Of Shadow Born

by S. L. Gray

  Her heartbeat thundered loudly enough to hurt her ears. She trembled and she thought, just perhaps, that the body locked beneath Dr. Moore's touch had begun to do the same as she bucked and fought. She was so close now. Kade's image loomed before her, larger than life, welcoming. She thought she could hear his heart pounding beneath hers. One more push, one last plunge.

  A leap of faith.

  She fell forward into Kade.

  Heat filled her like a kettle overflowing. It boiled up, blazing through her, from her feet to the top of her head. It raged through her like an inferno, threatening to consume her from the inside out if it found no outlet. She would erupt. She would explode.

  She opened her eyes. She let it go.

  The force of release knocked her back and into the wall behind her. Something popped inside with a deep shudder and sound. Pain flared across her side, making it hard to breathe. Her ears rang, her vision swam, and her chest and arm stung as though they'd been burned. She heard a hoarse sound and realized a moment after that it had come from her. A groan, a murmur. She shook her head and fought down a wave of nausea. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and forced them open again.

  Dr. Moore slumped against the far wall, his hands held up before him. His chest heaved as he struggled for breath. Blood coated his fingers. He lifted his empty gaze to hers and emotions flickered through his expression. Surprise. Dismay. Even a splinter of respect.

  The tablet lay shattered between them, broken corners, shards and dust all that remained.

  Then a shadow fell over her and a hand appeared in her line of sight. It took effort to lift her head, to follow blunt fingers to a broad hand, up the arm and past the shoulder to fix on his face. On Kade's face, one corner of his mouth lifted. "Let's clean up this mess."

  Melanie reached to accept the offer. Their fingers touched.

  Their hands were slapped apart by a stinging blow. "That wasn't the deal!" The interruption was followed by a solid blow against her sternum, one that made her curl around the knot of pain that once more stole her breath before it sent her stumbling backward to the floor. She braced herself for someone to land atop her, to pummel her or kick her or pin her down.

  Instead, Noura came to stand over her, one foot on either side of Melanie's hips. She studied her from above for a moment, then shook her head and sank into a crouch, stopping just shy of actually sitting down. Still, she looked comfortable. "That wasn't the deal," she said again, then went on as if her presence wasn't out of the ordinary. "Hey, Mel. Long time no see. Did you know the big guy sold you out?"

  "No." She lifted her head to look for him, peering past Noura to where he stood. Motionless again. She closed her eyes, concentrating past pain to try and touch his mind. Something, anything to ensure he was all right.

  "Ah ah." Noura tapped a fingertip against her forehead sharply, making Melanie open her eyes again. "Not this time. No whispering behind my back. It's not polite."

  "You're not Noura." Melanie had to believe that. Her friend would never act this way.

  She tilted her head as if considering. "Maybe not. Does it really matter?"

  "Of course it matters," Melanie hissed. "She wouldn't want to be like this, in someone else's control, not able to choose for herself."

  Noura spread her hands, or the thing inside her spread them for her. "But we've given her power. She's not the sexy-but-overlooked sidekick anymore." She grinned. "You could come to work for me."

  "Not a chance." Melanie didn't have to think about it. "Not ever."

  Noura's grin picked up an edge that sent a chill racing through Melanie's body. "You say that like I was giving you an option." She glanced over her shoulder, toward Kade, and looked down again. "Want to hear him scream?"

  The glint of light in her eyes didn't come as such a surprise now. Not in the too-bright room. Not knowing that a dark creature wore her skin like a puppet master. Behind her, though, Kade's body jerked. Twitched and shuddered, then bucked as a scream erupted from him. The sound was sharp, piercing, and sounded as though he was being torn apart alive.

  Melanie pushed at Noura and the other woman stood, allowing her to climb to her feet, heart racing, chest aching. "Stop! Leave him alone."

  Noura rounded on her, eyes blazing now. "What's it worth to you?"

  She studied Kade, now flinching silently, jaw locked and muscle clenched and flexing against whatever Noura had done. What was it worth to have him released? What would she give to have the torture ended? She exhaled and closed her eyes. "Everything."

  Her decisions had all led her here, to this moment, to this place. She could have walked away a dozen times by now. She could have refused to acknowledge the things he'd told her. Even in the face of fantastic creatures, she could have insisted someone else be her guardian. If she'd been more patient, she would have let Garamendi come after him. She was a thief and a trust-breaker and she'd done it all for him. Because she loved him. "Everything."

  "Not good enough."

  Melanie's eyes snapped open again. Noura stood toe-to-toe with her, expectant glee in her expression.

  "It's too vague, Mel. You could try to wiggle out. No, no." She paced a tight circuit around Melanie. "Try this one. If you let Kade go, I'll join your side. I'll do whatever you say."

  Melanie met Kade's eyes. Could he hear her? Did he even know she was still there? He wouldn't want her to repeat the words. She knew that he'd protest, but if their roles were reversed, wouldn't he do the same? "I love you, Kade."

  Noura nudged her with a hip. "Not on the list."

  Melanie frowned over her shoulder at the thing that looked like her friend. She pursed her lips, took a breath and lifted her chin. "Let him go. If you let Kade go, I'll join your side." She tried to ignore the tremble that started as a flutter at the base of her spine. "If you let him go, I'll do—"

  "No, you won't." Garamendi's voice cut through the pounding heartbeat in Melanie's ears. She whirled and found him standing behind them, a pistol large enough to legitimately qualify as a hand cannon in his grip and a scowl darkening his expression. "You finish that sentence, I'll shoot you myself."

  There were people everywhere all of a sudden. Dark, half-formed figures that came through the barren walls he'd been staring at like someone had simply opened a door. He couldn't make out faces right away or isolate one voice from another. It didn't matter which team had come for them. These were Icarus Unit soldiers and they were just in time.

  She'd been about to undo everything the Unit had been working toward. Melanie was willing to give up generations of history to save one man. To save him. In the process, she would lose her soul. They would twist her, blacken her, until everything that drove him crazy about her, in good and bad ways, was gone forever.

  Whether the body survived their retraining, the woman he loved would disappear.

  Noura shrieked, a high, terrible sound that penetrated the barrier they'd built around him to keep him under control. Unable to act for himself, or so they thought, until Melanie arrived. Garamendi and Amrhic had been right. The bond they shared, the damned mystic powers of an echo, let him reach her with his mind if not his arms. And yet he still hadn't been strong enough to save her.

  No, that was wrong. She was strong enough to fight for herself. Maybe not to win or last forever against an enemy with centuries of practice behind them, but to fight, to take a stand, to make a decisive choice.

  Bolts of shadow crossed the room, opening temporary gaps in the walls of the warehouse as several Unit members surrounded Noura and she lashed out in frantic dismay. The creature controlling her would no doubt be happy to tear that body apart if it meant an escape for the occupant.

  That wasn't going to happen. Kade knew his colleagues far too well and they all knew Penumbra's tricks. A loose knot of uniformed figures closed in on Noura, coming at her from all sides.

  When she lifted her hands for what looked like a final salvo, given the figures she was tracing in the air with gnarled fingers, a single ma
n stepped away from the group, with his hands held up like he meant to calm her down. Open, flat-palmed, carrying no visible weapons, but at this angle, Kade could tell his hair was light and he stood shorter than his teammates by several inches.

  Farris.

  Who might be small but who made up for it with speed. When she lunged for him, he reached behind his back almost too quickly to see, then whipped his arm out again, sending a rapidly expanding web of mesh toward her.

  It connected and she toppled, limbs flailing as she tried to get free. With another gesture from the little man, three teammates melted out of the group and slapped containment buoys on the floor. There would be no sliding out of the team's grip. Noura wasn't going anywhere.

  He sensed another barrier coming down, sealing this pocket of space. Nothing could get in or out, not without permission and certainly not without notice. The cavalry had arrived.

  Now he watched Garamendi cross the room toward him, shaking his head. "Can't turn my back on you for a second." He laid a hand against Kade's chest. Neither man breathed for a moment, then Garamendi exhaled and Kade gasped for air. The last of the haze surrounding him lifted. He could think, he could move.

  He could get to Melanie. He clapped his supervisor firmly on the shoulder, then pushed past him. "Have to keep you on your toes. Isn't that the rule? 'scuse me."

  To his credit, Garamendi didn't argue and he didn't try to get in the way. Kade felt his gaze like a weight on his shoulders, but just at the moment, he didn't care.

  He caught Melanie around the waist, pulling her away from Sylvie's questioning. She turned in his arms and started to say something. His name, maybe. Something else. That didn't matter either. Only one thing did.

  Kade crushed his mouth hard against hers. One arm wrapped around her tightly and he pulled her up on her toes, kissing her until his lungs ached for air. He needed to remind himself of the taste of her, the feel of her against him, and the fact she was whole and real and here.

  Then he wheeled to face the place where Sandoval still sat, still half-dazed, still faintly puzzled of expression. Let him wonder what had happened when he struck. Kade had murder on his mind.

  Trapped against his will, held motionless for — how long had it been? Hours? Days? — felt like an eternity. He'd had more than ample opportunity to think of all the creative ways he planned to make this man suffer in turn. And all before he'd tried to kill Melanie in front of Kade's eyes.

  And Noura. Noura could be forgiven. The things she'd done were out of her control. She sat, confined and glassy-eyed between a trio of team members. There was nothing else she could do to hurt anyone. If she so much as twitched the wrong way, they'd stop her. Knock her out, if need be. They'd find a way to give the woman buried deep inside somewhere the keys to her body again. No, he had no bone to pick with Noura.

  But the growl that escaped him as he stalked across the room to the wall where Sandoval slumped wasn't for effect. He didn't mean it to simply intimidate. Kade wanted to roar, to blast the man with words powerful enough to flay the skin from his bones, then pulverize the remains.

  He curled his fists into Sandoval's shirt and hauled him up to standing. He could smell fear and sweat beneath the stench of dark magic. He could see reflection shift in obsidian, unreadable eyes. "Give me one good reason to let you live."

  It came out a snarl. Kade knew he was baring his teeth. He felt more like an animal just now than a man capable of rational thought and sound judgment. There would be an inquisition and hell to pay. The tablet had been destroyed. Garamendi, Sylvie, Amrhic, they'd all want answers and he had none. He'd get them, later. He'd stand beside Melanie. He'd take the punishment doled out. He'd deliver his own.

  "Tell me," he rumbled again, shaking Sandoval hard enough that the man's head snapped back and cracked against the wall. "You want to stay quiet, it won't save you. Doesn't make you look like a martyr. Just makes you look dead."

  "Kade."

  Melanie's voice sounded close behind him. He waited for her touch. He could feel the heat of her hand hovering, but it came no closer. It took an act of will not to step back or lean into it. She was safe. She was fine. He could feel her, even without seeing her, as surely as he felt his own heartbeat. She didn't need to touch him. He wanted it.

  "Kade," she said again. "We can't kill him."

  "Not interested in can't and shouldn't," he said, jaw aching from clenching his teeth. He tightened his grip in Sandoval's shirt. "I'm interested in ending this."

  Sandoval's expression brightened, warmed with amusement. His lips pulled into a grin, making the web of blue lines across his face seem to shift and move, almost writhing. "Yes, end this. Put us all out of our misery."

  "If you're going to tell me how killing you makes you stronger, don't," Kade warned. "Consider it done and heard and spare us all the drama."

  The other man grinned wider. "Not at all. Being dead might be a relief. It might be torment. Who can say? So kill me," he prompted. "I want to see if you can."

  "Kade, don't." Now she touched him, warmth seeping through his shirt at the small of his back. "You want to stop them, don't you? He knows things Garamendi might need. We'll take him back with us. Let them decide what to do with him." She stepped to his side and Kade glanced down at her briefly. Color had begun to creep back into her cheeks. A faint line had appeared between her eyebrows. "You don't want blood on your hands."

  "Poor thing," Sandoval crooned. "Has he convinced you he's innocent? That he's never taken someone from their family? Never killed someone without absolute proof he held the guilty party in his hands?" Those black eyes rolled and shifted as he looked between them. "Good lord, is she that naïve?"

  "It's a war," Melanie snapped, drawing herself up as her shoulders went back. "People die, I get that." Her chin lifted and she smiled, thin and wry. "And I wasn't talking to you."

  Sandoval leaned into Kade's hands, his chest pressed hard against Kade's knuckles. "But I was talking to you."

  He recognized the echo in the other man's voice and the buzz of power that swept over him, like a low electrical current running over his skin. Melanie sucked in a sharp breath and posture that had been straight with pride a moment before now stiffened, drawn taut not by her choice, but Sandoval's words. Her eyelashes fluttered as her eyes rolled back and Kade knew. He knew what was happening. Sandoval would make her See.

  Not on his watch.

  Kade drew his head back and snapped forward, forehead colliding with Sandoval's in a blow he felt to the base of his spine. He shoved the other man back at the same time, pushing him solidly into the wall. He needed a little space, half a second's concentration.

  He wanted revenge. For the nightmares, for the hollow in his chest that sometimes felt like it would swallow him whole. For his father and his brother. For that crease between Melanie's brows. He wanted to go back in time to a place before everything had gone to shit. He wanted to be a different, a better man. To end the fight, not just today, but once and for all.

  He let the urge and need and hunger grow. He let it fill and fuel his rage. Then he let it go.

  One blow, one strike with the force of years of fighting behind it. One punch that caught Sandoval beneath the ribs, driving air out of him like a hammer to the bellows. He should have doubled over Kade's fist, crumpled around it in reflex and reaction.

  Instead, there was a commotion behind him. He heard a woman's voice, sharp and keen. He heard the team spring into action, a second too late. Bodies toppled to the floor and in a tangle of limbs and curses, Garamendi spat out, "Hold the wards!"

  And Sandoval shattered. No, not shattered. He splintered, disintegrated. Like a static-laced picture on an old television screen, Sandoval broke apart into thousands of pieces. Kade's fists thudded soundly into the wall behind where the man had stood. The cloud that remained lingered a moment, and then, one by one, the pieces disappeared, dissolving into little more than wisps of shadow that faded away, leaving the echo of laughter in Kade's
ears.

  "No. No!"

  "Kade?" Melanie gasped his name as Sandoval's hold on her broke again and her body relaxed. She leaned against his shoulder abruptly, clinging to his sleeve. She squeezed her eyes shut and touched her temple, then asked, "What was that? What happened?" She looked around the room, then up at him. "Where is he, where'd he go?"

  The word tasted bitter even before Kade got it out. "Gone. He got away."

  "What?"

  "Gone," he said again and turned away from the offending wall. "Used his powers, warped out, whatever you want to call it. He's not here." Failure upon failure.

  "It wasn't him." Garamendi joined them, expression grim. He gestured back toward where the team huddled around Noura. She sat on the floor, blinking at them, forehead wrinkled. She shook her head in response to a question, her cheeks pale and hand trembling when she lifted it to rake it through her hair. "Whatever was living in her had one more trick up its sleeve."

  "'Whatever' is the one who leads those opposing us. Powerful, talented in the arts of deception. Under other circumstances, I'd say we should be flattered," Amrhic said. A note of near-humor warmed his voice.

  Kade hadn't noticed the curator in the midst of the team when they’d arrived. There was no overlooking him now, however, crouched in the middle of the tablet's shattered pieces, collecting them gingerly as if each shard were a precious thing.

  Melanie tensed beneath his arm. He felt more than heard her take a breath to steel herself, then another to speak. "Amrhic, I'm so sorry..."

  He shook his head by way of answer. "You did exactly what you were meant to do."

  A little silence descended on the cluster. Melanie looked up at Kade. Kade shook his head, shrugged and frowned. "Did what she was meant to do? What's that mean, exactly?"