Shadow Blade

by Seressia Glass

  Nico rubbed her back as she coughed and gagged her way through the burn. “How will we know it worked?” she asked when she could speak again.

  He took the vial from her, placed it on the nightstand. “Let’s find out.”

  He leaned over her as she eased back onto the pillows. Energy crackled between them, but not the blue of her power. Expectation and yearning caused her heart to slam inside her chest.

  She was afraid and nervous and excited, but ready, oh so ready. From the moment she’d seen Nicolo Darvalos, she’d wanted him. Every female Chaser in training had wanted him and no one, not even Kira, had speculated that she would become his charge. She’d secretly gloated when he’d been assigned as her handler, bitterly disappointing the other trainees and forever cementing their dislike of her. Not that she cared. Nico belonged to her and always would as long as they both lived. Discovering the attraction wasn’t simple teacher-student infatuation, but was in fact reciprocated, was the best moment of Kira’s life.

  Until now.

  His fingers brushed her cheek. She stuttered out a sigh, curling into his touch. So warm. “What do you want to do, my love?”

  She cupped his face in her hands, marveling at the feel of his skin against hers, the way his thick dark hair tickled the edges of her hands. “Everything.”

  He touched her, touched her as she had never been touched. She learned the differences between holding, petting, stroking, between caressing and fondling. She discovered the glory of lips and teeth and tongue and all the wonderful things the male form could do with the female. In the early morning hours, secure in her ability to please and be pleased, she learned how to make a man shiver and shake as he called out her name.

  They stayed in their hotel room for two days, exploring each other fully, until Nico suggested dinner at one of the cafés near the Grand Canal. Kira didn’t want to go out, but the idea of leaving behind her Lightblade and wandering the Piazza San Marco like the hundreds of other tourists and lovers had a certain appeal.

  Gorgeous by day, the square was absolutely stunning by night, golden light bathing the historic buildings with an etheric beauty. Arm in arm, they crossed the Piazza, heading for the arcade. “Where are you taking me? I would have been happy to order in again.”

  “My dear, we cannot come to Venice and not walk the Piazza,” Nico said, his grin infectious. “There’s a late night restaurant near Teatro La Fenice with a most impressive collection of wines.”

  “We’re not going to stay out too late, are we?” Kira asked. “If it’s our last night together, I don’t want to waste too much time on food.”

  Nico laughed. “If this is to be our last night together, my sweet, I need to keep up my strength. But not to worry, they have takeaway service.”

  All at once, hundreds of Venice’s ubiquitous pigeons took to the air, swirling around them, separating them. Even without her extrasense, Kira could sense something was different, wrong. The pigeons should have been at roost, not filling the Piazza, flying away, not attacking. She instinctively reached for her Lightblade only to remember that she’d left it in the hotel room. “Nico!”

  A muffled shout lost in the fluttering of thousands of wings. So many, so unnatural, something from a Hitchcock movie. Holding one arm up to keep the pigeons from clawing at her face, Kira reached out for her handler.

  “Nico!”

  He lay sprawled at the base of Saint Teodoro’s granite column. His chest had been sliced open, blood staining the bricks beneath him.

  “No!” Frantic, she searched the Piazza for help, but the square was strangely deserted. “Don’t die, Nico, please don’t die!”

  She fumbled through his pockets for a phone, repeatedly keyed Gilead’s emergency code. Screaming into the phone, calling for help, trying to hold Nico’s chest closed, hold his life in. Blood carried power, reactivating her extrasense, flooding her senses with his thoughts and emotions. The desire to possess, to take her away from Balm, away from Gilead. The abrupt transformation to need, then to love. Defying Balm, defying nature, even if it meant death, to give Kira what she needed, what every human should have . . .

  “Nico . . . ”

  “Ki-Kira.” Air gurgled in his throat as he looked at her, the smile half-formed on his lips as he died.

  Laughter. She raised her head, saw two men standing a few feet away, hands in their pockets. One reptilian, one heart-stoppingly beautiful, familiar. They laughed again, revealing pointed teeth. Shadowlings. The handsome one blew a kiss at her before both turned and strolled away.

  No. Not this time. You won’t escape this time. I’ve got my power back and I’m going to make you pay for what you did to Nico.

  Power flooded her body. She drew her blade. It wasn’t her Lightblade, but an older dagger, Egyptian. It didn’t matter. It wanted to kill and at that moment, so did she.

  She leaped at the Shadowlings, consumed with the urge to destroy. More Shadowlings flooded the square like a flock of birds coming home to roost. She screamed, blade flashing as she swung again and again. Yellow rain fell as she split Shadowlings apart. Yet no matter how many times she killed them, they kept coming back.

  Venice disappeared. She stumbled through a nightmarish landscape pierced by bolts of two-colored lightning—yellow and blue. Fire careened around her, burning through her veins. It felt as if thousands of little teeth gnawed at her, ripping her apart from the inside out, blinding her with pain. Shadowlings and wraiths swirled around her like ghosts in a fog, taunting her, thwarting her attempts to break through.

  She screamed again, fighting her way through with fists and feet and teeth, desperate to get away, get to safety. Balm called to her through the storm but she couldn’t make it through. She felt as if she struggled through quicksand as tombstones toppled around her, being pulled further and further down into the abyss of Chaos and Shadow.

  There was no use in fighting it. She was trapped. Every effort to claw her way free was met with failure. She might as well give up.

  Kira!

  The wind wailed her name. At least, she thought it was the wind. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was someone she knew, someone trying to help?

  Desperate, she flung her hand up, reaching for something, anything to pull herself to freedom. Something caught her hand. She looked up.

  Khefar looked down at her, his face set in familiar implacable lines, his eyes burning. “Fight! If you want to escape this Chaos and live, you have got to fight!”

  Reaching deep, she found the last reserves of her will and fought to pull free, Khefar’s demands ringing in her ears. Her body and her will stretched past their limits, tearing, screaming; the Chaos holding her, reluctant to let go.

  One last kick and she launched free, panicked and flying, fearful and falling. But Khefar was there, and he caught her.

  It took a long time to swim up through the darkness, longer still to stop hearing the screams. Every time her grip slipped, every time she thought she’d plunge back into the depths, she’d be pulled back.

  She opened her eyes, expecting to find Wynne beside her, Zoo ready to dose her with one of his herbal cocktails. Instead she found the Nubian, and he held her hand.

  Wordlessly she stared down at his fingers, his bare brown fingers, threaded through her own. No leather, no plastic, no layers of armor. Just warm skin against warm skin, and a feeling she could only compare to inhaling wintergreen, cool and crisp.

  “It seemed to comfort you,” he said into the quiet. “I didn’t mind.”

  It had more than comforted her. It had kept her anchored. “How long?”

  “It’s been a couple of days.”

  Two days? “Oh gods. I need a phone.”

  Wordlessly Khefar dug a mobile out of his back pocket. Her hands shook and her vision blurred as she attempted to tap in a number.

  Khefar took the phone from her. “Tell me the number.”

  She did. He punched it in, then pressed the phone to her cheek. She whispered her thanks, cl
utching the phone close, too unnerved to wonder why she didn’t receive any impressions from the device. Her heart pounded against her rib cage and she could almost hear her blood racing through her veins. Don’t let me be too late, please don’t let me be too late.

  The phone didn’t complete its first ring. “That had better be you, daughter.”

  “Balm.” She tried again. “Mother. Just wanted to call to tell you I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine. You sound like you were pulled back from death.”

  She looked up at Khefar. “I was. But I’m back now. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.”

  “That’s because you couldn’t call earlier.” Balm’s voice shook. She sounded angry, upset and relieved, revealing far more emotion than Kira had ever heard from her. “I called for you, but you didn’t answer. For a full day you didn’t answer.”

  Oh, no. “Are you on your way here?”

  “I made it to New York a couple of hours ago. The plane is being refueled and then I’ll be on my way. I’m bringing specialists with me, and we’ll take you back to Santa Costa where you can be properly taken care of.”

  No, no, no. “Please go back home, Mother. I’m sorry that I worried you, but I’m up and about now.”

  “You don’t want me there?” Balm’s voice warbled. Again she had no idea of the emotion behind it. “A mother can’t rush to her daughter’s side, to see with her own eyes that she’s alive and well?”

  “You’re the Balm of Gilead.” She closed her eyes. Arguing with Balm was tough on the best of days; being off-line for two days left her with even fewer defenses against the head of the Commission.

  She tried a different tack: honesty. “I’m fighting one of the Fallen. You can’t be exposed to that level of threat. You need to trust us to do our jobs and stop this menace. You need to trust me.”

  “I trust you, Kira, but I don’t trust what’s around you. This is an entirely different level of danger than we’ve seen before. And for some reason, the Oracles have a large blank spot whenever they try to focus on you.”

  “Really? That doesn’t happen.”

  “I know it doesn’t happen,” Balm snapped, a clear indication of just how upset she was. “This battle you fight is larger than Gilead’s ability to track and predict. I . . . I’m afraid for you, Kira.”

  “I am afraid for myself.” She had to blink rapidly against the emotion that swept over her, threatening to pull her under. “I had a close call. I know that. It’ll make me more careful, but not if I have to worry about the heart and soul of Gilead being so close to one of the Fallen.” Her grip tightened on the phone. “Please, Balm. I need you to be in Gilead more than I need you here.”

  Silence, then a sigh. “All right, daughter. I’ll return home. Make sure that you come to visit me this evening. I’ll leave a pathway open for you.”

  “I will; I promise.”

  Her eyelids slid closed. She concentrated on simply breathing, too emotionally and physically drained to do much more than that. For Balm to be afraid, things had to have been really bad.

  Khefar took the phone from her, and she whispered her thanks as she reopened her eyes. “You said it’s been two days?”

  He nodded. “This is late afternoon on the second day.”

  Zoo’s magic and her own Chaser abilities usually made her heal faster than regular humans. She must have been seriously messed up to be out two whole days.

  Her gaze roamed the room, taking in the twin-size bed with its plain white cotton sheets, the oak chest of drawers, the whitewashed door she remembered led to a bathroom. She looked to Khefar again, dressed in black jeans and a long-sleeved shirt she thought she’d seen him in before. Exhaustion pulled at his features, accented by the stubble shadowing his chin. Had he sat by her the entire time, holding her hand? “This is my safe room at Wynne and Zoo’s house.”

  He nodded. “We decided to bring you here since none of us knew what protections you have on your place, and time was a factor.”

  Kira translated mentally: I had probably been pretty close to biting the big one. It certainly would explain why Balm had been on the way to Atlanta and why I can’t feel my extrasense. The fact that she couldn’t decide which of those terrified her more meant her batteries were in serious need of recharging.

  “Here.” He held a cup and straw for her. “You must be thirsty.”

  She was and eagerly sucked the water down. He returned the cup to the nightstand and without asking, gathered her hand again. It was nice. She shoved her free hand through her hair, wincing at the lingering ache. “Where are they? Wynne and Zoo?”

  “When it seemed like you were starting to come out of it, Zoo went to his greenhouse to get some herbs for you. Wynne left a moment ago to get you some food.”

  Leaving her alone with the Nubian. That didn’t make sense to her. In the handful of times that she’d gotten into serious scrapes, Wynne was always there to tell her—with much love and affection, of course—just how idiotic she’d been. Her friend wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to remind her that they were all a team. What, she wondered, had happened?

  “Okay.” She wanted to sit up, but it meant letting go of his hand. Already she missed the contact. Her muscles protested as she tried to rise, causing her to grimace. Khefar moved to help her. She froze as his arms went around her shoulders, then forced herself to relax. “Someone had to carry me here. I guess that was you, huh?”

  “Yes.” So matter-of-fact, as unruffled as usual. “Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

  Gods, he’d made her blush. She never blushed. “Yeah.”

  He stood. “I can carry you.”

  “No.” Having him carry her would be more than she could handle. “No, just help me hobble over to the door. I can take it from there.”

  He wrapped a thick arm around her waist and helped her up. Going from sitting to standing was a dizzying experience and she leaned into him, inhaling deeply through her nose until her equilibrium returned.

  She took care of business as quickly as her muscles would allow. Her empty bladder and stomach only compounded the sensation of something vital being missing. The Avatar had done something, worked some sort of magic to strip her powers away. Nico had done that too. Both had given her a liquid concoction that had scalded her senses and rendered her powerless. Maybe it was time to know what they had done so that she could find a way to reverse it. She never wanted to feel this level of powerlessness again. Never wanted to be without her magic again.

  It was a fundamental realignment. Her extrasense was more than mental, more than psychic ability. In the Normal world, where magic was something acted out in epic fantasy movies or on Las Vegas stages, Kira was an anomaly. She’d always known things about people, at least since she was five and in the first foster home she remembered. Her earliest memory was of a ruler smacking her open palms, punishment for touching her foster mother. A five-year-old didn’t have the social filter of adults, and she thought she was being helpful when she’d tell people what they were truly thinking and feeling. No matter how often she’d tried to suppress it, she could feel her power swimming through her veins gathering strength until it manifested itself as blue light when she reached puberty.

  She’d hated her powers her entire life. Now that they were gone, she’d do almost anything to get them back.

  Kira stared in the mirror, hoping to jog her memory. Her reflection was better than she’d expected but that was more a testament to Zoo’s skills than anything else. Something was still off. She’d gone to confront the Avatar. She remembered it hadn’t gone well, but she’d managed to fight her way clear.

  No, that didn’t seem right to her. She leaned closer to the mirror and blinked. Her eyes, normally a chocolate brown, had lightened to amber. Flecks of green caught the light as she turned her head.

  Fingers curled around the lip of the sink. Memories swirled through her consciousness, indistinct but full of pain. Nico. Fighting Shadowlings. Screams and more s
creams. And colors, swirls of yellow, blue, and green. No, she hadn’t left the Avatar easily. He’d done . . . something. What the hell had happened to her?

  You belong to me, to Shadow, already. You just haven’t realized it yet.

  She whimpered as the words, the voice, slithered through her mind. No, gods, no. She was a Shadowchaser; she belonged to the Light. She’d never give herself to Shadow. She’d rather die first.

  “Kira, are you okay?”

  She wiped at her mouth with a shaky hand, then opened the bathroom door, making sure to keep her gaze to the floor. “Yeah, just trying to get my legs back.”

  He helped her back to the bed, fussed with the pillows like a nursemaid. She considered it sweet in a way, but also concerning. She must have been in a really bad way to warrant this kind of attention from him. How had they found her? Where had they found her? Trying to remember only made her head hurt.

  He wrapped his fingers around hers again, scattering her thoughts. It would have been nice, except for the fact that his frown was firmly in place. The man could do eighteen different versions of dour.

  “So the Balm of Gilead, head of the Gilead Commission, creator of Shadowchasers, is your mother?”

  She rubbed at her forehead with her free hand. At least he’d waited until she relieved herself to question her. “You know her, huh?”

  “I know that it takes a formidable woman to be the Balm of Gilead. The brilliant mind of Cleopatra. The fighting spirit of Boadicea. The inspiring leadership of Amanirenas standing against the Romans. And she’s your mother.” He shook his head ruefully. “Now I know why you are the way you are.”

  She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not so ignored it instead. “Balm did not birth me, but she took me in, forged me into what I am today. Anyway, she was about three hours from descending on us like a landslide, so thank you for letting me use your phone.”