake it up.” I drifted about his small front room, briefly running my gaze over the files and paperwork. Missing people reports, fae incidents, FA research, and various sticky notes with Andrews’s hastily scrawled observations. His work had become an obsession. Or perhaps it was a distraction? I pushed a few files aside and found a grainy CCTV still of me at the Chancery Lane subway station, the very moment I’d stepped from a train I’d never been on: the moment of my construction.
“Did it?” he asked.
“Huh?” I hadn’t noticed him move, but now he stood close enough to see the image that had caught my eye.
“Did the thing inside you wake up?”
“Yes.” I paused and tried to slow my racing heart. “Ancient draíocht holds me together. Gives me life. And I’m afraid I know exactly what that means.”
“You killed the queen, Alina. It’s over.”
“No.” It’s not the queen. And I think it’s only just begun. I faced him—the man with a deep sadness in his hazel eyes. He’d lost so much, and every day, he’d lose more. “When the queen created me, she made me human. And she did a damn good job. I want to be human; I want to be Alina.”
A tiny smile tugged on his lips. “The girl who asks all the questions.” He reached up and brushed my hair from my eyes. His expression had softened, and some of the tension in him visibly eased.
“But I’m losing myself,” I said. “Every time I let the dark in me out, I lose more of me.”
“You’ll beat it.” He pulled his hand back and tucked both into his pockets but the tiny smile stayed. “You’re too stubborn not to.”
I wished I had his optimism. “It’s horrible. When I went after the queen in Under I became something else. Me, but not me. I killed fae, Danny. They were dangerous, I had to, but I still killed them. And I didn’t feel anything. That’s not right. That’s not human. And there’s more—the queen wasn’t just a crazy fae; she was possessed by something that turned her dark, made her truly insane. I think … I think that thing is in me now. I don’t know what it wants, but it feels hungry. And when they attacked, when Kael tried to goad it out of me—”
“Alina, look at me.”
I did, but it hurt. He smiled that same soft smile and looked at me as though he already knew everything was going to be okay. That was the bespellment. I could do no wrong in his eyes.
“You think you deserved what they did to you?”
I nodded, not finding the words.
He shook his head, and taking his hand from his pocket he reached again for my face, but this time he settled his fingertips on my cheek. The tingling was instant. A hit of pleasurable tremors licked through me. More. Andrews’s eyes widened, his pupils dilating. He pressed his palm to my cheek and closed his eyes.
“No.” I pulled back and stumbled over a stack of folders, almost falling on my ass. “No, that’s not why I came. I … I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“Alina.”
“No.” I reached for the door, my head full of Andrews. I wanted more. Not just more, but all of him. I wanted to whirl around and devour him. Dark needs pulled me back. “No, please. I don’t—I can’t hurt you.”
“Alina, wait. Don’t go.”
The yearning in his voice. It was wrong. So wrong. Danny didn’t want me, he wanted the touch. To feel that fae h
igh. Because bespellment told him he needed it—needed me. “I’ll find her.” I called back. “I’ll find her, and make this better.” Somehow, I’d find her. I’d make it right.
I took the subway and knew I was in deeper trouble as soon as the train pulled away from the platform. The cars clattered into the dark, and I found myself eyeing the passengers around me, searching for areas where their cuffs didn’t cover their wrists, or where their collars gaped. I could swipe a quick touch. Just an accidental brush. I need it. I sat by the door, dropped my head back and closed my eyes. The train rocked and jarred its way into the dark and with every second need pulled on my nerves. Reign. I had to get to Reign. He’d know what to do.
At Angel station commuters piled into the car. Legs brushed mine. Someone sat next to me, but I dared not open my eyes.
“Mind the gap,” the automated voice droned, and the door-closing alarms sounded. Its shrillness cut into my skull. I shivered, and I knew those around me would think I was in the midst of some sort of meltdown. Too many people. Too hot. No air. I need what they have. One touch, two. Just a little. Just enough to get me through this. The dark clawed at my thoughts and somewhere distantly I wondered if it was the queen’s laughter I heard or my own. Old Street station came and went. Then Moorgate. Bank was next. I had to change at Bank to get to Chancery. Keeping my head down I grabbed the pole and hauled myself from the seat. A few more minutes. That was all. A young guy—earphones in, eyes on his cell phone—cast me a wary glance. It wouldn’t take much to change my position and accidentally bump his hand. I’d have him then. He’d be mine.
I turned my back on him and bumped my forehead against the cool pole, counting the seconds. Reign hadn’t told me it’d be this bad. He hadn’t told me the need would try and crawl out of my skin and grab the nearest draíocht food source.
The train shuddered to a halt at Bank. I shot from the car and made it to the nearest bench when the screaming need almost dropped me to my knees. All around people marched toward the exits, expertly ignoring my breakdown in that way Londoners have perfected. In less than a minute, the platform was empty. The door alarms beeped and the train cars rumbled from the station.
I lowered myself onto the edge of the bench and thread my trembling fingers through my hair. Bank station was quiet enough that I could hear my own heart pounding in my ears.
All I had to do was get the westbound Central Line and Chancery Lane was just two stops away. I could do that. I had to. A rumble echoed down the gaping tunnel to my right. The next train would deliver yet another onslaught of temptation. I couldn’t hide from this. Reign was right. I’d thought—hoped I could pretend it wasn’t happening, pretend I was the happy American girl Alina. I didn’t have the luxury of pretending anymore. The rumble grew, rattling nearby trash. Hot air blasted over me, but there was no sign of the train’s lights in the tunnel.
Movement along the curved ceiling above caught my eye. A shadow flowed across the tiles, unaffected by the lights it wove around; a liquid slither of dark that sent a jolt of terror coursing through my veins. Another shadow followed behind it. More behind that, until the tunnel’s dark reached outward as though it might consume the entire platform. I smelled it then, like wet, earthy decay. The smell of wastelands, of dead and rotting forgotten things.
I pushed slowly to my feet and backed toward the connecting tunnel. I’m really seeing this. The dark is alive. A screech of brakes sounded behind me from the westbound platform. The dark swallowed up billboards, washed over the lights, and devoured the Bank station sign. All along the walls it rushed: death.
I bolted through the connecting pedestrian tunnel, darted onto the westbound train just as the alarms sounded and the doors closed and whirled. The dark licked across the tunnel walls, turning them black. The smell of it clung to my clothes.
I bumped backward into a woman. She mumbled an apology and shifted. Does nobody else see it? A quick look around me revealed bored faces buried in their cell phones.
The train jerked away from the station and plunged into the tunnel toward St. Paul’s and Chancery.
“Did you see that?” I asked the woman I’d nudged.
She smiled a quick, sympathetic smile and stepped away.
I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d looked, but from her expression, I could assume not well. I took a seat, ignoring the few sideways glances from the passengers, and wondered if I was going mad. It was real. I had seen it. Detective Miles—Andrews’s dead partner—had told me my mind would break up when I was starting to come apart, to unravel. I’d forget things. My thoughts would fracture. Was that what this was?
My skin itched and sweat trickled down my back. Just a few more minutes and I’d be back in Chancery. Reign would be nearby. He’d know what to do. He’d harbored the spirit of Cu Sith for centuries, he’d understand and help me. He’d berate me, for sure, tell me I was stupid for letting it get so bad, but he’d help.
I dropped my head back against the train window. Perhaps I couldn’t do this alone, and maybe that was okay? The truth was, I had no idea what I was supposed to do or who I was designed to be. A girl, a construct, a spirit? And what did those things mean? I wouldn’t be anything if I didn’t admit I needed help.
A small tendril of black twitched through the train doors. It probed its way inside and writhed along the roof of the car toward the tube map.
I glanced around the carriage. Two teens chatted at the far end, a well-dressed businessmen seemed engrossed in the tablet resting on his knee. The woman I’d spooked was checking her phone. Nobody looked out of the windows. Had they, they’d have noticed the black was complete. No flicker from the train brakes, no glow from the carriages against the tunnel walls. Nothing.
More inky-black fingers slithered through the door. At the far end of the carriage, above the two teens, black poured in through an open window and rippled across the train’s ceiling. The turned-earth smell filled the car.
A woman screamed.
At least I’m not nuts.
I plucked the dagger from my boot. “Move away from the windows.”
They scrambled from their places into the central aisle, clutching the overhead poles.
“What is that?!”
“Is it smoke?”
“There’s a fire! The alarm—”
“No!” I barked, slamming into the guy making a grab for the emergency button. “Don’t touch the alarm!” He reeled away, looking at me like I was insane. The last thing we needed was for the carriage to grind to a halt deep in the underground tunnels. “It’s not smoke,” I said, raising my voice. Smoke didn’t coat a train carriage like a second skin.
“Then what is it?!” one of the teens asked.
I gripped my dagger and eyed the dark. “It’s a lytch.” My memory supplied the name. The lytch devoured shadows, twisted them, and made them their own. And this thing had found the perfect home in the London Underground. “Everyone, get behind me, to the back of the carriage.”
The train trembled and screeched its way through the tunnel. There was no knowing where we were, or even if we’d stop at St Paul’s.
“Is it fae?” the businessman hissed as he shuffled by me. “It’s fae, isn’t it! One of their monsters. It’s going to kill us. Like that thing at the Dome.”
“Shh.” And don’t give it ideas. I moved to the middle of the car and watched the black creeping its way along every surface inside the carriage. The lytch, like all fae, fed on draíocht. I tried to pull more information from the memories that weren’t mine, but couldn’t focus on what I knew to be real and what was just my own screwed up head trying to piece together fragments of the past.
How do you talk to a shadow? The same way as you talk to spiders, I guessed. “A little far from home, aren’t you?” My voice came out calmer than the panic in my head could account for.
The train car jolted around a tight bend, throwing me and the passengers to one side. The lytch surged forward, dropping a curtain of black a few feet in front
of me. I reeled, and the passengers screamed.
The icy touch of ancient draíocht wrapped around my body, tore out my human fear, and planted power there instead. From one blink to the next, I became the very thing I feared, the thing I should hate, but didn’t. The me inside.
I straightened, heard that familiar laughter in my head, and smiled at the swelling shadows. “Maybe you’d like a taste of old draíocht?”
The dark rolled back, receding like waves on a beach. I peered into the abyss and smiled.
The car shuddered to a halt. The doors opened.
“Mind the gap.”
I snatched at the nearest person and shoved him for the open door. “Run!”
The shadow flooded the car. I turned and bolted as a whisper of its touch slid across my cheek and through my hair—so close a chill pulled through my veins, emptying me of life. I slashed blindly with the dagger and burst out onto the packed Oxford Circus platform.
“Run! Go!”
People avoided eye contact and tried to board the train, until the dark poured out of the carriage. Panic scattered the crowd in all directions.
“Call the FA!” I yelled, clutching at a bench so as not to get caught up in the rush. They pushed and shoved, falling over each other in their haste to get away.
A shrill scream broke over the crowd.
The lytch was out of the car. It reared high above the platform, before cresting and crashing down onto a fallen woman. Her scream cut off and I lost sight of her in the swirl of shadow.
“Not them! Try some old draíocht. Right out of Faerie,” I called, raising my voice high above the shouts. Damn Faerie and its throwaways. “I taste just like home.” I stepped into the middle of the now-empty platform and spread my arms. “Want a piece of me?” I didn’t know how to fight this thing, but I could lure it away from the crowds.
The shadow folded over itself and tumbled forward. I bolted into one of the connecting pedestrian tunnels toward yet another platform. If I could keep it on the move, away from the ticket hall where commuters converged, I might be able to keep it distracted until the FA arrived.
City of Shadows Page 9
