Shadow’s Edge np-1

by J. T. Geissinger

  “A full-Blood Ikati can stay in animal form forever if we want to because that’s what we really are. It’s our true nature. Our human shape is a disguise, a clever adaptation that’s allowed us to live alongside our enemies, to survive. We can only hold our form as human or vapor for so long.” He drew another slow breath, measuring his words. “Days, weeks maybe if you’re strong enough. But you have to Shift back sometime, and when you do...”

  He stood there struggling, remembering.

  “Though he was ordered not to, your father Shifted to vapor to relieve the pain after he was tortured on a machine called the Furiant—”

  Jenna made a small, horrified noise. All the color drained from her face. She lifted a trembling hand to her mouth.

  “He was recaptured as vapor and put in a box, a special steel box designed to seal on entry so he couldn’t escape.” His final words were almost whispered. “It was a very small box.”

  Her lips parted. He saw her pulse pounding in the hollow of her throat. “So when he Shifted back...”

  It didn’t need further explanation, but he nodded anyway.

  She stepped back and stood with one hand over her mouth and the other pressed to her heart and stared at him, swaying, her eyes fierce with unshed tears. It was several moments before she spoke.

  “Do you know what I think?”

  Her tone was so cold he imagined icicles falling from the shape of her words to shatter into a million frozen pieces against the stone beneath their feet.

  “No.”

  “I think maybe it’s better to die than live like you do,” she spat, clipped and hard, eyes flashing eerie citrine against the pallor of her face. “Hiding like fugitives, trapped in a gilded cage.” She made a wide, sweeping gesture that encompassed the lawns, the gardens, the smoky forest, and the sprawling mansion behind them. “Turning against one another in the worst possible way for the sake of your precious Law. It makes me sick. You make me sick!”

  Pain exploded under his collarbone as if a nail had been driven there. He closed the distance between them with two short steps. “Jenna—”

  “Don’t,” she said, breathing hard and stepping back. “Don’t you dare.”

  Jenna Shifted to vapor just as he reached for her arm, leaving him grasping at nothing but air. Leander watched helplessly as her empty cotton dress slithered to the ground, a castoff ghost curving pink and soft to lie in mournful silence against the dewy grass.

  14

  Jenna streaked like a bullet into the cool sanctuary of the forest.

  She had never moved like this before, had never thought it possible. Nothing but the sheer animal force of her will propelled her straight ahead through the thicket of towering trees. Sunlight slanted down from above as she flew, a shooting arrow filled with rage and a despair so deep it was bottomless.

  Her father. Those bastards killed her father.

  She sped on under primal instinct, darting through misty air and dappled shafts of sunlight, startling a family of deer into flight, flashing over fallen logs and mossed bracken, scattering a trail of dead leaves high in her wake. She sliced through a delicate, dew-heavy spiderweb and felt its silken fibers cling to her until they sheared away, one by one, torn off by her velocity.

  She was grateful she didn’t have the capacity to cry now, folded in vapor as she was. She was grateful she couldn’t feel her heart throb, feel her guts twist into knots.

  She was grateful she couldn’t scream. Because if she started, she didn’t think she would be able to stop.

  “If they ever find you, run,” her mother had emphatically said, a few months after her father had disappeared so many years ago.

  “Who?” she’d asked, suddenly alert, abandoning the show she’d been watching on television in the living room and turning to look at her mother, who was staring out the front window of their house, her gaze darting this way and that as if she expected someone to jump from the bushes at any moment. A large glass of clear liquid was clutched in her shaking hand, and even from where she sat cross-legged on the floor a room away Jenna could smell the alcohol.

  “It was too late for me by the time I found out what he was,” she answered, cryptic, still peering out the window. “I was already in love with him. A real Romeo and Juliet kind of love too, quick and deep and star-crossed, with everyone and everything against us.” She took a long swallow from the glass, ice cubes clinking, then pressed it against her forehead and closed her eyes. “Not that I would change it,” she whispered. “Not that I would go back and change a thing.”

  “Mom?” Jenna said, afraid of the incoherent rambling, the dark, desolate tone in her voice. Her mother turned from the window and Jenna saw for the first time the deep grooves around her mouth, the furrow between her brows, the lines fear and mourning had carved into her face. Though frail and ill, she was still beautiful—statuesque and elegant with a mane of long blonde hair she’d inherited from her own mother and passed along to Jenna.

  “And no more sports,” she said abruptly, her voice changed from desolate to fierce. “No more gymnastics, no more soccer, no more track. You can’t risk standing out like that. You have to blend in, try to act like everyone else—”

  “I won a trophy in track!” Jenna cried, leaping to her feet. “Gymnastics too! I’m way better than those other girls—”

  “Oh, honey,” Jenna’s mother said, her eyes welling with tears. “That’s because you’re not like those other girls. You’ll never be like them.”

  Those words held a ring of prophecy, and it had struck Jenna speechless. She stood looking at her mother, tall and blonde and pale, just like she was, but broken, and felt the earth turn under her feet.

  “Who am I like, then?” she asked, already knowing.

  A lone tear tracked down her mother’s cheek. She didn’t bother to brush it away. “You’re like your father,” she said, and the desolation was back. “You look like me, but you’re like him, strong and fast and...different. And like him, you’ll be hunted. So you need to learn to pretend to be something you’re not, because I won’t always be around to protect you.”

  There was nothing in Jenna’s short time on earth to prepare her for that. Not only the thought that her mother might eventually leave or die or otherwise cease to take care of her, but also the admission that she was like her father, who she worshipped as something close to divine, and the proclamation that she was going to be hunted.

  Like him. Her father was hunted. Her body went cold with horror.

  “What happened to him?” she whispered, terrified her mother might actually tell her this time. But she didn’t. She only took another drink from her glass and turned back to the window. It was a long while before she answered.

  “He’s gone, and he’s never coming back,” she said, and Jenna had never heard such anguish in another person’s voice. Her mother drained the final ounce of liquid from the glass, set it on the windowsill, and stared at it, through it, as if she wasn’t seeing it at all.

  Jenna sank to her knees on the bare wood floor, shaking so badly her legs wouldn’t support her anymore. Her cheeks were hot and wet, and she realized she was crying.

  “Why not? Why won’t you ever tell me what happened?”

  “When you’re older,” her mother replied in an eerie, dead tone, still staring at the glass. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

  That became a promise that was never fulfilled. And now Jenna was flying like the wind through a forest that once belonged to her father, fleeing from the answer to a question that had gnawed and hurt and grown unchecked like a cancerous tumor for fifteen years.

  She covered miles of primeval undergrowth until finally she tired.

  Drifting down against the rough bark of a sapling, she pooled, exhausted, in a watery plume into a fork in its branches. She listened to the sounds of the forest, leaves rustling, branches creaking, squirrels chattering, the patter of tiny, unseen feet scraping over the dirt below. A red-throated sparrow alighted o
n the branch above her and began to whistle, feathered belly expanding sweetly in song.

  She couldn’t think of what to do. She could hardly think at all. She had wanted answers so desperately, had felt as if the world would be righted if only she knew all the details of her past, if only she knew the why and the how and the when. But even the small piece of information Leander had given her hadn’t helped her world align in any way—it had only served to throw it even further off its axis.

  Execution. A very small box. The thought of it made the sparrow blur into a shape she didn’t recognize, a blob of color stark and sharp against the haze. She reared up against the branch, flattened herself over the peeling bark as she lost her balance. The sparrow flew away with a shriek into the forest.

  She surged up through the canopy of branches and looked down over the treetops, spread thick and verdant green for miles around. She spotted a crumbling ruin in the distance, just beyond an outcropping of lichen-covered granite, and angled herself down, heading toward it. It was an old stone cottage, with empty windows and a roof half-collapsed, almost reclaimed by the forest.

  Covered in climbing ivy and blue trumpet vine, it looked exactly as wretched and forlorn as she felt.

  Jenna funneled down and Shifted to woman beside a low, crumbling wall. She hesitated a moment, her senses surging back. Her heart pumped to life, the scent of wild mint and cedar resin filled her nose. A chill erupted over her naked skin as a cool, misty breeze stole over it.

  She put a hand on the rough stone wall to steady herself, leaned over, and threw up.

  When the last of the heaving was over and she had finally emptied her stomach, she wiped her watery eyes and nose with the back of her hand and spat into the dirt. She knelt there awhile, staring at a small pile of dead leaves on the ground, feeling slime and mud ooze through her fingers, the dull ache of her bare kneecaps against the cold ground.

  She filled her lungs with air, forced herself to do it again, and again. When it began to feel as if they would remember to do it on their own, she hauled herself to her feet and scraped the mud from her hands against the rough wall.

  The cottage was dark and even cooler than the forest. When she stepped inside she had to wrap her arms around her nude body for warmth. Grasses and ivy had overtaken most of the stone floor, but in one corner opposite the collapsed roof there was a blackened brick hearth, and beside it were a lantern and a rough blanket, folded atop a pillow. Someone else had found refuge here, but long ago—a fine layer of dust covered everything.

  Shivering, Jenna unfolded the blanket, shook it out, and wrapped herself in it. It was coarse and scratchy, it smelled of must and rotting wood, but it was thick and warm and fell past her knees. She sank down on the cold stone hearth and felt like a lost pilgrim in some forgotten fable: friendless, soulless, outcast, and abandoned by everyone and every-thing. She looked around at her sad little sanctuary. The crumbling walls, the mossy stone, the shadowed and lonely interior.

  Meager though it was, it would have to do. She planned on staying here awhile.

  15

  Morgan watched with mounting amazement as Leander, for the fifth time in four minutes, paced the length of the East Library, spun on his heel, and paced back again. He paused next to an overstuffed armchair, then sat down heavily into it, propped his elbows on his knees and clenched his fingers into his hair.

  Holy shit, she thought, astonished. He’s losing it.

  After all he’d been through—the grueling strength and agility trials to confirm his Gifts and worthiness for the title of Alpha, the rigors of commanding a pack of unruly and feral beasts, the shocking death of his parents—he’d never lost his composure, had never once allowed a glimmer of anything less than total control to be seen by anyone close to him.

  And now this...unraveling. It was as unthinkable as the earth ceasing to rotate.

  “She won’t be gone long, Leander, she doesn’t have any food,” Morgan said from her chair at the table. She adjusted her weight against the carved wood back, uncomfortable and uneasy. “Or clothing. How far could she get?”

  “And she has an army of the best hunters on earth looking for her,” added Viscount Weymouth, seated across from Morgan. They exchanged glances as Leander remained unmoving in the chair, staring at the floor. He let out a low, guttural moan—a sound that sent something unsavory crawling along her skin.

  Definitely losing it.

  In the three days since she fled from Leander, news of Jenna’s disappearance—a single day after her much-anticipated arrival—had spread like wildfire though the colony. The daughter of the tribe’s most Gifted Alpha, and its most notorious criminal, had vanished like a ghost.

  A ghost that had absolutely no intention of ever being found again.

  Along with a cadre of his most Gifted guards, Leander searched every nook and cranny of Sommerley—every low and hidden place, every knell and dale, all the miles of open fields and high bluffs and grass-covered banks of the winding river—but no one found a single atom of her scent to lead them to her.

  He was attuned to her, he knew her scent better than any of them, but he found nothing of her in the woods, nothing of her near the road. No trace of her lingered to give him hope that she was still near, could still—somehow—be convinced to stay.

  “And what if there is something else out there looking for her as well?” Leander raised his head to stare across the room. His eyes were fierce. There were fine lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there yesterday, an expression of naked anguish he was doing nothing to hide. “She’s alone, unclothed, with no weapons or food—she’s completely vulnerable.”

  “We don’t know that the borders of Sommerley have been breached by the Expurgari, Leander,” Viscount Weymouth said soothingly, glancing once again at Morgan. He sat back in his chair and picked up a steaming cup of black coffee.

  “We have no proof of that yet. If they are about, it’s highly doubtful they’re inside the perimeter, not with the number of guards you’ve posted, not with the security systems you’ve put in place.” He lifted the coffee to his lips, all the while keeping his gaze trained on Leander. “An intruder would almost have to be invited in to breach our safeguards. I’m sure she’s safe.”

  “For the time being,” said Christian, tense and brooding at the far end of the table.

  All eyes turned to him.

  He too looked worse for wear. He’d worn the same shirt three days running, hadn’t bothered to shower or shave in the last two. He ran a hand through his hair and huffed out a weary breath.

  “She’s new to these woods, new to Sommerley as a whole...she has no idea where our borders lie. And if she can Shift to vapor, as Leander says she can,” he ignored Leander’s steely gaze and continued, “she can simply fly away at will. Never to return.”

  “Thank you, Christian,” said Leander, “for your very helpful input. Now shut up.”

  “I’m merely saying,” he continued, speaking directly to the viscount and Morgan, “that not only does Jenna have absolutely no reason to want to make her home here, but she’s been given good reason to loathe us all. In her place,” he glared at Leander, his hands white-knuckled around the arms of the chair, “I would have done the same thing.”

  “Are you implying,” Leander said, deadly soft, “I was wrong to tell her the truth?”

  The viscount cleared his throat and set his cup down carefully atop the gleaming mahogany table. He leaned forward and adjusted his spectacles. “Perhaps it might have been a bit much...so soon...”

  When Leander switched his gaze from Christian to focus directly on him, the viscount cleared his throat again. “Her ways are not our own. It must have come as a great shock,” he added, a faint sting of chagrin in his voice.

  Silence took the room. The warning call of a mockingbird rose outside the windows, harsh and razored, slicing through the sunlit room like a knife.

  “Although I’m sure you had your reasons,” the viscount finished lamely. T
he surface of his coffee suddenly became of great interest to him.

  “We’re not like the rest of them,” Leander said, his voice hard. His eyes burned as they fell on each of them in turn. “We’re not like the Expurgari or the humans or any of the other animals that walk this earth. We’re stronger than all of them, we face the truth. We speak it. We’ve survived eons of persecution and envy by being stronger than they are, and Jenna is a survivor as well. I won’t sink to their level and lie to her. We are Ikati. We are above them all, above their petty skirmishes and greed and lies.”

  “Indeed,” Morgan said, examining her French manicure with acute interest. “I daresay we are.” She raised her gaze to Leander’s face and a pulse of anger sharpened her tone. “But we’re not above making someone with good intentions and an innocent heart our unwilling prisoner, even if she doesn’t quite realize it yet. Nor are we above forcing her to be subject to our Laws. Laws that are foreign to her, Laws that took the life of her own father.”

  She leaned back in her chair and crossed one long leg over the other, her manicure forgotten. “Laws that will make her no more than chattel if it’s discovered she can breed. No,” she said softly, her eyes narrowed to slits. “We are definitely not above any of that.”

  “We’ve been through this with you before, Morgan,” interrupted the viscount before anyone else could speak. “Dozens of times, hundreds, I would wager.” He leaned forward in his chair, visibly grateful for the opportunity to move the focus away from himself. He began to tap his index finger on the table, a staccato beat to underscore his words.

  “The Law is in place to keep us from total disaster. It was created as the anchor that holds us fast against the raging river of temptation that would lead us into extinction. If it weren’t for the rules we live by, we’d be hunted far more easily than we are now. We never would have lasted even the first millennium—”