Warrior from the Shadowland

by Cassandra Gannon

Wood Phases made excellent soldiers. Their sense of duty and respect for authority fit in nicely with military work. Uriel’s fighting skills were certainly superior to the Air House stooges’. One on one, two on one, maybe even three on one, Uriel could have beaten them all. But, there were six armed mercenaries and Uriel only had half a second to react.

  Uriel slammed into one of the guys headed for Thar, sending the Air Phase into the wall. Two more tackled Uriel from behind.

  “Son of a bitch!” Tharsis toppled the potted fern into the path of the other Phase headed his way and scrabbled backwards out of range of the deadly arc of the blade. “Nia!”

  “I’m alright.” Nia lied. “You and Ty run!” She pried the sword loose and gave an experimental swing with her wrist, trying to figure out how to use it. Since the guy whose shin she aimed at let out a bellow and reached down to grab the wound, she guessed she’d done it right.

  The desk was suddenly lifted right from over her. One of the Air House assholes toppled the whole thing sideways so Nia was exposed, again.

  From the outer room, Ty let out a cry of alarm. Nia could hear her trying to get into the fight, rather than run away from it. Typical. Ty found waiters intimidating, but had no trouble taking on a half dozen, blood-thirsty assassins. As Job delighted in pointing out: for all its emphasis on education, the Water House had never been known for its rational thinkers.

  Nia drew on her powers to gather up as much water vapor as she could. Since the air conditioning in the building kept the humidity annoyingly low, it really wasn’t much, though. Elementals didn’t usually use their power in fights against each other. It wasn’t considered honorable. But, neither was attacking unarmed people, so Nia wasn’t worrying about playing fair.

  She slammed Water energy at her attackers like a punch, trying to evade their clutching hands and get to her feet. It wasn’t going to be enough. She knew it. Nia realized in a distant sort of way that they were all going to die.

  And that’s when she felt a new force enter the fray.

  Not Uriel’s steady Wood Phase energy, not the flowing strength of the Water House, but something so huge and dark that it swamped her senses. Nia’s head snapped around, expecting to find another army of Phases standing in front of her. Instead, she saw a single, shadowed shape. Even then she didn’t see it so much as sense it as it moved.

  The two men attacking her must’ve noticed it, too, because they shifted in unison to face the new threat. Nia wasn’t sure what happened after that. Everything moved too fast. The sword was ripped from her hand and took the heads off both men in one long, clean slice. Blood splattered on the beige walls in a horrible rainbow shape.

  Nia felt her mouth drop open in shock.

  The Air Phase going after Tharsis fell next. The guy didn’t even have the chance to turn and see his death coming. The power behind the sword swing sent the attacker’s head slamming into the ground like a dropped cantaloupe.

  “Holy shit.” Tharsis whispered. He stared at the Air Phase’s decapitated body in a sick sort of fascination. Behind his shoulder, Ty looked more terrified than ever.

  Nia’s brain finally registered that the sword was actually held by a male Phase. A very big Phase, wearing black and grey camouflaged pants and a sleeveless t-shirt. The horror of the situation must’ve been making her slightly hysterical, because Nia had the very clear thought that every man’s muscles should look so good in a muscle shirt

  Most Elementals ranked high on any attractiveness scale. It was the nature of their species. This particular Phase made the rest of them look like everybody’s last choice for prom date, though. Even covered in the blood of his victims and twirling a massive sword around like a baton, the man was beautiful. The kind of beauty that didn’t seem quite real; as if you might blink and he’d just disappear right in front of you. Every move he made had a purpose and easy masculine grace. His mercury colored eyes fixed on his next target with a deadly intensity that really shouldn’t have been nearly as hot as it was. He was gorgeous.

  And then Nia noticed the silver streak at his temple that declared him part of the Shadow House. Her heart stopped.

  There was only one Shadow Phase left in the universe.

  Cross.

  Words tumbled through Nia’s memory. Whispers she’d heard about Cross. Warnings from anyone who ventured too close to the Shadowland.

  Unstable.

  Dangerous.

  Wrong.

  After the Fall, every Elemental felt Cross lose his grip on the Shadows. They’d all braced themselves as the end of the world began unfolding in an explosive chain reaction. For many Phases, it had been a relief when Cross let go and his House crumbled. Others had panicked. Most were already too far gone to care what happened.

  Nia had been sitting at Ty’s bedside when she’d sensed the pull of oblivion. She vividly recalled the rush of it, the terrible power promising to stop all the pain and despair. Nia had thought that she’d been one of the Phases passed feeling anything, at that point. But, when the Shadows burst free, her eyes had filled with frightened tears. She’d never felt so alone in her life. Like she’d suddenly been abandoned at the edge of some great, yawning abyss.

  Except, there’d been no end at the end of the world.

  Cross somehow stopped it and pulled the Shadows back. He’d shouldered the entire House himself. It shouldn’t have been possible for one, single Phase to do that. Every Elemental knew that it just couldn’t be done. In all of history, it had never even been attempted. Yet, Cross had held the weight of the Shadow House for two solid years, now… Alone.

  No one could do something so impossible and stay sane.

  Unpredictable.

  Deranged.

  Wrong.

  Nia knew that they’d had a far better chance against the six Air Phases than they’d have against Cross, if he turned the sword on them next.

  Uriel had killed two of the three men he’d been fighting. The last one was attempting to pin him to the floor when Cross came up behind him and stabbed the attacker through the neck. The guy’s eyes rolled back to stare at Cross in a sort of dazed stupefaction as he slumped sideways.

  Cross actually smiled. He twisted the blade in a practiced flourish and took the Phase’s head clean off.

  Ty cringed.

  Ignoring Uriel, who was breathing hard from the battle, Cross calmly decapitated the other two bodies. Nia still couldn’t force herself to look away. Besides the Fall, very few things killed Elementals. Beheadings were one of them. It should have made her sad to lose more Phases when the Elementals needed every member of their species so desperately. In her heart, though, Nia wasn’t sorry to see such terrible men exterminated forever. They would have killed her twin, kidnapped her cousin, and probably destroyed the universe in the process. Their deaths weren’t going to keep her up at night.

  Tharsis, Ty, Uriel and Nia stayed perfectly still as Cross finished his grisly task. None of them were sure what to do next.

  “Um.” Tharsis finally cleared his throat. “Wow. Nice work, crazy guy.” He gave an encouraging nod, his gaze still fixed on the body in front of him.

  Cross disregarded that. Mercury colored eyes swung around to pin Nia. “What the fuck were you thinking?” He demanded, harshly. His voice was a shadow of shadows, seeping out and chilling the air. “Do you want to die, now? Is that it?”

  Nia’s eyes widened. “Who, me?” She actually glanced over her shoulder to see if maybe his glower was directed at someone else. She couldn’t imagine why he’d look so angry with her. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “Yes, fucking you.” He stalked closer to her. “What if I hadn’t gotten here in time? What if I hadn’t felt you, again? Huh? Then, where the hell would you be?”

  “Probably trying to get back under that desk.” Nia admitted, before she thought better of it. She had no clue what most of his rant meant, so anything she said could set him off. He was crazy. It would undoubtedly be better to keep her mouth shut, but Nia had
never really excelled at doing that.

  She held her ground as Cross moved closer to her, once again struck by how lovely he was for a lunatic. His dark hair swept back to his shoulders, offsetting the pale color of his skin. There probably wasn’t a lot of sun in the Shadowland for tanning. For some reason the unexpected thought made her smile.

  Cross didn’t appreciate her small grin. “You think this is fucking funny?” He sounded incensed.

  “Stop swearing at me.” Her smile faded. He still gripped the sword in his hand, but Nia wasn’t about to let him just push her around. “And stop trying to intimidate me. Just stop.” She held up a hand in the universal “don’t come any closer” signal. “I mean it, Cross. Don’t.” There was so much power clinging to him, she could feel it like an electrical charge. No one should be able hold so much energy and still function.

  Unique.

  Deadly.

  Wrong.

  Against her will, Nia took a small step backwards.

  Cross froze. His eyes flashed with an emotion Nia couldn’t quite identify; hope or sorrow or something that vanished too fast for her to read. “You know who I am?” He asked, in a softer tone.

  “You’re the only Shadow Phase left.” Nia gestured to the silver streak at his temple. “Narrowing it down wasn’t too hard.” She felt a little more secure, now. When she’d said “stop,” Cross had halted on a dime. That was a pretty clear indication of the type of man he was. He wasn’t going to hurt them. “Everyone knows about you and what you did after the Fall.” He’d saved the universe. Did he really think any Phase, anywhere, hadn’t heard that story?

  Cross glanced away as if that wasn’t the answer he wanted. He suddenly seemed to realize that he was covered in blood, because he winced. Avoiding Nia’s gaze, he wiped his free hand down the side of his pant leg, trying to get it clean.

  “The Shadow King? Aren’t you supposed to be all wrong, now?” Uriel inquired with typical Wood Phase tact. “Why are you helping us?” He pulled himself to his feet and eyed Cross like he was a volatile science experiment. “Why are you here, at all?”

  “I’m on vacation.” Cross sneered. He watched expressionlessly as Uriel and Tharsis both moved closer to Nia. “What’s your name?” Blood dripped off the blade of the sword and onto the floor.

  “Well, that’s Uriel.” Nia explained when no one else seemed willing to answer. “And this is my brother, Tharsis. And that’s my cousin Tritone.” She pointed over her shoulder. “She’s the one hiding in the doorway.”

  Ty bit her lower lip and regarded Cross warily.

  If Cross was impressed at meeting the infamous Queen of the Water House he didn’t show it. He met Nia’s eyes, again. “Not them. What is your name?” His voice suggested that only a simpleton would have misunderstood his question, even though he hadn’t been looking at her when he’d asked it. “What the hell do I care what the rest of ‘em are called?”

  For some reason, Ty’s mouth curved at that.

  “Gee, thanks.” Tharsis muttered.

  “Oh. Me?” Nia ran a hand through her hair. “Well, I’m Nia.” She wasn’t used to introducing herself to other Phases. Pretty much everyone knew her from her passionate, if inevitably losing, arguments at Council meetings.

  “Nia.” Cross’s expression became something close to awe.

  “Nia is the princess of the Water House.” Uriel told Cross, pointedly. “She’s not wrong. She’s normal.”

  Cross looked down at his palms again. Blood still stained them. He shoved his free hand into his pocket, holding the sword with the other. “She’s not normal.” He retorted, almost to himself.

  Nia wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

  “Should we be –like-- escaping now?” Tharsis wanted to know. “’Cause, I don’t think the humans will understand sword fights and headless guys in their office when they come back from lunch.” The Fall had made Tharsis immune to dead bodies. He absently nudged the torso in front of him with the toe of his black Converse high top. “Plus, the whole ‘happening in a serology lab thing’ is not gonna be great if the humans start testing the blood of these guys. Elemental DNA’s bound to raise some red flags.”

  Uriel sighed. “Humans.” His tone said it all.

  Cross scowled over at Nia, seeming to remember that he was an arrogant madman. “What the hell are you even doing around humans?”

  Nia hesitated, not sure how much to tell Cross. Not sure why he was in the human realm, at all. He may have sided with them during the Air House attack, but everyone with a brain in their head hated the Air House. Cross probably wasn’t going to love the idea of accidently joining up with a rebellion. He seemed pretty touchy. Besides, Nia didn’t want to get him in trouble with the Council. A Banishment sentence really wasn’t the best way to repay someone for saving your life.

  “We’re on vacation.” Ty put-in, seriously.

  Cross flashed her a quick glare.

  Nia turned to stare at her cousin in shock. Ty didn’t joke with other Phases. She even kept Uriel at a polite distance. Ty’s dry sense of humor only ever came out around family. It was bizarre.

  Ty raised a shoulder in a small shrug, a smile still curving the edges of her mouth.

  Nia looked back at Cross and prepared to lie. Nia was actually a fairly good liar, which was why she was presently in the human realm and not staying safely in the Water Palace like the Council thought.

  When she met Cross’s mercury eyes though, every “very reasonable explanation for all of this” excuse went right out of her head. She heard herself telling him the truth. “We’re searching the blood records. Someone donated plasma and it was used at this hospital. Only the blood wasn’t completely human.”

  She didn’t go into detail about what they were hoping the other, non-human, qualities in the blood were, of course. Cross would think she was nuts. Job certainly had. Because, Nia’s rebellion was searching for something magical. Something that could undo the Fall and restore what had been lost.

  The Quintessence.

  To most Elementals, she might as well have been hunting Big Foot.

  Uriel and Tharsis winced in unison. “Nia, you’re not hooked up to a lie detector.” Thar hissed. “You could maybe fudge a little bit here, huh?”

  Cross’s eyebrows shot up. “Humans and Elementals can’t interbreed, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I’ve never been comfortable with that theory…” Ty began, musingly

  “Nia.” Uriel interrupted in a calm sort of voice. “Whose blood is that on your arm?”

  Cross swore savagely in Elemental.

  Nia winced. She’d forgotten about the cut on her shoulder, but now she felt the pain of it rush in. “Oh, great.” She looked down at the throbbing wound and said the only think that came to mind. “And now, my favorite blouse is ruined.”

  Chapter Two

  Pain is my element, as hate is thine

  Percy Shelly- “Prometheus Unbound”

  Chason, of the Magnet House was a mean son of a bitch and his need for vengeance was the stuff of Homeric legend. His hatred was so vast and unquenchable that it left no room for any other considerations. It overrode everything else in the universe. His festering, burning, aching desire to strike back at his enemies consumed every moment of his life.

  His hatred was his life and it would be his death, as well.

  Because, Chason planned to destroy the world.

  It wasn’t that he wanted to end the world, exactly. Truthfully, Chason didn’t give a fuck about the world anymore, so he had no real feelings about whether it should survive or not. It was of no real consequence in his single-minded quest for revenge.

  Collateral damage in his war.

  Chason’s real goal was to bring down the Air House. To kill Parald, Parald’s second-in-command, Gion, and every other Air Phase in existence. To blow every damn one of them into oblivion and smile while it happened.

  Admittedly, if the Air House fell, it did mean the collapse
of the universe.

  Chason was insane, not stupid. He knew that the other Houses couldn’t exist without Air, for God sake. It was one of the largest, most important pillars of Elemental life. Chason knew that if Parald and all his minions died, they’d drag the rest of existence down with them. He knew that it would finally finish what the Fall had started. It would wipeout everything with a quick whimper, shrinking the universe down like the little black dot that appeared in the center of old TV sets after you switched them off. Chason knew all of that.

  He just didn’t care.

  Not at all.

  Because, he’d trade everything, in every realm, in every time period that had ever existed, for the satisfaction of seeing Parald dead. Nothing else mattered to him. Not a tiny bit.

  Chason had conceived of several simpler plans to get rid of Parald. After all, it wasn’t just the collapse of the Air House that could end the world. Any important House tumbling would trigger the dystopia. And there were a lot of Houses with far fewer Phases left than the Air House. Five in Wood House. Three in the Water House. Two in the Crystal House. The Shadow House only had one. One. And everyone knew Cross was unstable from holding the Shadows all by himself, so he’d be such an easy target.

  Yes, Chason had worked it all out in his own fracturing mind. How, with a few quick deaths of some random Phases, he could end the world and take Parald to hell with him. If there’d even be a hell after the apocalypse. Chason actually wasn’t sure about that. But, so long as the Air House collapsed, he supposed it didn’t matter.

  Killing Parald in such an easy way wasn’t good enough, though. Just beheading all the Time Phases, for example, then waiting for the Air House to crumple along with everything else as a natural consequence of the past and future colliding. It was just so… impersonal. So quick and distant and unsatisfying.

  Chason wanted Parald to see his death coming. To experience it like an inescapable wave of despair and lost dreams. To know that there was absolutely nothing he could do to ever stop it and that Chason, of the Magnet House had been the one to set it loose on him.