Shadow Assassins (The Second Realm Trilogy)

by Vazquez, Melissa

  “The fastest way to go is to fly. Seek the dragon rider living deep within the Ice Dragon Mountains. He is known as James the Exiled. He will help.”

  “Who?” Kaydee asked, confused.

  The name got the attention of Atrimalous. It was impossible that he had just heard the seer correctly. James the Exiled was someone he knew, someone he had lost contact with years ago.

  “Are you sure of this man, seer?” he asked.

  The seer looked disgusted, as if he had disrespected her horribly. “If you doubt me, you can leave.”

  She couldn't have given him a more blatant dismissal if he had asked for it. Still, grudgingly, he paid her for her services and exited the hut with the two women he traveled with.

  “I have to travel into the mountains?” Kaydee asked doubtfully.

  Leta frowned. “That mountain range is huge to travel through. What kind of hermit lives up there?”

  He approached them. “I know who he is. I can take us there.”

  “Do you even know how to get there?”

  He turned away from them and threw the hood of his cloak back up. “I have ways of finding him. Dress warm though; it's cold up there and we have to go by foot.”

  Kaydee glanced back in the direction of the mountains and wanted to cry. More traveling to be done.

  

  Leta was a woman who knew how to pack. They had returned to her house so she could pack provisions. Atrimalous was itching to get on the road. Kaydee could see impatience roiling of him like steam but Leta wouldn't budge, insisting that Kaydee wasn't used to life on the harsh road and would need to be cared for. Even when Kaydee tried disagreeing with her, Leta would hear none of it and instead went back to sweeping through her small hut for various items.

  What surprised Kaydee the most was the emergence of a full-length fur coat straight out of the 1940s. Leta explained with great pride that her mother had been an illegal fur trader between here and the First Realm, which was why she had been banished to the Isle Dark in the first place. Clothing was some of the most smuggled contraband into the Second Realm. Harmless as clothing sounded, Leta explained that the Law of Absolute Separation stated that the First and Second Realms would have no connections to each other in terms of culture, technology and other items, but clothing was always smuggled through.

  Kaydee was first slipped into a fur-lined cloak that Leta owned, before she tried the jacket on. It was a surprisingly nice fit. She was uncomfortable about wearing the mink at first, but Leta explained that up in the mountains, it would be snowing and she needed all the warmth she could get. Kaydee longed for down-feather jackets and gloves, but made do with what she was given. Last to go on were fleece-lined leather gloves, again smuggled in from the First Realm.

  Leta carried what she called her black hole bag, explaining that it had been bewitched to be practically bottomless. In reality, it was a leather purse that looked similar to what modern women in the First Realm carried. Inside the bag went enough food and water to keep them sustained through their mountain travel, plus a few lanterns and some flint for fire-making, should they need it. Finally, dressed warmly enough for travel, the women were ready. When offered something warm, Atrimalous turned it down.

  “I won't need it,” was his simple explanation.

  Behind his back, Kaydee tried not to laugh as Leta impersonated a tough man – her impression of Atrimalous.

  The three set off as the sun sank beneath the horizon, into the mountains. There weren't many villagers out, so there weren't many people to question three people traveling towards the mountains in a strange assortment of clothing, or lack thereof. Once they came to the tunnel, Atrimalous lit one of the lanterns Leta had packed, one that dangled off of a walking stick. He didn't need the flint, summoning fire right out of his hand. When Kaydee questioned if he was a mage, he didn't give a direct reply, instead, gravely replying that he had powers of some sort.

  Leta had been right, this was a man of few words.

  They left the tunnel behind as they climbed to a less-traveled and barely visible dirt road nearby. The winding pathway led into the mountains and as Kaydee stared up at it, she sighed heavily. This would be a long night, with a long, hard climb ahead of her. Hopefully, finding this James the Exiled wouldn't be difficult. She just hoped that Atrimalous knew where he was going.

  Chapter Twenty

  Night fell with an eerie silence over Moonriver Academy. The great castle stood in ruins, with rubble strewn carelessly around the school grounds. All around the rubble were bodies, of both Emeralde knights and the occupants of the school. The school grounds had turned into a grizzly war zone.

  Evangeline stood at one end of the ruin, her shoulder horribly pulled out of place. She had dislocated it for sure, but that was about the worst damage she had obtained. She was definitely one of the lucky ones.

  Once the knights had broken into the castle, all hell had broken loose. Freed from their teacher's protective barriers, the students of Moonriver Academy were fast to defend themselves and their school. Brave as they were, they weren't prepared for full warfare with men who had been specifically trained to kill. These were students, not warriors. Sure, some of them had done some damage and severely injured or even killed some of the knights, but they still had a lot to go up against.

  In the onslaught, it looked as though the deaths around her were evenly split, more or less. There were plenty of men in plate armor to lie beside those who had occupied the school. The deaths pained her. These kids were younger than she was and they hadn't hesitated to fight.

  She glanced around her. As darkness settled over the ruined school, magic had been put to use, lighting funeral pyres or just fire pits to keep the darkness away. The burning smell of hair and skin made her eyes water. She skittered away from the pyres, searching. She had been separated from her fellow Assassins in the melee. She didn't even know if they were alive.

  “Evie!”

  She turned at the sound of Marco's voice. She saw her friend some distance away, limping towards her. His left leg had been scraped badly, enough to tear away the cloth of his pant leg from the knee down. Horrible scratches were down his calf, blood pooling on his shoes and the ground around him.

  She hurried to him and asked if he was okay. His answer was mostly yes, although there was obvious damage. As he spoke, he held his normal little smirk. The smirk was a relief to see, so normal within the remains of the battlefield they stood on.

  He helped put her shoulder back into place. A scream ripped from her lips as it was forced back into place, but the worst was over soon enough. In return, she pulled a knife from her pocket and cut away Marco's good pant leg, severing it into several cloth strips used to bandage his bleeding leg. It was a horrible patch job but it would have to do for now.

  Together, they walked through the rubble, seeking Kaleb. They found him in a half-transformed state, his skin an odd tiger striped pattern, his eyes glowing yellow and green, reflecting like a cat's in the dim light. He didn't seem to notice them approach.

  Evangeline checked to see if he had claws or fangs at his disposal, but all he had were hands balled into fists and striped with orange and black. His face was half-transformed as well, nose and mouth fused together to make a sort of muzzle or snout, his ears higher up than they should have been. He looked altogether alien and in pain. He must have been too exhausted to transform all the way.

  “Kaleb, it's Evie,” she said to him, gently.

  That strange, half-formed nose twitched, scenting her.

  “You need to transform back. You're stuck in a half-state.”

  The form before her made a small mewling sound, both petulant and pathetic. He closed his eyes and his body shimmered for a moment as he gathered his thoughts and concentrated. He pulled his body back together into a total human state. The orange and black striping melted into his normal skin tone, his eyes shifting back and his ears sinking to their normal location. Once the transformation had been completed, he
fell into a deep sleep, not even acknowledging his friends.

  Evangeline tried not to take offense as he fell into sleep without so much as a hello. He had breached his magical limit in that fight, shifting from animal to animal when he found a form that suited him better. He knew better than to shift so fast but he had been caught up in the battle. The result was his body needing to rest before it had finished transforming.

  “He's lucky that didn't happen to him during the battle,” Marco said. The usual humor and sarcasm had been sucked from his voice, leaving him strangely quiet.

  Evangeline nodded. “He would have been killed for sure.”

  She and Marco stayed in that spot for a moment, keeping watch over their friend. Around them, the survivors were searching for the injured and the dead. The dead were dragged aside by crying, retching peers, while the injured were pulled to their feet and brought to a group.

  “No!”

  Her head whipped around at the sound. She recognized her twin's voice, even as it was thick with grief.

  Dante knelt some distance away over a man, a body Evangeline instantly recognized. Oh, no.

  “No!” Dante cried again. The angel-demon hybrid broke down into tears, even as a boy and his black wolf tried to pull her away. Once they did, she grew desperate, her crying louder, harder, choking her to the point of incoherency. Her friend gave up on separating her and instead pulled her into a hug.

  Dreading what she was to be looking at, Evangeline approached, slowly. There was a crowd of onlookers gathering to see their fallen teacher and some were crying with the same fervor as Dante. Others watched sadly.

  “Okay, everyone, move back,” Evangeline ordered, with as much authority in her voice as she could muster.

  Some of the crowd looked at her, then to Dante before they moved back. Others didn't budge. She didn't care. She moved through the crowd, not caring who she shoved out of her way.

  When she came to the body everyone was gathered around, she choked back a sob. She might not have liked vampires much, but Dirk didn't deserve to die. He had been a friend in the short time she had stayed in the castle under his care. His quick humor and subtle authority was to be admired. Now, with him laying limp on the rubble, she couldn't help but wonder who had dared to end his life, who had dared to go after him. He had bled out horribly, but not at the spot where he was laying now. There was a noticeable stab wound in his chest, near his heart, and above his gut. His clothes had been burned badly on one side, as had his hair. Despite the grisly ravaging of his body, his eyes were still closed, his expression more or less relaxed. He could have been sleeping for all they knew; except his chest was eerily still, adding on to the haunting reality that although he could have slept, he would never wake.

  Evangeline moved towards Dante, again bringing alarmed stares and whispers about their identical looks. She recognized the boy that held her twin. Dimitri, the Immortal. He looked bruised and scraped, but mostly unharmed.

  “Dante,” she said softly.

  Her twin turned and she swore she could have felt the pain rolling off of her as it had a physical form. Instead of offering her twin words of comfort, she pulled her into a hug.

  “I'm so sorry,” was all she could say.

  Around the school, similar horrifying discoveries were being made as the injured and the dead continued to be separated. Different students and teachers went through exactly what Dante went through. The only difference was, while Evangeline and Dimitri were the only ones to comfort Dante, peers flocked together in groups of friends, to comfort each other. It left Evangeline feeling resentful of the survivors, angry that they would ignore her twin when she was in just as much pain as they were. This wasn't a time to hold schoolyard grudges, this was the time to gather together, strong.

  “Don't let him stay here,” Dante whispered, her voice ragged. Sobs wracked her body but she managed to choke out, “Funeral...pyre.”

  Evangeline had learned some of the ancient school traditions in her short stay on campus. One that was hardly used in everyday life was the insistence on a funeral pyre. It was a school-wide belief that their peers deserved a pyre big enough to reach the heavens. There was no cemetery or burial rights to be had, but a pyre big enough and hot enough to go beyond this world and carry the dead into the next.

  She and Marco helped carry Dirk's body over to where the pyres were being arranged. Dante had reached out to Dirk before she allowed them to carry him away. She took the amethyst charm from around his neck and placed it around hers as her reminder of him, before she allowed them to head to the pyre. Her heartbroken sobbing carried across the barren school lot and even though it seemed cruel, Evangeline tried not to hear it. Her heart was breaking for her sister. In the small amount of time that she had seen Dante and Dirk together, she saw the love and respect that her twin had for the vampire. No mere friend, but Dirk was a sort of father figure to her, in the same way that Evangeline had Dr. Fyrn. To lose Dirk was beyond what Evangeline could comprehend.

  A fire mage had naturally selected himself as the one in charge of the funeral pyres. Dirk's body was arranged around a gathering of stones and wood, before the pyre was lit.

  Dirk's body dissolved in a blur of tears as Evangeline watched. She made her way over to Dante and held her twin close. The two cried as the fire carried Dirk from their world to the world beyond.

  It was as if the heavens were listening. As night fell, dark clouds gathered overhead. A gentle mist of rain fell on the survivors, as if even the heavens were mourning for their fallen peers. It wasn't enough to put the pyres out, but steam and smoke rose thickly above them.

  Dante wiped tears and rain from her eyes. “I won't let his death be for naught.”

  Evangeline heard her soft, angry voice. “What?”

  “I'm not going to let him die for nothing!”

  Dante's voice chilled Evangeline more than the raining mist did. In her voice was more than just anger, but pure, unfiltered hatred and the promise to avenge her fallen friend. No matter the cost. Evangeline knew better than to say anything or try to stop her. Dante wasn't going to listen at this point. She wouldn't be stopped anyway.

  Sometimes, comfort was all that could be given, even when the person who needed it wasn't listening. So Evangeline continued to hold her twin close, with the smell of burning wood and smoke on her twin's hair and clothing, on herself and in her mind. The sights and smells of the pyre would be on her mind long after the fires went out. It was one of those things that haunted her, even when she closed her eyes.

  Chapter Twenty One

  To say it was cold in the mountains was an understatement. Kaydee wasn't prepared for the cold, or the snow. Her sneakers caked up with snow fast when she tried walking. Eventually it got to the point where she grew tired of slipping and sliding on the icy ground and just raised the earth up a bit, shaking the snow and ice aside as a raised pathway was formed. It wasn't cheating, really, it was just making things easier on herself. The ground lowered as she passed but Atrimalous growled his disapproval, saying that her changing the mountain terrain could have unwanted effects. Leta told him it wasn’t a big deal, but he was insistent, saying that avalanches were unpredictable in these areas.

  “Okay, let's see you do better,” Leta challenged.

  Atrimalous sighed heavily and held out his hand. Gusts of wind blew the snow out of their path in a straight line. The wind seemed to be coming from his hand, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “Better?” he sneered.

  Kaydee couldn't help but stare. “A fire mage and a wind mage?”

  Atrimalous stared at her for a moment, realizing that she had seen the fire he called earlier. He didn't bother answering her, instead, choosing to lead the group, walking fast and ahead of the two women, silent as the mountains around them.

  “He has...unusual powers,” Leta said, trying to find words to explain. “I haven't seen the full extent of them myself.”

  From what Kaydee had learned, it wa
s near impossible to control more than one element. It wasn't as though it was a learned skill; mages were born with the ability to control only one element. She could only control earth and although earth meant the plants in the ground, the rocks and the dirt, it was still one solid element. This man before her had two separate elements.

  There were ways to unlock control over more magical powers, but to do that took dark magic and evil intent. Kaydee shuddered to think of what Atrimalous had done to push his powers beyond that of what he had to have been born with.

  They continued through the mountains. Kaydee had no sense of direction up here, no way to tell if they were going in the right direction. All she had to see was the lantern Atrimalous was holding up ahead. He walked at a swift pace ahead of them, blowing snow out of their way and waiting for them to catch up, before starting again. This relentless, daunting pattern continued until Kaydee thought she might die of exhaustion. When Leta saw her panting hard, trying to catch her breath, she suggested that they stop.

  “We're almost there,” Atrimalous argued.

  “And you'll have a dead girl on your hands if you continue to push her, tough guy.”

  There was more grumbling from him, but he relented and let Kaydee catch her breath. When they set off again, Kaydee felt as though her legs were made out of lead. How was Atrimalous walking as though nothing were wrong?

  To her relief, it didn't take long for their path to even out from an upward slope to something more level. The path widened into a large circular area, flat, hidden among the mountain peaks. The mountains around them blocked the wind for the most part. On the far side of the circular area was a large cropping of rocks that formed a sort of cave. Several stretches of cloth had been pulled tight over the rocks. Some, damp and tattered, fluttered in the wind like eerie, ruined flags.