Shadow Flight

by Christine Feehan

  She’d tried multiple times after that to re-create that experience, but she hadn’t been effective in completely hiding or moving from one place to another. Now she realized she’d been naked then, in the shower when she’d heard them coming for her. She hadn’t wanted to face her step-uncles naked, so she rarely took her clothes off, and her showers were super-brief. Now she realized her clothes had been the problem all along.

  She pressed her fingers to her mouth. They were trembling. Her lips were trembling. She forced them to stop. She had learned to take control of herself. She had Emmanuelle and Mariko Ferraro to thank for that. They worked with her when they trained her on self-defense. They talked to her constantly about not just training her body but training her mind as well. What defense actually was. What power was. What it embodied. What control was. What that embodied. She saw those traits in both women, and more, she felt both power and control when they walked into a room. They embodied both traits, and she wanted that kind of confidence and to command and earn that same respect.

  Nicoletta ignored the fact that her head wanted to explode and her body felt as though it was in pieces. She knew it wasn’t. Her skin covered her bones. She had only to open her eyes and look, and she would see for herself. It was only in her mind, a trick. The mind was powerful. Vittorio Ferraro lectured her on that subject as he trained her on speed and how to throw a proper punch and kick with maximum power so that when she struck, she was focusing that strike on a tiny area, but the penetration was so deep that it could shatter bones or destroy organs inside the body.

  Focus, little sister. The punch doesn’t stop at the surface. You want to penetrate, go out the other side. You kick through the obstacle, whatever it is.

  How many times had he said that to her in his patient, soft, commanding voice? Vittorio never raised his voice. Never was exasperated or impatient. He pushed her hard, but he worked just as hard, giving her his time generously and repeating lessons when she asked him to go over a technique she wanted to improve.

  Her lashes fluttered, protesting, a kind of terror seizing her at the idea of allowing light in, but she was determined to overcome fear. She was with Taviano for a reason. She didn’t want to be deadweight that he dragged around. She wanted to be a partner, useful to him. If that was going to happen, she had to open her eyes, and she had to do it now. She was going to use every lesson the Ferraros had taught her to get back on her feet and get over the effects of the shadow riding. If they could do it, so could she.

  She opened her eyes very slowly, all the while hearing the sound of guns going off. She was afraid for Taviano and Clariss. That fear for them, more than anything else, helped her to overcome her own terror of her head exploding. Pain burst through her skull as the light pierced her eyes, but when she blinked rapidly, she realized that the shadows dulled the brightness to a dimmer gray, helping to mitigate the effect.

  It suddenly occurred to her that every lesson in the Ferraro training dojo ended with sitting on the mats, legs tucked up, breathing deeply, meditating. The breathing was always the same, slow and even, and they corrected her breathing almost more than they corrected her fighting techniques. Taviano had used that same breathing to slow hers to match his. She used it now and kept breathing, just the way she’d been taught, and found she could recover faster.

  The numbness in her body, the feeling of paralysis, lessened, as did the images in her mind that she wasn’t all there. She looked down, half expecting her skin to be gone, but there it was, covering her arms and legs. Her body was intact and that helped push away more of the sensation that she was no longer in human form. Breathing deeply, she pressed her hand against the wall of the warehouse, her first physical sensation. The contact with something solid really grounded her.

  The gunshots continued, louder now, as she recovered, the sound ringing in her ears. She turned, back to the wall, heels digging into the concrete, and forced herself into a standing position, pushing up hard, using her unsteady legs and her hands on the wall. It felt good to find muscles, wobbly or not. She willed steel into her body. She was an asset, not a complication.

  She was Taviano’s partner. She was born to be his partner. That had been her secret mantra for the last couple of years, when she’d been working so hard to overcome her hatred and loathing of what her step-uncles and Benito Valdez had done to her. She was not going to allow those men to take away what her parents had so lovingly provided for her for so many years. What Lucia and Amo had done for her these last few years. Or the opportunities the Ferraro family had given her—the training and education, the counseling and compassion.

  She trained with the Ferraros and then went to work, all the while going over their instructions in her head, every movement, every single thing they said to her. She didn’t forget anything. That was another gift she had. She remembered everything. Sometimes it could be a curse, but in this case, it was a major help. The smallest detail was etched into her brain. She practiced in her mind when she couldn’t practice with her body.

  At home, she gave Lucia and Amo her undivided attention, and then, the moment they retired for the night, she was in the garage, where she’d set up a gym, and she was training again, working on the speed bag, the heavy bag, and kicking and punching and practicing rolls and falls. She knew the Ferraros had trained from the time they were very young. She had a lot of time to make up, but she was determined to do it.

  When she wasn’t working out physically, she was hitting the books. The Ferraros were intelligent. That was apparent in their conversations. They spoke several languages. They could converse easily on just about any subject. She immediately set out to catch up on her education, at first in order to be able to converse with them, but then because her mind became thirsty for knowledge. There were apps on her phone, and she went to bed every night speaking other languages and woke in the morning practicing them.

  Leaning against the wall for support, Nicoletta forced her chin up and made herself look out of the shadows and really focus on the room and every individual. Clariss was on the floor, crawling toward the exit. No one seemed to be aware of her. There were bodies on the floor and a great deal of blood. She knew she should be bothered by that, and there was a part of her that was upset that she wasn’t. Living with her step-uncles had changed something in her.

  She searched the room for the one person who mattered most to her. Taviano. He moved from shadow to shadow, and even she couldn’t see him until he emerged behind a fallen shooter and took the gun from his hand. He rose up as a man approached, the weapon extended. Taviano shot him at least three times, point-blank.

  Her heart in her throat, Nicoletta caught sight of Jorge, the one other person she recognized from the concert. He had been with Armando, chasing after her. Clearly, he had begun to make his way toward the exit of the warehouse, near where she was, just as he’d done at the hotel, but he turned back when he saw Taviano.

  She had no choice. Her body had to work. Nicoletta launched herself out of the shadow, rolling in a tight somersault, to come up under Jorge’s gun arm. She slammed her head under his chin, driving upward using her entire body, her heels and knees, nearly lifting him off his feet. At the same time, she used her fingers to force his hand open, hitting his pressure points so his fingers spasmed and the gun fell to the floor. She kicked it away and followed Jorge as he fell away from her, driving her stiff fingers into the dent at the base of his throat, imagining them coming out the other side of his neck.

  She pulled back as he went down to his knees, coughing. She kicked him hard in the solar plexus and then spun around when she felt hands on her waist.

  “Piccola, it’s just me. Slip back into the shadows.” Taviano stood in front of Jorge with Santiago’s gun. “We can’t have evidence that we were here, although you saved my life. Let me finish this.”

  He spoke gently, as if she might shatter—or condemn him because he was going to pull the trigger o
n Jorge, the man who would have killed him. She could pull the trigger. Would that make Taviano think less of her? Because she wasn’t that compassionate woman, her heart soft and concerned with how to help the poor boys who lived such a bad life that they joined gangs and decided raping girls and selling them was a great pastime and way to make money. She was never going to be that woman. Never. She wasn’t going to pretend to be, either.

  She did just what he said, walking back, skirting around two dead men to get to the corner where the dark shadow lay like a stripe leading out of the warehouse. Once she was at the mouth of the shadow, she watched as Taviano made his way back to where Santiago was. He lined up the shot so it looked as though the New Yorker had actually fired the gun that had killed Jorge. She locked that information in her mind. It was another detail that couldn’t be forgotten. That was how the Ferraros kept away from police attention. They made certain that everything added up for forensics. Taviano replaced the gun carefully in Santiago’s open palm exactly as it had been when he removed it and then he rode the shadow back to Nicoletta.

  He looked around the warehouse. “Do you see any cameras? I interrupted all transmissions, but I could have missed something.”

  She should have thought about that. Stefano had told her more than once that she always had to pay attention to cameras on the street. When she walked down a street, he wanted her to practice noticing how many businesses had them. Which ones were real and which were fake. Could she concentrate on them and stop them from recording? She’d never tried something like that, and she’d thought he was crazy until Ricco had demonstrated.

  Secretly, she’d begun trying to stop a small recording device she had. She’d managed to interrupt it a grand total of three times for all of two seconds. She’d been proud of herself until Stefano had sternly told her to keep it up, that she needed to be able to knock out cameras for long blocks of time if need be. She didn’t understand how being able to have that kind of control would come in handy until this moment. Now she wished she’d spent more time on practicing and less time on sleeping. It just seemed that she often fell into bed exhausted after long training sessions.

  “Would they have cameras attached to the beams up in the ceiling for any reason?” she ventured. “It seems kind of silly, but when I took a quick look around, they seemed to have an abundance of cameras. I thought it was a bit narcissistic. If Iker was narcissistic, he might have cameras showing every angle of his performances, because although I didn’t see him most of the time, he sounded like he was performing to an audience.”

  Taviano looked so pleased with her it was all she could do not to grin. She looked down at her hands, happy to see that her fingers were intact.

  “Give me a minute to check, tesoro. I’ll be right back.”

  Nicoletta watched him move easily from the mouth of the long wide shadow to the smaller feeder tube, and then he was gone from her sight. She knew tesoro was treasure, and it was an endearment the way it was used, but the family always had endearments for her. Vittorio, Ricco, Giovanni and Stefano almost always referred to her as “little sister,” mostly in Italian. Sometimes it was “little one.” They had accepted her as family, and it had taken a long while for her to realize that. Now she knew.

  Taviano, thankfully, had never treated her like a sibling. He rarely trained her. He seemed uncomfortable putting his hands on her, and she couldn’t blame him after the disaster of that night when she’d been so terribly drunk and flung herself at him. She kept from groaning, still embarrassed at her behavior that night. Taviano might be able to excuse it, but she wasn’t quite there yet. She might never get there. She’d come a long way and her confidence level was rising every minute, but not around him. Maybe it never would.

  Taviano slid back into the shadow beside her. She was astonished how silent he was when it had been surprisingly loud traveling through the shadow.

  “You were right, Nicoletta. There were actually two more cameras. I took a minute to make certain the feed wasn’t going to a remote site and then I removed the insides and turned them off, with the wires not hooked up, as if they hadn’t finished installing them completely.”

  “You think the cops will buy that?”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what they do. Clariss is our tie to the warehouse. Drago and Demetrio have taken her to the cops, and she’ll give her statement. After that, she’ll be taken to the cousins and reunited with Pia and Bianca. They’ll be well looked after.”

  While he explained, he carefully cleaned up all evidence of her getting sick. His cousins had done so at the hotel. He had to make certain it was done at the warehouse.

  “The cops will launch an investigation once they see the slaughter at the warehouse, but what are they going to find? My cousins weren’t near the warehouse, and neither were we. Pia and Bianca will tell the cops that you’re with me. And you are. We’re going to fly off in the jet together.”

  “I’m sorry I got sick.” She nodded toward his hand and the wipes he’d found to use.

  “Wait one minute.” He found a Dumpster some distance away and tossed the wipes in the thing, certain the cops wouldn’t dig that far, and then returned to her.

  “Can you handle one more time in the shadows with me?”

  Nicoletta’s stomach did that weird pitch and roll it often did when she was around him. She could handle one more time going anywhere with him. She managed to lift her lashes just enough to sneak a quick peek at him, and his dark blue eyes were so focused on her she nearly choked. He could burn a hole right through her looking at her like that. She nodded because she really couldn’t speak.

  Taviano took her hand. “You’re going to have to look at me, piccola. I need to know you can do this. We’re going to have to make a short stop in Vegas and then head home.”

  “Vegas?” That made no sense.

  “I’ll tell you when we’re safe on board. We’ve got to get out of here, but I have to know you really can do this.”

  “There seem to be quite a lot of things you’re going to tell me once we’re on that plane,” she said, attempting humor when her entire body rebelled at the idea of going with him once more on the long journey to the airport through the shadows.

  His arms tightened around her. “I’ve got you. I’m in your head, Nicoletta. In your mind. If it becomes too difficult, and you can’t feel me anywhere else, look for me there. Feel me there. The shadows can fool our physical bodies, and can twist our perceptions, but our brains remain intact. You can find me there, and I can find you. If you search for me, our connection will grow stronger. Our shadows are already twisting together. They’ve been doing so every time we’ve been close for the past three years. You had to have felt it.”

  She’d felt the connection between them growing when they were close, but she’d thought it was only on her side. She’d tried to stop it. She’d done everything she could to stop it. She’d used alcohol, tried to hurt herself, been rude and cutting to him. He was so attractive. Physically, he was just about everything a woman could ask for in a man. Sometimes it was all she could do to keep from staring at him, but he was so much more to her than his gorgeous looks.

  “You ready?”

  There was no way for her to be ready, but they had to get this done, so she nodded. She had a lot to think about. Taviano had given her an unexpected gift, just the way all the Ferraros always gave so generously to her. Why? Why had Stefano and Taviano singled her out and brought her home with them? What had brought them to New York and to her step-uncles that night?

  Taviano gripped her hard and stepped into the long, thick shadow. Instantly she felt the pull on her body. It was strong, tearing at her skin and muscles. She closed her eyes and pushed her face into his rib cage, breathing in his scent. Taking him into her lungs while she could. Everything about him always made her feel safe.

  Taviano was right about their connection. She had put
a gun to her head when her three step-uncles had come for her, telling her that Benito Valdez had demanded they hand her over to him. They said it was an honor that he wanted her to be his woman. She knew better. He’d demanded that her uncles share her on more than one occasion, and he’d deliberately hurt her, laughing when he did so. He was a brutal, uncaring man.

  She had eyes. She saw how the president of the Demons treated women. He ran a human-trafficking ring. He could say what he wanted, but she wasn’t having his babies and then being trafficked while he kept the children and took the next girl who caught his eye.

  It had been Taviano who had taken the gun from her hand. He had come out of nowhere, out of the shadows, killing her step-uncles and removing the gun so gently. She would always remember the way his voice had reassured her. She’d been out of her mind with fear of Valdez, determined to end her life. Wanting an end to the beatings and rapes. She’d fought every day since her parents’ funeral, when she’d been handed over to them, and she couldn’t fight anymore.

  Taviano’s touch had been so gentle, his voice like a soft warmth over her skin, a stream of reassurance that enveloped her in a cocoon that separated her from the rest of the world. Then he had her in his arms and his brother was asking her if she wanted to live. Looking at him, at Taviano, she knew she did when she had been so certain before that she didn’t.

  The wind whipped at her body, flogging the skin from her, flaying at her muscles to expose her bones. She squeezed her eyes closed tighter and pressed her face firmly into Taviano’s side, breathing the way she’d been taught every single night at the end of her training. The ending to her nightly sessions hadn’t been to wind things down or meditate like she thought; there was a much deeper purpose, one that helped immensely when in the shadow tube. The more she used the breathing, the better she stayed in control. That allowed her not to panic and lessened the terrible impact of the shadows tearing at her body.