by Holly Evans
I cringed. How could she be so blatant? We’d already established that the ceremonials had bounties out on our heads.
The priest narrowed her eyes to small slits and made a low hissing noise.
“And what brings you to research such a topic?”
Leona grinned, leaned forward, and whispered conspiratorially, “That would be telling.”
The priestess hissed again.
“We do not keep such works here. You will need to visit the node temple.”
“But you’re the knowledge temple…” Leona said, her face creasing with confusion.
The priestess made a broad sweeping gesture at the space around us. “And we are still constrained by the physical boundaries of this space. You are the third person today to ask about that subject. Kindly stop wasting our time and come as one unified group next time.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. The ambassadors were something that had been mentioned in passing during a history class in college. A myth. They hadn’t even really settled on a unified name for us. Two other groups looking for the same information sounded like good reason to start being far more careful.
Leona smiled sweetly at the priestess.
“Thank you for your time, my lady,” she said as she dipped her head.
The priestess relaxed some, but watched intently as Leona turned and headed out of the door. Something about the entire situation felt wrong, and I needed to find out what it was before I got hurt. Or worse.
35
Leona leaned against the wall of the temple and ran her fingers over the hilts of her silver knives.
“We’ll have to head over to the node temple. I suppose it’s fitting that they’re there. Any idea who or what our shadow is?” she asked, her eyes straight forward and her body stiff.
“Shadow?”
I hadn’t noticed anyone, but then I’d been too busy trying to figure out what Leona’s game was. Blood magicians weren’t known for being the friendly, trustworthy type. She made a small motion with her chin towards the bench across the road, where someone dressed in dark clothing sat under the thick foliage of the trees. My eyes skimmed over the outline of the person three times before they finally settled on them. I rolled my jaw. That suggested some interesting illusions were in place, which likely meant they didn’t look like the young man with mud-brown hair and a forgettable face, either.
“They’ve been following us since we got on the seventeen,” Leona said quietly.
My instincts told me to walk over there and make sure they didn’t follow us any longer. Perhaps I’d been spending too long with the cougars. Maybe I’d be one of Fein’s guys, after all.
“Is there any blood magic you can subtly weave to get them off our trail?” I asked.
The only thing I knew about blood magic was the truth spell the council’s people loved using. There were stories about how powerful it could be, how dangerous it was to wield. There were stories about everything, though, if you looked deep enough.
She looked at me. “That depends on you. Do you trust me to use some of your blood?”
Her confidence had slipped away, leaving a quiet woman with large innocent eyes. I couldn’t be sure if it was an act, but I did know she was the first ambassador I’d met.
I held out my hand, palm up. She smiled and slid the smallest of the silver knives from its place on her belt.
“I only need a single drop of blood. Just enough to throw up a false trail for him to follow,” she said with a small smile.
She pricked the palm of my hand, a quick, gentle motion that resulted in a small droplet of blood welling up. True to her word, she didn’t take any more, and repeated the motion with her own hand. I noted the smooth white lines running up her wrists, old scars from what must have been deep cuts.
“Blood magic is a cruel and demanding master,” she said quietly.
Something tugged gently at my sternum before I watched an ethereal image of myself walk off around the corner with an image of Leona. They were smiling and laughing about something, oblivious to the stalker that soon followed behind them. Leona took a deep breath and sagged against the wall.
“I’ll need a moment before we head over to the node temple,” she said, swallowing hard.
“It might be a good idea to be a bit more subtle at the node temple. They’ve devoted their lives to studying this shit,” I said, with what I hoped was a good-humoured smile.
The corner of her mouth pulled up into a half smile.
“I can be subtle.”
“I find that hard to believe,” I said with a laugh.
She screwed up her nose and took a deep breath. “I’ll be ready in a minute. I need to make sure the trail leads him far away from us.”
The node temple wasn’t too far from where we were. It struck me as an odd place. Rather than worshipping the gods, it worshipped the magic networks. The ink network nudged me and rippled of pinks blurred the edges of my vision. Of course it would approve. It struck me as the type of personality that adored being worshipped. What would they think if they knew I could communicate with the network?
The node temple sat in a small grove of trees on the river side of the magical quarter. Leona had barely spoken on the walk over there. Her confident stride held a slight stiffness to it, and her smile didn’t reach her eyes. She kept rolling her thumb over the top of her silver blades. Whatever was going on in her head was clearly bothering her. There was nothing I could do. She seemed strong enough to handle anything life threw at her.
The node temple was an odd building that made my skin prickle and the ink network press against the back of my mind like an eager dog. The building was simultaneously every colour and no colour at all. Slender pillars were spaced evenly around the perimeter, with the building itself standing some three stories tall. It was a collection of circles joined by narrow threads. It must have looked like an odd web from above. The moment I stepped between the two closest pillars, it felt as though ants erupted from my skin and began marching up and down my spine. Leona curled her lip and rushed past the pillars while muttering under her breath.
Fortunately, the sensation slipped away once I was inside the circle of the pillars. The ink network was on high alert and pressed into my mind with a sharpness that I didn’t appreciate. My vision began to shift, the colours flickered and became brighter. New shapes formed. It was creeping into my consciousness and putting me into the state I’d been in when I found the rogue magicians. I drove it back and mentally shouted at it. Greys and deep blues burst around my vision, but slid away, leaving me to think clearly. I didn’t care if it wanted to experience its worshippers, it would have to find some other poor vessel to try that with.
Leona stumbled and choked for a second. I grabbed onto her arm and stopped her from falling entirely.
“My network is rather eager to get inside his node,” she hissed.
“I just had to drive mine back,” I whispered.
She frowned and stood up fully.
“You can do that?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“Yes…”
Surely she must have tried? It looked as though her network pushed her hard. She took a calming breath and closed her eyes. Her jaw clenched and her hands balled into tight fists. Slowly, the colour returned to her face, and she began to smile.
“Thank you, Dacian,” she said, smiling.
Her hands uncurled to reveal fresh blood around deep fingernail indents. She didn’t seem to notice; instead, she returned her focus to the building just before a scream filled the air. Well, fuck.
36
I found myself torn. Part of me wanted to run inside and help the victim. The other wanted to flee for fear of being caught there. The hero side of me won.
We ran into the temple via the closest door and continued to run down the winding hallways, past humming priests and eerie music, to the centre room. Leona ran into the back of me, where I came to a sudden stop, my heart pounding my chest. The entire floor was covered in
blood. In the centre of it all were three bodies, each face frozen in terror, their eyes all seeming to stare at me. Judging. Blaming.
Two men in very expensive black suits stood on the far side of the room with black blades pressed to the throat of a young woman who was shaking and whimpering.
“Where are the books on the ambassadors?” the red-headed man roared.
My blood ran cold.
“They’re gone. The women took them this morning,” the young woman sobbed.
“Name. Address,” the red-headed man shouted.
“I don’t know. Please. I’m just a vessel for the dream network. Please. I don’t know.”
She slumped to the ground, her throat slit, before she could say anything more.
The red-head’s gaze turned to Leona and me.
“We can’t just stand here,” Leona said.
“No, you can’t.”
A harsh female voice said.
I spun around to see Chris smirking at me.
“Mr. Corbeaux. What brings you here today? You wouldn’t, by any chance, be looking for the same books we are, would you?” she asked, her eyes hardening.
I shrugged.
“It’s a temple, I wanted to commune with my network,” I said.
My chest was tightening. The murderers were behind me somewhere, and Chris knew something.
“I find it interesting that a tier-two tattoo magician was able to bring through a Dobh Chu by himself…” she said, her teeth beginning to elongate as she fixed her gaze on me.
I bit back the smartass comment and desperately looked for an exit. There were none. Another draconic blocked the hallway the direction we’d come. The murderers were at my back. Fuck.
“I’m sorry you have to see this, Dacian,” Leona said quietly.
I glanced at her as she sliced her palm open and gasped. The blood behind us began to ripple. Chris lunged at Leona. I tackled her to the ground and punched her in the jaw as she raked her sharp claws down my ribs. She tried clawing at my stomach, tried to gut me through my leather jacket as I punched her again. The audible crack from my knuckles as they broke against her increasingly hard skin brought me out of the moment. I needed a new approach here. Someone clearly agreed, as I was bodily dragged off Chris and kicked in the ribs hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. The kick was followed by one to my head. Everything went blurry and sounded distant.
Someone tried to kick me in the stomach again. I grabbed onto their leg and threw my weight sideways, pulling them over with me. The man landed with a thud. I’d never been any good at wrestling, but by the gods I was not going to abandon Leona and die there in that temple. I was not going to lose Keirn and the life we were building.
Fire wrapped around my hand and burnt the skin. The pain was unlike anything I’d felt before. Suddenly there was absolute silence. I froze. It wasn’t a conscious decision. My instincts took over. Slowly the bodies around me crumpled and deflated. The life ebbed from their faces, leaving them grey and very much dead. The fire extinguished on my hand. I looked around for Leona. Slowly, her legs gave way beneath her and she fell to her knees. I crawled across the short space between us and wrapped my arms around her shoulders as she shivered and gasped for air.
“I’ve never taken so many lives before. I’ve never done such a big working. Gods be with me,” she whispered as she sobbed onto my shoulder.
I held her close and said nothing. I had no idea what to do or say as we knelt in the middle of carnage. There was blood everywhere. So much blood. Time was irrelevant. We could have been there for thirty seconds or three hours. I have no idea.
Slowly, priests, or whatever the node people are called, appeared. Unfamiliar faces peered around the bends in the hallway and looked at us quizzically. They should have been horrified, shocked, stunned, something! Instead they approached like curious cats, heads tilting from side to side as they took in the details.
“Vessels,” Leona said quietly.
I frowned and looked at her.
“They’re being ridden by their networks. We need to go. Someone will have called the guards. The council. We have to go.”
I helped her to her feet and kept my arm around her shoulders to keep her steady.
My phone rang as we stepped out into the bright sunshine. I ignored it and helped Leona rush through the pillars back out into the city. People wandered along the pavement looking at their phones and laughing at their friends’ jokes, as if nothing had happened.
“I’m going home. Here’s my number,” Leona said stiffly.
“Are you sure you’re ok?”
She nodded.
“This is what I do. This is who I am,” she said, as though she were reciting it from a page.
I put her number into my phone and ignored the three missed calls before I rang her, giving her my number.
“Call me if you need to talk,” I said firmly.
She nodded and walked away without another word.
I took the call from Shadow on the fifth ring.
“Dacian! Where the fuck have you been?” Shadow demanded.
“What’s the emergency?”
“We’re under attack. We need everyone here to help.”
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.
37
The Cat’s Whiskers was a small bar in the up and coming part of the city. It blended in with the rest of the dark-bricked residential buildings along the road. I’d have missed it entirely if it weren’t for the small sign with neon-blue writing marking it as a bar. Not just any bar - a hangout for Fein’s guys. I should probably have been offended that I hadn’t been invited before, but I was too busy running down the cracked pavement, hoping that Tala and Keirn were ok.
I barged in through the heavy dark-wooden door expecting to see a collection of red caps and the gods only knew what else fighting an enraged group of Fein’s shifters. What I got instead was darkness, shifting darkness that sliced through my jacket and punched me in the jaw.
“Fucking shadow walkers!” I shouted.
“There’s ink in the back room. Use some sigils and give us a fighting chance,” Luka shouted from somewhere within.
The shadows swarmed around us. Blows crashed against my already-sore ribs and jaw. I lashed out at every opportunity, often hitting thin air. To say it’s difficult fighting what you can’t see is the understatement of the year. I managed to make out Keirn’s white hair as he performed a fast spinning kick that cleared some space around him. Luka appeared out of the darkness and sank his teeth into a different portion of darkness. Wails of agony and rage filled the room around me.
By some miracle, I stumbled into the back room and found a large bottle of red ink. The image of the bloodbath filled my mind for an excruciating moment. Tala’s cry of pain brought me back. The ink network surged forward the moment I wrapped my fingers around the cool glass of the ink bottle. There wasn’t time or vision to form sigils. I’d have to use pure ink and hope for the best. Someone hit me around the back of the head. Claws sank into my hand, trying to remove the ink bottle from my hand. The stopper came loose, and the ink network took control.
The magic flooded the ink before me, twisting it into something jagged and snarling. It was difficult to make out where it ended and the shadows began, but the shadows recoiled in horror. The thing’s mind connected with mine, filling my thoughts with cold predatory intent. I felt its claws slice through soft stomachs of shadow walkers and teeth tear into their cool flesh. The ink network drove it on, determined to protect its property. The shadows receded, revealing the shadow walkers themselves.
I felt the walkers’ fear, and I enjoyed it. No. The ink creature enjoyed it, reveled in it and toyed with the walkers. They were all small, fragile-looking magicians, each dressed head-to-toe in black. Some of the flickered in and out of existence as they stepped onto the shadow plane and back again.
“What a fun game,” the ink creature thought.
The whites of the shadow walk
ers’ eyes thrilled it as they saw their weak, wispy shadows were no match for it. The shadow walkers couldn’t have been top tier. They couldn’t keep the shadows in a solid state for very long at all. That led to black mists pooling around our feet and oil-slick shadows dripping down the walls. It was all very theatrical, but it meant their fighting ability quickly diminished. The vines and tendrils they tried to choke us with soon disintegrated. Once they lost the advantage of having the room entirely black, they weren’t much of an enemy at all.
The cougars and Keirn wasted no time in gutting them, leaving me with a feeling of disgruntlement. I’d enjoyed toying with them. They had been small and rather weak, depending on shock and numbers rather than any real combat skill. Some part of me deep inside knew that the higher-level shadow walkers were something worth playing with. They presented a real challenge as they formed true weapons from their shadows.
I reclaimed my mind and told myself it had been the predator that had enjoyed toying with them. I drove the network back and allowed the predator to dissolve back into ink. My mind became entirely my own with a sudden jolting sensation that pushed me down to my knees. The room spun and everything hurt.
“Dacian. Dacian, talk to me.” Keirn’s voice came from somewhere distant.
I frowned and latched onto the familiarity and comfort. The room was spinning, but I’d survive. Keirn pulled me close to him, his usual fresh scent marred by blood. His fingers ran over my face in slow searching motions, concern filling his silver eyes.
“Talk to me,” he begged.
“I’m ok,” I said.
I looked around for Tala. The little wolf wasn’t ready for big fights. He sat on a bar stool, nursing what looked like a broken wrist and a black eye.
“Are you ok, little wolf?” I asked.
He raised his eyes to me and nodded, a flicker of a smile passed across his lips.
Keirn kissed me tenderly.
