Of Shadow Born (17 page)

"Upstairs," Kade prompted, touching his fingers to the small of her back again. He carried her other suitcase in the opposite hand. He guided her to the second floor and farther down the hall, directing her to another unmarked door.

There was no number posted, no welcome mat waiting outside as there were in front of other apartments across the way. It might have been a vacancy, except Kade produced a key.

"Be careful when you get inside," he warned as he turned the key in the lock. "It'll take a second for your eyes to adjust. I'll be right behind you. Don't worry."

"I don't until someone tells me not to," Melanie pointed out, voice wry
to her own ears. She took a deep breath as Kade nudged the door open, steeling herself for the worst as she crossed the threshold.

Nothing attacked her. Nothing growled or barked or bit. The air felt cool where it touched her skin, but that didn't count as out of the ordinary. There was no telling how long it had been since he'd been home. With no bodies or appliances running, any San Francisco apartment could turn uncomfortably cool, fast.

The fact that the room beyond the door was dark likewise didn't strike her as odd. Kade had warned her and it only made sense that the lights would be off and furniture hard to make out compared to the light in the hall. Only when Kade closed the door behind them and the shadows deepened did Melanie hesitate at all.

"Is there a light switch somewhere?" she asked as the first finger of dread crept up her spine.

"There's a lamp." She felt him brush past her, heard the snap of something clicking, then squinted against the flare of brightness.

It was almost better with the lights off. The apartment, if it could even be called that, was nearly barren. There were a few pieces of furniture, but not enough to fill the sprawling space. She'd been right in her estimate of the building itself, judging by these rooms. It must have once been a warehouse and been divided up by someone with an entrepreneurial mind.

The walls and floors had been resurfaced and painted dark. The support structures that held up the floor above had been hidden inside columns of a matching shade. There was a couch and a pair of mismatched chairs, a low table and a few more lamps around the room that didn't match the one Kade had turned on.

No walls divided the kitchen from the living room. There were no bookshelves and no stereo, no television she could see. There were only two visible windows and those had been covered with dark, heavy drapes. "No wonder you wanted to stay with me," she murmured before she could stop herself. "What do you
do
here? Other than eat."

Kade chuckled and came back to her. "I have a bedroom. I sleep," he said. "Sometimes I read. Mostly, I practice."

She twisted to look over her shoulder at him. "Practice what?"

He shrugged. "Whatever I need. The shadows make it easy to concentrate on our powers. There's no better place for you to learn how to control them than here. With me."

"Our powers." The shiver that swept over her came on too suddenly to fight. She leaned against him and he made room. "That still doesn't make sense to me."

"It will," he promised. "Give it time."

Time she might not have if the other side had its way. She nodded nonetheless. "I will," she told him, "but if I'm staying, we've got to talk about your color scheme. Gray doesn't always go with gray."

He laughed. "
As long as you're staying, you can decorate it any way you like. Make yourself comfortable and welcome to your new home."

~

She slept like a child, boneless and unconcerned. One arm stretched across the bed, palm up, the fingers curled. No doubt she'd flung it out in the midst of a dream, or used it to help turn herself as she found a new position and drifted deep into blissful oblivion. The slight curve of her lips proved her rest peaceful. It seemed almost a shame.

A shame to disturb her and wake her up. He sat beside her, his slowly solidifying weight hardly tilting the bed. He ghosted his hand along that arm, following skin toward the vulnerable crook of her elbow. Tracing higher along her bicep, close enough to feel sleepy warmth and yet not touch. Not quite.

He could lose himself in the peaks and valleys of her body. Graze a breast with the back of his knuckles and watch the nipple tighten beneath her shirt. Skim his hand up the inside of her thigh toward the dark thatch between her legs. She would open to him. She would sigh and twist and spread herself, offer him the pleasures they'd shared the night before.

She would cry out into his kiss and he would savor the taste of ecstasy, delv
ing into her over and over until he'd spent and sated himself. Then he'd leave her as he had before, with nothing but the vaguest memory. He could come to her for a thousand nights and each one would surprise her, thrill her, make her beg for more...

If he had all the time in the world, he could cherish her. For now, he had other plans.

He brushed the pad of his thumb against her lips. They moved beneath his touch and Noura wet them, the pink of her tongue still startling against the dusky rose of supple skin. Her lashes fluttered and he felt himself smile. Her eyebrows tugged together and she roused toward waking. When her eyes opened, she focused slowly.

Then
smiled, a languid shift of expression. The nightshirt slid up her stomach as she stretched, revealing tempting skin, the fabric draping breasts that made his palms itch with need. It would be so easy to steal an hour in her arms.

Then the frown returned,
puzzlement carving deep lines on Noura's forehead. "Wait," she murmured, pushing up on her elbows. "You weren't here with me—"

He clapped a hand against her mouth, muffling her scream. He held on, fingers pressing hard enough to still her
but not bruise. The spell was broken. A sigh escaped him as he leaned in close and brushed his mouth against her ear.

"I need you," he whispered. "Oh so very badly. You and only you, Noura. No one else will do."

She tried to fight him. She put up a valiant effort as his body melted into nothing and he buried his essence in the cradle of her mind.

Chapter Fifteen

"I can't feel my legs."

"Then you're not doing it right."

Melanie's sigh of frustration echoed through the room. "You keep saying that and I keep trying, but that doesn't mean I'm going to magically know what to do."

"I've told you," Kade countered. "Close your eyes, remember to breathe, reach for the shadows."

"Which is making my legs go numb!" She held up a hand before he could argue again. "I think I'm done. We've been at this all day."

"It's only been a few hours. You can't just give up."

"And I can't run a marathon just because I've got tennis shoes. I'm done," she insisted again and moved across the room. She paced to the couch and
fell onto it with a groan, her eyes drifting shut. "My back is happier already."

Kade
exhaled sharply. "So if we're not training, what are we going to do?" He felt certain he could sit in silence longer than she could stand.

Her shoulders rose and fell. "You could talk to me."

He bit back a
n oath and headed toward her. She never seemed to run out of questions. He understood how this might all seem overwhelming, but training was more important than an endless Q and A. Talking wouldn't save her or keep Penumbra's men from attacking. He claimed the opposite end of the couch. "I don't know what else you expect me to say."

"Talk about the weather. Share your hobbies." Though she kept her tone light, he could all but taste irritation in her words. "Explain what the tablet meant by finding a child who's a sage."

Kade dug his fingers into the corners of his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. It helped ease the pressure of his mounting headache. "You couldn't ask an easy question?"

He
caught the mischievous shift of her expression when he opened his eyes again. "When you go easy on me, I'll return the favor."

She had him and she knew it. Kade
ground his teeth and ducked his head. "I tell you a story and you stop fighting me?"

Melanie nodded solemnly and thrust out a hand to shake. "Cross my heart."

He folded his fingers around hers and shook firmly. "Deal. And I'll hold you to it."

"Somehow I'm not surprised." She
took the agreement as an invitation to shift closer on the couch and drew her legs up beneath her, leaning against his side in what had become habit. She twisted her fingers into the shirt wrinkles at his waist. "So?"

"So." Kade exhaled. He had no need to embellish the words. They were strange enough on their own. "The story goes that the night we were created, when our families were cursed to the shadow and the pharaoh
was killed, there was a storm the likes of which Egypt had never seen. Some places got a downpour, others were blasted by sand, but the one thing that stayed the same was the wind.

"It howled, they said, like it carried the pain of the world. It couldn't be ignored or blotted out by covering your ears or shouting over it. No music drowned it, no kind of noise could mute the sound. In some villages, the very old died of fright when they heard it. Babies wailed and children wept.

"Except one girl." Kade shook his head. He'd never liked this story. It made the hair on his arms stand on end, no matter how old it was. Whether or not it was true. "She wasn't afraid. Instead of hiding, she went looking for the source of the sound. She knew, somehow, that it wasn't natural. She wandered from her family and through the empty streets until she reached the pharaoh's home.

"What she saw, no one can say. They found her there in the morning, on her hands and knees, eyes fixed on the boy's body. They couldn't ask for answers, because she wouldn't speak. She moved and ate, but she didn't sleep and
had never learned how to write."

Melanie shifted against him. "So why does that make her a sage? It sounds to me like you're talking about a traumatized child. If she saw her king murdered, it's not surprising that she didn't s
peak."

"But she did," Kade told her. "When there was something to say. She started by predicting an early flood. Then she would warn of invasions or droughts or disease. She knew things the wisest men in Egypt couldn't foresee. More than that, she never slept again or aged at all."

Melanie studied him a long while in silence, her eyebrows drawn together, before she broke it with a laugh. "That's impossible."

"As impossible as walking through the shadows," he agreed.

So much for her amusement. Her laughter died and she hugged herself, leaning against him less now. "So what happened to her? This impossible child."

"She moved from place to place
, family to family. They took responsibility for her in turn. Protected her and treated her like one of their own."

"Then someone has her now
," Melanie guessed.

Kade smiled a little. "So goes the theory."

"Theory." Her eyebrows knitted again. "You don't know?"

He shook his head. "I've never seen her. For all I know, she's just a myth. The tablet seems to think she's real
..."

"But after all this time," she picked up where he
’d left off. "Kade, what if she isn't? What if something's happened to her? What about the prophecy?"

"Garamendi would have said something." He thought. He hoped.
True, given his self-imposed leave of absence, he'd been out of the loop. He still felt sure if something that major had changed, one of the team — Sylvie, or Farris, if not the boss himself — would have mentioned it. No reason to keep it from him, anyway. "If something's changed, we'll work around it. People disappear all the time. There are always other ways."

She fell silent again, words nearly visible on her lips, though she held them back. She frowned at his chest as though she might read encouragement written on his shirt. When her gaze lifted to his again, uncertainty darkened her eyes. "Who was it? Can I ask without offending?"

Kade frowned. "Who was what?"

"The one who disappeared?" She
studied him, watching for something he couldn't guard against. "For you, I mean. Who did you lose?"

"What does that have to do with the sage's story?"

"Nothing, directly." She kept studying him. "You just looked so sad telling it. About her being there at the death of the pharaoh. Like you knew how she must have felt." She paused a moment, maybe deciding whether she should speak again, then sat up straighter and took a breath.

He knew that posture. She would charge ahead with the thought behind her teeth and damn the consequences. "You told me her story. What about the rest of yours?"

Half a dozen answers sprang to mind. Misdirection, half-truths and flat-out lies would be easy to tell. Bound together though they might be, his failures were his to live with and she definitely didn't need to know.

He'd been telling himself that since he'd met her. Before Melanie, he
’d convinced himself that he didn't need to share the burden of his guilt. When he'd stayed away and on his own, it made sense. He hadn't had a choice. Now, with her watching him so intently, waiting for an answer, he doubted the wisdom of the thought. Grief shared was grief lessened, wasn't that how the saying went?

But she needed him to be strong for her, to be the protector he claimed to be. She couldn't know all the details if he wanted her to feel safe and trust in him enough that she'd keep practicing. If she knew how he'd let down his last team, despite what they'd meant to him, how could she believe he'd do all he could for her sake?

He couldn't look at her, whether he should or not. He tilted his head until his neck cracked, then squared his shoulders. Confessing didn't come easy. He curled his fingers against his legs and stared hard at the wall across the room. She wasn't the sort to just let this go.

If he somehow managed to talk his way around it now, she'd just ask again tomorrow or the next day. She'd keep after him until she got her answers. She'd be distracted, digging for truths that would come out eventually. She was his echo. One way or another, Kade's past would get back to her. Maybe it was better that he get it out of the way.

"My dad," he answered finally. "Him and my brother."

"At the same time?" She touched his arm. Her fingers felt cool against his skin but the tremble had disappeared. "I'm sorry."

"So am I," he murmured. The words tasted wry. "We got ambushed bringing supplies to a safe house. They didn't want to travel together. I told them numbers would keep us safe." And he'd been wrong.

It should have been an easy delivery. They carried food and bottled water. They donated clothing and toys to be spread out between locations. It was a harmless run, no danger expected. Everyone should have made it home in one piece.

He could still feel the memory of warning that tingled up his spine in the seconds before their attackers faded into sight. Small hairs stood up at the back of his neck as he relieved the sense of gathering power, like a deeply inhaled breath that sucked away the air around him. He closed his eyes when the crack of magic echoed through his mind. It didn't keep him from seeing their bodies fall again.

Melanie shook his shoulder. An urgent note sharpened her voice. "Kade? Wherever you went, I need you to come back now. Please? I really need you. We've got company."

He'd begun to hate those words. "Company" never meant the pleasant sort of visit he'd expect from a friend. It was a threat and a warning of impending danger. Kade's eyes snapped open, his senses sharpening to alert.

She'd gotten impossibly close, her body pressed to his
, thigh to shoulder. Her fingers tightened on his arm and loosened like a kneading cat, but there was nothing contented about her body language.

"I can feel it," she whispered. "I can't see them, but I feel them coming.
Promise me you'll teach me how to control that. Please?"

"Train you out of knowing when you're in trouble?" Kade rose smoothly to his feet. "Not a chance. Stay there," he added, pointing back toward her and the couch as he heard her move to follow him. "I'm just going to look around."

"You're not leaving." Only the panic that tinged her words kept them from being a command. Despite himself, Kade smiled.

"Not going anywhere," he promised. "Just checking the wards." He could do that from where he stood. It just took a moment's concentration and he could stretch his awareness out like a net that spanned to all the corners of the apartment at once. If he pictured it in his mind, he could see the glowing knots that allowed him and his allies
to pass. He could see the strains where enemies had tried to force past his protection.

Or where the lines had snapped completely.

Malice looked like sanguine smoke and made his throat feel thick with the same. He cleared it, focusing on the corner where the wards had been obliterated and something — some
one
— pressed through.

It took a determination the merely
curious didn't have to cross wards the likes of those set up around Kade's home. When he'd first been training his powers, his father had forced him to find ways through the best he could build. Over and over again against stronger barriers. There might come a day, his father warned, when he would have to dare.

Though the lines and symbols of a ward were invisible to the naked eye, breaking through them felt like having
a white-hot brand laid against his skin. The pain sank deep and echoed down into the bone. More than one person had passed out trying to enter where they were unwelcome. Whatever lay on the other side had to be worth the suffering.

"Remember what we practiced," he told Melanie. "If things get bad here, you can use it to get out. Go sideways and run. Find a safe place and step out. One of us will find you."

"I'm not leaving you." She rose and came to join him, despite his command. She stole his attention. Her gaze, when he met it, was steady and fierce. "I may not want to be in the middle of this, but I'm here and it doesn't look like there's an easier way out. So, sorry, but you're stuck with me."

Kade turned to face her completely, his
faint smile returning. "I want to be stuck with you," he promised, "but I want you safe as well. Which means, if an opportunity to run comes, do it. I'll find you."

She might have protested again, but the wards shattered in that moment. Kade felt them give like a rope unraveling. Melanie gasped at the same time and tilted sharply toward him, her hand pressed against her stomach again.

"It's here." It, because he had no way of knowing what had come through. Man or beast, male or female, none of that mattered. He knew it came on the attack and he would fight.

Spotting
the figure wasn't hard. Though it gave off no light and probably not much heat, Kade still felt it like a flame blazing in a deep corner of the room. It made no sound as it wandered out of darkness, head down and heavy, arms hanging at its sides. Human, then, or at least shaped like a person. That came as some relief. Men could use magics against them, but at least they would escape another attack with claws and beaks.