Shattered Spirits

by C. I. Black

  Her shoulder slammed into the wall. Pain roared through her. She released the baton and Wild Hair swung at her. She ducked under and rammed her foot into his knee. The joint shattered, dropping him.

  She leapt up and smashed her elbow into the back of his skull. Bone crunched. His neck snapped, his face cracked into the wall, and he collapsed.

  “Well done,” Katar said, his voice too close.

  Capri jerked down and Katar’s machete whooshed over her head. She seized the baton and wrenched around, bringing it up to block another swing. Metal squealed against metal as the machete skidded off the baton.

  Katar swiped the blade up and around. Capri leapt toward him, snapping the baton against Katar’s forearm. He roared and rammed his shoulder into her chest.

  Agony shot through her. She staggered, and Katar slashed at her. She jerked back but wasn’t fast enough. The machete sliced through the front of her coat, drawing a thread of fiery pain across her gut.

  Katar slashed again. She wrenched back, off balance. Another slash. He was backing her up like she had Wild Hair. A lunge.

  She sidestepped, snapping the baton down on the blade. The machete’s tip hit the floor, and Katar stumbled. Capri whipped the baton around and snapped it across the hand holding the machete. It clattered to the floor. Snap across his face. Snap—

  He seized the baton. She twisted in, kicking him in the chest. Air burst from his lungs but he didn’t let go of the baton and used it to wrench her toward him. She kicked again. He captured her leg and barreled forward, slamming her back to the wall.

  Pain exploded through her. He twisted her wrist. Her fingers went numb, and she dropped the baton. He spun her around and slammed her to the floor, bringing his weight down on her.

  Ribs cracked. Agony consumed her.

  He grabbed the front of her coat, yanked her up, and drove her back down to the floor.

  More pain. She couldn’t catch her breath.

  She clawed at his hands, twisted in his grip, anything to break free. But he was bigger and stronger than she.

  He yanked her up and down again. Her head snapped back, cracking against the concrete.

  Flashes of light and dark swarmed across her vision. She fought to focus past the pain. Katar’s weight vanished. He lunged toward the machete. She scrambled for the baton only a few feet away, and wrapped her fingers around the rubber handle.

  She wrenched around to block the strike she knew was coming, but the strength of the machete’s blow knocked the baton from her still numb fingers. He kicked her in the gut, knocking her over, and raised the machete to decapitate her.

  But a shadow dove out of the darkness and caught the machete’s strike with his own blade. Ryan. Her heart stuttered with relief and fear.

  Katar growled and slashed at Ryan, who parried and lunged in. Katar sidestepped and jabbed the machete into Ryan’s side.

  It happened so fast. Katar was the more experienced swordsman. Hell, Ryan probably had never used a sword before. One parry, a lunge, and a counterstrike. That was it.

  The sword slipped from Ryan’s fingers. His knees sagged, and he seized the machete, trapping it in his body. His gaze locked on hers with a fierce determination, his message clear: kill the bastard.

  She seized the sword. Dragon laws be damned. Katar had to be stopped and without a medallion or the Handmaiden nearby, death was the only option.

  With a scream, she leapt forward. Katar’s eyes flashed wide, and she swung the sword with all her dragon-enhanced might. The blade hit flesh and bone and then air. Blood sprayed the wall. Her yell boomed through the empty office space, echoing off the unfinished concrete walls.

  Katar dropped, his head bouncing a few feet away. Ryan sagged to his side, and the square-jawed security guard staggered to his feet.

  Capri jerked the sword in his direction and growled. He raised his hands and backed away.

  “Oh, Mother,” a soft masculine voice said.

  Capri jerked her attention to the new threat. The need to help Ryan screamed within her, but she wouldn’t be able to save him if they were still under attack.

  Grey and Anaea rushed toward her.

  A sob bubbled in Capri’s throat and her knees gave out, dropping her beside Ryan. The machete protruded from his side. He still clung to it, his breath shallow desperate gasps.

  “This will be all right. I will make it all right,” she said. She wanted to touch him, to kiss him, to hold him but feared any contact would make everything real. If she didn’t touch him he couldn’t be injured, couldn’t be dying.

  “Call 9-1-1,” Grey said.

  “They won’t get here in time,” Ryan gasped.

  “I won’t let him die.” She would die with him. Her heart was already shattering. Odyne’s agony was nothing compared to this.

  Anaea knelt beside them. “Grey will gate you to the hospital.”

  “Done,” he said. Just like that. No questions asked. No comment about how dangerous it was to gate into—or even near—a busy emergency room. Nothing about the laws they were about to break or the mess revealing a magical gate to humans might cause.

  Grey pressed his hand to the wall stained with Katar’s blood. A black vortex of a gate formed, slowly. The muscle in his jaw twitched, as if summoning this gate was painful.

  Ryan brushed his bloody fingers against Capri’s cheek. “It’ll be all right.”

  But he didn’t look all right. He was pale. Blood pooled around her knees. Even with the blade still in the wound, stopping the gush of blood, his life still wept from his body.

  She captured his fingers, pressed them against her skin, and leaned into his touch. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “That’s what I just said.” A hint of a smile pulled at his lips.

  “Yes.” Her throat tightened.

  “Got it,” Grey said. He nudged Capri aside, knelt, and slid his hands under Ryan’s back and knees.

  Ryan’s eyes hardened. He gave a quick nod, and Grey lifted, drawing a sharp gasp that became quick pants, Ryan’s agony clear. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Grey turned to the gate as a man-sized shadow dove toward them. Wild Hair leapt into the pool of light, seized the machete handle, and wrenched it from Ryan’s body.

  Blood sprayed across Capri’s face. Ryan’s blood. He went limp.

  Wild Hair raised the weapon to slash at Grey. With a growl, Capri lunged at him, but a sudden wind tossed her back. She fell to the floor as the wind seized Wild Hair and crashed him through the bank of windows on the far side of the unfinished office space.

  Anaea growled. Her telekinetic wind whipped around her, pulling at her hair and clothes. Then the wind vanished and she sagged, her hands pressed to her knees as if to catch her breath.

  Capri scrambled to Ryan. He wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. His head and arm hung limp, and blood stained the front of Grey’s clothes and the floor at his feet.

  Grey staggered to the gate, but it wasn’t there. The shock of the attack must have broken his concentration.

  “Call another,” Capri said. Ryan needed help. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t. Mother, please.

  “He’s not breathing.” Anaea pressed her fingers to Ryan’s neck. “There’s no…”

  “He can’t be dead.” Capri wouldn’t allow it. She was supposed to get at least fifty more years with him. A violent tremor seized her and dropped her to her knees. She’d just found her inamorator. He wasn’t supposed to die. Mother, this was not happening.

  This was not happening.

  CHAPTER 47

  A sob clawed out of Capri. She couldn’t drag her gaze from Ryan’s face. He was hers. And he was dead.

  “I’m so sorry, Capri,” Anaea said. She reached for Capri, but light shimmered from the inside of Anaea’s shirt and her eyes flashed wide. She yanked the medallion from around her neck and the light intensified, blindingly bright, burning away the shadows in the room.

  “What’s happening?” Grey asked.

&nb
sp; Anaea’s wind burst to life. It whipped around her again, rattling the wires in the ceiling, gusting dust and snapping the plastic sheeting.

  “The medallion is absorbing his soul,” Anaea said.

  “What does that mean?” Capri fought to get to her feet, but the wind knocked her back. If the medallion had Ryan’s soul, Anaea could put it back into his body—no, his body was too injured. Without the soul magic of a drake, he’d just die again. But Anaea could put Ryan’s soul into another body and save him. He wouldn’t remember anything. He probably wouldn’t remember he was her inamorator. The bond might not survive rebirth. But at least he’d be alive.

  Grey staggered and the wind jerked him to his knees. Ryan’s hand hit the floor, into the pool of his blood.

  Anaea’s wind pulled her up. The light from the medallion burned the color from her, turning her into a shimmering white entity. The humans would call her an angel; a dragon would say—

  “Mother,” Grey gasped, his eyes wide with recognition.

  “No.” Anaea shook her head, and the wind eased her to the floor, on her knees before Ryan. Her eyes were hard, her breath quick gasps, and her body trembled. Her magical power was incredible.

  Her telekinetic wind snapped, swirling up miniature dust devils. She squeezed her eyes shut and it subsided, then she eased the medallion’s chain over her head and clutched it with both hands.

  Capri jerked forward. “Use me. I’ll hold his soul until we can find a vessel.”

  Anaea glanced at her. The sorcerer’s eyes burned white. No pupils, no irises, only shimmering, searing white. She blinked and Capri’s heart stuttered with the movement, released for a split second from the ferocity of all the power, then captured again in its vortex.

  “Please. I can’t lose him.”

  Anaea’s expression softened. Capri couldn’t tell how. Her eyes remained burning suns, her face a hard sculpture, but there was kindness there, love, affection, understanding.

  She turned back to Ryan, her movement slow, and pressed the medallion to his chest. Light exploded around them, blinding for a heartbeat and an eternity all at the same time. Capri was suspended with it, body, breath, and soul.

  Then the light swept into a contraction, rushing out of the medallion and into Ryan. His skin started to glow. White light cut from beneath his eyelashes and between his lips. Darkness flooded behind Capri, as if Ryan and the medallion were consuming more than just the light it had created, but also the light from the emergency light and the glow from the office windows across the street.

  It pressed against Capri’s senses, pulled at her, called and cajoled. With a roaring whoosh, it jerked her forward. Her forehead banged against the floor. Pain screamed through her skull and someone gasped.

  She wrenched up. Ryan gasped again, then screamed. He pressed his hands to the gaping hole in his side, clawing at his ruined shirt.

  Capri rushed to him. “It’s all right. It’ll be all right.”

  He stared at her with no recognition and no understanding.

  Her throat tightened. Of course he didn’t recognize her. He was newly reborn, reset to whatever was in his human soul’s base knowledge. And he was still injured. He still needed a hospital.

  “Make a gate,” she growled.

  “No.” Anaea pressed her hands against Capri’s and Ryan’s and eased them away from the wound. Or what should have been the wound.

  “My side,” Ryan said.

  “His side.” Capri glanced at Anaea. “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does it mean?” Capri needed answers. Had Anaea healed Ryan or did he now have soul magic strong enough to sustain his body? Was he now a sorcerer like Anaea or… or she had no idea what?

  Ryan groaned.

  “It’ll be all right. We’re your friends. I’m—” She swallowed hard, unable to tell him she was just a friend. She was more than a friend, she was his and he hers. But the rebirth spell had taken that away. Mother, he didn’t remember her. “I’m a friend, too.”

  He grabbed her fingers, pressed her palm against his newly healed side. “Why are you talking like I don’t know who you are?”

  “Because—what? You shouldn’t know who I am.”

  He flashed his teeth in pure invitation. “Soul to soul, blue drake. I’d never forget you.”

  “But how?” Her mind whirled. He wasn’t supposed to remember. That wasn’t how the rebirth spell worked.

  “The Handmaiden has been keeping secrets,” Anaea said. “Just like how there are natural human mages, the rebirth spell doesn’t have to wipe a dragon’s memories.”

  “And apparently it also works on humans,” Grey said.

  “I would guess only those who already have a magical connection,” Anaea said.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Capri met Ryan’s gaze. He was alive, and he remembered her. Everything else didn’t matter.

  * * *

  Tobias ran his finger through the ash and dirt on the altar in the Handmaiden’s rebirth chamber.

  “We’re beginning to make a habit of this,” a sultry feminine voice said. Ophelia.

  “Yeah, well. This is the only place I know of in Court that’s warded against prying eyes.”

  “And ears.” She flashed her teeth and leaned against a pillar.

  Tobias sighed and fought the desire to run a hand through his hair. It was a habit he’d kicked two hundred years ago that was coming back. Being the royal Chamberlain was not an easy job these days. “What do your ears tell you?”

  Ophelia’s expression darkened. “That we’re in trouble.”

  “Us, personally? Or dragon-kind in general?”

  “Dragon-kind, but given your position in Court, it might end up falling on you.”

  “Swell.” Maybe it was time to take that vacation he’d been thinking about. Except he hadn’t been thinking of taking a vacation and there was nowhere he could go where Regis’s drakes wouldn’t find him. What he really wanted was to find the Handmaiden. But whether that was for the sake of dragon-kind or his hurt feelings, he didn’t know.

  “Your plan worked. With your North American Clean Team and Capri containing most of the mess at Barna’s gala, it was easy to set up the news story that this was a joint FBI-Newgate P.D. special investigation with Detective Miller as a deep-cover officer. Cooper’s even marginally happy because you gave him all the credit and even Ptolemy joined in the ruse by awarding him a medal. The story from that reporter with KDKA—excuse me, formerly with KDKA—got discredited, so believe it or not, we’re safe. I’d say this was one of your best cleanups yet.”

  “Try and convince Regis of that.” The Prince had locked Court up tight. Only those with the ability to gate without an anchor—since Regis couldn’t control them—and those with special permission were allowed to leave Court. No matter how tidy Tobias and the Clean Team had made the situation, the events of the gala had sent him on a rampage. A dozen drakes had been sent to Odyne and a dozen more had been locked up, whether they’d had anything to do with the mess or not.

  “That’s my concern,” Ophelia said. “Dragons are starting to talk. They’re no longer just thinking of uprising, they’re talking about it.”

  A coup would destabilize Regis completely. “Do you know who?”

  Ophelia pursed her lips. She knew. The drake knew almost everything that happened at Court. But if she wasn’t going to say who was involved so Tobias could arrest them that meant—

  “You want a coup,” he said.

  “I don’t know. But Regis brought Odyne back into service. That’s not right. Not for the dragons she touches, and not for her.”

  If the rumors were true, Odyne didn’t just give pain, she also received it when she used her magic. Regis had to have something against her to compel her back into service, but Tobias had no idea what that could be.

  “I’ll keep my eye on the situation, but…” Ophelia shrugged.

  “But something needs to change.” Tobias couldn’t agree mo
re. The question was, what? And would he be able to break his oath of allegiance and defy his Prince when that time came? He might have been a pirate in a past life, but he’d never been an oath-breaker before.

  Everything would be fine once the Handmaiden came back. Except he had no idea when that would be. And if she didn’t return soon, there might not be a Dragon Court to return to.

  * * *

  Diablo paced his living room, battling the rage roaring through him. It had been a week since the fight at Barna’s gala. All that gating, fighting—and getting shot—had weakened his control on the beast within and it had yet to quiet. Andy’s murderer was dead, Capri and her inamorator were fine. Even Grey was doing all right—although the silver drake still didn’t look well. Why was the beast still raging?

  He’d tried everything: meditating all day, working out until he was exhausted, sleeping in, taking two days off work, then spending all day with the kids he’d saved.

  But the beast clawed at him, digging painful rents into his psyche that ignited at every noise, every flash of light, every thought of Andy’s death.

  Mother, Andy wasn’t supposed to be dead.

  But he was. Diablo couldn’t turn back time. He had to move on and figure out how to calm the beast again.

  He needed to kill someone, break something, destroy, maim. God, he’d never needed one of the humans’ ridiculous wars so badly before. He drew back to punch the window and jerked to face the room before he shattered the glass. Andy’s spindly table and fragile vase stood opposite him, taunting him. No. Reminding him. He wasn’t the beast. The beast didn’t control him. He controlled it.

  The urge to destroy something crawled over him. He needed a drink. But drinking alone right now was a terrible idea.

  He pulled out his phone and dialed.

  “Hello?” Grey said after two rings. He sounded tired.

  “Wanna get a drink?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A drink. I could use a drink, but I… well, I could use some company more.” The beast roared. He didn’t want company. Company would stop him from starting a bar brawl.