Shadow Blade

by Seressia Glass

  That didn’t make sense to Kira. Balm always knew. She knew everything. But what if she hadn’t known about this? What in the Universe did it mean for the head of the Gilead Commission to not know?

  The Universe was a vast and mysterious place, impossible for any one person to know and understand. People spent entire lifetimes trying to understand earth religions. Those who knew about the Universal Balance, how the cosmos was aligned between Order and Chaos, Light and Shadow, and how every god, every thing, came from that source, could spend several lifetimes studying and not begin to scratch the surface.

  Kira certainly couldn’t begin to understand those she ultimately served, the Guardians of Light. Just as she doubted that even those Fallen into Shadow knew the full depth of the source of Chaos.

  Of course, it was impossible to predict random coincidences, but believing the past few days were just a burp of fate would take the sort of mental gymnastics she knew she wasn’t capable of.

  Her mentor and handler had just happened to come upon an ancient Egyptian dagger. Egyptian weaponry was one of Bernie and Kira’s special areas of expertise. He knew the artifact to be magical and therefore brought it to America—where Kira had the facilities to deal with it—instead of asking her to travel to London, which would have been easier for him if it had been merely a priceless object. A seeker demon and one of the Fallen had followed the dagger’s trail. That trail had also led the dagger’s original owner—the only being she’d ever encountered who was unaffected by her touch—straight to Kira.

  That was the part she didn’t understand at all. As far as she could remember, she could tell things about people by simply touching them, their lives replaying across her mind’s eye like a disjointed movie of the week. She could pick up similar, if fainter, traces of people’s lives from objects they had touched. The talent had grown as she’d matured. When she’d reached puberty, her “gift” had turned into a curse that had sent her adoptive sister to the hospital and her to Gilead. How could she have known that her ability to read people caused her to drain their energy, especially since she’d never met another being with her gift? She hadn’t been able to safely touch another human being—except once, with Nico, under very special circumstances—since.

  Until the Nubian touched her.

  She gripped the edge of the counter. Now the Nubian and his—what, guide?—were in her home, upstairs in her bedroom. Not even Wynne or Zoo had been on the upper level, and now she had a man dying in her bed because he needed to be awakened by the morning sun. Kira liked to be awakened by the morning sun too, but the sun brought her to life metaphorically, not literally.

  Kira grabbed a cold gel pack from the freezer, took it and her cleaning materials into the living area and sat down on the sofa. She put everything but the blue pack on the coffee table. Propping her bandaged ankle up on a sofa pillow, she placed the cold-pack on it. Kira looked at her hands as she adjusted the icy compress: they were shaking—and not from the cold. Her bare hands hadn’t been that close to another person’s skin since Nico had died in her arms, died because he’d wanted to please her. Now the Nubian prepared to face Anubis because he’d tried to save her.

  “Ma’at, goddess of justice and order, is there a lesson here? Something that I’m supposed to learn? I have to believe there is. I have to think something more is at work. I have to believe these deaths mean something.”

  She knew the deaths meant something. She just had to find out what that something was. Which meant she had to find the Avatar of the Fallen who’d controlled the seeker demon.

  At least they’d taken the seeker demon off the street. That was the only good thing that had come from the last two days. The downside was that if the Fallen’s Avatar hadn’t been taken out when the seeker demon imploded, it could possibly conjure up another one.

  Nansee came down the stairs just as she began to polish her blade with a combination of metal polish and extrasense. She looked up. “So it’s done? He’s gone?”

  “Yes.” He ambled over to the chair and slowly folded his lanky frame into it. “You managed to clean your Lightblade, then?”

  She held it up, sighting along the blade. “I normally let it sit overnight on a clear quartz crystal cluster on my nightstand too, but my bedroom’s now off limits, seeing as how it was unexpectedly transformed into a morgue.”

  “This cluster?” He extended his hands to her. The quartz cluster, about six inches long, lay on a handkerchief in his hands. It looked like the one on her nightstand but she knew he hadn’t had anything in his hands when he’d come downstairs.

  “How did you . . . ?” She shook her head. “I’ll just say thanks and, please, put it on the table.”

  Nansee placed the cluster within her reach, then eased back. “If it makes you feel better, think of Khefar as falling unconscious from his injuries and needing rest to recover.”

  “Sure, let’s give that a shot.” She’d either have to believe him or call Sanchez to help her dispose of the body. Either way, at sunrise she’d know for sure.

  Nansee ran a hand over his thick white hair. “I know this is not what you intended. Believe me when I say it isn’t what he intended either.”

  “No, he just wanted his blade back.”

  “Of course.” He gestured toward her own weapon. “If you’d lost your Lightblade, would you not do anything within your power to reclaim it?”

  She looked down at the blade, gleaming with her extrasense. She could clearly remember the day Balm had introduced her to it, how it had been a prize she’d had paid dearly to earn. Earn it she did, through days, weeks, and months of hard training and harder discipline, and that made it all the more precious.

  “This.” She jerked her head toward the stairs. “This has happened before?”

  “Yes, the last time was about fifty years ago.”

  “And I guess he always comes back, right?”

  “Do not worry, Chaser Solomon. This is a tale that has been told before. Although the details may change, the ending is always the same.”

  He glanced at the open cabinets above her stove. “I notice that you have quite a collection of teapots. Does that mean you might have some rooibos?”

  “Of course. How rude of me. I always break out the chai myself while I’m waiting for someone to rise from the dead.” She dialed back her extrasense, placed her blade on the coffee table, and started to rise from the sofa to make her way to the kitchen.

  Nansee quickly rose from his chair. “No, please, allow me. You need to rest your ankle.” He beamed down at her. “And you still have your humor. That is a good thing.”

  “Keep my humor but lose my sanity?” She used a small burst of power to charge the crystal before balancing her blade on the points, then settled back down, shifting a pillow behind her back. Nansee had already removed the kettle from the stove and was filling it with water from the tap. He set it back on the burner to boil. “Don’t know if that’s a fair trade-off or not.”

  “You’re not losing your sanity, Chaser. These are strange circumstances, to be sure, but really, you’d be more comfortable if you could just change your definition of death as it concerns Khefar.” He opened a cupboard door and located the canister of loose red tea without asking its location.

  “Sure, I’ll work on that. In the meantime, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I can tell you some, but the rest will have to come from him.” Nansee found two mugs and set them on the counter.

  “Those mysterious ‘rules’ of yours again?”

  Nansee smiled. “One might say so.”

  “Okay, let’s start with something basic then. Why did he jump into my fight with the seeker demon?”

  “It’s what he does.”

  “Why? My extrasense protects me. He doesn’t have that.”

  “His blade protects him.”

  That stopped her cold. “But he didn’t have his blade. That makes it doubly my fault that he died.”

  “Kira
.” Nansee leaned on the counter that divided the kitchen from the “living room.” “May I call you Kira?” She nodded. “This is not your fault. This is who he is, what he does. This has been his way for scores of centuries.”

  “Why? Why is he doing this? Why is he still alive? Why does he come back to life every morning? Is he a solar vampire or something?”

  “His story is not mine to tell, Chaser Solomon,” the old man said. “What I can tell you is that the Dagger of Kheferatum is his, a gift that became a curse he’s had to bear for four millennia.”

  She stared at him, watching as he plucked a kente-patterned teapot from her collection. It clicked in her head then, softly and completely. “Oh my gods.”

  He turned to her, a decided twinkle in his eyes. “Yes?”

  “Nansee. That’s what he calls you. But that’s not your name, is it? Not your whole name.”

  The kettle whistled. He lifted it from the stove, then poured a bit of steaming water into the teapot to warm it. “It is one of them. I’ve had many names over the centuries. A few of them have stuck.”

  “You’re Anansi. Kweku Ananse. The spider god of the west.”

  He bowed low with a flourish. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  She had a real live demigod in her kitchen, making tea. She must have cracked or this was all a dream and she was still sleeping off the previous day’s trauma.

  “Funny, you don’t seem like the trickster god of all the folktales.”

  “Times are different now,” the old man said, his ever-present smile fading at the edges. He poured out the warming water, then spooned loose tea into her teapot. “Even gods have to grow up sometime. Besides, we are, at our essence, what people believe us to be.”

  “But I believe you’re a god. Khefar knows you’re a god.” Bitterness flooded her, along with a healthy dose of anger. “So why didn’t you save him? Why didn’t you save Bernie?”

  “Because all the higher forms of life are endowed with free will. And as such, some choices lead you to an inevitable conclusion, no matter how differently one may want the story to end. You, Kira, take risks every time you remove your gloves. Khefar knew that attacking the seeker demon without the Dagger of Kheferatum put him at a disadvantage. Your friend Bernie Comstock knew the dagger was dangerous, so dangerous that he decided to bring it to the one person in the world he trusted to safekeep it. Each of you knew the risks involved.”

  She clenched her fists, holding on to her power and her rage by the thinnest of grips. “But you could have stopped their deaths. You could have intervened. Any of you could have.”

  “Kira.” For a moment the old man looked every bit of his supposed years. “Think about it. The Universe is about Balance. If a demigod who stands in Light had interceded on your behalf, what would Shadow have brought in to balance me?”

  He was right. Of course he was right—he was a demigod. Her body shook as her anger churned, needing a target, an outlet. Finally she just threw back her head and screamed, long, loud, and raw.

  Silently he came around the counter and handed her his handkerchief, a tiny spider embroidered at the edge. The urge to laugh bubbled up, the remnants of releasing emotion. “Nice touch, that.”

  “Thank you.”

  She wiped at her eyes, wrestled herself back under control. “Well, since the Nubian isn’t running down the stairs brandishing a towel bar he ripped off the bathroom wall, I can only conclude that scream wasn’t loud enough to wake the dead.”

  “It was close. We’ll have tea in just a moment more. Would you like toast with it, or do you have something else?”

  He was being nice and it made her feel guilty. Gods were good at that, she supposed. “Just the tea will do. I don’t think I could eat anything right now.”

  She tried to hand him back his handkerchief but he demurred. She thrust it into her back pocket, then blatantly changed the subject. “So, how did you, a West African demigod, get involved with a warrior from Kemet?”

  “He fascinated me and since I collect stories, I wanted to acquire his. More than that, I like to think that I have kept him company all these centuries. No one should have to walk through this world alone.” The demigod set the teapot and mugs on a tray and brought it into the living area. He set it on the coffee table.

  “I’m sure he appreciates that.” Her vision blurred over again, no doubt from the steam coming from the mugs as he poured the hot brew into each. Maybe no one should have to walk the world alone, but sometimes a person chose a solitary path because it was simply the safest way. Besides, in the end, facing final judgment, everyone was alone.

  She wanted to go downstairs, sit before her altar, and commune with her goddess. It seemed a fitting tribute somehow, with a warrior of the Two Lands lying in state upstairs making his sacred journey through the underworld. Ma’at, guide him safely.

  “Kira, have you ever been to a wake?”

  She blinked rapidly. “No.”

  “Then let’s have one, now. We can sit, drink tea, and I shall regale you with tales of wonder and awe . . . and bring you fresh ice packs.”

  A surprised laugh broke free, probably just as he intended. “You just want an excuse to share your tales with a captive audience.”

  “And here I thought I’d perfected the whole ‘mysterious ways’ persona.” He smiled at her. “Drink your tea. I have a god’s lifetime worth of history to choose from.”

  Chapter 12

  Gold-white light pierced the darkness, the promise and potential of a new day. Next came the warmth, driving back the cold of death and night. Then came breath, the most precious of air. Light, warmth, breath—the triple gift of life.

  Khefar dared to open his eyes completely. He lay sprawled on a large bed, his torso swathed in bandages. Blessed sunlight streamed through large windows, bathing the bed and giving the pale walls an airy feeling.

  He turned his head, expecting to find the trickster grinning over him. Instead he found the Shadowchaser. She’d changed out of her layers of leather and into gray cotton pants and a white T-shirt. Curled up in a chair beside the bed, she looked so soft that he almost didn’t recognize her.

  She leaned forward as he stirred, the morning sun catching the tortoiseshell-brown flecks in her eyes. “You’re awake.”

  “As promised, Isis be praised.” He pushed himself upright. “Seeing you instead of Nansee is a most welcome change. Surely you didn’t watch over me the entire time? And where is the old man?”

  “Downstairs, preparing something he calls a proper resurrection feast.” She shook her head. “And no, I didn’t sit up here all night. Dealing with a dead man in my bed was a little much. Luckily I was entertained by a demigod who likes to be domestic.”

  “He revealed himself to you?”

  “Once I thought about it, it was easy to make the connection. He decided to keep my mind occupied by plying me with tea and tales.”

  “That means he likes you.” Which, thought the warrior, could be cause for worry. When Anansi took an interest in humans, especially women, things tended to go downhill fairly quickly.

  “He didn’t share any stories of you. Said they weren’t his to tell.” She stretched in the chair, bones cracking. “I’m curious about one thing—two, actually.”

  “Can I take the easy one first? I did just return from the dead, you know.”

  She didn’t return his smile. Instead she seemed almost angry as she asked, “Why did you save me?”

  “That’s the easy question?”

  “Just answer it.”

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Because I need to know why.” She rose . . . and he saw his blade grasped in her hand. “You didn’t have your dagger and your immortality is, as I now understand, complicated. I had my blade and my extrasense, yet you decided to help me. Why?”

  Danger thrummed through the air, heavy and potent. Her easy stance proved that she knew how to fight, both with a weapon and without—something he was alr
eady aware of, considering she’d come through a tussle with a seeker demon with nothing more than a twisted ankle.

  “I didn’t decide to save you, I just did. Fight, defend, protect. That’s the warrior’s way.”

  “The warrior’s way is also to kill, destroy, pillage.” She held up the dagger. His dagger. “Especially with a blade like this one.”

  “Blades such as that one are dangerous in their own right,” he told her. “Even a good person could be turned by that dagger.”

  Skepticism shone plain in her expression. “Is that what happened to you? Were you turned by this dagger?”

  “I was turned by my anger.”

  “Really?” Kira tossed her braids over her shoulder with a practiced gesture as she crossed to the bed. “Your blade showed me how it came to be in your possession, gifted by a High King of the Two Lands. Your blade also showed me how you destroyed an entire village, then kept on killing, century after century. Your blade also calls itself the Dagger of Kheferatum.”

  Khefar sighed. “My blade apparently talks too much.”

  In a blink, the tip of the blade pressed against his throat. He felt a slight sting, knew that she’d nicked him. Deliberately too, given how steady her arm was, how flat her eyes, the slight curve of her mouth. He had no doubt that if he so much as sneezed, he’d be dead. Again.

  The dagger gleamed in the sunlight as she turned it slightly. “The magic in this blade is unprecedented,” she whispered. “The power of Kheper combined with the might of Atum, bonded by centuries of bloodshed. No wonder mystics and alchemists and the power hungry have searched for it. I don’t know if I could defuse its magic. I don’t even know if I’d want to.”

  This isn’t good. This was twice the warrior knew of that she’d handled the dagger. Twice that her extrasense had blended with its innate magic. Already he could see the glint in her eyes, the response to the dagger’s call. It meant she had incredible strength, more strength than she probably knew. The dagger killed the weak.