“Right,” said Russell, staring at the fire with wide eyes. He shook himself and followed me as I ran to the end of the level, the AK-47 bouncing against my back. We made it to the stairwell, and I started to reach for the door handle…
And froze.
Over the railing, I saw the dark-suited forms of the anthrophages racing along the medical college’s lawn, heading for the stairs. I stepped back from the door. Was there any other way to get out of here? The fire had sealed off the ramp’s entrance, and the anthrophages were smart enough to cover the stairwell.
A sinking feeling of panic settled into me.
We were trapped…and our only option was to fight.
“We can’t get out,” said Russell.
“No,” I said. “Come on. We’ll have to fight them.” That meant I would have to use magic in front of Russell. “Let’s head halfway up the next level.”
“A bottleneck,” said Russell.
“Right, something like that,” I said, running forward. “Russell, listen to me. There’s something I have to tell you.”
“What is it?” said Russell.
We reached the halfway point of the next ramp, and I turned, trying to think of the right words.
“We’re in serious trouble,” I said. “If we don’t fight our way free of this, we’re going to die.”
Russell nodded, his face earnest. “I know.”
I took a deep breath. “So we have to use every weapon we can…and that includes spells. I know magic, Russell. I can cast spells. Lord Morvilind taught me.”
I expected surprise. I expected disgust or fury or incredulity. I almost expected him to pull out his phone and call the Inquisition right then and there.
I did not expect him to nod.
“I know,” said Russell.
“It’s just that…wait. Wait. What?” I said.
“I know you can use magic,” said Russell.
“What?” I said again, too surprised to think of something clever to say.
“Oh, yeah,” said Russel, as if we were discussing the weather. “For about five years now.”
“How the hell did you find out?” I said, looking down the ramp. Sooner or later the anthrophages were going to storm out of the stairwell.
“I rode my bike home from school,” said Russell. “James and Lucy weren’t home yet, so I went upstairs to say hi. When I went into your room, you were levitating three feet off the floor.”
“And you didn’t say anything?” I said, incredulous.
Russell shrugged. “Well, I figured you wanted it kept secret. Lord Morvilind must have taught you. It seemed like the sort of thing to keep secret.”
“You didn’t tell me?” I said. “For years I’ve been telling all sorts of lies to you, and you knew the entire time? Jesus Christ, Russell!”
He shrugged again. “I mean…I didn’t know what to do. Women aren’t supposed to learn magic, and men who learn magic are all drafted into the Wizard’s Legion. Like Lydia’s grandpa. I didn’t want you to get into trouble, so kept quiet.”
“Oh.” My exasperation faded into a sort of sick weariness. We were about to die, after all. “Thank you, Russell.”
“You’re not really a computer programmer, are you?” said Russell. “James says you do dangerous things for Lord Morvilind.”
“Yeah.”
Russell let out a long breath. “That’s why he’s willing to cure my frostfever, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said again.
“Oh,” said Russell. “I thought that might be it, but…I’m sorry, Nadia.”
“What for?” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I’m sorry for…everything that happened to you,” said Russell. “Because of me.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “I don’t regret it, and I would do it again.”
We stood in silence for a moment, the only noise the distant crackling of the flames on the lower level.
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” said Russell.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry, Russell. I did my best.”
Russell closed his eyes, swallowed, and nodded. “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.”
I wondered what the hell he was talking about, then I realized he was quoting the Bible.
“Oh, Russell,” I said. “Maybe for you, but I’ve done a lot of bad things, and…”
“There you are.”
It was a woman’s voice, one with a pronounced British accent.
I spun, and saw the woman walking down the ramp towards us.
She was big. Not in the least fat, but she was over six feet tall, and to judge from the muscles I saw in her forearms, she could have picked up both me and Russell without difficulty. She had dark skin, black eyes, and long black hair pulled into a tight bun. Over her black T-shirt she wore a tactical harness with grenades, a pair of holstered pistols, and several magazines of ammunition. In her left hand she carried a minigun, an actual .50 caliber minigun, as easily as if it were a suitcase. A belt of ammo hung from the gun, attaching to her backpack.
“Who the hell are you?” I said.
The woman’s black eyes shifted to me, and she grinned.
“Oh, you must be her,” she said. “Oh, dear. Of course you are a skinny white girl. It is the skinny white girls who always get him into trouble.”
I started to answer, and then I noticed something unsettling. The woman had a strange, spiraling black tattoo upon the right side of her neck, a peculiar mixture of curved lines and jagged edges. That wasn’t the peculiar part, though.
The tattoo was moving, swirling around her neck and face like the fingers of a living thing. Even as I watched, her eyes filled with darkness, becoming pits into a bottomless void.
The woman was a Shadow Hunter, bonded with a Shadowmorph that gave her superhuman strength and speed and resilience.
“Nice tattoo,” said Russell, his voice a little unsteady.
“Thank you,” said the woman. “What a nice young man you are. Kindly clear the line of fire, please. It was quite a lot of work to find you, and I would hate for it to go to waste.”
She stepped forward, raising the minigun, and the anthrophages raced around the corner.
I had never seen anyone use a minigun against anthrophages before, but it made an astonishing mess.
The recoil from the gun should have sent the woman staggering, but the power of her Shadowmorph let her stand motionless. The gun produced a constant roar, the rotating barrels blazing, and she swept the weapon back and forth like a woman watering her garden. Her aim was low, and she cut off the charging anthrophages at the knees, their legs disintegrating in sprays of black slime. The anthrophages fell with screams of fury and pain, and the Shadow Hunter sent short bursts of fire at individual anthrophages, the volleys ripping apart their skulls.
A half-dozen anthrophages broke free of the carnage, sprinting towards us in a scattered group so the Shadow Hunter’s minigun could not tear them apart. I raised my AK-47, and Russell did the same, but it proved unnecessary.
Another Shadow Hunter, a man, leapt into sight from between two cars. He was dressed in a similar fashion as the woman with the minigun, with a tactical harness over a black T-shirt, though he wore jeans and running shoes beneath them. His face was lean and handsome in a sharp sort of way beneath a shock of brown hair. His eyes, like the woman’s, were filled with the void, but he had no tattoo visible. The reason for that rested in his right hand. His Shadowmorph had flowed into the shape of a black sword, lusterless and dark, a blade that could cut through anything.
The Shadow Hunter proved that a moment later when he attacked, cutting the head from an anthrophage in a single smooth blow. The woman kept up her controlled bursts of short fire, while the male Shadow Hunter danced and blurred through the remaining anthrophages. They converged on him, but he was faster, stronger, more skilled, an
d none of them could touch him.
The fighting was over in less than a minute.
The woman sighed and lowered her minigun, smoke rising from the barrels. The male Shadow Hunter closed his eyes, his blade dissolving to disappear beneath his sleeve. When he opened his eyes, they were an unremarkable shade of brown.
He met my gaze and smiled a little. “Katerina Annovich. We keep running into each other like this.”
“Katerina Annovich” was the name I had given him the last time we met, when I had robbed Paul McCade’s mansion and gotten the anthrophages on my tail. We had worked together for survival, and had barely escaped with our lives. The man before me was a Shadow Hunter, a wizard, and an extremely capable fighter.
He was also a very good kisser, and I pushed that thought right out of my head.
“Corvus,” I said. “What took you so long?”
Chapter 7: Militia
Russell looked back and forth between us, blinking in surprise.
“You…all know each other?” he said, but the woman laughed.
“Corvus?” said the woman, shifting her minigun to one hand. “Corvus? You told her your name was Corvus?”
The Shadow Hunter I had known as Corvus shrugged. “I needed an alias.”
The woman laughed again, and Corvus sighed.
“What the hell is so funny?” I said, exhaustion, terror, and confusion warring for dominance in my mind.
“When he first joined our family,” said the woman, “before my time, mind you, the others called him Corvus because he was so grim and dour. Corvus the raven, as it were.”
“I had my reasons for both,” said Corvus.
Her laughter faded. “That may be, but I didn’t think you’d want to be reminded of it.”
“Some things we should never forget,” said Corvus.
“I suppose,” said the woman, “but…”
“For God’s sake!” I said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Well,” said the female Shadow Hunter, “my name is Nora. My real name, by the way, not a fake one. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, I’m charmed,” I said. My brain pointed out that displaying rudeness to a Shadow Hunter holding a minigun was probably not the best idea. Besides, she and Corvus had just saved our lives. “Thanks for…um, well, showing up in time.” I looked at the remnants of the slaughtered anthrophages. The gray body parts and the black slime that served as their blood had created a ghastly swamp at the bottom of the ramp. “We were screwed.”
“Yes,” agreed Nora. “You were doing quite well upon your own, though. Usually when anthrophages go after human targets, the end is predetermined, and rather grisly as well. They’ve been after you since…”
“July,” said Corvus, walking closer. “Conquest Day, in fact.”
“You’ve lasted nearly three months with anthrophages after you?” said Nora. “That is most impressive.”
“Thanks,” I said, watching as Corvus approached. I tried to figure out what to do next. Corvus and his friend Nora clearly didn’t want us dead. If they did, the two Shadow Hunters could have let the anthrophages eat us.
Yet why turn up in Milwaukee in the middle of a major Archon attack?
“Wait,” said Russell. “Those tattoos…you guys are Shadow Hunters?”
“I’m afraid so, dear,” said Nora.
“There really are such things as Shadow Hunters?” said Russell. “I mean, I’ve seen movies and read books about Shadow Hunters, but I thought they were legends.”
“No, I’m afraid we are quite real,” said Nora. “Most of our depictions in popular culture are terribly inaccurate, though.”
“Um,” said Russell. “You’re not here to kill us, are you?”
Nora laughed. “Certainly not. We do not have a writ of execution for you.”
Corvus stopped a half-dozen paces from me. I met his gaze without flinching. His eyes had turned brown again as the Shadowmorph withdrew its power, but I saw no hint of his intentions upon his face. He really was quite a handsome man…
Once again I tried to push that thought out of my head.
“So your name really isn’t Corvus?” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Your name isn’t really Katerina Annovich?”
“No,” I said.
He looked at Russell for a moment. “Your hair. You have frostfever.”
“All my life,” said Russell.
Corvus looked back at me. “He is your brother. The family resemblance is plain.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Corvus nodded as if a mystery had just been solved. “He is the one you were protecting.”
“Yeah,” I said again, my hands tight against the AK-47. “Okay. So. Don’t think I’m ungrateful or anything, because those anthrophages would have killed us. But the timing is a little suspicious, isn’t it? The Archons are attacking the city, the anthrophages are trying to kill me…and you turn up at the nick of time to save us? Little bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“Ah,” said Nora. “You were right about her. She is clever.”
“We were looking for you,” said Corvus.
“For God’s sake, why?” I said. “If you wanted to ask me out, there were easier ways to go about it.”
You know how I’ve said many, many times before that I have a smart mouth? That it sometimes gets me into a lot of trouble?
This was one of those times.
Russell’s eyes got enormous, and Nora let out a hearty guffaw. Corvus displayed absolutely no reaction. Yet for a moment, just a moment, I thought he looked…
Sad?
“No,” said Corvus. “The Firstborn of our family commanded that we seek you out after I reported the details of our last encounter.”
“Your last encounter?” said Russell, his expression still astonished. “Eww. Just…eww.” Nora laughed again.
“Russell, not now,” I said. “So you found me. How?”
“It was challenging,” said Corvus. “You did an excellent job of concealing yourself, and I could find no trace of you in Milwaukee. So instead I have been following the anthrophage packs hunting you.”
“That sounds dangerous,” I said.
“It is,” said Corvus, “but I’ve had some practice, and Nora is a capable fighter. We’ve taken out six anthrophage packs that were searching for you.”
I felt a chill. “Six?”
The anthrophages had almost killed me in Los Angeles. In the Shadowlands, a pack of anthrophages led by a magic-using anthrophage elder had tried to kill me twice, and if not for the machinations of the Knight of Grayhold and the frost giant jarl Rimethur, they would have succeeded.
“Yes,” said Corvus. “It seems you very much annoyed some of our mutual enemies.”
“What can I say?” I said. “I have gift for pissing people off.”
Corvus snorted. “Truly.”
The chill did not leave me. If Corvus and Nora had not killed those six anthrophage packs…I would be dead. Russell and the Marneys might be dead with me, since I had been staying with them for the last month.
“Okay,” I said. “So your boss, this…uh…”
“Firstborn,” said Nora. “He is our leader.”
“This Firstborn guy wanted you to find me,” I said. “Why?”
“We need to ask you a question,” said Corvus.
“A date?” I said. “Sure, but you’re paying. I’m old-fashioned that way.”
Corvus shook his head. “Not on a date.”
My mouth went dry.
I was pretty sure I knew what he wanted to know. Somebody like me was unusual. Corvus knew I was working for someone, that I did so to preserve the life of someone that I loved. If he figured out that I was working for Lord Kaethran Morvilind, then I was dead. Morvilind had been very clear about what would happen if I gave away his secrets. He would kill me, and Russell would die of frostfever without his yearly cure spell. Or if Morvilind found out that I had angered the Dark Ones, he might kill me. The
one time I had asked Morvilind about the Dark Ones, he had flat-out threatened to kill me if I ever asked again. I had to find a way out of this.
“All right,” I said. “You want to ask me a question. Fine. There’s something you have to do for me first. No, two things.”
“We did just save your life,” said Nora.
I grinned at her. “You save my life because if I’m dead, I can’t answer questions.”
“Fine,” said Corvus. “What do you want?”
“First,” I said. “Why did you turn up in the middle of an Archon attack?”
Corvus frowned. “It was extremely bad luck.”
I snorted. “You expect me to believe that it was just a coincidence?”
“It is an unlikely coincidence, but nonetheless it is the truth,” said Corvus. “The Shadow Hunters stand apart from the war between the High Queen, the Rebels, and the Archons. True, we have accepted writs of execution for Rebel leaders from time to time, though we do not accept writs from the Rebels. We had heard of increased Rebel activity around Madison…”
“There’s an understatement,” I muttered, but Corvus kept talking.
“We followed an anthrophage pack from Madison into Milwaukee,” said Corvus. That meant that the anthrophages had been following me, and I had almost led them right to the Marneys’ house. A wave of sickening guilt went through me. I had gone to such efforts to save Russell, to make sure Morvilind continued his cure spells…and my own stupidity had almost brought disaster on us all.
God, what a fool I was.
Corvus was still talking, so I forced aside the guilt and made myself listen.
“We followed the pack into Milwaukee, and seem to have walked right into a major Archon incursion,” said Corvus. “Nora and I would have caught up to you sooner, but we had to fight our way through a scouting party of orcish soldiers.” His eyes flicked over the AK-47 hanging at my side. “It seems you had your own encounter.”
“You could say that,” I said.
“She ran them over with a car,” said Russell, still looking a bit stunned.
“Efficient,” said Nora. “I approve.”
“What is the second thing you will ask of us?” said Corvus.
Cloak Games: Omnibus One Page 42
