by S. L. Gray
~
"Easier said than done." Especially with her mind racing. Melanie crushed her eyes shut for the third time and dug her fingers into the corners. The pressure made it easier to concentrate.
Just as there'd been no door leading inside from the cabin's front porch, there was no way out. The windows that looked out on the world seemed real enough at first glance. Trees swayed, birds flew by or landed on the sill and pecked up the handfuls of seed left out to feed them.
Opening one was another matter. Melanie couldn't find a single lock or latch to throw open so she could lift a pane. More to the point, nothing in the cabin worked when it came to breaking glass. She'd tried kicking at the windows, she'd thrown a heavy bookend. The poker from the fireplace bounced off the window no matter how hard she swung, and trying to jab her elbow through only resulted in bruising.
There had to be another way. She just had to find it. Breathe. Relax. Concentrate beyond what was easy to see. Intangible, untouchable...
She had to get to Kade. She just couldn't think about him. There was no telling what Dr. Moore would do to him in the time it took to gather help and she couldn't afford to let her imagination run wild.
So she pushed past worry and ignored her frantic heart as best she could. She took deep breaths. She went through the process of clenching and releasing muscles from her head to her toes until her whole body felt flushed, warm and tingling.
Then she reached for the shadows she remembered beyond the door and stepped forward. The toe of her shoe scraped against wood for a second, then the barrier parted and the sensation of stepping into the shade swept over her. When she opened her eyes, she faced a colorless world that relieved her more than she'd ever dreamed it would.
"Did it," she murmured. "I did it. By myself. I did it!" She did a little dance as well, a private celebration no one would know about or see before she settled back to the task of getting help. She had to find her way back to headquarters.
The cabin, mute and colorless behind her, didn't offer suggestions. Nor did the skeletal trees that loomed when she picked a direction and started walking. They looked familiar, she thought. She was sure she recognized the length of that one's trunk and the spread of another's branches. The ground beneath her feet seemed clearer of shadowed undergrowth than other spaces between the trees. This had to be the path they'd taken on the way up.
Then again, turning back to look behind her to be sure, she didn't think she recognized anything at all. They'd been moving fast, maybe even taking shortcuts. Kade hadn't bothered to point out landmarks. The more she double-checked the direction, the less certain she became.
"Stop." She closed her eyes again. "You're overthinking. Don't plan, just trust. Remember, don't guess. You can do this." But when she opened her eyes, she couldn't tell which way she'd meant to go next. Breaks between the trees seemed to lead to other paths in the distance and memories nagged at her faintly. They'd turned here, hadn't they? After walking straight for a long while, they'd made a left...or was it a right?
"This is crazy," she said out loud. "I am not going to spend the rest of my life out here. Eeny meeny miney moe." Her finger wavered between the directions that looked most likely. "One of you will get me home. If I wander the wrong way..." She sighed. "I'll just start over again."
It was only when she stumbled over a root she hadn't seen that she seized on the idea to use the talisman. She caught herself before she fell, one hand slapped against rough bark. The necklace slipped free of her collar, twisting for a moment before it thumped against her chest. She reached for it for comfort, cool metal on her palm a reassurance.
She found herself changing direction a second later, turning to face back the way she'd come. The talisman pulsed against her skin and tugged, not the unpleasant sensation Dr. Moore and his creatures triggered, but the insistent pull of a forgotten memory. This way, it seemed to tell her. Follow me.
How could she argue? Melanie had no other ideas about how to find her way, even if the notion of a mystical necklace leading her home went one more step beyond her normal world. She'd left comfortable and predictable behind three days ago. She shrugged off the last of her hesitation and gave in to the odd new compass in her mind.
The trip went much faster when she didn't fight the pull. She didn't stumble or stub her toes and she didn't question the twists in the path. Every turn felt right and every new view of the horizon looked familiar. Here and there she thought she caught the shadow of a footprint on the ground or a bent piece of gray grass, left behind by their earlier passage.
She might have found them on her own with enough searching. If she'd wandered far enough. If she hadn't gotten lost again. Better to trust the little beacon in her hand. Had Sylvie known the talisman would work this way? Had Kade?
"Where is he?"
Someone touched her arm and caught her around the waist when her knees buckled. She opened her eyes and looked up into Garamendi's worried gaze.
"You're all right," he told her. "You're safe with us now. What happened, Melanie? Where's Kade?"
Chapter Nineteen
"Never underestimate the little people," Noura sing-songed cheerfully. She'd managed to get him off the floor and onto his feet. She'd moved him across the room with very little assistance from Kade himself. She might well have been reading his mind now. "Now that would be a neat trick, wouldn't it?"
"Not interested in your tricks," Kade grumbled. His tongue felt thick and heavy. His jaw felt as though weights hung from the corners. His head alone must have weighed a ton.
"Oh, but you'd like them. I have quite the satchel full," the petite woman said as she brushed up against him and caught his jaw in one hand. "Better than a parlor trick with golden rings and sleight of hand." Her eyes danced with wicked glee as she made him shake his head, squeezing his jaw tighter in her grip. "Kade, Kade, Kade. You are pretty, aren't you? I see what Melanie saw in you. I think I like it."
He jerked his head up, out of her grasp. "If you hurt her—"
"Blah blah threaten, posture, puff out chest. I know the drill." Noura waved a hand and walked away, turning her back with a lack of concern.
It would take him only a few seconds to snap her neck, Kade assured himself. A few more and he could banish the thing that wore her skin and pretended to be the woman Melanie called friend. For her sake, he'd spare the body. He strained against invisible bonds that bound his arms to his sides and kept him pinned where he stood.
"It doesn't help to wiggle," she informed him oh-so-casually, stepping up to a seat on the stool she'd found somewhere. Dug out of the corner of the empty warehouse, maybe, if that's what this place was. If it existed anywhere in reality at all.
"Oh, it's real," she promised, answering his thoughts again. "But where and what, well." He could see her smile as clearly as though she sat in a spotlight. "That doesn't matter much, now does it?"
"Are you enjoying yourself?"
"Scads." She crossed one knee over the other, wiggling her foot in clear amusement. "Of course, I'd rather have you both together, but all things come to those who wait."
Maybe Noura was content to cool her jets and bide her time, letting things happen somewhere outside, but if she thought — no. He needed to keep from planning or threatening. She was skimming off the top of his mind. White noise. White snow. Boring, bland...
Noura laughed aloud. "Beige. Paint the ceiling beige. Think what you want, Kade. If I want it, I can find it. Mind games won't stop me, though I admire your determination and creativity."
"I live to entertain you," he lied, voice thick with insincerity. "Who are you?"
"Tsk. You know my name."
"I know who you look like," Kade argued. "Who you claim to be, but you're about as much Noura as I am the pope. Don't you want to brag?"
She shrugged easily and folded her hands on her knee. "I don't need to, when I can demonstrate just as well."
She didn't make a gesture. She didn't seem to move at all, and yet someth
ing changed. Static crawled over Kade, sweeping over him as though he stood in rising water. It moved from his ankles to his knees, then waist, and he found himself taking quicker, deeper breaths as though at some point he would lose the opportunity.
The more he struggled, the faster the buzzing spread, until his lips tingled with it and his vision blurred. Then, for a second, there was blessed stillness. He braced himself, tensing. Whatever it was, this was not a reprieve but a preparation.
The attack came fast, like knives sliding through his skull. Barriers he'd practiced for years parted like the wards on his apartment. Whoever, whatever, this creature was, it knew how to cut straight to the core.
He cried out. He heard the sound, knew it came from him, and yet it sounded foreign to his own ears. Too high, too wounded to have come from his throat. He would have clutched at his head, if he could. He would have fallen to his knees again. This woman, this thing, wouldn't let him collapse.
Like flipping through the pages of a photo album, scenes from his life faded in and out of view. Mom with a tray of cookies in the kitchen. He must have been young; she seemed very tall. The first kiss he stole behind the gym in seventh grade. Belinda Rosen had been a year older. He got lucky with her. High school graduation, moving out of home and into the apartment with his brother.
Kade knew where the memories would lead. His stomach knotted and threatened to rebel when he saw the alleyway, the body with limbs splayed out at unnatural angles and the dark pool that spread beneath it. A quick sweep of the area showed only one downed figure. His father. His brother hadn't fallen yet. He could still warn him...
No! This was in the past, over and done. He didn't need to see it again. He didn't want to relive it.
"Eric?" Gabriel sounded out of breath. His voice was high and tight with pain. He had an arm wrapped around his ribs. He was limping, already wounded. His footsteps echoed unevenly off the walls of the buildings that closed them in. "Where is it? Where's Dad? We need to get out of here..."
"This isn't the way it happened. You didn't talk — he didn't talk to me." Kade gripped his brother's shoulder, fingers curling hard, despite the fact that the memory was changed. "Run," he insisted, trying to turn his brother around. He pushed and Gabriel stumbled but turned back, frowning.
"What are you doing? What do you mean, run? We have to clean this place out, just like Dad said."
There should only have been families here. The children should have been playing games and enjoying their new toys. Instead, they'd scattered around the rooms of the safe house. Monsters, Penumbra's pets, had been waiting...
"Where is he? You didn't leave him inside." It wasn't a question. Gabriel sounded certain, determined. He pushed Kade aside and cleared the line of sight to their father's body. He flinched and Kade echoed it. Their gazes locked for a second, then Gabriel staggered away. "Dad?"
"Don't." He had to try. He knew it wouldn't work. Gabriel glared back at him, expression dark with disgust.
"What do you mean, don't? Why are you just standing there? You're just going to watch while he dies? Dad? Dad! Come on, Dad, hang in there. Help's coming."
No, it wasn't. There was no help to be had. There wasn't then. There wasn't now. Lucas Kade was already dead. Not even the most powerful among them could have put his tattered body back together. That's what they'd told him after he'd been hiding from the world for a month. It didn't help then, it wouldn't help now.
"Stop this," Kade whispered as he watched his brother hitch away. Watched him kneel beside the fallen man. Saw him glance back over his shoulder and heard him call, "Do something!"
An instant before the shadow beside him shifted, stretched, and revealed a twisted, cruelly clawed form. A heartbeat before the creature made a sharp slashing gesture and dark blood sprayed in an arc as Gabriel spun and fell, his throat torn out.
Another ragged sound escaped him. Bile burned at the back of his throat. How many times would she make him relive their deaths? How many different ways could this creature kill them before he cracked and gave it...what?
"What makes you think that we want anything from you? Why can't I just wander through your thoughts?" Her voice rippled through his mind, low and warm and uncomfortably sensual. "Explore them. Change them."
The scene flickered. His brother's body disappeared. His father's remained, chest torn open, eyes open and staring, empty of everything but the last frozen moment of horror. And when Kade lifted his hands, he saw taloned fingers, cruel and deadly.
Gabriel stepped around the corner of the alleyway, and a savage hunger filled Kade's gut. The urge to rend and tear and taste blood became a powerful need, like a thirst too long unquenched. This time, when his brother fell, it would be by his hand.
"Don't make me do this," he murmured desperately. "You want to mess with my head, I got a whole lot of nightmares you can replay until you make me sick. But not this one."
Amusement made her voice richer when she spoke in his head again. Smug satisfaction sounded like thick honey in her tone. "What's it worth to you to make it stop?"
"If you don't stop telling me I don't know what I'm asking, I really think I might just scream."
Garamendi called a meeting after Melanie's return. She'd been invited to attend to give an account of what had happened. She told the gathered about the cabin and Dr. Moore's threat. They told her asking for Kade's immediate rescue was impossible.
She hated that word.
"Nobody wants to make you scream," Garamendi assured her. "But there is a certain procedure we have to follow. We don't just race off, sticks in hand, to beat our enemies until we get what we want."
"No," she said, sour sarcasm stinging her tongue. "I'd hope not. You should take guns. Knives, at least." The comment hadn't won her favor. Garamendi and the rest of the shadow-born stared, unsmiling. Melanie ground her teeth. "I understand," she enunciated slowly. "I just want to know you're going to do something."
Garamendi smiled in a way that meant he was humoring her. It was meant to be placating. Melanie had never slapped a man in her life but her palm itched with the urge to do it now.
Instead, she let him put his hand on her shoulder and turn her toward the door. "I promise we're going to find a solution. You'll be the first to know what it is, as soon as we have it worked out. Until then, try to relax," he said as he propelled her out of the conference room. He closed the door before she could turn back to protest.
So now she roamed the halls, unattended. She couldn't do any harm inside the fortress, she reasoned, so they trusted her on her own. Garamendi had made a promise. She had to believe he'd keep it. She wanted to believe him. She struggled to keep her cool. Patience would have to serve as her companion.
The impromptu conference had emptied the hallways and offices of the ziggurat. If she'd been in a morbid frame of mind, she might have been disturbed by the way her footsteps and even her breaths echoed back from the sloping marble walls. As it was, all she needed to hear was that Kade would be all right.
"Of course he'll be all right." She kept one hand wrapped around the talisman, tugging downward steadily to make pressure against the back of her neck. "He knows how to take care of himself. He's been doing this longer than you."
"Every man has occasion to need someone at his back."
Melanie startled and looked up to meet Amrhic's gaze. The custodian smiled warmly, but it faltered a moment later. "Don't say it," she warned as he took a breath to speak. "Yes, I'm back, alone. Yes, he's missing. Yes, I suck as far as partners go."
Amrhic touched her arm gently. "I was going to say that you looked weary. Would you like to come and sit?"
She could have kissed him. Would have if she hadn't guessed that someone would notice and tell Kade when they found him. Of all the things a man needed to hear when being rescued from God only knew where, his girlfriend kissing some other man probably ranked near the bottom of the list.
Still, she accepted the arm he offered and leaned more than strictly nece
ssary. He slowed his usual pace, she felt sure, but she didn't get the sense he was impatient at all. Just expectant.
"I don't know what they're doing," she confessed when she'd settled on his couch again. "I don't know what they're going to do."
"Find a way to bring him home," Amrhic assured her, fiddling with a coffee pot at one side of the room. "If there's a way to retrieve him, they will. Don't worry. They'll go for him as soon as they're able."
Melanie sat forward. "What if as soon as they're able isn't soon enough?" She shook her head. "It's not that I don't believe you, or them, when you say you want him back. I'm just not sure we're all playing the same game with the same set of rules."
"It's almost guaranteed that we aren't, on the surface," Amrhic allowed, pacing back to join her with a coffee cup held in each hand. He sat in the chair beside her only when he'd handed one off. "At the core, however, the struggle is very much the same. One side will have all of the power. Neither side wants it to be the other one."
She pressed her fingers to her temples and rubbed, making tiny circles with the tips. "I get that. I understand, but they do have the power at the moment. What are you — we — going to offer them to balance things out again, if not what they want?"
"When they make a demand, we'll make a counter offer."
"When?" Melanie lifted her head. "They already have. I told Garamendi exactly what they want. It's not like they were shy about asking. They want the tablet. That's what they've been after all along."
Amrhic's gaze went to the table where the tablet lay, covered by a cloth again. His brow furrowed as though a headache threatened. "We'll offer them territory. Return a route through shadow we've wrested from them."
"And you think they're going to go for that? Couldn't they just have bargained for that whenever they wanted? Territory wars aren't exactly the same thing as some three-thousand-year-old information source, right?"
