Shadow Blade (29 page)

“I should be capable of dressing myself.” She tried dredging up a smile in his general direction. “If I can’t, that would be a good argument for not going anywhere anytime soon, wouldn’t it?”

Khefar left her, softly closing the door behind him before leaning heavily against it once outside the room. His heart ached for her. He couldn’t be angry with her, not when she’d just been emotionally devastated. All he could do was promise to be there for her. He knew what it meant to have innocent blood staining one’s hands. He also knew it never truly faded.

Kira was at her breaking point. He’d seen it in the slump of her shoulders, the tremor in her fingers. He couldn’t press her about going off alone, question her about the dagger she’d had Wynne create—no doubt a replica of his. Those things could wait. What mattered now, more than anything, was making sure she stayed away from the shadows that threatened to consume her.

“Nansee.”

The demigod materialized beside him. “Yes?”

“I need you to spin up a block around us and Kira’s room.
Quickly.”

Thankfully the spider god didn’t ply him with questions. Instead, he placed his palms flat against the door. Khefar felt the rush of power as it swept through him and down the hall. He pressed his forehead against the door and waited.

The first short shriek still caught him like the lightning-quick slam of a rifle shot. It was followed by another pain-filled wail, then another.
Then more, blending into one long scream of agony.

His hands itched with the urge to open the door, to go to the woman breaking apart on the other side. She needed to excise the grief and she wouldn’t if he went to her side. If she didn’t get it out, the agony would fester and infect her entire being. That didn’t mean he couldn’t share it with her, endure it with her, even with a door between them.

Something stirred deep inside him, an emotion he’d thought long buried and gone.
Revenge—the emotion that had consigned him to this eternity of rescue and redemption.
Like a faltering ember it searched for fuel, found it in his growing regard for this young Shadowchaser, and began to burn.

Khefar vowed silently to himself that he would bring the Fallen to justice and save Kira—even if that meant saving her from herself. And if he enjoyed himself in the process, so be it.

Chapter 24

K
ira leaned against the rear right passenger door of Khefar’s Charger, trying desperately not to think or feel. Both options hurt like hell and she’d had enough pain to last a lifetime.
Several lifetimes.

She’d hurt her friends. She’d killed innocent bystanders. It didn’t matter that she’d been drugged and lost control. It didn’t matter to her and it certainly wouldn’t matter to Gilead. She’d have to atone somehow.
Later.
Right now, she had to find Enig. Then she’d have to destroy him.

“Kira.”

She glanced up to see that Khefar had turned to face her from the front passenger seat. He said her name again, as if he’d been calling her for a while.
“Yeah?”

“Do you want to stop for anything before you go home?”

“Uh-huh.” She straightened, ignoring the pounding of her heart and the painful twinges shooting through her muscles. “I want to go back to where you found me. Not the cemetery, but the old factory where the homeless people were.”

He didn’t try to argue or overrule her, though Anansi did throw a questioning look their way. Khefar ignored him, staring at her with his soul-dark eyes. He just asked one question. “Are you certain?”

“Not even a little, but I gotta do it. My blade’s out there. I need to find it. A Shadowchaser without her
Lightblade .
 . . ” She shook her head. “Besides, I need to see the place where
I .
 . . where I was.”

“All right.”
He turned back around. For a stupid, fleeting, weak moment, she wished he sat beside her so she could reach over and thread her fingers through his. Even with her gloves on, just the connection would be enough. Just a touch, so she’d know she was still human. The hunger of it gnawed at her insides.

She thought she’d conquered it, the skin hunger. More than a decade’s worth of Gilead training. Six years of living with the guilt of Nico’s death.
Then Bernie’s death, Zoo’s injury.
Attacking Khefar.
Innocents dying.
She shouldn’t want to touch anyone again, shouldn’t want to take off her gloves ever again. But she wanted to touch the Nubian.

“We’re here.”

Lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed the car had stopped.

Shoving aside her inconvenient neediness, she opened the door and pushed herself out before he could come to help her. Anansi wisely stayed in the car.

Yellow police tape ringed what was left of the old factory. A burnt smell still charred the fall air. She turned slightly to get her bearings.
Oakland
Cemetery
lay a few blocks to the east,
Grady
Hospital
just to the north. Her actions had sent people to both places.

“Remember anything?”

Khefar had an uncanny ability to pull her back before her thoughts spiraled down. Then again, he’d been through this before. She’d killed ten people. He’d killed several thousand. Surely, she thought, he knew the emotion that strained her insides, fighting for a way out.
Had experienced the strangling grief that welled inside her.
After four millennia, did he still feel the weight of their souls, despite the lives he’d saved in atonement?

Did it matter? He’d had four thousand years to come to terms with what he’d done. She wouldn’t even have a tenth of that.

“Kira?”

She shook her head. “I thought I’d be able to sense my blade, but it’s not here. Which means it was at the other warehouse near the airport and it’s probably long gone.”

“Hopefully that means the police didn’t confiscate it as evidence.”

“The police would be the least of my worries.” If Sanchez had recovered her
gear .
 . . well, the phrase “public hanging” was too mild for what Sanchez would plan for her.

She concentrated on the scene, trying not to think of how vulnerable and off-balance she felt without her Lightblade. “You said you guys tracked me. Did I ping you from here or somewhere else?”

“No, it jumped from a location a little south of here, faster than you could have made it by car and not as steady as your path to the cemetery.”

“The cemetery.”
Her mind instantly went to Zoo and Wynne. Her friends had risked their lives to save her and she’d returned the favor by trying to kill one of them. “I attacked Zoo,” she said then. “He was trying to help me, trying to talk me down, and I zapped him.”

“It was a stress-filled moment. You didn’t single him out. Anansi and I took a couple of hits too.”

That didn’t reassure her. “So I attacked you, one of my best friends, and a demigod.” She closed her eyes. “I must have been seriously fucked-up.”

“You were drugged and the Veil was torn from you. You didn’t even know your own name.”

Memories slithered through her mind’s eye, snakes and wraiths. “I attacked you. I tried to take your

dagger
.”

“I think you were under a compulsion to take it,” he corrected her. “As for the attack, it was the easiest way to disarm you. See?” He pulled at his collar, exposing the unmarred skin at his shoulder. “I sat in the sun and healed just fine.”

“You kept me from hurting Zoo further, didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “I’m immortal; he isn’t.”

So she’d attacked him. She would have killed him too, or at least tried. And Wynne—

“Thank you.
For sacrificing yourself.”

He nodded, but there was nothing he could say. You’re welcome? No problem? Neither of those
were
true. The truth was
,
the Chaos magic had done something to her.
Changed her.
She had to pray that the damage wasn’t permanent.

“What good does it do you to force these memories? None of us blames you, Kira.”

Her shoulders bunched as she looked away. “You blame me for going off on my own.”

“That’s different. Regardless of what happened after, I would still be upset at you going off alone.”

“Because I jeopardized your afterlife by making it impossible for you to protect me?”

He touched her shoulder, turned her around.
“No, because we’re a team.
That means we decide and act together.”

She wanted to argue that she was already part of a team. Not Sanchez and Gilead, but Wynne and Zoo. But the only reason their team worked was because she hadn’t allowed Wynne or Zoo to override any of her decisions. She was the Shadowchaser; they weren’t.

“Does it matter that I was trying to protect you?”

“Yes, it matters a lot.” His expression lightened. “I don’t think I can recall the last time someone acted out of concern for me. Thank you.”

“You are welcome.” She dipped her head. “That helps. But I think Wynne and Zoo will still blame me for a while.”

“They don’t blame you; you know that.”

“Does it matter?”

“No. Not at the beginning.”

She stuttered out a sigh, feeling scraped raw and totally out of her element. “I met them two years ago. They had a scrying mirror that had a nasty habit of feeding on souls and resisting their efforts to break it. I tracked it down, evicted the spirit inhabiting it, and confiscated the mirror. We’ve been friends ever since.”

She turned away from the charred ruins of the warehouse. “They wanted to help me and I refused at first. Their friendship was more important, how normal they were. But they’ve got mad skills, you know? I started relying on them for my gear, more than the Commission, and they came through every time. I thought they were adrenaline junkies or wanted some kind of fix for leaving their military life behind. Then I thought they were just crazy, especially when they stuck it out with me. But they’re not. They’re the bravest people I’ve ever met. They’re human and
so .
 . . so breakable. I go into danger all the time, but I’ve got my extrasense to protect me. What do they have?
Kevlar and themselves.
Their stupid, fragile selves.
They could have been killed and I would have even more blood on my hands.”

Khefar moved closer to her. “You know I know what you suffer. You think the blood will stain your hands forever.”

She looked up at him. He did know. “You came through it. How did you do that?”

“Badly.
I had to die to come through my anger and guilt. Even then I was basically a bastard for a century or two.”

She felt a thin smile crease her lips. “Somehow I don’t think I’ll have the luxury of several centuries to balance my scales.”

“Then don’t think about next year, next month, or even tomorrow. Think about getting through the next minute, then the next one after that. You’ll be surprised to discover that minutes become days and days become months and the hollowness becomes easier to breathe through.”

He did touch her then, a hand on her forearm. “You’re stronger than you know, Kira. I would rather you not walk the path that I did or learn your lessons as I learned mine. But however you learn them, I’ll walk with you.”

She had to go up against Enig again. The consequences of not facing him were far worse than confronting him and failing to stop him. Yet the thought of going against him on her own filled her with a silent terror. She wouldn’t ever ask Wynne and Zoo to back her on any missions again. But if Khefar wanted to help her, she would not refuse. “Thank you. Thank you for that.”

“Come on.” He guided her to the car. “We both need to refresh and regroup. Then we’ll come up with a plan to stop this Avatar and get your blade back.”

They made it back to her home in a much lighter silence than when they’d left Wynne and Zoo’s. Still, two days had been lost. The only real bright spot Kira could identify in the gloomy scenario was that Enig didn’t have the dagger.

Anansi slowed the car as they entered her neighborhood. She felt the Nubian tense before she noted the stiffness of his body, and she peered out the window to see what had caused the reaction. The distinctive grill of the Rolls-Royce Phantom gleamed in the sunlight in sharp contrast to the diamond black paint and tinted windows. She knew of only one person so ostentatious, but couldn’t believe he’d endanger his neutral reputation by visiting her.

“I’m betting you don’t see a car like that in this neck of the woods often,” Khefar noted.
“Friend or foe?”

“Depends on which way the wind blows.” She released her seat belt. “But I need to talk to him. Something made Demoz leave his club. I better find out what it is.”

She got out of Khefar’s Charger, trying to move as if she hadn’t been put physically and emotionally through the wringer. It was a challenge since most of her energy went to keeping her shields in place.

The woman she’d seen in the club a few days ago, the Light-infused one who had served them in Demoz’s office, stood by the driver’s side passenger door. The afternoon sunlight burnished her blue-white glow, making her appear almost like a Normal. For an inexplicable reason she reminded Kira of those cat-tailed servant girls in a bunch of Japanese anime, a shy and solicitous demeanor concealing the skills and temperament of an assassin.

The rear window rolled down enough for her to just make out the psychic vampire’s bulk, a large shadow tucked in among other shadows. She wondered just how old he was. It was usually the older ones who had a thing against sunlight. Most of the younger vamps had their work-arounds, including mobile spray-on sunblock units.

She spackled on the sarcasm.
“Demoz, I would invite you
in .
 . . well, no, I wouldn’t. What brings you here?”

“You.
I had to see with my own eyes that you were still alive.”