Dark Flight (The Shadow Slayers)

by Cassi Carver

  “Are you having trouble flashing?” she asked, peeping up at him with expressionless eyes, as if to mask her pain.

  “Just gathering my strength. Now you know the silver-wing’s most guarded secret of traveling in the Shadowland—it isn’t as easy as it looks.” He nuzzled closer. He would never get enough of his princess in his arms, and being there for her when she was suffering was like a gift straight from the Maker. “Almost ready.”

  It wasn’t his imagination when Kara squeezed him tighter and pressed her cheek to his bare chest. As for the feel of something wet against her lashes, he couldn’t be sure. She clearly wasn’t ready to talk of what had transpired with Julian, and he wasn’t going to push her.

  She cleared her throat. “Ready now?”

  He chanced a glance at her face. Yes, her dark brown lashes glistened at their base. “As Mazeki probably told you, there’s no way to flash to the Mount of Truth. I can get us to the first stop on the map and then flash us back to that same location after you rest on the surface. I’m not sure how long the journey will be, but I don’t want you to overstay your welcome here.”

  “Too late,” she muttered, glancing into the distance toward Julian’s land.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Nothing. But I’m really feeling fine. Even when I…uh—” she cleared her throat again, “—visited Julian before, I never felt worse than a little fatigued when the hour was up. I really don’t understand why everyone makes such a big deal of it.”

  “Kara, even females a hundred times your age have to regenerate on the surface. Demiáre can’t remain in this realm indefinitely.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting indefinitely, just that you don’t need to be so worried. I’m not going to let the Abyss suck me in for my pride’s sake.”

  He laughed and shook his head. So said the woman who was hurting so badly he could feel her pain seeping through his skin, and yet she went on as though the past eight months with her black-wing lover hadn’t meant a thing. “As you say. Let’s get started.”

  Kara didn’t know how it was supposed to feel getting dumped. She’d never really had a boyfriend before Julian, so she didn’t have much to compare it to. Still, she wondered if it was normal that after three weeks, she vacillated between wanting to weep and bash her fists into the nearest cloud until it wet its watery pants.

  Damn it, she knew that what she and Julian had was nothing more than a glorified booty call, but for eight long months she’d looked forward to the short moments in time when she could touch his body and glory in the fact that it was hers.

  And he was here somewhere at this very moment. Maybe at his place. Maybe he was already with Mazeki. But she and Julian were back in the same realm…

  Well, screw him and the black wings he flew in on. Maybe she would get a harem going on Mercury Island and see just what else was out there. From all she heard, it was unnatural for a Demiáre female to be monogamous anyhow. Maybe she was only attached to Julian because he was all she knew. “Yeah, that’s it,” she said, agreeing with her self-assessment.

  “No, unfortunately, that’s not it,” Gavin replied. “I’m looking for an outcropping of rock at the edge of Raleon’s kingdom that looks like a fawn. That doesn’t even look like a mammal.”

  Gavin thought he’d be able to flash them close to the first marker, but after thirty minutes of his arms crossed over Kara’s middle and his heavy silver wings beating the wind above them, her breasts were falling asleep from lack of blood flow. “A fawn, huh? That must be something. How funny that the rocks eroded in the shape of a baby deer.”

  She was fairly close to asking Gavin to massage her tits to get her circulation going again, but she wasn’t sure how that would go over. So instead she said, “I think I’m ready to make a pit stop.”

  His arms jerked. “Are you feeling faint? Would you like to rest on the surface for a while?”

  “Not a chance. I said I’d tell you when I need to go back, and I will. I just want to stretch a little.”

  “In that case, let’s see if we can make it to the fawn. It should be close. You see those boulders ahead?”

  She looked off into the distance and her mouth dropped open. Sure enough there were mounds of boulders in every shape and size, resembling a sculpture garden, but instead of being carved or crafted, they appeared to be natural shapes. But nothing in the Shadowland was natural. Especially not its inhabitants.

  Gavin set them down on the dry earth. Unlike the stormy gray firmament in the Land of Desolation, Raleon’s kingdom was crowned with clear blue skies stretching as far as Kara could see. The sun beat down on her head, as though the black-wing had cranked up the thermostat on his kingdom. “I can’t believe this is made of will. It looks so real. And the heat definitely feels real.”

  “It is real here.”

  “Can he sense us?”

  “If Raleon were expecting us, no doubt he could sense our presence here, but as it is, his power is stretched thin. Our footsteps shouldn’t amount to more than a passing niggle on his consciousness.”

  Kara tripped over a small rock, and it jammed between her toes. “Ouch, hold on.” She pulled the pebble out and regarded it. “Yep. It’s real. My toes think so too.”

  Gavin shook his head. “Of all the times to wear flimsy pink sandals.”

  “How would I know Raleon had invested so much time into his scenery? Besides, these sandals match my shirt.” She held her foot up. “And look, they have little pink jewels across the top. On my income, that’s pretty fancy. Not all of us can create stuff with our mind. We have to work for it.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, princess. I’ve worked for every million I’ve accumulated over the years. And there was a time when a million dollars wasn’t so easy to make.”

  “There was a time? What time am I living in then?” She watched the toe of her sandal as it pressed into the rocky brown earth. “It’s weird, you know. Being in the Shadowland is like stepping into someone else’s dream. I can’t get over the power of the Aniliáre.”

  Her mind went to Julian, wondering suddenly if he would rethink his decision if all went well with Mazeki and he started feeling better about his own position in the Shadowland. But as soon as the stupid thought popped up, Kara shoved it back down with a vengeance.

  What was Julian to her anyway? An ex-lover. Nothing more. He’d never made promises of forever to her. He’d never asked her to give up her life on the surface to spend it by his side. Their physical chemistry was off the chart, but that was probably because she’d bonded to him when he was still silver-wing-Julian, and that bond had carried over somehow.

  She sniffed and rubbed her index finger under her nose, not slowing her steps as she unfolded the map. Bondmates… Who the hell cared? There was no destiny with her kind. She’d formed a physical bond and over time, it would fade. She would bond again…if that was even what she wanted anymore.

  “Are you all right, princess?”

  She looked up, startled. “What? Why are you asking me that?”

  “Your eyes…” He took her upper arm to bring her to a stop and gently wiped his thumb under her lower lashes. “They’re watering.”

  “Yeah, well…” She pulled away and strode toward the fawn. “Maybe I’m allergic to rock animals.”

  Gee whiz… She needed to pull herself together. It’d been three flippin’ weeks since the break-up and here she was, acting like Julian had just smashed his heel into her instep. If she’d known that gallivanting across the Shadowland would make her such a mess, she might have stayed home…

  No. She could handle this. She just needed to stay focused. On Gavin. On Brakken. On the baby. There was too much at stake to allow emotion to slow her down.

  Up close, the young deer looked at least twenty feet high. Kara plopped down on her backside and smoothed the map over her knees. “Okay, we made it to the first stop. Now even if we have to go back to rest, you can bring us straight here next time, right?”

&nbs
p; He didn’t immediately sit, but she saw his boots move in closer. “Yes. As long as I’ve been there, it’s not a problem.”

  “So now we need to find something on this fawn that will complete the first step on the map, right? What exactly are we looking for?”

  Gavin smoothed his hand over the boulder. “With all the cracks and crevices in this stone, let’s hope it’s not a striation of some kind.”

  “But that would make sense, at least in that it needs to lead to the next stop on the map, right? Man, this sun…” Kara stood and wiped her brow. “We need to talk to Raley about adding some cloud cover.”

  Gavin squinted at the fawn and then stepped back a few paces. “The sun…yes… Do you see that? Look at the way the sun catches the specks in the granite. I’m not sure if I’m imagining it or if there might be a pattern there.”

  Kara marched to Gavin’s side and stood on her tiptoes, trying to catch the view from his perspective. “I don’t see it.”

  His large hands came around her waist and lifted her easily until she was cheek to cheek with him, viewing the stone from his vantage point. “Now do you see it?”

  Kara swallowed, willing herself to stare straight ahead and not give in to the urge to press her cheek to Gavin’s. She blinked and refocused her vision. “Maybe… Yeah, I think so. Can you get me closer?”

  With Kara still held in his grip, Gavin plodded closer to the side of the fawn’s gracefully arching neck. Sweat had begun to collect in Kara’s cleavage, and she pressed her tank top between her breasts to absorb it and stop the tickle there.

  “Yes,” Gavin said, “this heat isn’t helping your scent any.”

  “What?” Kara gasped. How embarrassing. They had heat in the Shadowland, but no convenience stores where she could run in and pick up a travel-size deodorant. “Sorry.”

  Gavin laughed. “You misunderstand me, princess. The scent of your perspiration has always done something to me, and none of it is bad.”

  Kara grinned. “I guess that’s a matter of opinion.”

  “I’d say it’s more a matter of timing.”

  Kara reached her hand up to trace it along the sparkles in the stone. “I’m not sure what the pattern would be, but I do see something.” The stone was powdery and dry, more like chalk where the infusion of brilliance ended. “Look, this comes right off!” She used her nail to scrape harder.

  “So it does,” Gavin replied. “You may be on to something.”

  She wriggled from his grip onto her feet and really got to work, trying to clear away as much of the porous, crumbly stone as she could.

  Without enough room for them both to work, Gavin stood back, and Kara could just see the toes of his boots in her vision. “I think that’s most of it! Only a little more,” she said.

  “Wonderful. Are you getting tired yet?”

  “Gavin, give it a rest, will you?” But even as she said it, she caught the quick shift in his stance. She dropped her hand, and her gaze flew to his.

  Nostrils flared, Gavin scanned the sky. “Come. Quickly!” He reached out and grabbed her hand just as she detected the sound of wings beating in the distance and heard the muffled rise and fall of masculine voices.

  Without a word, Gavin dematerialized, and at the same time, Kara witnessed her own skin fade until she could see the ground through where her legs should have been. This was totally different than flashing. She could feel Gavin’s grip on her hand, and they weren’t going anywhere, but in every other sense, it seemed like they’d ceased to exist on this plane.

  Gavin’s hand came around her mouth, gently but decisively, and she nodded her understanding that she needed to be silent as two silver-wings flew toward them.

  “Are you sure the scout detected intruders here?” one guard asked the other.

  These men didn’t dress a thing like her clan-mates. They wore a single piece of armor over their chests, dark, like pewter, with an emblem etched into the metal and below that, black skirt-length bottoms made of vertical slats of leather. Gladiators, maybe?

  “They must have flashed when they heard us coming.”

  “I didn’t sense anyone flashing, did you?”

  “No, but…” The guard stilled and lifted his nose to the wind. “Do you smell that? There was a female here.”

  “Why would there be a female here? Raleon’s females are all accounted for, and no other females would be stupid enough to come here alone…unless they planned to stay.”

  Gavin’s grip shifted to Kara’s waist and he pulled her close to his chest, as if to protect her from even the thought that these men could try to hand her over to their king.

  “She wasn’t alone. I smell another silver-wing. Though it wasn’t as if she could have flown here on her own two wings anyhow.” The men snickered, and it made Kara want to plant her boot where the sun didn’t shine.

  “Do you want me to get a tracker? Maybe we can figure out where they flashed to.”

  “No. If they come any closer to the palace, we’ll alert Raleon. As it is, I’m not sure he would care to be bothered.”

  “Well, as long as we’re here…” the first man said to the second as he sat in the shade of the fawn and fished a flask from his pocket.

  The other man laughed. “Where did you get that?”

  “The females’ nest on the surface. The king stocks the good stuff for them. When I do transport, I take a little for my trouble.”

  Kara tugged her arm in the direction of the clue she’d uncovered in the rock. Gavin’s grip tightened, as if to say no.

  Kara ran her hand over his biceps and pinched hard. She felt the tremor in his chest, as if he held back his laughter. Finally, his hands smoothed down her sides and over her ass, until she went wide-eyed, wondering just what in the hell he was up to.

  A moment later, she flipped into the air, suspended by her ankles with Gavin apparently flying her over the spot on the fawn where she needed to finish her work. Unfortunately, it was only inches from the back of the silver-wing’s head. Shit! But she asked for it when she’d unleashed the Jaws of Life on Gavin’s arm.

  She very gently scraped the stone again, rubbing the pad of her finger over it without making much of an impact as she tested whether the guard would notice her. When he took a long swallow from the flask, she scraped harder, making a chunk about an inch wide fall just behind him, narrowly missing his shoulder.

  She sighed, and gentled her motion again as her blood began pooling in her head. The shape of the glittery vein in the rock was much like a crooked line, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out which way they would turn it on the map to get them to where they needed to go next. But then again, there was still a little chalky coating she needed to uncover.

  “I still smell her,” the guard next to her said.

  “Yes,” his companion agreed. “She is a strong-smelling female, whoever she is.”

  Kara stifled her growl. She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment coming from a silver-wing, but where she grew up, those would be fightin’ words. It was all she could do not to flick the next chalky bit into the man’s hair. When she paused, contemplating it, Gavin gave her a little shake. For the sake of her throbbing temples, pounding with excess blood, she got back to work.

  When she’d at last uncovered the entire design, she took a mental snapshot of it and shimmied her ankles a bit, signaling to Gavin that it was time to go. The next thing she knew, she was being dropped on her head on his big silky comforter on Mercury Island.

  She rolled onto her side and rubbed her neck. “Uh? Why am I here?”

  “Because if they do have any trackers skilled enough to follow our trail and get through our wards, I’d rather them show up on an island of three hundred warriors than at your apartment.”

  “Ah. Good thinking.” She drew up her knees and maneuvered to the side of the bed to sit. “Okay, let’s try to plot this on the map.”

  “Did you get a good look at the design?”

  “Good enough, I h
ope. Did you?”

  “No, I couldn’t see it with your—” his gaze grazed her hips and the curve of her ass as she sat, “—legs in the way.”

  She pulled out the map and unrolled it, then set the crystal pen to its parchment-like surface. “It was almost like a Y, but I don’t know which direction to turn it.”

  Gavin breathed deeply. “Two prongs that end in one location, or one location—the fawn—that could possibly take us in two different directions…”

  “Well…crap. Any ideas? You are a thousand years old—forty times older than me, I believe you pointed out. You have to have seen something like this before, right?”

  “I’m familiar with maps of the Shadowland as much as anyone can be. But kingdoms made of will can change in an instant, so a well-made map, like the one Mazeki loaned you, has to be able to change with them. The Land of Desolation won’t show up at all.”

  And that left her…where? Staring at nothing but an incomplete collection of lines and squiggles. “Okay, so what if we take the design and keep it in the exact same position as what was on the rock, just to see what happens?”

  “Try it. You can always re-plot and start again.”

  Kara tried to visualize the exact angle of the Y, then she held the map up and traced the shape over the paper with the crystal stylus. When the tip of the stylus hit the paper, it burned a brown line into the fibers like a soldering iron.

  “Okay. There. If I stay with the exact same scale and alignment, with one path from the fawn that ends in two locations, this is what we get.” She held the map out to him. “Do those locations look familiar to you at all?”

  Gavin stared at the map with his eyes scrunched in thought. “I think so. Here—” his thick finger stabbed the prong to the left, “—is a rather small region of the Shadowland controlled by Nefren. What he lacks in power, he makes up for in hard living. And the path to the right, I believe would land us on the outskirts of one of the largest mountain ranges in this realm.”

  “Okay. So where should we start first?”