Siege of Shadows

by Sarah Raughley

  Despite the pain, Jessie laughed at him. “Nah, that ain’t happening.”

  “Shut up,” Rhys said. “Or next time, I’ll take a kneecap.”

  “Mm, sexy.” Jessy gave him a wry grin before turning to me. “We need to go. Vasily’s waiting for us.”

  “Vasily?” Rhys spat. “What have you done? What the hell is going on?”

  With her gun still aimed at him, Jessie pulled out her black phone. “I was waiting for a call and I got it. It’s confirmed.”

  I barely twitched in response.

  “He gave you a signal.” Rhys inched closer to us, his feet making no noise against the dewy grass.

  “You didn’t think Vasily of all people would stay locked up for long, did you?”

  “Who helped him?” Rhys crushed a posy underfoot.

  “Who didn’t?” Jessie laughed. “There’s more of us than you realize. You really suck at picking sides.”

  The two stared each other down in the night, and something inside me was screaming for me to get ahold of myself, but my knees stayed helplessly pinned to the grass.

  “Life really isn’t fair, isn’t it?” Jessie said. “All those years ago . . . we all went through it in that fucked-up facility—those insane training sessions, those ‘psych evals’ that felt more like torture. You were the one who said we could be free. You made me think we’d all escape together. Escape the Sect.” Her voice, for the first time, swelled with a kind of childish hope, immature and fragile. It didn’t last. “But everything went wrong. We followed you, but only you got to live. And what did you do but go right back to the Sect?” Her long red hair swept the air like a pendulum as she shook her head violently. “Unlike me and Vasily, you had Mommy and Daddy to go back to. People to protect you. You escaped one cage and dragged your own sorry ass right back into another. Ever the dutiful son.” She smirked. “You’ll never be free.”

  “And are you free, Jessie?”

  Jessie rubbed the back of her neck with a trembling hand. I couldn’t tell if she’d even meant to or not. “Maia,” she said suddenly, and it was like my body shook awake. “Remember what the little voice in the phone told you. We gotta go.”

  Yes. At all costs.

  I stood.

  “Maia?” Rhys lowered his gun, his eyes narrowing as a hint of fear crawled into his features.

  At all costs.

  Balls of flame exploded at Rhys’s feet like little bombs. Rhys jumped and dove to avoid them, rushing toward me every opportunity he got, but I didn’t stop hurling fire at him. Jessie’s unhinged laughter screeched over the chaos as she dragged herself up and balanced herself on her good leg.

  “Kill him!” She goaded me, too excited at the mayhem of flames to bother shooting at him herself. “Kill him now!”

  I was trying. The dull pain throbbed at the back of my neck, the steel band rubbing against my skin as if aching to crush my windpipe. Listen to Jessie. Escape with her at all costs. I was trying.

  “Maia, wake up! Fight it!” Rhys cried before I sent a wall of flame crackling up at his feet. He jumped, but too late—he cried out in pain as the fire licked his leg.

  A hard twinge in my chest, a sudden chill rushing through me. All these curious sensations my mind couldn’t grasp as Rhys hit the ground hard, rolling on the grass to put the flame out.

  Maia . . .

  Maia . . .

  Are you listening . . . ?

  She was humming a melody I’d heard too many times before on those terrifying nights.

  Her voice . . . Natalya’s voice.

  I told you. . . . You let them cage you. . . . You trust too easily. . . .

  “What are you doing? Kill him! Hurry,” Jessie ordered because my hands had frozen in the air.

  My arms wavered, caught between falling limp and staying firm. My attacks stopped. What was I doing?

  Its hold on you is getting weaker . . . If we work together . . . if we share this battle, we can overcome it completely. . . . For just today, for just a second . . . Maia, let me take you. . . .

  There were too many voices in my head: one telling me to kill Rhys and the other telling me to kill myself.

  I can’t do it alone. Let me out. . . . Let us . . . help each other. . . .

  “Maia.” Rhys tried to struggle back to his feet, but his unwieldy legs collapsed beneath him and he fell back. He gripped the soil, dirt collecting in his fingernails as he let out a haggard sigh and looked up at me. “Please come back. Come back to me.”

  Painfully, slowly, my lips pried apart. “Rhys . . .” But that was all I could manage.

  “Fuck, forget it!” Jessie raised her gun.

  And that was the trigger. I released the mental defenses I’d desperately been holding on to, and just like that, a new power filled me. Natalya. Two energies connecting within one form. The power overwhelmed everything else in me, shorting out the command, the white noise that had been dulling my mind. With the force of two Effigies, I stomped on Jessie’s hand, pinning it to the dirt. She gasped in pain, but she was strong too; she managed to slip her hand out from under the pressure. While she dragged herself away, my fingers curled around the steel band on my neck, and with a grunt, I tore it off.

  “Shit,” I heard Jessie swear. One could never underestimate the power of adrenaline. Despite the pain from her gunshot wound, Jessie dragged herself to her feet and began running as fast as she could to the river alone. And I was about to go after her. That was the plan. But . . .

  It was as if a tidal wave had drowned me. Two energies suddenly torn out of balance.

  I should have known.

  This was never going to be a partnership.

  “No, stop!” I doubled over, grabbing my head with both hands. “Stop . . . stop!”

  I was . . .

  I . . . I . . .

  . . . . . . I . . . . . .

  Air filled my lungs. Sweet and dense. I was alive again. Back into this body.

  I was alive.

  “Maia? Maia, what’s going on?”

  That voice.

  Quietly, I turned my head.

  And saw him.

  Feeble. Burned.

  Kneeling in front of me.

  The hilt of my sword formed first from the elegant dance of flames, that cool, familiar grip. The tip was last, buried in the grass. The cold sensation that tingled through the skin. That horrid wildness I’d been taught to suppress my whole life now quivered through my bones.

  “Aidan,” I whispered.

  Aidan heard the girl’s voice but knew immediately that it wasn’t Maia who’d spoken. For one passing moment, his arms were limp at his sides. He sat still, helpless—that is, until the panic finally settled in. His skin paled. His body shook. The fear of death gripped him.

  “Oh god,” he breathed. “Oh god.”

  What must it have felt like for him to see the large, beautiful eyes he loved wet with bloodlust? I could hear her screaming, fighting inside her own mind. It wouldn’t take long for her to return.

  But this wouldn’t take long either.

  Aidan was already leaning back, his wide, terrified eyes locked on my sword as I raised it high above my head. Zhar-Ptitsa. He knew its name.

  “It’s okay.” Tears streamed down his cheeks—and strangely, tears streamed down mine as I aimed to murder the man I’d once called a friend. “It’s okay. Do it. Do it, Natalya.”

  My hands shook above me.

  “But . . . I didn’t want to.” The words trembled out of him as the tears wetted his lips. “I didn’t—you have to know that. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  I hesitated. Why was I hesitating? Why?

  “Maia?”

  “Agent Rhys! Ms. Finley!”

  “Aidan!”

  “Aidan! Oh god, Aidan!”

  Figures were rushing toward us. Agents. I recognized some of them. Director Prince’s eldest son, Brendan Prince, was among them and—Naomi. She was barefoot, running toward us with her high-heeled shoes in her hand,
but she stopped the moment she saw me, saw the sword I lifted.

  “I did everything I was asked,” I called out over the noise. “I did everything, but you . . .” I lowered my arms, the tip of my sword touching softly against the ground before my hands started to shake. “You . . . Why didn’t you protect me?”

  I fell to my knees as Zhar-Ptitsa faded into embers that brushed past my body and fluttered with the wind into the moonlit night. My time was up. She was coming.

  Closing my eyes, I let the darkness take me.

  • • •

  The story was that an anti-Sect gunman had infiltrated the estate looking to murder Blackwell. Blackwell’s wounded body and the shattered windows were proof enough, though it didn’t stop questions from being asked. Dignitaries left the fund-raiser quickly while journalists scurried to put together their news reports.

  I sat on the front steps of Blackwell’s estate, my dress torn in places, my body wet with sweat as I watched the ambulance take Rhys to the nearest hospital for his burns.

  Rhys.

  “Natalya,” I whispered as the bright sirens disappeared into the night. “You . . . weren’t lying to me after all.”

  Each word plummeted to the floor like a stone. I had to fight to keep from following them. My limbs felt weak, my mind blank but for the memory of Rhys pleading for death at Natalya’s hand.

  I was wrong about everything.

  I touched my lips, lips that had touched his, my fingers trembling. Liars and traitors were everywhere. I was surrounded by them. Brendan had taken the shattered steel neck-band in as evidence, and I was to be sent to the London facility immediately to check out the back of my neck. But even though I needed to know what had happened to me, I couldn’t trust them. I couldn’t run away either. I couldn’t hide. What could I do?

  I lowered my head into my hands as soon as I felt the tears budding.

  “Maia.”

  Lifting it again, I looked down the line of parked cars in front of the estate. Naomi called me from the back of a sleek black Rolls-Royce. She waved at me to come over.

  “Are you okay, Mrs. Prince?” I asked once I finally reached her.

  The window was down, but she kept the door open. That didn’t mean I felt welcome coming forward. Naomi sat rigidly in the backseat, her long, sleek black hair draping down her chest like a blanket.

  “Somewhat. I’m still shaken.”

  I could see that. Her pale hands trembled against her lap.

  Did she know? About Rhys?

  “Mrs. Prince . . .” I looked around, making sure nobody could hear me, and lowered my voice. “The last time I scried, Natalya told me to talk to you. She gave me your name specifically.”

  “She did.” It was something between a statement and a question.

  “What Natalya said to you earlier . . .”

  Naomi’s bottom lip curled inward. “Yes. Come inside.”

  I hesitated but eventually listened. Whatever Natalya blamed her for, she’d sent me to Naomi for a reason. The woman shifted over to make room. Once I was inside, she rolled up the tinted windows. We were alone.

  “Please tell me you know something.” I gripped the back of the passenger seat. “What the hell is going on here? Saul is out there. Jessie said something big is gonna happen. And he’s got people helping him, soldiers with abilities like him, like us, but I don’t know who the hell I’m supposed to trust anymore.” My eyes watered as I thought about Rhys, our kiss. The burning sensation still hadn’t quite disappeared from the back of my neck. “The Sect—”

  “Can’t be trusted,” Naomi finished quietly. She kept her expression calm as she looked up at me, but she couldn’t bury the urgency in her eyes.

  I frowned, studying her carefully. “Who are you?”

  Her features were stone as she answered. “A member of the High Council of the Sect,” she said. “From one of the so-called Seven Houses.”

  “Seven Houses . . .” I pressed my back against the door. A member of the Council. Suddenly, I realized why her voice sounded familiar. She’d spoken that day in the cathedral when Blackwell had made me pledge allegiance to a broken institution on my knees like a servant. Hers was the only voice of reason, of kindness, among those that filled the hall with jeers.

  “So your husband’s the director of a Sect division while you’re from some family dynasty of Council members?” With one director son and another son who was a murderer. A derisive laugh almost escaped my throat. Interesting family.

  “No. There’s no dynasty,” Naomi corrected. “The ‘Seven Houses’ moniker is a red herring for secrecy’s sake. Council members are elected into their positions, though there are some—very few—exceptions. . . .”

  Naomi twisted her wedding band around her middle finger as if by habit. “Something is happening . . . within the Council and within the Sect. Saul, the terrorist. Those soldiers. They’re all a part of it. That woman Jessie was right. Something terrible is going to happen. I can feel it.” She looked at me. “And you girls, you Effigies. You have to help me stop it.”

  My mouth dried, and my body began trembling. I didn’t want to show how scared I was, but I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking when I asked, “How?”

  “Not here.” She flicked her head toward the window behind me. An agent had just walked out of the front doors of Blackwell’s mansion holding a set of car keys. “We can’t use phones, either. It’s too dangerous. I bought Natalya’s home in Madrid. Nobody knows, not even my husband. In exactly four days at sundown, meet me there, but make sure you’re alone. I’ll tell you everything. I’m sure you’ve been waiting too, haven’t you? For the truth.”

  The truth. Yes. Ever since I first saw Natalya die in front of me. Ever since her parents warned me against the Sect in Argentina. If I had any chance in hell of stopping Saul for good, I needed to know how. But remembering the anguish crushing Natalya from the inside, remembering her pain as she stared at the woman through my eyes. It was the pain of betrayal.

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “I understand your hesitation.” Naomi must have seen my hesitation. “And it’s up to you to decide one way or another. I’m just afraid this will all go too far before we can stop it. But before you go”—her hand firmly seized mine the moment I moved for the door—“there’s one thing I need to tell you. I want to be honest with you before you choose to move forward with this.”

  “What is it?”

  The driver came closer.

  “Natalya’s death . . . My son was just the gun. And he . . . he is who he is because of the sins of his parents. Because I was too weak to protect him.” Naomi’s features pinched as she struggled against a sudden well of tears that never fell. She blinked them away. “He was the gun. But a trigger can’t pull itself.”

  There was no hesitation as she stared back at me, as she held me in place with little more than a confession.

  “Though I didn’t order her death, Natalya’s blood is on my hands.” Her words hung in the silent air. I hadn’t realized my mouth was open until I heard my own breath shuddering out of me. “Knowing that, if you still want to stop Saul, come and find me in Madrid.”

  I opened my door the moment the driver arrived. And I watched quietly as Naomi’s car took her from the estate into the dead of night.

  PART TWO

  All around the house is the jet-black night;

  It stares through the window-pane;

  It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light,

  And it moves with the moving flame.

  Now my little heart goes a-beating like a drum,

  With the breath of the Bogie in my hair;

  And all around the candle and the crooked shadows come,

  And go marching along up the stair.

  The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp,

  The shadow of the child that goes to bed—

  All the wicked shadows coming tramp, tramp, tramp,

  With the black night overhe
ad.

  —Robert Louis Stevenson, “Shadow March”

  19

  VASILY HAD ESCAPED. WITH THE looming threat of his father’s disappointment hanging over his head, Brendan dispatched several units to find him, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. He’d escaped through the tiniest cracks in the Sect’s defense structure with the help of several agents who were now missing. Of course, no one was more displeased than the Surgeon, who’d lost one of his favorite toys. It was everything Cheryl could do to keep this mess a secret from the press.

  Meanwhile, I had other worries.

  “Okay, Maia, we’re all done.” The technician spoke through an intercom from the other side of the glass. With an angry mechanical whir, my flat white bed slid back out of the hole in the CT scanner.

  “Did you find anything?” I asked as one tech came into the room and started removing the straps from my neck.

  “Well,” she said, helping me up, “you know, we need to go over it further—”

  “Please.” It was cold in the room and the hospital gown was too big, so I felt the chill brush up my bare legs. I reached out with the arm they’d punctured with an IV line and tugged at his shirt. “Can’t you tell me anything? I need to know what they did to me.”

  He turned to the other technicians waiting behind the glass.

  “Well, in vivo CT molecular imaging can only give us so much,” one said through the intercom, “but from what we can see so far, our targeted probes did detect the presence of a similar molecular structure to the one in the dead soldier you found in the desert.”

  The dead soldier. Philip. Thinking back, he’d said someone was forcing him to do something . . . before he broke free and ran to the hideout. He wanted us to find him. To help Alex, maybe the others too . . .

  “Pete and Dot told us it was a nano . . . thing,” I said. “Nanomachine?”

  Jessie had it at the base of her neck. She said it hid her frequency for as long as it didn’t degrade. That guy we’d found in the desert. Once his degraded, the Sect could track him.

  But maybe that was what he wanted. A defector.

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “So it wasn’t the neck-band Dot and Pete gave me. . . . Wait!” My head snapped up. “Mellie. Mellie injected me with something before I put it on. We should question them!”