The Shadows and Sorcery Collection

by Heather Marie Adkins

  Yulian sipped his pipe while he regarded me. “Life has carved hard lines into you, Gadreel.”

  “It hasn’t touched you.”

  Yulian laughed: a real, true belly laugh, the kind that used to make Gretchen call him Santa. “Maybe not visibly, but it has. Every year that passes is another series of scars on us, don’t you think? Another layer of protection against the hardness of life here in Kremlin.”

  “Can you forgive me?” I asked.

  “Of course. That’s what family does.” Yulian sighed, extracting the pipe and letting his hand rest in his lap. “I brought you here, Gad.”

  I bolted upright, ignoring the jarring ache in my chest where my wound was healing. “You sent that woman for me?”

  “The ‘badass in leather and heels’? Yes.” Yulian chuckled. “Dominika is my daughter.”

  “You had a daughter?” I asked, surprised. In all the time I’d known Yulian, I’d never known him to have a lover, much less a family of his own. To be honest, I’d thought him to prefer men over women. Not that I had any problem with that; how can one champion the love of an angel for a human and not fully support love in all its many, beautiful forms? But it is a bit hard, scientifically, for men to get pregnant.

  Yulian tapped his pipe against a knee. “What is your fascination with the biology behind family? I did not help give birth to Dom. She came to me as an orphan and has been my daughter ever since. My daughter, and also my best warrior.” His red lips quirked at the corners. “Badass, is she? She’s quite talented. Good at hiding, sneaking, and winning.”

  “She’s a witch, too?”

  “No. Merely human.”

  “She used magic to transport us from the Square.”

  “Yes. One of my spells. One of my better spells, if I might be so bold to assume.” Yulian puffed on his pipe and regarded me through the thin stream of white smoke. “I’ve been busy the past fifty years, Gadreel. Trying to make life in the Circle easier on everyone, but especially on my own kind.”

  I recalled the small velvet sachet and the swirl of translucent dust. “You can…bottle spells?”

  “In a manner. Yes.”

  I let this revelation spill over me. I’d spent thirty years or more thinking the witches had died off. Instead, they’d taken up residence in “the Underground” and not only become stronger, but evolved their magic, too.

  What had I done in thirty years?

  God, what had I done for thirty years? Fifty years? From the moment Catie and Gretchen died?

  I pushed away thoughts of my own insecurities and asked, “Why did you send Dominika for me?”

  “Ah. The question of the hour, isn’t it?” Yulian murmured. “I dreamed of you. I thought you dead, for a time. Until Dom—on my request—tracked you down a few years ago so that I might know you were safe. Since then, you’ve never been far from my mind. You, or my nieces.” He cleared his throat and leveled a serious gaze on me. “In my dream, Belias murdered you. You were chained and carried to her, and she killed you.”

  “That nearly happened. Sort of.” I touched the healing wound in my chest. If I hadn’t run, gotten shot, or been saved by Yulian’s prodigy, Belias would have killed me.

  “Something told me you needed me. We did a tracking spell on you, and Dominika went to retrieve you.” He tapped his forehead with a knowing smile. “You were reaching out to me and you had no idea. My magic listens, even when I cannot. Seems I heard just in time.”

  “If you came for me specifically, why am I locked away in what looks like a padded room?”

  Yulian pursed his lips. “You disappeared for years, Gadreel. You didn’t respond to my letters or attempts to get in contact with you. So how was I to know you hadn’t gone rogue?”

  I scoffed. “Do I look like the kind of angel to go rogue?”

  Yulian raised his eyebrows but didn’t respond.

  “Ex-angel,” I corrected when the silence that followed stretched too long.

  Finally, Yulian spoke again. “Now that the reunion is over, and we’ve agreed all’s well that ends well, let’s move on. Tell me how you ended up running from the slave traders in the market.”

  I gave him a brief rundown of the past week, starting with Raphael’s sudden appearance, through helping Liliya with the ice demons, and her abduction. Then my pointless search for Yulian that left me ill and at the mercy of the men who found me, and ending with Dominika’s boot in my face.

  “That hurt, by the way,” I added, rubbing the side of my head where a tender bump graced my skull. I supposed the gunshot wound took precedence over a concussion, but it would have been nice if my nurse had healed it, too.

  Yulian shrugged. “Dom has a mind of her own. If she felt you needed to be unconscious, I trust her judgement. From the sound of it, that bullet had ripped you end to end. You were probably bleeding out.”

  “Does a concussion help with that?”

  “I have no idea,” he said simply. “This cipher from the Seraph—you no longer have it?”

  I gritted my teeth. “No. I guess the slave traders took it when they took my bow and clothes.”

  “We’ll get you more clothes and a new bow,” Yulian assured me. “Do you think you could recreate the cipher?”

  I conjured an image of the ancient parchment in my mind. I’d pored over it in the days I’d wandered the Circle looking for any sign of Yulian, so I had memorized most of it, even if I hadn’t understood it.

  “Maybe,” I finally said. “I’m not much of an artist.”

  “You don’t need to be an artist. Just accurate.” He produced a pen and a notepad from somewhere within his robes and passed them to me.

  By the time Yulian left with a shitty approximation of the cipher, I was worn out and ready to sleep for another twelve hours. Or twelve years.

  But just being in Yulian’s presence had strengthened me. I had a newfound hope that with him on my side, we could complete the mission and beat Belias. And if luck were on our side… Maybe there was still a chance I could save Liliya.

  I dozed in the dim room for a while, haunted by the child’s good-natured smirk. If Belias had killed her, I could only hope she’d done it quick.

  Something about the night felt heavy and thick when a click pulled me from nonsensical dreams.

  I lay still in the darkness, blinking away sleep. The single bulb high above had been dim but illuminated when I’d passed out, but now I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. The nurse had likely come by to check on me and extinguished the light when I didn’t awake.

  I waited in the inky black, somewhere between sleep and waking. I felt someone in the room, but it wasn’t my nurse. The energy was off. Masculine.

  Angry.

  I remained frozen, waiting. A creak, a shuffled step.

  Then a presence stood over me, and I heard the telltale scrape of a dagger being drawn.

  10

  Thank God my reflexes weren’t completely screwed up.

  I caught the arm blind on a downward swing. The sharp blade sliced into my forearm but glanced away from anything vital. My attacker growled, deep and menacing like a rabid dog, and then shifted to press a knee to my chest wound.

  I cried out, lights exploding in my vision. My grip on the guy’s wrist slipped, and I sensed the knife fall closer to my body.

  In the moment before the knife hit me, fury filled my mind. Everything I went through to get here, to find Yulian so we could save the goddamn world, and some asshole was gonna sneak into my room in the middle of the night and murder me?

  Fuck no.

  I shoved with all my strength, ignoring the bite of the knife in my arm. I pitched out of bed, taking the man to the floor with a satisfying thunk of his head. The knife skated away on the slick linoleum, and he attempted to scramble after it, but I tightened my grip on his waist. He hit the floor face-first with a pained grunt.

  We tussled, my blood making the fight slippery for both of us. In the chaos, I ended up beneath the guy, my ar
ms twisted under me and my face jammed against the floor.

  The light flashed on, and a throaty voice demanded, “What the hell is going on?”

  The weight pressing me into the floor disappeared, followed by a thud and a crash. I rolled to my back and sucked in a thankful breath.

  Dominika stood over a blond-haired, blue-eyed behemoth, again in her leather and heels but minus the fur coat. By the way the behemoth was sprawled on the floor, arms and legs akimbo and a tray table in pieces around him, it looked like she’d flung him off me. And he wasn’t exactly small or light.

  What an incredible woman.

  “Aldric?” she said with a note of disgust in her voice.

  A dude roughly the size and shape of a small mountain blinked up at her from the floor. My blood streaked his face and arms like war paint. “Uh. Hey, Dom.”

  Dom snatched his knife off the linoleum. Her sharp gaze narrowed on the bloody blade, and then shifted to the surprisingly deep wound seeping from my arm. She pointed the dagger at her friend, her face darkening. “Seriously?”

  Aldric stumbled to his feet. I was more than a little proud to see I’d split his lip, even in my weakened state. If God was good, the asshole probably had a concussion, too. Aldric reached for his knife, and Dom sidestepped his grasp, moving effortlessly in her high-heeled boots.

  Aldric huffed. “Give it back.”

  “Explain to me what ‘it’ and you are doing here in the first place,” she retorted.

  “His presence puts us all at risk,” Aldric hissed, pointing a beefy finger at me. “Fallen angels are bad news. Just as bad as the demons.”

  “Jesus.” Dom laughed, a short, sharp bark of irritation. “Are you kidding me? I knew you were an asshole. I just didn’t know you were a murdering asshole.”

  Aldric took a single step forward. “He is an insult to our way of life. You should never have brought him here.”

  Dom stared wordlessly at the man for a long moment. He shifted uncomfortably beneath her frigid gaze. Even I felt the burn, and I wasn’t the recipient.

  “You’re a pig, Al. Go home.” Dom tossed the knife at his feet.

  I inwardly applauded the disrespectful move; it forced the man to bend over and retrieve the blade, putting him at a physical disadvantage. Lowering him. Then she crossed the room to help me stand.

  “You’re going to help him? Just like that?” Aldric snapped without bending for his knife. “He’ll destroy us all! He’ll bring the demons here, and we’ll lose everything!”

  “I don’t even like the demons,” I added helpfully as I found my footing with Dom’s sure hands guiding me. I wrapped my fingers around my arm to stem the flow of blood. I had lost a lot of blood recently. I’d bleed out at this rate.

  “Fuck off, Al.” Dom leaned into me, wrapping an arm around my waist. “Not everyone is as backwards as you. There’s more than enough room for all of us to share the Circle.”

  “You’re wrong.” Aldric grabbed his knife, shoved it into the sheath at his hip, and then gave me one last glare before he left.

  Dom guided me to the bed, her angular face settled into something akin to humility. “Sorry about that. Every race has crazies, no?”

  I nodded and flinched away from her as she touched my fresh wound. The cut burned on my skin. With my luck, that douchebag’s blade was probably poisoned.

  Dom rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a child. Give me your arm.”

  Clenching my teeth against the sting, I allowed her to twist my forearm so she could see the wound. She used the blanket to wipe away most of the blood. “Might need stitches. No tingling in your hands or anything?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Nancy can sew you up, and Yulian can heal it.” She patted my knee and smirked. “Second time I’ve saved your life. You owe me twice.”

  “I would have beat the shit out of that guy.”

  “No, you would have tried to beat the shit out of him, and he would have wiped the floor with you because you’re doped up on painkillers and only have full use of one of your arms.” She flicked the bandages over my gunshot wound to prove her point, and I growled at her. “Whoa, killer. I just came to take you to better accommodations.”

  I massaged my shoulder with one hand. Until she’d pointed it out, I hadn’t realized how much my gunshot wound hurt. Now that the danger had passed and my adrenaline was chilling out, all the pain had reared back to life—especially after that asshole had dug his body weight into my shoulder.

  “Where’s Yulian?” I asked, wiping blood off my hands onto the already bloody bedsheets.

  “In the chapel.” Dom stood, fluttering her hands as she intoned, “Communing with the ancestors.”

  “Sounds mystical.”

  “Entirely. I’m going to go find Nancy to sew you up and take a look at that shoulder. Then: clothes, food, a bed that doesn’t smell like a hospital. I have all the best for you.” She winked and left the room, high heels fading down the hall.

  I kinda liked this badass warrior woman. Enough to maybe forgive the fact she’d kicked me in the head for no good damn reason.

  Nancy put a few stitches in my new cut, and then deemed my healing chest wound okay. She offered me more painkillers, which I turned down. If I had another Aldric run-in, I wanted all my wits, even if that meant a dull roar of constant pain.

  Dom gripped my waist to help me stand, careful to avoid touching either of my mangled arms. Not that it helped; the moment gravity took hold, heat rushed to my head. I swayed, fighting against a wave of pain-induced nausea.

  “Can you walk?” Dom asked, concern in her tone.

  “The last time you asked me that, we traveled through time.”

  Dom snorted. “We didn’t travel through time. That’s impossible. We transported through space.”

  “Ah. Because one is so much more possible than the other.”

  Dom wedged her body under my shoulder. She hummed with restrained energy, thin and wiry beneath my arm. “Not familiar with magic? Your wife wasn’t a witch like Yulian?”

  Few things could breach my carefully constructed walls. Mention of Catie was one of them.

  I looked away from Dominika and cleared my throat. “No. My wife was human.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No, it’s fine. You know who I am and who Catie was to Yulian. You have the right to ask.” I gestured to the door. “Lead the way to these better accommodations you promised.”

  The hallway outside my hospital room was sterile white and smelled of antiseptic. Cold linoleum pierced the thin socks I wore, and I missed my boots—which had been taken from me along with everything else on my person when the slavers kidnapped me.

  “We don’t have far to go,” Dom assured me. “Our house connects directly to the hospital.”

  I nodded my appreciation, though it stung to know she could see the pain in my face.

  “So you know that guy?” I asked to change the subject.

  “Aldric? Yeah. I guess.” She kept her gaze on the stairs as we climbed, her hand tight on my side. “We grew up next door to each other. He’s an ass. He was the kind of kid who stepped on beetles just to hear them crunch. It’s some kind of miracle he didn’t turn into a serial killer.”

  “Great dude.”

  “Right? But he has powerful parents. You know how political this world can be. It’s rarely about who you are so much as who you know.”

  Surprisingly astute for a woman as young as she appeared to be. But like Liliya, little girls didn’t stay young and innocent long in Kremlin Circle. Dominika obviously knew how to take care of herself and how to navigate the shitty world we lived in.

  I ascended the flight of stairs with only a little help from my badass tour guide. Thankfully, my legs seemed to be in full working order, and she didn’t have to demonstrate her strength by carrying me. It was rough enough to show pain in front of her without feeling emasculated, too.

  When I’d known Yulian in my life before th
e rift, he had a comfortable existence. He owned a big house in the woods with a lot of ridiculous things like expensive rugs from faraway places and art that I didn’t understand. I expected much the same now, because even when we try to convince ourselves we can change, most people don’t. But we emerged into a hallway that was quite the opposite of what I expected.

  Crude wooden walls bowed over bare hardwood floors worn by time and footsteps. No rugs, no mirrors, no hall tables with doilies and vases of roses or abstract art on the walls that my daughter could have painted better.

  The place was clean, and warm, even, but it looked no different than my own cabin. It definitely didn’t look like the kind of digs Yulian would have chosen once upon a time.

  For the first time since setting eyes on him again after fifty years, I wondered what turns his lengthy life had taken. Clearly, being on the run from Belias hadn’t been kind to the witches.

  As if life under Belias’s rule had been kind to anyone.

  “It’s not exactly a palace, but the walls are sturdy and the rooms are warm,” Dom said, opening an arm to gesture me through an open doorway.

  The room was no bigger than a closet, dominated by a twin bed and a sagging armoire with no doors. A cheerful red rug gave the otherwise neutral room a splash of color.

  Dom picked up a bundle of drab gray clothes from the blankets and tossed them to me. “I tracked down some clothes for you. They might be a little small, but I didn’t have many options. Yulian doesn’t wear normal stuff.”

  I caught the clothes against my chest. “Why not just leave me in the hospital room?” Despite the locked door and padded walls, the room had been bigger. Cheerier.

  Dom shook her head. “Natty Nabokov is due any day now. The room needs to be open for her to give birth.”

  “You only have one hospital room?”

  “We only have one of a lot here. If you haven’t noticed, it’s sparse. We make do.”

  We faced each other in silence. I gripped the bundle of clothes to my torso, waiting for her to leave.

  “Um.” I waved the clothes. “Can I have some privacy?”