Dark Flight (The Shadow Slayers) (3 page)

Aiden sighed. “Gavin won’t take you. He doesn’t want to get you involved.”

“What?”
Kara sputtered, then she remembered where she was and whispered feverishly, “I’ve been training for
months
. I’m helping him come up with a plan to take down Brakken. Trust me—I’m as involved as it gets.”

“That’s why I thought you’d see the reason in my taking you to see Mazeki without Gavin knowing. You get to meet the man who saved your life as a child, Julian gets to unlock the secrets to being a Son of the Sky, and Gavin gets use of his own personal black-wing. It’s a true win-win.”

Kara nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

Aiden grinned wide. “Follow me. There’s a parking structure around the corner we can use to flash.”

She thought briefly about the house key and the cellphone she had stashed in her pockets. She’d never traveled to the Shadowland with technology from the surface before. “Is this going to fry my phone?”

“No, but I wouldn’t expect to get service.” Aiden chuckled, probably thinking he was so funny, and Kara just shook her head.

Once they’d found a secluded stairwell, he opened his arms to Kara, and she knew they both hated this part. She wasn’t at ease enough with Aiden to be able to relax in his grip, and he didn’t like her enough to make it any easier on her.

When his muscled biceps wrapped across her upper arms and his hands came to her back, he said, “I should probably mention that Mazeki can be a little…odd. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. You’ll be fine.”

She got a strong hit of Aiden’s concern right before the agony of traveling to the other realm descended on her from all sides. Flashing to the Shadowland couldn’t even compare to flashing from one place to another on the surface. It was truly hell.

“Oh, shit,” she moaned, bending at the waist, panting from the feeling of her body becoming real and solid again as the pain faded away. At least she didn’t go unconscious anymore. Wait…was that a good thing?

When she was finally able to stand straight without Aiden’s support, she looked around. This part of the Shadowland was nothing like Julian’s home.

“Is this where Mazeki lives?” she asked.

“This is it. I forgot you’ve only seen the Land of Desolation. When you get closer to the kingdoms, the scenery can scramble your mind. Sometimes literally.”

There were three huge waterfalls cascading down from the top of a tall mountain. It was tropical, like Mercury Island, but instead of a lush landscape extending as far as the eye could see, the big mountain seemed to rise out of nothing and be met by nothing at the end of its sharply angled slopes.

“If I touch it, is it real?” she asked.

“Yes. You can touch things made by will in the Shadowland and they are every bit as real as on the surface. Some black-wings are even strong enough to hold the artifacts together in the earthly realm.”

“But Julian’s apartment…it looked right and
he
used it, but for me it was about as substantial as a 3-D movie.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To help Julian get mastery over his powers.”

Kara’s gaze ran over the strange mountain again. “Okay, lead the way.”

“Try to touch as little as possible.” He walked straight ahead and waded into the knee-deep water, and Kara followed. The water felt drier than a liquid should, like acetone when she saturated a cotton ball and ran it over her nails.

Aiden chose the waterfall to the far right and stepped into the thunderous deluge. The water fell over Kara’s head like pure, luminous joy washing over her spirit. Her body sparked to life, her nipples drawing tight and her core pulsing hard. She sighed and smiled, tilting her face up to catch the drops in her mouth. It was wondrous, sensuous, full of possibilities. Aiden grunted and yanked her arm.

When she stumbled into the wide mouth of a cave, Aiden grimaced and put a hand to his temple. “What happened?” she asked him. That’s when she realized, much to her shock, that although her jeans and Hoolecha Inn T-shirt had been clinging to her body when they’d trudged through the water, they were completely dry now.

“Mazeki’s wards. When you walk through them, they reflect his feelings toward his visitor. They’re very effective at keeping out unwelcome guests.” His eyes narrowed even further. “You seem a bit more welcome than I am.”

The feeling left on her skin was like a lover’s intimate caress. Maybe she could bring a swimsuit next time and sit under Mazeki’s falls for a few hours like a low-cost spa day.

When they started walking again, the first thing Kara noticed was how different this cavern was from the witch tunnels. Witches had narrower passageways into the earth, probably because of the difficulty of carving them in the first place. Mazeki made this of his will, and the cavern was as broad as the waterfall. The earth under Kara’s sandals was a fine brown powder, soft under her steps.

A single red door stood out at the far end of the cavern. Aiden knocked and stepped back. A man opened the door. His hand on the knob was almost covered by the long sleeve of a flowing brown robe. He smiled at Kara and pushed the door wider for her. The brown hair braided down his back was so long it trailed along the floor, and his skin was as rich as melted chocolate. He was handsome, but then she hadn’t met a man with the blood of the angels who wasn’t.

“Kara. At last,” he said and stepped back to allow her to pass. Aiden followed behind her, and a millisecond later, she heard the sound of him running into something. She turned to see what looked like a thick pane of glass—Aiden’s face had even made a little print where it had smacked against the clear surface.

“You wait there,” Mazeki told him.

“No, Kara belongs to
my
clan. I go where she goes,” Aiden shot back.

“She’ll be fine.” Mazeki’s gaze ran the length of her body. “Most likely.”

Then the red door slammed shut.

Chapter Three

Kara felt more than a twinge of apprehension at being alone with a strange Aniliáre. Julian was the first black-wing she’d met, and she wasn’t sure he counted. Following a safe distance behind Mazeki—as if there were such a thing—she looked around.

The place was huge, maybe as big as the mountain itself, and the walls were probably a hundred feet high. The weird thing was that the walls were covered in book-laden shelves, like one giant, cavernous library, and the living space was centered in the middle.

Mazeki walked in silence to a grouping of rugs and pillows on the floor and sat, motioning for Kara to do the same. All around there were stacks of books, even taking the place of furniture in some cases. Books under the lamp, holding it up. Books where a coffee table might be, with plates of discarded food on their surface and a half-finished glass of wine. Kara chose a pillow and plopped down to the sound of a small squeak.

“Gently, Kara. Let them warm up to you.” As Mazeki said it, a brown-and-gold-striped satin pillow wriggled out of the pile and peeked up at her.

Her eyes widened. A pillow was looking at her? What the hell? And it seemed scared. The gold fringe at the top of the medium-sized rectangle drew low, and the pillow bent, cowering.

The Shadowland was going to take some getting used to…

She extended her hand. “Come here, little guy. I won’t hurt you.”

The pillow waddled over and sniffed her, then rubbed his fringy corner on her hand. It purred and sidled closer. “Does it have a name?”

Mazeki looked bewildered. “I haven’t taken to naming my bedding.”

“Ah.” She blushed but thought it was a fair question under the circumstances.

Stripey, as she dubbed it, trailed around Kara’s arm and nuzzled into her, wedging himself firmly against her back to support her weight. When she relaxed into him, his vibrating purr felt like a form of massage against her knotted muscles. Nice.

She glanced at her host. Aiden had warned her that Mazeki was odd. Dressed in a fraying brown robe like a monk, he looked like a playboy hippie who hadn’t cut his hair since he’d taken up the cloth. His braid was so long, it coiled beside him like a snake. Hopefully, it wasn’t really a snake, but judging by the pillow softly breathing against her back, she couldn’t be too sure.

Mazeki regarded her with a smile. His eyes weren’t exactly brown. Even from a distance, his irises seemed to be made of facets of yellow topaz and earth-toned jewels. “So you are her…”

Kara fidgeted with Stripey’s fringe. “I guess I am.”

“Deanna’s daughter.”

“That’s what they tell me.” Why was this so damn awkward? “You knew her, too, or just my father?”

“Teras and I had an informal alliance, but I thought he was a fool for dallying with the first Queen of the Shadowland. How could Ailexon not destroy him for what he’d done?”

Her hand stilled. “What he’d done?”

“Fathering
you
.”

“Oh, yeah.” It was a horrible feeling knowing that her father had been sent to the Abyss because of his affair with her mother. No, Kara hadn’t been part of the decision, but ultimately, her arrival had gotten both of her parents killed—and that was something she could never reconcile or recover from. “So…you hid me on the surface when I was born?”

Mazeki raised his arm slightly, getting comfortable, and a pillow jumped to attention and quickly wedged itself under his elbow. He didn’t even say thank you. “I never touched you as an infant. Infants are foul-smelling and unreasonable. I read up on the care and feeding of them and decided that it was worth a trip to the surface to put you in the right hands.”

“Oh.”

He smiled encouragingly. “Humans are much better adapted to the caretaking of young. I had a servant deliver you to the human orphanage in San Diego that very night. And you’re welcome, my dear. I hear the weather is lovely there year-round.”

“So…you just sort of dropped me off…like in a cardboard box or something?”

His head jerked in affront. “Heavens, no. It was a basket. A lovely basket, hand-woven in the Appalachian Mountains. I got it on a vacation I took there in the fifties. They didn’t give you the basket when you moved to your first home?”

“Uh…no.”

“Those bastards. I paid ten human dollars for that basket.” He met her eyes and when she didn’t respond, he added, “That was quite a sum in the fifties.”

Looking at him now, she could totally imagine that story being true. “Still,” she said calmly, “however you organized it, that was an amazing thing you did for me and my family. I owe you—big time.”

His peculiar eyes zeroed in on her face. “You don’t owe me a thing. Your father paid me in full.”

“You did it for money?” When she shifted against Stripey, he curled tighter against her back. “I mean, that’s totally fine—I’m not judging—but I thought you and my dad were friends.”

Mazeki linked his hands over one drawn-up knee, and his worn leather sandal slipped out from under the edge of the robe. He had perfect feet, but then the Aniliáre weren’t mortal, they weren’t even made of flesh in the traditional sense. If this black-wing had warts or ingrown toenails, it would be because he’d willed them onto his feet.

“Money?” he replied. “No. What need would I have for money here?”

“Oh, of course.” She shook her head at her own stupidity. “What do you guys trade in? Gold?”

“Gold?” He laughed and spread his hands. In his palm appeared a shimmering roll of…toilet paper? He reached across the expanse of pillows and laid the roll of soft gold mesh at her feet. “Yes, here is gold, should you need any during your time in the Shadowland—corporeal creature that you are.”

Obviously, gold wasn’t a very big deal here. “So what did he give you?”

He met her eyes and she felt the same sparkle of activity along her nerve endings as she had in the waterfall. “You, Kara. He gave me
you
.”

When she shot to her feet, Stripey squeaked and dove back into the pile. “What are you talking about, he gave me to you?”

Mazeki stood and stroked his hands through the air, and Kara felt it as a pair of warm palms running soothingly over her arms. “Calmly now… I can imagine this is a shock, but I can prove to you that you are mine, if need be. As for why Teras did it, I suppose he believed that if I could keep you alive until adulthood, I could keep you alive once you’d matured and could travel to the Shadowland.”

“What? You kept me alive?” Kara frantically rubbed her upper arms until the feel of his touch dissipated. “You didn’t do jack shit. Your servant dropped me off in a designer basket, and I haven’t seen or heard from you since.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you, or are you not,
alive
?”

“Of course I’m alive. I’m talking to you.”

“Then why are you complaining about my methods?”

Kara had to focus on breathing. She was getting lightheaded. “I don’t know how it works here, but where I come from, you can’t just give people away like a door prize.”

“Why are you in such a panic? Do you doubt my ability to shield you from the chief of the fallen angels if he comes for his revenge?” He sat again and gestured to the floor. “Please sit. You’re not an infant any longer, Kara. Let’s discuss this as adults.”

Kara chose a pillow a little farther away this time and sat more slowly. When the brown and gold pillow wriggled free of the others and pointed in her direction, Kara opened her arms to it.