But the scars and the muscles were not at the forefront of my attention.
His tattoos were.
Specifically, his moving tattoos.
Spiraling black lines marked his torso and stomach, and as I watched the tattoos moved, writhing and flowing over his skin like…like…
Like shadows.
I looked at the blackness that filled his eyes, as if they had become spheres made of shadow.
I looked at his right hand, and saw the lines of black tattoos retreating from his wrist and up his damaged forearm. I knew then, with utter certainty, that when he had called that dark sword into existence, the tattoos had flowed up his arm and coalesced into his hand to form the sword.
And that meant…
A wave of fear rolled through me, more intense than any I had felt since beginning this enterprise.
“Oh, hell,” I whispered. “You’re a Shadow Hunter.”
Oh, God. I had kissed a Shadow Hunter. If I died in the next few minutes, they could inscribe “NADIA MORAN, IDIOT” upon my tombstone.
“See?” said Corvus, his voice a hard rasp. “Told you I wasn’t a vampire.”
“Think I would have preferred that,” I said. “You’re an assassin.”
“No,” said Corvus. “No. I am not. We are executioners, not assassins.”
“Oh, there’s a fine distinction,” I said, my mind racing.
I knew about the Shadow Hunters. Everyone did. They were a legendary organization of assassins, and according to the stories, they gained superhuman powers from symbiosis with a Shadowmorph, a creature of some kind from the Shadowlands. The Shadow Hunters turned up in a lot of movies and books, though the Inquisition always made sure the fictional Shadow Hunters killed traitors to the High Queen, Rebels, and corrupt businessmen. I had asked Morvilind once if the Shadow Hunters were real, and he had answered that if I valued my life, I would make sure to stay well away from the Shadow Hunters.
“It is,” said Corvus, taking deep breaths. “We are not assassins. We only kill those who have earned execution.”
“And you feed on them,” I said. According to the tales, a Shadowmorph drank the life of its victims, transferring that power back to its host.
“Yes,” said Corvus, and his shadow-filled eyes opened again. “Please do not stand so close to me just now. You are young and pretty and I’m…a bit hungry at the moment.”
I took several hasty steps back, my eyes fixed on him.
“Hungry,” I said. “Goddamn it. A Shadow Hunter.”
“And what about you?” said Corvus, wincing as he closed his eyes.
“What about me?” I said. “I’m not a Shadow Hunter.”
“Are you a half-elf?” said Corvus. His eyes darted back and forth behind closed lids, the black lines of the Shadowmorph skittering over his skin. “Or are you an Elven noble in disguise?”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “I’m not an Elf, and my mother didn’t sleep with one.”
“You cast an illusion spell,” said Corvus. “A…Cloak spell, I believe it is called. You vanished so thoroughly that not even the Shadowmorph could sense you. Humans are forbidden to learn illusion magic, and the Inquisition kills any Elves that teach illusion or mind magic to humans. So what are you?”
That put an idea into my head. Maybe I could report Morvilind to the Inquisition for teaching me illusion magic. Of course, if I did that, he would use the vial of heart’s blood to kill me. If he killed me before he cured Russell, then the frostfever would kill Russell. A wave of bitter anger went through me. Morvilind didn’t need chains or brands or drugs to control me the way McCade controlled his borrowed slaves. He had built a perfect box around me, a box from which I could not escape.
Though the wounded Shadow Hunter in front of me was a bit more dangerous at the moment.
“What I am,” I said, “is concerned that you’re going to bleed to death unless you get something on those cuts.” The gashes across his chest and stomach were bad enough. His right forearm was a mangled mess beneath the torn sleeve of his coat. Unless he saw a doctor or a wizard with a powerful Healing spell within the next few hours, he was probably going to lose the arm. Or die of blood loss.
“No,” said Corvus, shaking his head. “Just keep watch for a moment, will you?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll stand here and watch you bleed to death.”
“You won’t,” said Corvus, rolling his shoulders. The movement had to pain him…but then I saw something astonishing.
His wounds were shrinking. The lines of the peculiar black tattoo writhed and twisted over them, making the gashes shrink centimeter by centimeter. As I watched, they closed, becoming livid red marks, then scars, and then vanishing entirely. Within five minutes, the wounds were gone. Corvus let out a ragged sigh and opened his eyes, which had returned to their normal brown color. He looked somehow…sharper, harder, hungrier, and I had the distinct feeling that he was undressing me with his eyes.
I watched him, ready to cast a spell if he tried anything.
Instead he looked at the bloodstained tatters of his shirt and coat and shook his head.
“Pity it’s a rented tuxedo,” I said. “You’re not getting the deposit back.”
“No,” he said.
I licked my lips, pushing moisture into my dry mouth. “Are we going to have to fight?”
He blinked in surprise. “Why would we do that?”
“Because that Shadowmorph just expended a lot of power to heal you,” I said. “Because a Shadowmorph feeds of life energy, and it’s probably real hungry after all that exercise. Because I’m the nearest source of life energy.”
He shook his head. “I will not kill you or harm you, unless in self-defense. I do not have a decree of execution for your life. The law of the Shadow Hunters forbids it.”
“The law?” I scoffed. “Since when do people follow the law? I’m sure you’re just like the Elven nobles and their pets, mouthing about the law in public and then screwing a drugged slave when you…”
He slammed his left hand onto the metal counter with enough force to leave a dent, and I flinched back.
“I keep my word and follow the law of the Shadow Hunters, Katerina Annovich,” said Corvus, his voice as cold and hard as the dented steel counter, “at a cost you cannot begin to imagine. I have kept my word and followed the law for decades before you were born. I will violate neither now.”
Silence stretched between us. A dozen smart remarks started and died on my lips.
“Um,” I said. “Okay, then.”
“Thank you for my life,” Corvus said, lifting his hand from the dented counter.
“You were doing pretty well on your own,” I said.
“I might have,” said Corvus, “since I was about to shift the sword to my left hand. Or the wraithwolf might have ripped my head off. I am stronger than most men, but that matters little in hand-to-hand combat with a creature like a wraithwolf. Had I known McCade had such guardians, I would have come better prepared.”
“You did pretty well on your own,” I said again. “Better than I would have. One of those things would have torn me to pieces. Two…” I would not have lasted more than a few seconds. “Thank you for killing them. I would have run.”
“Or hidden with that Cloak spell,” said Corvus. “That was how you got away from me in the alley, wasn’t it? You Cloaked yourself and waited until I left.”
“If you had waited a little longer, you would have found me,” I said. “That spell is exhausting, and I was almost at the end of my stamina when you left.”
“I see,” said Corvus, nodding the way a man does when a vexing mystery has been solved at last. “I thought you had gone into one of the offices, but I couldn’t hear you running. The Shadowmorph is less potent in the daylight, but I still should have been able to hear you.”
“Not while Cloaked,” I said.
“No,” said Corvus. “Not while Cloaked. The prospect that you might have employed an Elve
n spell of illusion escaped me entirely. I shall not make that mistake again.”
“What were you doing there, anyway?” I said.
“The same thing you were, I imagine,” said Corvus. “I hired the services of a man named Niles Ringer to forge an invitation to the gala.”
“He probably overcharged you.”
“Egregiously,” said Corvus, “but the invitation was effective. We are both here, are we not?”
“That we are,” I said. “We are going next?”
“Onward,” said Corvus. “We both have our missions.”
“And what is yours? Are you here to assassinate,” Corvus frowned, and I rolled my eyes, “are you here to…to execute McCade? You have one of these decrees of execution?”
“A conditional one,” said Corvus. “Only if he possesses a specific book.”
“And what is this book,” I said, “that it should earn a death sentence from a Shadow Hunter?”
“Nothing you should know about,” said Corvus.
“I already know illusion magic,” I said. “That’s a death sentence right there. What’s another one atop it?”
“No,” said Corvus. “No, some knowledge you are better off never possessing. Even the mere possession of this knowledge can harm you. If we enter this inner sanctum and do not find the book, that is that. Better that you never know what I thought to find here.”
I made a show of rolling my eyes, but a thread of dark suspicion went through my mind. What if this book was some means of killing me? Another part of my mind pointed out the ridiculousness of that thought. If Corvus wanted to kill me, he could have let the wraithwolves do it.
Or he could have summoned his dark sword and feasted upon me once the wraithwolves were slain. He looked harder, sharper, than he had a few moments earlier, and I knew his Shadowmorph was hungry. I could feel its presence brushing against my thoughts, a dark aura that called to me…and I admitted I found it attractive, the way his kiss had been.
Better avoid that thought entirely.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s keep going. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
“Agreed,” said Corvus, and I started for the door on the far side of the kitchen.
Another grim thought occurred to me. “Do you think McCade will know that the wraithwolves have been killed? If he summoned them, he might be linked to them.”
“Perhaps,” said Corvus. “I am more curious why he let them loose during his party.”
“Guard dogs?” I said. “Big, nasty, guard dogs?” I checked the door. It wasn’t warded, but it was locked, and I took a deep breath to clear my buzzing mind. I had cast a lot of spells tonight, and the effort was starting to wear me down. “Or maybe he wanted to dispose of someone. The wraithwolves would eat all the meat, and he could dump the bones down that big garbage disposal in the sink.”
“The first possibility is more likely,” said Corvus. “I speak from experience when I say that a party is not the best venue to kill someone.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
He only snorted in answer.
I focused and again cast the spell to undo a lock. The door clicked, and I swung it open. A narrow utility corridor stretched beyond it, lit only by a pair of light bulbs, and then opened into a large mechanical room. I supposed it would be amusing if I had come all this way only to break into McCade’s furnace room. On the other hand, the magical auras I had sensed had been in this direction, which made me wonder if McCade stored magical relics in his furnace room.
It was a large place, at least as large as the room with the slaves, though air handlers and rows of transformers filled much of the space. The machinery gave off a constant wheeze, and sometimes a rattling cough came from one of the air handlers. A layer of dust and grit covered the floor, likely left over from the original construction, and rasped against the soles of my shoes.
In the far wall stood a vault door, an eight-foot slab of steel adorned with multiple locks and bars. To judge from the reinforced frame, it was at least eight inches thick, and strong enough to resist gunfire, dynamite, and maybe even a small bulldozer. I couldn’t see any electronic alarms, but I suspected they were there.
“Can you get through that?” said Corvus.
“Yep,” I said, casting the spell to sense magic. There were no spells or wards upon the vault door. “I’ve gotten through harder doors. It’ll take me a minute or two, though.” It would take multiple castings to get through the locks and the alarms, and I was tired enough already. "It’s your turn to keep watch.”
“Of course,” said Corvus. “I…”
He spun, the Shadowmorph sword appearing in his right hand once more.
“What is it?” I said, wishing I had thought of a way to smuggle a gun into the mansion. “Is…”
Two rivers of mist flowed across the floor of the utility room.
“More wraithwolves,” I said. “There were four cages in the kitchen.”
“I will stun one,” said Corvus, and lightning crackled in his free hand. “Use your Cloak to distract the other. I will dispatch it, and then kill the second before it can recover from the lightning.”
That was an awfully tenuous plan, especially when we both were already weakened. The rivers of mist split, solidifying and hardening as they did so.
This time we found ourselves facing six wraithwolves, not two.
“Well,” I said, my heart hammering with sudden terror, “guess McCade kept them two to a cage.”
“Could you Cloak both of us at once?” said Corvus. He whipped his shadow-sword in a wide arc, and the misshapen creatures cringed back to avoid it. If all the wraithwolves charged at once, they could bury both of us with ease.
That would not be a pleasant death.
“Maybe. Probably,” I said. “I couldn’t hold it for very long. Not long enough for them to get bored and wander off.”
One of the wraithwolves inched forward, and Corvus thrust, the beast jumping back. Sooner or later they would work up the nerve to charge. Or they would sit here and guard us until McCade and his security guards arrived to shoot us. We were trapped with no way out.
Unless…
My fear turned into something far sharper.
There was another spell Morvilind had taught me, one that I had used several times. Every single time it had almost gotten me killed, but “almost killed” was better than “definitely killed”, and if I stayed here, I would definitely be killed.
I stooped, grabbed a handful of dust and a chip of concrete from the floor, and whirled to face the vault door.
“What are you doing?” said Corvus.
“Keep them off me,” I said, summoning magical power as I concentrated. I hoped I had enough strength left to work the spell. “Just for a few seconds.”
Silver light whirled and flared around my hands, a sheet of gray mist rippling over the vault door. The strain was immense, but I gritted my teeth and forced myself to keep working the spell.
One of the wraithwolves snarled, and I heard a thunderclap and saw a flash of blue-white light as Corvus flung a globe of lightning. A chorus of snarls rose from behind me, claws scraping against the floor as the wraithwolves braced themselves to spring.
In that moment, gray light washed over me, and the curtain of mist seemed to become deeper somehow…and through the mist I glimpsed a forest of barren, dead trees, a cold wind blowing over my face and tugging at my skirt and hair.
The rift way was open.
“Now!” I shouted. “Jump! Go!”
Corvus whirled and ran past me as the wraithwolves sprang, and I jumped after him. I should have hit the steel vault door and bounced off.
Instead I fell through the mist, and into the dead forest beyond.
The gate had taken me to the Shadowlands, to the haunted places between the worlds.
Chapter 8: Shadowlands
I hit the ground, pale grasses rustling beneath me, rolled to one knee, and turned to face my gate. I saw the mechan
ical room back in McCade’s mansion, the wraithwolves racing after us, and with an effort of will I dismissed the spell.
The rift way flared and disappeared, and I saw that we were in a clearing, dead trees ringing us, pale grasses everywhere, the starless, black sky writhing with ghostly ribbons of blue and green and purple fire.
Right about then I passed out.
If you’ve ever had heatstroke, or moderate dehydration, magical exhaustion is something like that. The blood pressure drops, and it’s usually accompanied by a sudden sweat and a loud humming noise in the ears. I managed to take two steps towards the dead trees. Corvus said something, and my vision turned gray, and then white, and I just had the wits to get to my knees before I keeled over.
I wasn’t out long.
My vision swam back into focus, and I sat up with a startled curse. Corvus stood nearby, the Shadowmorph sword in his right hand, his eyes darting back and forth. Belatedly I realized that the smell of his bloody clothes might draw all manner of predators. We had to get out of here as soon as possible.
“Oh, hell,” I said. “Did I drop it? Tell me I didn’t drop it.”
“Dropped what?” said Corvus.
If I had dropped it, we were in a lot of trouble.
But I hadn’t. The concrete chip and the dust were still gripped in the fingers of my left hand. A little relief went through me. That, at least, was one less thing I had to worry about.
Though there were plenty of worries left behind.
“Our way back,” I said, trying to get my legs underneath me.
Corvus held out a hand. I looked at it for a moment, wondering at the wisdom of touching a Shadow Hunter. Then I shrugged and held out my free hand. He heaved me up without a hint of effort, and I staggered a little, but I managed not to fall on my face.
“A piece of concrete,” said Corvus, incredulous. “You brought a piece of concrete with us?”
“I don’t know why that surprises you so much,” I said. “Given that I just opened a rift way to the Shadowlands in front of you.”
Cloak Games: Omnibus One Page 11
