Dark Flight (The Shadow Slayers) (14 page)

Not more than a foot away from the other black-wing, Julian hit something solid going full speed, and he hit it so hard, his mouth and nose left a bloody print on the clear surface. Julian slid to the ground and wrapped his hands around his bruised and broken ribs. “You bastard. Take down your little bubble of a shield, and fight me like a man.”

Mazeki laughed and his braid uncoiled, slithering over his shoulder and standing at attention as if to get a better view. “That will be lesson number one for you, my boy. I am not a man. I do not fight like one.”

The black-wing lifted both hands and clapped them together, and Julian felt the crushing impact on both sides of his body. The pain in his ears was so horrific, he was sure he’d ruptured both eardrums.

For a moment, all he could do was sit and try to catch his breath. He willed his body to heal faster, but he doubted it would be fast enough. As his bloody mouth and nose began shifting and mending, Mazeki applauded.

“Yes! Heal yourself. Can a man do that? But still…” He rubbed his hands together, and Julian had the awful feeling he was in for another pummeling. “You might find it a better use of your energy to avoid the injury in the first place.”

This time, when Mazeki drew his hands back and clapped them together, Julian threw up his own shield, a thin bubble reminiscent of the one he’d first learned to conjure.

Mazeki’s power shook the shield on all sides, but Julian remained inside, untouched. “Go to hell,” Julian said. “You brought me here under the guise of teaching me, but I see what you really want. You want me out of the way so Kara is left with nothing but silver-wing protectors.”

Mazeki walked closer and reached out to run a finger along the clear outline of Julian’s shield. He pulled his hand back and sniffed, looking somewhat repulsed. “No. This will not do. Is that the best shield you can conjure?”

What was he up to, pretending that he cared for anything beyond making Kara his? Julian didn’t bother to answer. Then a moment later, Mazeki raised both hands and laid them flat against the shield.

“This is what’s going to happen. I am going to take your miserably weak shield down, and I’m going to slap your smug little face. Every slap I’m able to deliver will count as one session with Kara where I’m able to take her as roughly as I like—and I do like rough. Does that sound like fun? And every time you stop me, I’ll take her gently.” He said the word
gently
as though it was the most mundane thing in this realm.

Julian met his eyes and roared so powerfully, it blew Mazeki’s braided hair off his shoulder. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself? That will be the only action you see if I have anything to say about it—”

But before he could even finish his statement, his shield winked out of existence and Mazeki’s hand darted out and smacked the side of Julian’s cheek hard enough to send his entire body flying to the other side of the room.

“Oh, no. What happened to your shield?” Mazeki mocked. Then he rubbed his hands together, and drew them apart again. “I’m being sporting, you know. Not only will another black-wing not give you a warning, he needn’t make a gesture to have his power obey his command.”

This time, Julian threw his shield out before Mazeki even clapped his hands together, and sure enough, energy rocketed into the clear barrier, strong enough that it sounded like an earthquake. It didn’t quickly dissipate, though, as the last burst had done, it seemed to quiver around the transparent boundary, seeking a way in. Julian could feel it pushing at the bounds of his will.

Mazeki stepped toward him again, and when he reached for the shield, Julian knew he was done for. Just as the other black-wing struck out with his hand, Julian flashed. He materialized instantly at the far end of the room with his dark wings extended and the taste of blood in his mouth.

“Well done, my boy. Sometimes fleeing like a coward is the best decision you can make. Let’s play another game… You see this?” He raised a staff and it glowed with brilliant blue light. “Every time I touch you with this, it’s going to take a year off your immortal life. At least, you’ll wish it did.” He chuckled and a split second later, he was gone.

Julian barely had time to register that Mazeki had moved before the other black-wing was upon him, thrusting the light stick into his gut. The pain that shot through his body was unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

“No,” he wailed, when the other man ground the stick into his gut, tearing through skin and entrails.

Julian flashed again, and as he winked out of existence a splash of blood spurted into the air in his wake. He held his bleeding gut, panting through clenched teeth and looking down from the ceiling where he’d ended up. The worst he’d done so far in this battle with Mazeki had been to ruin Mazeki’s robe with blood spatter. It wasn’t quite the vengeance he had planned.

“As your mentor, Julian,” Mazeki said, floating up on onyx wings to where Julian was pressed against the ceiling, “I have to point out two problems I’m seeing. First of all, unless your plan to defeat Brakken involves using you as bait, I’m not sure your strategy is working.

“Second of all, for the true and deep love of Hexa’s hairy ass, would you please tell me why you are choosing to bleed and have bits of intestine, and whatever that is, leaking from your wound? True, I was made, not born of a Shadow Rising, but you seem a bit too attached to the corporeal, my boy. You are spirit. Act like a spirit.”

This time, when Mazeki raised the glowing staff and thrust it toward Julian’s already gaping middle, Julian went misty, allowing it to sail right through.

“Yes! That’s it.” Mazeki smiled. “We must have a solid defense before we can work on your offense.”

Unable to resist, Julian darted his hand out and slapped Mazeki upside his grinning face. “Minus one for you. Now we’re even.”

The other black-wing narrowed his eyes. “Back to defensive strategies. Let’s try this…”

Before Julian knew what was happening, Mazeki’s long braid had come free of his head and was coiling around Julian’s wrists. He tried to flash, tried to go misty, but it was as though the rope anchored him to the spot.

“Take him to the mat,” Mazeki said, and when the rope yanked Julian toward the floor, Julian knew Mazeki hadn’t been talking to him.

He struggled, thrashing his hands to try to free them, but nothing worked. “Release me, you bastard!”

“Wonderful. Let’s see that tactic in action. Would you be so kind as to repeat what you just said?”

“I said, release me!” Julian bellowed.

Mazeki approached and patted Julian on the top of his head. “No. I will not. Any other persuasion you’d like to try?”

Julian responded by flashing his middle finger.

“Now back to shields…” Mazeki straightened the sleeves of his robe. “You seemed to be enjoying the slapping game—and I know I was—so let’s pick up where we left off on that one.”

“My hands are tied,” Julian protested.

“Oh.” Mazeki frowned. “Good point. It seems they are. You know, flashing is the most blessed gift, but when someone binds that ability, what are you to do?” And then he hauled back and planted his rock-hard fist into the left side of Julian’s face. “Minus one for you.”

Julian literally saw stars. Bright splotches of white bobbed in his vision, but he didn’t move or even slump. He couldn’t. He was completely anchored in place.

“Shields.”
Mazeki’s voice was a sing-song, grating sound like one might hear in a preschool room. He walked to his weapons wall and gathered three items—a club, a mace and a katana. Then he returned to where Julian was seated, his gaze running over Julian’s bound hands.

“This is fun, Julian. I really mean it. But I have a new book waiting that was just released this week. It’s the last in the series, and my servant had to stand in line for
three hours
to get me a signed copy. Would you mind if we moved this along?”

Julian was going to kill this man. He might not have the strength to do it today, but if he learned how to send Brakken to the Abyss, this bastard was next. Any man who threatened Kara didn’t deserve to exist.

“You will have three chances to improve your shields. And I’m growing bored with taking it easy on you, my boy. It’s time to show me your A-game. Ready?”

Mazeki raised the wooden club and swung. Julian flung his shield out just as the lacquered wood connected with the side of his bubble. Mazeki grimaced and put his palm flat on the clear surface. Julian clenched his teeth, fighting the sensation of his will being taken from him. He started to sweat and tremble, daring a glance at his adversary. Mazeki looked displeased, and with a grunt and a final thrust, he tore Julian’s shield out of existence and followed with an all-out assault on Julian’s head.

When Mazeki and his club were finished, Julian couldn’t even see through the blood streaming into his vision. He wasn’t sure that his skull was still completely intact. Somewhere, through all the pain, things felt loose in all the wrong places. “Enough,” he whispered through the remaining fragments of his teeth.

Mazeki dropped to one knee before Julian and sneered. “It’s not nearly enough. You are the most pathetic excuse for a Son of the Sky that I have ever laid eyes on. Are you on the surface, Julian?”

“What?” he rasped. “The surface?”

“Are you on the surface, and am I in some dream? Because I could understand being bound and beaten to a bloody pulp on the surface. After all, it is a reality outside our own. But here? You are…wretched. Pitiful. I will be doing Kara a favor, no doubt, when I show her how a true Aniliáre takes a woman. Our females do regenerate, after all.”

The sound of Mazeki’s laughter filtered through Julian’s torn eardrums and made his blood heat to molten lava. “I will kill you before you ever lay a finger on her.”

Mazeki stood and retrieved the mace. Its metal-studded head looked ominous. If the club could bash Julian’s head in, what would the spikes do? Lift away chunks of his skull? The thought made him physically ill, but he pushed it down. This wasn’t about him. This was about protecting Kara. He could do whatever it took to protect Kara.

This time, when Mazeki swung, Julian focused everything in his being on holding the shield. When his body trembled and blood oozed down his cheeks, he smiled.
I am not bound to flesh and bone. I am born of spirit.

As Mazeki beat the spiked mace into the shield, Julian attempted to relax his muscles and visualize his bones, his skin, his every cell weaving back together in perfect order. As the pain subsided, he breathed deep. And as he exhaled, he stopped breathing altogether. He was not flesh and bone needing to draw breath. He was spirit.

When Mazeki ceased pounding on the shield and put his hand to it, Julian relaxed his wrists and watched them stretch, thinning like putty when he pulled them from the tight knot of rope.

The other black-wing grunted, his hand at the transparent boundary beginning to glow blue with effort. His will cascaded over the shield, picking and pulling at the threads of Julian’s power. Julian closed his eyes, casting aside his fear of physical pain, simply
becoming
.

Strange visions hovered at the edge of his awareness. Gavin using a claw to tear through fabric and pull a drunk and bloody Aiden from the inside of a tent… Kara bending to help Julian retrieve a wrapped bar of soap from the hall… He wasn’t sure what it all meant, so he let it recede in his mind as he focused on the here and now. And when he opened his eyes again, Mazeki was almost misty everywhere but where his hand met Julian’s shield.

Smiling, Julian stood and raised his own hand, setting it over Mazeki’s. He reached out with his mind and his will, probing the other man’s power, learning to map it and understand it.

A second later, Mazeki dropped his hand from the barrier and whirled. He grasped the katana and with no warning, swung it at the base of Julian’s head. At first, when it hit the barrier, Julian thought he’d instinctively raised another shield around himself. But then he realized what he was seeing and began to laugh in earnest.

Mazeki bared his fangs and hacked at the clear wall, but it was no use. Julian had completely encased him in a perfect, round bubble.

When the older black-wing finally tired, he flung the sword to the ground. “Very nice,” he said. “Your defensive strategies seem to be improving. Now is probably a good time to mention that I was only teasing about Kara being mine. So who wants to learn how to travel to the surface?”

Chapter Eleven

Kara stirred, feeling something soft trail over her forehead. She blinked, trying to adjust her eyes, but it was darker out now than when she’d gone to bed. “Gavin?”

His smiling face and the outline of his forearm came into focus as his hand stroked her hair. He knelt beside the bed, already dressed.

“Good morning, Kara.” Staring into her eyes, he leaned in and kissed her, his lips claiming hers in a way that left no doubt that last night had really happened and that he was immensely pleased by that fact. “How did you sleep?”

Her eyelids fluttered as she processed the perfection of his kiss. “All right. How about you?”

He grinned ear to ear. “I haven’t slept so well in a hundred years.”

Kara laughed. “You know that just makes me want to ask what happened a hundred years ago, right? What was her name?”