The Shadows and Sorcery Collection

by Heather Marie Adkins

  The wool co-op had a merry disco ball in the front window. It had been there as far back as Dajia could remember, like a relic of days gone by. The ball swung on its axis, light flashing from the mirrors, making patterns in the blood on the window.

  Rapid gunfire blasted from beyond the walls. The masked cavalry had arrived and brought the artillery.

  Dajia followed the wet sound of teeth gnashing. She rounded the counter to find her mother splayed on the ground in her long gray skirt, a ravager gnawing on her shoulder.

  Fury consumed Dajia, so hot it could melt the polar ice caps. She held out her wand and snarled a word she didn’t know existed deep within her: “Praemius!”

  A ball of flame whooshed from her wand and steamrolled the ravager. The monster disappeared beneath the fire and, in moments, the fire went out to reveal nothing but ash.

  Dajia didn’t have the wherewithal to realize she’d just defeated a ravager using nothing but magick. She fell to her knees beside Myra. Her mother still breathed, the air coming from her chest shallow and ragged. Her heart still beat.

  But death would come for her. She had been contaminated.

  24

  Dajia

  If the regulators had come fifteen minutes earlier, her mother might have survived.

  If they had come fifteen minutes earlier, they could have protected her.

  Instead, they came fifteen minutes too late, and when they came, it was to take Myra into custody.

  During the purge, regulators murdered witches with little more than swords and a smile. Humans, on the other hand, were regarded more highly. Contaminated, sure, but still a human, still to be treated humanely.

  Dajia rode in the carriage beside her unconscious mother, holding her hand. Less than a day earlier, she’d ridden in a carriage with a handsome man looking for answers to the things going wrong in Sector 14. This ride felt darker. Contaminated, like her mother.

  The hospital sat near the wharf, overlooking the rough surf and a vast pearl of blue. Clark was somewhere out there, on his little fishing trawler with his two partners, casting nets for seafood. Dajia longed to be out there with her cousin, on the beauty of the open ocean with the water swaying beneath her feet and the sun on her face. Out there, freedom promised contentment.

  Here, beside a carriage as her unconscious mother was wheeled into her final resting place, promised only death.

  IN A HOSPITAL ROOM OVERLOOKING the ocean, Myra opened her eyes and blinked blearily around.

  “Am I dead?” she murmured.

  Dajia cradled her hand between both of hers. “Not yet.”

  Myra blinked again and shook her head, as if brushing cobwebs away from her face. She groaned, her other hand lifting to her bandaged shoulder.

  “They cleaned you up and gave you some painkillers,” Dajia told her softly. “We were waiting to see if you would wake up.”

  Myra trailed her fingers over the bandage, tears pooling in her eyes. “Was it one of them?”

  Dajia nodded.

  Her mother turned away to gaze out the window. It disgusted Dajia that the sun could shine so bright and the sky could be such a crystalline blue right now. Inside, Dajia’s world felt as black and destroyed as the wastelands beyond the wall.

  “I’ve had a good life.” Myra stroked Dajia’s hand, but kept her gaze on the clouds.

  Dajia sobbed once and tried to stifle it, sure if she let go, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Myra reached out and forced Dajia’s chin up, meeting her gaze. “I’m sixty-two, sweetheart. In some parts of the world, that’s ancient. A life well-lived.”

  “Some parts of the world no longer exist.”

  “But we do, Dajia Bray,” her mother said firmly. “And I can’t imagine what I would have done for the last fifteen years of my life if you hadn’t become mine. You are my everything, sweetheart. Now and forevermore.”

  Dajia stopped trying to hold it in and gave over to the wash of emotion threatening to drown her. She sank to the covers, laying her head on her mother’s lap, and she cried. She’d spent years crying for Justin and Vanele, and never once considered she would one day cry for Myra.

  But all lives come to an end. Some much sooner—and much more unbidden—than others.

  So Dajia cried for every lost good night hug. She cried for every lost morning of eggs and coffee. She cried for her mother’s smile and long gray ponytail, and how Ghost would miss her as much as Dajia. She cried for the lonely idea of walking the house on M Street all by herself, surrounded by the haunting memories of her neighbors and the mother she loved.

  When the tears subsided, Dajia closed her eyes and accepted a loving kiss on her forehead. Her mother’s lips were warm and wet with tears.

  “I don’t want to become like those things, Dajia. I want to leave this world as me, with all of my faculties in order and my memories guiding me home to the Lord.”

  Dajia nodded. She understood. Truly. She would no more want to watch her mother become a beast than she herself would want to be one.

  “What will I do without you?” Dajia asked, her voice small. Was she nine again? Looking at the unseeing emerald eyes of Vanele Bray on a floor of blood?

  Myra brushed away Dajia’s long, dark hair and cupped her face. “Live, sweetheart. Live, love, and be the witch you are, free from the persecution you’ve endured all these years. Take Sector 14 into the future, and do it with a song in your heart.”

  A nurse arrived, carrying a cup of water and a smaller cup of pills. She gave brief instructions, and then remained in the corner, out of sight, out of mind.

  Myra took the first two pills.

  She and Dajia talked about nothing and everything. They sang Myra’s favorite hymnals, and moved on to her favorite classic rock songs, leftover from days long before the Reckoning: “Simple Man.” “Dream On.” “Landslide.” “Black Velvet.” “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Dajia told her about Liam and the coven, and blowing the windows out of the warehouse, and Myra looked so proud.

  At the nurse’s urging, she took the other four pills half an hour later.

  Her words grew soft and slurred. She rested on her side, and Dajia crawled into bed beside her, holding her hands.

  “Will you say the Lord’s Prayer for me, Day?” Myra asked, closing her eyes.

  “Our father, which art in heaven,” Dajia murmured, kissing her mother’s hands. “Hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”

  Myra’s last breath hushed from her lips before the prayer ended.

  Dajia bit back her tears, fighting against the despair inside her, and finished the prayer for her mother. “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

  CORA WAITED FOR HER IN the lobby.

  All available chairs were occupied. People cried in every corner, and Dajia felt numb to it all. Death hovered in the room like an unwanted visitor, and she wanted to punch him, stab him with his own scythe, scream at the universe for taking so much from her. From everyone.

  Cora reached for Dajia’s hands and gave her a steadying root, a place to balance on the sea beneath her feet.

  “Are you okay?” the pretty blonde asked.

  “No,” Dajia answered truthfully.

  Cora nodded. “Heartbreak does that. It’s okay to not be okay. You know that, right? Be as not okay as you need to be, and I am here for you.”

  Dajia nodded, oddly relieved for her new friend’s understanding.

  Cora grimaced. “Can I give you more bad news?”

  “If you have to.”

  “The rest of our merry band has been arrested for unRecorded use of magick. Picked up on the streets after the ravagers were contained.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “And now there’s a warrant out for your arrest as the ringleader.”

  “You are fucking kidding me.”

  Cora bit her lip, trying to hide her amusement, maybe in the wake of Dajia’s grief.
But what was natural about grief? The whole act of grieving was a rotten ordeal. Focusing on the people she’d dragged into this mess was a helluva lot better than obsessing over her mother’s peaceful death.

  Dajia straightened her shoulders and headed for the door.

  “Where we going?” Cora asked, rushing to keep up.

  “The palace.”

  25

  Eli

  “Broad fucking daylight.” Eli slammed a hand on the map on the table before he turned his back on it and rubbed his brow. “This is fucking ridiculous. They got in through another breach in 3, and managed to annihilate their way to 4. In broad daylight. We didn’t even know it happened until they got to 4. Where were the patrols for 3?”

  “3 is, um, fairly slow lately, Your Grace—”

  Eli didn’t even know this guy’s name. He’d seen him around, remembered his face at a recent graduation of regulators. His mom was some mistress of one of the dinosaurs who held a council position, and he was likely a bastard child.

  Uncharitable thoughts aside, Eli remarked, “I don’t give two fucks whether the beat is slow or so busy you couldn’t stick your dick in a drainage pipe without someone seeing. Your paid position is to protect the people of Sector 14, regardless of what beat you draw. I am disgusted with you.”

  The other three men from Beat 3’s patrol looked positively contrite. Bastard Child, however, sneered. “No one was even home in 3. They were having some super-secret meeting and practicing unregulated magick in another beat.”

  “I don’t care if they were burning bridges and singing Kumba-fucking-ya. Your job as regency-appointed regulators is to protect the sector, and you failed. You will report back to the training academy Monday morning. Obviously, you didn’t absorb enough the first time.”

  The guy opened his mouth to argue, and Eli held up a hand.

  “If you want to continue receiving a paycheck from the regency, you will shut your mouth and leave this room now.”

  A tomb-like silence followed their departure from the war room.

  Coyle cleared his throat. “Well. Clusterfuck of a morning, eh?”

  Eli turned a thunderous stare on his general. “Don’t start with me, old man.”

  Coyle hid a smile. “Whatever you say, son.”

  Eli lugged his assault rifle onto his front and buckled it into the holster. “The breach is contained?”

  “Yes, sir,” a man answered.

  “We have men handling the scene?”

  Coyle nodded. “Of course.”

  “Then we need to go. We’re running short on time and resources. Meet me in the courtyard in fifteen minutes. It’s time we trek into the wilderness.”

  “WHAT THE FUCK ELSE CAN go wrong?” Eli wondered out loud as he left his men behind with Turner at his side.

  Turner worked at tightening the buckle on his sword sheath as they walked and laughed. “Anytime you say something like that, something else will go wrong.”

  “Walls are falling. Mass death. Rivers running red with blood…” Eli tugged on the uncomfortable sheath of bullets around his torso. There wasn’t much cause for guns inside the sector, but outside, it might be the line between life and death. “It’s like the god damned apocalypse.”

  The two men split ways at the regent’s door—Turner excusing himself to the courtyard to await his orders.

  Behind the closed door, Eli found Noelle asleep in the bed beside his father, and his father wide-awake, rheumy gaze on the door as if he’d known his son was coming.

  “More trouble,” he remarked.

  “Of course. You’re dying. What did you expect?” Eli elected to remain standing, too stupidly afraid to sit and relinquish any semblance of power over the invalid.

  The regent glared at him, as best he could with only half a working face. “I’m disgusted with you.”

  “And I, you, Father,” Eli replied. No small part of him wished to wrench his rifle free and make meat of the regent’s face—hasten the impending death so they could try to make a go of it without his dark influence.

  “I don’t know where I went wrong.”

  Eli glanced at his mother. She seemed so serene in her nap, lost in dreams where nothing was destroyed, and life remained the same as it had been for years. He harbored anger towards her, even though he shouldn’t. His anger should have been thoroughly angled toward the sad sack of skin and bones that had once ruled the sector with black hands.

  “You went wrong when you ventured down a path good men avoid,” Eli said smoothly. He hurried on before the man could reply. “There’s been contamination in the water. Blood, it seems. We’re sending a team beyond the wall. I’m leading.”

  “Well, leading is the only thing you do well,” the regent snarled.

  Eli unholstered his gun and leveled it on his father with a calm, cool contentment. The movement was fast—abnormally fast, praised back during training for his swift execution. The barrel of the gun pointed at the regent before the man could blink.

  Eli rested his finger on the trigger. A week ago, he thought, he wouldn’t have been able to do this. A week ago, his fear of the regent ran deeper than the ocean that crashed along the shores of Sector 14. Now? Now, it would take nothing but one more sneer for Eli to depress that trigger and unload a dozen bullets into the piece of shit dying in the bed before him.

  But that was the rub. The regent was dying, lost to a wasting disease that came with age and misuse of magick. He’d die sooner rather than later—maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, but the end was coming. A swift execution at Eli’s hands would simply mean more responsibility on Eli’s shoulders, sooner than he could anticipate and prepare for.

  No. Best to let time and disease waste the man, so that when the right time came, Eli could take over. Could find a way to keep Sector 14 safe.

  “When you die, we will rejoice and dance upon your bones,” Eli said, tone even, barrel still pointed at the man he had once called Father.

  “Not before the ravagers dance upon yours.”

  Eli lowered his gun and laughed. “Have a swift journey to hell, Father. Say hello to the devil for me.”

  Before the demon could say anymore, Eli left the room.

  HE WAS IN THE MIRRORED hallway of the grand foyer when a blast of powerful magick slammed into his gut.

  He recognized the magick. How could he not, having ripped it from her hands during the breach only three nights before? Not to mention last night, when he had joined so completely with Dajia Bray, he couldn’t tell where he ended or she began.

  Eli grunted and grabbed his gut. The metaphysical punch knocked the sense from him, scrambling his organs. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve a magickal assault, but there was little in him prepared to argue his innocence. He was a product of the regency, after all.

  Dajia waited for him in the courtyard, bathed in sunshine so vibrant, she could have been an angel. Two regulators, unmasked and wearing semi-amused grins, waited on either side of her. Eli modified his original angel idea to include “angel of death.” Dajia was clearly not as amused as his men. Behind her, another young witch with blonde hair hid a smile behind her hand.

  The dozen men and women expecting to go into the wastelands with him waited patiently in the yard. They watched the skinny witch in fascination. Dajia was all elbows and satin black hair, her wand sparking like a failing electrical outlet in her hand.

  Eli paused in front of her, wary of the sass on her pretty face and the violence in her wand.

  “There’s a warrant for my arrest,” she said calmly. “Did you know?

  Eli processed this nugget of gold. “No. I’ve been a little busy. Is this true?” he addressed the men on either side of her. He found himself not quite so concerned about his own irritation towards them, so much as he was concerned for their safety and well-being under Dajia’s ire. His men may have been armed and bigger than Dajia, but Eli had no doubt who had the upper hand.

  Kwan nodded, oblivious to Eli�
�s internal musings. “Yes, sir. She and twelve others were caught illegally conducting unRecorded magick in Beat 4.”

  Eli lifted an eyebrow. “In Beat 4? You mean, during the breach when we could have used a few extra hands anyway? The breach that killed a quarter of our population in as many minutes?”

  Kwan had no response to this.

  “All of my friends are locked up,” Dajia said irritably. “You wanna do something about that?”

  Eli fought an urge to smile. He wanted to gather her in his arms and tell her how perfect she was. He glanced at the man on her right. “Boyle. Release the imprisoned to Miss Bray’s custody. We have bigger problems in Sector 14 than unRecorded use of magick.” He grinned at her. “I certainly didn’t sign a warrant.”

  As Boyle disappeared to the palace to carry word to release the prisoners, Dajia gestured to the group of stoic regulators behind him and asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Recon,” Eli replied, settling his own face into a similar stoic-acceptance.

  Dajia stared at him for a beat. She twiddled her fingers and flexed her fists, as if registering an uncomfortable sensation in her hands. “Recon… where?”

  Eli didn’t respond. What could he tell her? That he thought they were on a suicide mission? That he wasn’t one hundred percent sure saving the fresh water supply was worth a baker’s dozen of his regulators’ lives? His gaze shifted to the wall behind the palace.

  “No.” Dajia gasped the word. “Please tell me you’re joking. Outside the dome?”

  “We’re dealing with a state of emergency,” Eli said smoothly.