The Shadow City (The Demon-Born Trilogy Book 2)

by L. C. Hibbett

  As we approached the front of the cottage, I gritted my teeth, but it was utterly unnecessary. The building facing me was nothing like the home I had left a year before. I slowed to a halt beside a luxury four-wheel-drive and ran my gaze along the freshly painted exterior and the gleaming triple glazed windows that winked at me from the no longer ramshackle bungalow. Before I had time to process the storm of emotion building inside my chest, the sleek, gunmetal gray front door slid open to reveal an Amazonian beauty.

  “Aza!” Her name burst out of my mouth before my brain could offer its counsel. I clamped down on my bottom lip.   The striking Demon held the door open for us to enter, but I hung back, reluctant to cross the threshold. Aza frowned.

  “They’re not here, child—Fergus and Lara. They disappeared after you banished Peter from Shadow Hall. Fergus was a creep, and Lara was weak for him, but we didn’t know they were working with anyone else.” Aza spoke down at me with her chin raised defiantly, but I could sense the hurt seeping from the cracks in her armor.

  “We saw Fergus and Lara waiting to meet Peter in New York. And the day I insulted Fergus in your London head-quarters when he found I was Demon-Born after taking my blood in reparation, Lara opened a portal into a place filled with Spirit Demons. Hardly a coincidence, they had to have been working with Peter and his people…” I trailed off awkwardly, trying to erase the memory of Fergus’s oily fingers from my mind.

  Aza’s nostrils flared as she glared down at me. “Fergus brought us the lead about the Brothers, the Spirit Eaters, he was the one who got the key to open their portal, but we didn't know he was in league with them. Thought he was just his usual greedy self.”

  Aza took a step back as Lizzie prodded her in the shoulder. “Oh for goodness sake, Aza, stop grilling the girl. You would have been just as suspicious if the shoe was on the other foot. How are we to know that they aren’t sitting inside right now, watching us? And on that note…”

  Lizzie whirled to face Niamh. "What are you playing at this time, Niamh? Bad enough that you’re using your gift to manipulate us, but you had to use Eve’s house as your new base? Is that supposed to be a punishment for Gabriel? Because he left you to protect her family? Do you even care how much he is suffering already, worrying about where Eve is? Worrying about whether the people he loved, both of you, have betrayed him to these Spirit Eating Brothers—despite knowing what they had done to his Clara’s life. This is Eve’s home. You have no right to be here.”

  Niamh’s fingers curled into a fist. “Don’t talk down to me, Elizabeth. Clara was my friend, you barely even knew her, too busy gallivanting with Mathas to help Gabriel protect her. I was the one who watched her daughter grow—I watched over Eve before you knew she existed, don’t tell me what right I have.”

  For just a moment, as the fire of anger burned through Niamh’s eyes, the two women looked like reflections of each other. Just as quickly, the flame was extinguished behind Niamh’s eyes, and she gestured towards the front door. “Grace, Elizabeth, if you would be so kind as to follow Aza inside, please. We have much to discuss and time is against us.”

  Chapter Eight

  The interior of the cottage was completely unrecognizable. Most of the internal walls had been removed to create a large multipurpose space, and a massive glass room had been added to the rear of the building. The worn oak floor boards had been ripped up and replaced with polished cement. I chewed on my thumbnail and scanned the walls for any sign that this had once been my home, but there was none. Aza pointed her finger in the direction of a square metal table to our right, positioned in the space that held Eve’s armchair a year ago. “Niamh will join you when she is ready.”

  Aza began to walk in the direction of the large multimedia center that had been set up on the other side of the room, but she stopped halfway and addressed me without turning around to face me. “All you Mama’s stuff. It’s safe. For when she gets back.”

  I sat down heavily on one of the expensive looking molded leather chairs surrounding the chrome table. Lizzie folded her arms over her chest and remained standing. She tipped her head in the direction of an island unit stacked with computers and electronic devices of every description and waved her hand at a wall entirely covered with flat screen monitors. “Mathas would love all this. Gadgets—playing at spies.”

  “What do you think they’re watching?” My eyes were focused on the people working at the opposite end of the room. Aza typed something into a handheld computer and thrust the screen in front of the face of a tall guy wearing a headset. “It’s so weird. Like we walked in the front door of Hidden Cottage, but we ended up somewhere else, on the set of a sci-fi movie or something. Do you think they’ve been watching us the whole time?”

  “Very possible. Surveillance, infiltration, assassination. My sister likes to make sure all her bases are covered. Maybe she’s trying to create a Demon-Born army of her own.” Lizzie pulled her arms tighter around her body as she walked to the side window and stared out across Clew Bay. I yanked the tip of my thumbnail loose with my front teeth and bent down to toss it in the small trash can beside the table, but I hesitated for a moment.

  “You’re afraid I might want to harvest your genetic code.” My fingers snapped shut over the offending piece of fingernail and blood pumped to my cheeks. Niamh slipped into the chair facing me and rested her arms on the table. I watched Lizzie’s back stiffen at the sound of her sister’s voice, but she didn’t turn to face her. Instead she kept her eyes trained on the rolling Atlantic.

  “No, no. It’s just a bad habit, I mean who wants fingernails in their trash can, right?” I cringed inwardly, embarrassed by my lack of composure.

  Niamh examined my face for what felt like an eternity before she spoke again. “Don’t apologize for your instinctual behavior. You are correct; I’ve already instructed Aza to examine any traces of DNA that you leave behind.”

  “For the love of all that’s holy, what is wrong with you, girl?” Lizzie advanced on her sister with her arms spread wide. “Have you not made it hard enough on the child? You bring her here, to what used to be her home, but is now some new-fangled operations control center, and now you want to frighten her as well? Is this just a game to you? A way to pass your sad, lonely days? Bollocks to that. Come on, Grace. We’re leaving.”

  The table began to make a soft humming noise in response to pressure from Niamh’s fingers, and the surface of the table flickered to reveal that it was a screen. An aerial image appeared on the table top, and Niamh used her hand to zoom in on the picture. Lizzie halted at the side of the table as the Yorkshire Silent Home came into focus. Niamh spun the picture so that it honed in on the rear garden. When the image settled, I realized we were looking at a video, not a photograph, and I watched in morbid fascination as a team of people spread out and began to pick their way through the piles of bodies.

  “Is this now? Is it live?” Niamh answered my question with a nod of her head. Lizzie sank down into the chair beside me. Her athletic frame sagged as if the rage that had been propelling her forward had suddenly evaporated, leaving her flat. I stared down at the video footage again. “What are they doing?”

  Niamh pressed the corner of the table again, and the image vanished. “They’re collecting evidence. Aza and her team have already carried out a thorough search of the area, and I’m satisfied that their findings are accurate, but a second level search is essential for me to present my findings.”

  I wound my fingers together. “What findings? Look, you brought me here because you said you had information to share with us, so what is it?”

  “You needed one of my belongings to find me.” Niamh’s stare was focused on the leather bracelet that Lizzie had given me earlier.
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  I tugged it off my arm and shoved it onto the table. “Sorry, I didn’t even realize I was still wearing it. I wasn’t trying to keep it.”

  “A Seeker shouldn’t need something to guide them to their destination. Either your power is weak, or you are too weak to embrace it fully.”

  A bitter taste crept under my dry tongue. “Sorry?”

  Niamh drew her eyebrows together in apparent irritation. “Don’t apologize, you didn’t mishear me. A Seeker is more than a typical magic user, they don’t need tangible evidence to locate what they seek. Energy, hidden truths, those who are lost—nothing is beyond the reach of those with the power to Seek.”

  Lizzie banged her fist down on the table, and I shrank back into my chair. “That’s enough, Niamh. We didn’t come here to discuss Grace’s powers.”

  “You were invited here precisely to discuss those powers, Elizabeth. You know why we chose this building as our headquarters? Not to cause the Seeker distress, although it’s enlightening to know you believe me to be so petty, but because of all the unclaimed land in Europe, this exact spot contained the highest concentration of latent energy. What does that tell you, Elizabeth?”

  Lizzie threw her hands in the air. “That Gabriel chose this place, especially so it would offer the girls powerful protection? That it might be the site of an ancient’s ritual point? That it would be a good place to plant a vegetable patch?”

  “He didn’t choose this place for Eve to live. I picked it. I found it for him. I bought it.” Niamh lifted her chin. “And I chose it precisely because there was no trace of magic or energy that might draw the Angelic Council or the Spirit Demons to this place. Gabriel asked me to find the safest place, and I did. But now, only a few years later, this piece of land had been transformed from a magical wasteland into a seemingly endless well of energy.”

  I dug my fingertips into my temples. “Because of Eve? She poured so much energy into keeping us hidden. Is that what happens to the physical location a cone of protection is tethered to for that many years?”

  “No.” Lizzie glanced at Niamh before turning to me. “No, Grace, not usually. The charms protecting the New York cell headquarters had been intact for two hundred years, yet only hours after the Spirit Eaters had broken the protection spell and sent the Spirit Demons to attack it, all trace of the energy that had kept the cell safe for two centuries had faded entirely.”

  Both women stared at me expectantly, and I was struck again by how similar their physical features were, despite Lizzie’s wild hair and Niamh’s conservative ponytail. I tugged at my own hair by the roots. “Sorry, you’re going to have to spell it out for me. If it wasn’t Eve’s protection cone that changed the magical strength of Hidden Cottage, then what was it?”

  “You.” The sisters spoke with one voice, and the hint of a warm breeze rippled across Niamh’s face.

  Lizzie’s lips narrowed. “Or maybe not just you. The combination of your energies, perhaps? Possibly because both you and Dawn appear to be keepers of the Lost Powers, and then when you connected with Sam as well— the connection seems to be key. You’re stronger together.”

  “Which is why the Masters and you guys insisted on splitting the cell, right? To separate the Demon-Born. I knew it! I told Sam that’s why you did it! You might as well have been honest, instead of making up your stupid stories about our cell being too large to accommodate.” I twisted my body to face the window and tried to control my ragged breathing.

  Lizzie’s hand hovered above my shoulder. “Grace, nobody wanted you to feel responsible for the split. Mathas thought it would be safer if we kept you apart. If they captured all three of you at once, they would have had almost half the lost powers in one swoop. Mathas felt this would be safer for everyone—”

  “Yeah, well it worked out really, bloody great for Eli, Frank, and Lydia, didn’t it? Now I can add them to the list of people whose lives I have managed to make shit of. Thank you so much for that.” I wanted to smash out of the room and slam the door behind me, but the weight of responsibility to return to the cell with some answers kept me crushed into my seat. I stared down at my fists and waited for the pressure in my chest to ease.

  Silence fell over the table, broken only by the sound of Niamh tapping away on a small keyboard that slid out from underneath the table. Her lips were pursed as she focused on her typing. “Fatal error.”

  Lizzie’s head snapped in Niamh’s direction. “What?”

  “The decision to split the children of power. That time should have been spent developing the lost gifts. A Seeker who can’t seek, a Seer who is partially sighted, and a Reaper who isn’t reaping what he sows.” Niamh clicked the keyboard back into place under the table and raised her eyes to examine us. “It’s exactly as I feared. The battle has begun, but instead of warriors, you have toy soldiers.”

  “Hey, my powers are getting stronger. I’m trying really hard, we all are. I have found tens of Silent Homes that we didn’t know existed—”

  Niamh flicked a hand over the table, and a myriad of graphs and charts appeared on the oversized computer screen. “And how many have you gotten to before the Spirit Eaters or their minions did?” She ran her finger along the graphs and started deleting all those colored red. “Too late, too late, beaten, too late, beaten, discovered by Guardians, too late.”

  “Stop, Niamh. Don’t put this on her.” Lizzie’s voice was low and dangerous.

  “You are the ones who need to stop! I stepped down and let Gabriel turn his back on me because I believed you were best prepared to nurture these children and their gifts, but you have failed. The tide has turned, and you and your precious Shadow Children don’t even realize you’re in the water!” Niamh thrust her finger into the air. “Aza. Live footage please.”

  The monitors covering the opposite wall exploded into life. Rows of lifeless bodies filled the screen. They were no longer covered by a thin film of earth but instead were laid bare, their faces washed clean, their arms folded across their chests. The camera traveled over their faces, and my eyes were dragged onto the blood-soaked curls of a tiny blonde child. I reached underneath my shirt, grappling with the fabric to locate the small stuffed toy I had placed there for safe keeping, but it wasn’t there. I smashed my wrist against my teeth as the camera continued its relentless roll call of the dead. Brown hair, blond, curly, short, a sheath of raven hair, a glimpse of auburn.

  “No!” I sealed my lips shut to stop myself crying out again.

  Lizzie slammed her fists down on the table. “Enough, Niamh!”

  Aza pressed a button, and the image returned to an aerial view so I couldn’t see the bodies clearly anymore. I crushed my lips together hard enough to make them sting. Lizzie’s voice was a hurricane straining to be released. “Is this what you’ve been reduced to? Father’s precious gifted child—the only way you can get people to listen to your visions is with shock value. After everything we have seen. Haven’t you had enough of war, Niamh? Enough crusading? Or have you really fallen so low that you want a kid to see her friends’ dead bodies just to frighten her into thinking you’re right.”

  Niamh’s eyes widened and her fingers spread wide on the table. She looked at Aza before speaking. “We didn’t know.”

  “So, the mighty eye isn’t all seeing, after all.” Lizzie spat the words across the table. “The Moscow captives. You told the London cell to go to the Edinburgh Silent Home, but they heeded your warning too late. The captives were taken to the Silent Home in Yorkshire this morning. One of the Masters interrogated a Guardian that was left behind in the Edinburgh Home.”

  The word ’interrogate’ stabbed at my brain, and I turned my focus to the aerial footage in an attempt to burn the i
mage from my imagination. I tried to block out the sound of Lizzie and Niamh bickering. There was no proof that the hair had belonged to Lydia and Frank. It could have been anyone. Lots of girls have shiny black hair, and dark red hair isn’t that rare in British men.

  The burning sensation behind my eyes started to press down into my throat. I dug my fingernails into my palms. I would not cry in front of Niamh and Aza. I would not prove them right about how weak and useless I was. My brain began to process the image in front of me in a desperate attempt to distract me from the sob building in my throat. Light blue, light blue, black, light blue, black, light blue, light blue. I tried to focus on the light blue of the assigned clothing that all the captives in the Silent Homes were forced to wear, and suddenly my blood turned to ice.

  I rose to my feet and raced across the room to the sea of screens, pressing my face against the monitor. Blue, blue, black. I turned to stare at Niamh and Aza. I knew why we were here. These weren’t the just the bodies of the Halfborn and the incarcerated. I met Niamh’s ice stare. “It’s not just us. They killed the Angels. My God, they killed all the Angels as well.”

  Chapter Nine

  The room filled with silence as dense as fog. I jabbed my finger at the screen again and pointed at the black uniforms shrouding bodies on the ground. “These are Angel bodies, right? They killed their own. They gathered the prisoners and the staff from several homes, and they sent them to their death.”

  “They killed their own?” Lizzie crept toward the screen. “No. No. That’s not how the Angelic Council works. They wouldn’t do that, I have seen them make terrible decisions, but there is a code. They value the lives of Angels above all else.” She twisted sharply to stare at Niamh. “This is what you saw? The Angels turning on themselves? Are they trying to wipe out the Silent Homes, removing all Guardians who had knowledge of the Demon-Born?”