Dark Flight (The Shadow Slayers)

by Cassi Carver

  “We’re finally alone, and that is all you have to say, Kara?”

  Kara turned and started winding her way through the rusty rocks. She had no idea where she was headed, but it beat standing there like a tongue-tied dork.

  “Kara.” His voice was a rumble over her shoulder, and in the next instant, she felt the energy of his hand penetrate her skin where he took hold of her arm.

  “What?” she asked when he turned her to face him.

  “Have you forgotten me so soon? As you said, we aren’t sure what may happen tonight, and I think I have the right to know where we stand.”

  “What?” she sputtered. “I was in love with you. You crushed me like a bug under your boot. What moral support do I owe you now? You got your lesson from Mazeki, and that seems like payment enough for your part in this.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Her face twisted like she’d sucked on a lemon. “Of course you did!”

  “Yes, I did.” He placed his hands before him. “But it was because I wanted you to stay on the surface where you’d be safe.”

  “Did you ever think about saying, ‘Hey, Kara. I saw a scout when we were making love yesterday. I think you should stay home until I look into it’?”

  “You wouldn’t have listened. You never do.”

  “I might have surprised you.”

  “You did surprise me—you shacked up with that Mercury idiot before our bed had even cooled.”

  “You broke my heart. You were so cold, I couldn’t fathom it. And don’t you dare call Gavin names. He never disrespects you like that. He still grieves over losing the bond that you two had, and with the way you’ve been acting, I’m not sure you deserve it.”

  “He doesn’t disrespect me? He bedded my woman!”

  “I wasn’t your woman anymore. And that was your choice. I still loved you, Julian.”

  “Have it your way. I won’t beg to get you back. If you want to spread your legs for a silver-wing, be my guest. After I’ve fulfilled my vow and Brakken is in the Abyss, you and Gavin Cross can accompany him there, for all I care.”

  Kara swallowed. She still craved Julian to the deepest level of her DNA, but she had to be realistic. He might be infinitely more powerful now, and he might love her in his own way, but he would never be the Julian she first knew.

  All the love they’d made and the hours they’d spent together since he’d risen amounted to twenty times the experiences she’d had with the carefree Julian. And she loved this man. God knew she did. But there was still something missing in him, like he had a small empty spot in his core that her stubborn blindness couldn’t continue to cover.

  “After your vow to Gavin is complete, you’re free to do your black-wing thing. Just know that I do care about you and want what’s best for you. I can’t see that changing.”

  His ebony wings unfolded behind him. “That will be a sweet consolation, no doubt, while Gavin Cross takes you to his bed.”

  She was a ball of pain inside. She wanted to tell him she loved him. She wanted to kiss him and forget the world for an hour in his arms. She could do neither. Not now. It just wasn’t enough, he wasn’t enough, and it would be unfair to lead him to believe otherwise.

  “I’m sorry that hurts you. I never wanted that.”

  He snorted. “I’m not hurt, Kara. Hurting is for the weak.”

  “Really? You seem hurt.”

  “Not at all. I’m annoyed and inconvenienced and more than a little angry.”

  “Yeah, well that makes two of us.”

  “The difference is that you allow your volatile emotions to rule you. You make yourself an easy target for the advances of every man with passion and a pulse. You completely lack the clarity and levelheadedness of my species.”

  “Well, thank you for making that distinction. Just when I start feeling sorry for you again, you remind me that a black-wing couldn’t fill a thimble halfway with his humanity.” If she couldn’t see the pain in the slant of his features, she would have bitch-slapped him on principle alone.

  He squared his shoulders. “I’m keeping my vow to a man who stole my woman. That would be two thimbles’ worth of humanity, at least.”

  An amused breath rushed out through her nose. “Okay. You have me on that one. You’re still a part of the team, and maybe you aren’t the spawn of hell itself. Maybe.”

  “Ah… So she does like me. She admits it.”

  An involuntary laugh bubbled from her lips. “I’ll always like you, but that doesn’t make what you did okay, and it doesn’t mean we’re compatible long term or ‘meant to be’.”

  “I can’t convince you otherwise if your heart and mind are closed, but think about it for a moment. Every time we made love was special, and from what you told me, it was even before I’d risen, as though our bodies were created for each other.”

  She couldn’t say anything, because he was right, and if she admitted that, what good would it do? A physical bond wasn’t enough.

  “Kara…look at you. Wings,” he marveled. “That should not have happened. It should be impossible. And look at me—the son of a witch and some faceless Aniliáre. In a thousand attempts that breeding should never have resulted in offspring, yet here I am—a demibreed turned black-wing. Don’t you think that means something? In all the world, in this realm and on the surface, what are the chances we would find each other? Say what you will—my body knows its mate.”

  Kara closed her eyes. “Please, Julian. Too much has happened in the last month—hell, in the last day—for me to figure this out right now. I’m not discounting what you said. I wouldn’t lie to you and tell you we weren’t connected somehow. But for tonight, let our mission be enough.”

  When he looked like he was going to argue, she raised her hand to stop him. “Brakken is worse than I ever imagined, and there’s a real chance someone we love could get hurt. Let me just be thankful that you’re by my side and we’re doing this together—because I am thankful for you. If we can survive this and make it through tonight, we’ll still have tomorrow to sort out our future.”

  He searched her eyes for a long moment before nodding. “Keep you alive so we have a future? That’s a plan I can embrace.”

  She smiled. “Come on. Let’s take these wings for a spin. First one to the surface and back wins!”

  Kara couldn’t stop worrying about Gavin, but she had to trust him to follow through on his battle plan and keep himself safe at the same time. She and Julian certainly had enough to think about with their first pathetic attempts at flashing between the realms.

  After the third time, she was covered in sweat—and not the good kind—and she’d already had to call a truce with her heaving stomach. “Okay, time out,” she panted, bending at the waist and giving Julian the “T” symbol with her hands.

  He was in much better shape than she was, but then she’d had wings for hours, and he’d had them for months. The only sign he was fatigued was the quiver that ran up his spine when he came to rest. “You’re doing an amazing job,” he told her.

  She snorted. “Yeah, Brakken is gonna be petrified when he sees me spinning circles when I try to land. Flashing is way easier than actual flying, by the way. Why is that? ’Cause I don’t have feathers?”

  Julian frowned suddenly. “Gavin is summoning me.”

  “Oh my gosh.” Kara’s stomach flipped for real this time. She wasn’t afraid of much, but if she was being honest, Brakken terrified her. There were no lines of right and wrong he wouldn’t cross. “It’s time to do this.”

  Julian ground his teeth and his jaw muscles bunched. “I don’t regret pushing you away, you know. Even now, if I had a way to keep you safe from harm, I would.”

  “I know.”

  “Still, what I want to say is…I’m proud of you. The woman I love is a warrior at heart, and I’m honored to fight at her side.”

  Kara couldn’t help it; she reached out and squeezed his hand. “It’s you and me, Jules. We can do this.”
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br />   And then they closed their eyes, and Julian pulled her into the stream of the summoning trail—straight into the worst chaos and carnage Kara had ever seen.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Following Gavin’s summoning trail might not have been the best idea. Kara looked down and saw the ground at least thirty feet below her and she was suddenly afraid. How long could these bony new wings hold her up? She caught a quick movement at the periphery of her vision and threw her head back as a projectile whizzed past her forehead.

  The desert-like scene below them was horrific. Parched earth and sparse vegetation littered with what looked and smelled like decomposing heads on spikes—dozens of them—along with a smattering of warriors writhing in the sand from grievous injuries, some even smoldering as though they’d been burned. But most of the action seemed to be raging above.

  The next arrow that came at Julian he grabbed out of the air and immediately sent it back in the direction of the archer who’d launched it. It hit the man square in the chest, but it barely slowed the beat of his wings. As Kara had been told, if the arrows weren’t fashioned of Brakken’s will, it would take a painful many of them to stop a warrior completely.

  Kara ducked and tried to pluck the next arrow out of the air that came in her direction—but she missed, and the maneuver sent her somersaulting head over feet. Julian grabbed her wrist to steady her, but then a second later he shoved her chest, pushing her out of the way just in time for her to avoid a volley of shots.

  One arrow grazed her calf, and the burning sting made her fangs snap down and her claws burst from her fingertips. She reached down to her calf, and her hand came back bloody. “Son of a bitch!”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. We need to find Gavin and get someplace out of the line of fire.” But she couldn’t even take two seconds to find Gavin with all the flint she was dodging.

  Fire roared through the sky like the breath of a dragon, singeing everyone in its path. “No, find Brakken first. I’d say follow the fire.”

  “It’s Aiden!” she called when the blond-haired lord came into focus a hundred yards away. He was engaged in a swordfight with a huge but nimble warrior from Brakken’s force.

  “Duck!” Julian shouted, and she did, but she felt the wind from the arrow tickle the rim of her ear. He called the arrow back with will alone, and it rocketed into his grip. Then with a roar, he sent it hurtling toward its sender. This time, the shot went straight through the warrior’s eye socket, and he howled in pain.

  As she watched and searched for Gavin, a warrior fell from the sky and crashed into the dirt, and she could tell by the pants he wore that he wasn’t a Mercury warrior. She’d never been so thankful for that ridiculous buckskin. It made her clan-mates easy to pick out.

  “Follow me.” Julian took her hand, and they flashed to the other side of the clearing, just beyond the last armed warrior.

  “What are you doing? I can’t find Gavin from here.”

  She blinked when Gavin suddenly materialized to Julian’s right.

  “Gavin!” She was overjoyed to see him alive, even if his chest was a roadmap of holes in various stages of repair.

  “Princess.” When one of Brakken’s soldiers flew at them, moving fast, Gavin pulled back his hand and released a ball of energy that hit the man in the center of his body. The next thing Kara knew, the man was spiraling toward the earth. “Tedadianthus!” Gavin barked. “Finish him!”

  Kara tracked her friend Ted’s descent, just to cast her gaze to the side when Ted hauled back his heavy sword and lopped the other man’s head clean off. Even knowing those men served a monster, she couldn’t watch them being slaughtered. What if they were like the females Brakken had captured and they didn’t have a choice?

  “Where is your father?” Julian asked Gavin.

  “He’s burning the men for sport, and he doesn’t seem to care if he burns as many of his men as mine.”

  “You summoned us,” Julian said to him. “What did you have in mind?”

  Gavin threw a shield around the three of them when a man with a strange crossbow launched six arrows at them at once. The arrows bounced off the shield, and gravity pulled them toward the earth.

  “Brakken hasn’t tired yet,” Gavin said. “I’m afraid he seems to be enjoying this. We’ve been fighting for hours. The men are fatigued, and they’re starting to make foolish mistakes. We’ve already lost too many.”

  Kara quickly scanned the ground. “They’re regenerating? How many?”

  Gavin and Julian exchanged a glance, then Gavin threw a bolt of energy just before covering them with another shield. Seeing the arrows glance off the bubble, the warrior with the crossbow shifted his weapon to his back and balled his fists until they glowed. When he launched the next attack, he wasn’t firing arrows this time but some sort of energy of his own.

  “I’m sorry, Kara.” Gavin grunted as he held the shield. “But when I say we’ve lost men, I mean they’re really gone. They won’t be coming back.”

  “Oh, no.” They were dying? She knew a silver-wing could be killed, but she’d never seen it happen with the exception of Gable. She’d worried about the baby, she’d worried about the Abyss, but for some reason, the worst-case scenario she’d imagined for the men of her clan was regeneration. Men who’d been alive for hundreds of years were really gone now? “Oh, my God. Who?”

  With a snap of Gavin’s wrist, the shield suddenly winked out of existence and at the same time, he threw a bolt of energy at the other man. When the man dodged and cast his arm back, Julian growled, “Please, allow me.”

  Not bothering to flash, Julian rocketed toward the man with his wide black wings extended, and when the man launched his ball of light Julian’s way, Julian simply opened his mouth and sucked it in like smoke. When the man’s eyes went wide, Julian opened his mouth and blew the black smoke back at him.

  The shadows writhed around the man as though seeking entry, then they glommed on and wormed through his skin. He screamed and convulsed midair, but then his wings crumbled to dust and he plummeted toward the earth. For a moment, Kara watched as the man continued to shrivel, but then she looked away.

  “How do we stop this?” she asked desperately. “Gavin, tell me what to do.”

  “Some of these men may be devoted to Brakken, but most probably fear him as much as they fear us. If we can isolate Brakken, that may take some of the fight out of his men. Many might even flee.”

  Julian returned, his wings at a jaunty angle like a fighting cock. He liked this battle stuff way too much, in Kara’s opinion. What was the matter with these black-wings?

  A silver-wing flew their way, but he was wearing buckskin pants. When Julian raised his smoldering hand, Kara grabbed his shoulder. “He’s one of ours!”

  The warrior was dodging arrows, swooping down then up again, and the tip of one wing was badly burned. “Yes?” Gavin asked when the warrior stopped to catch his breath.

  Julian’s hand suddenly snaked out and caught an arrow that Kara hadn’t seen coming. “Thanks,” she murmured, bicycling her feet through the air when it felt like she was losing her balance. She totally sucked at this.

  “Jaxon Hex has a message for Lady Kara. He says the high priestess is on board and has assembled her people at the key points to form a net on the surface.” The man shook his head as though disgusted. “It’s flaming death magic, my lord. That’s what those witches are up to down there.”

  Gavin jarred the man with a pat to the back. “Good work. And we’ll worry about the magic another day, my friend. Today we need all the help we can get.”

  “Let me get acquainted with your father before we bring Kara into it,” Julian said to Gavin. Kara was about to protest until he continued, “But be ready, Kara. When I return it may well be time to instigate our plan.”

  “Go,” she told him, almost adding a warning to be careful. Then she rethought her words. Julian was every bit the black-wing that Brakken was. What he lacked in exper
ience, he made up for in not being completely insane. “You got this, Jules. Go kick his ass.”

  Julian followed the path of smoke through the sky to where Brakken was throwing flames at the Mercury warriors. Some had effective shields, but some had singed wings and were beating a quick retreat or simply flashing to safety. Brakken sized Julian up and inhaled deeply, drawing the air of the Shadowland into his lungs. He was probably preparing to torch Julian with a staggering blast.

  As Brakken opened his mouth and fire roared from between his lips, Julian centered himself. I am spirit. I am not merely flesh and bone.

  The blast completely engulfed him, but Julian let it pass. He watched from outside himself as the wall of red-orange flames whipped around him without heating his skin.

  When it was finished, Brakken sneered. “Julian Mercés. The one who convinced Gavine to turn his back on his father and crusade for Teras instead.”

  “I admittedly don’t remember that time, but that’s not how I’ve heard the story told.”

  “I should have killed you all when you had the audacity to install yourselves as lords over a clan. But I let you live, didn’t I? You, Ailexon’s son Aiden and my Gavine. It was the only softness I ever allowed myself, and now I see what a mistake I made to permit it to go on.”

  Julian laughed. “I agree with you. You should have killed me before my Shadow Rising. Now it’s a little too late.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Nostrils flared and black eyes trained on Julian with lethal focus, Brakken pulled an arrow from his quiver and nocked it, aiming straight at Julian’s head.

  When Brakken released the arrow, Julian threw his shield up, but he was unprepared for the force of the impact. Brakken’s arrows were made of something exceptional. If this was an extension of the man’s will, then Julian had been a fool to underestimate him.

  The arrow burrowed into Julian’s shield, coming closer and closer to his face, and he knew if it touched him, the outcome would be unfavorable. Straining—and failing—to keep his shield intact, Julian switched tactics.