Shadow Touched (25 page)

 

“Can you get that thing to move?” Captain Mead shouted. “I can’t see clearly!”

Thing?
Cam thought. Ellie’s shadow in his fae-touched vision was a prismatic, glowing beauty, taut with power and strength. She was semi-transparent at present—only when intensely emotional did she gain solidity. On the road before the truck were three men, only wavering silhouettes at this distance, standing indifferent to the forward drive of tons of metal screaming toward them.

They had no light; only a ghost-like aura trailed slightly behind each, like the tail on a comet.

“Now
those
are mages,” Cam told the men.

“This the trouble you expected?”

“Yes,” he answered. So mages
were
behind the attacks on supply trucks. Now to confirm they came from Martin House . . . “Remember, let the shadow do the work.”

Cam looked over at Ellie, who had leaned forward to see better and had put the tablet aside—they’d review the rest of the video later. But then he did a double take at what was playing out on the screen. Zander Martin was now holding a flame, and he was about to touch it to Kathleen’s painting. Adam was just lunging toward him—

Damn it.
Cam yanked his attention back up to the mages and Ellie’s shadow.

One of the mages had raised a rifle.

“Hold on!” Mead shouted.

A spit of black magic pierced the air toward them. The projectiles smoked in fast and low, and when the cab shuddered, Cam knew that some of the tires had been shredded because the truck careened to the left on the two-lane highway. Mead managed to control its deceleration, though centrifugal forces had Cam grabbing for balance. The truck lumbered the last couple of meters as the driver brought it to a stop.

“The cab is reinforced and bullet-proof,” Mead reminded them. “You’re safe in here.”

“No one’s safe,” Cam said, “or none of us would be here today.” Into his mobile, he said, “Three mages, all male, have shot out our tires. The truck is stopped. Send backup.”

A GPS would communicate their position.

If this confrontation was like the others, these mages would not only stop the vehicle from reaching Segue, but they also could leave no proof behind that magekind, and Martin House in particular, was involved—unless Zander had indeed anticipated this liaison and wanted to cooperate with them again.

Ellie’s shadow leapt from the hood to the pavement. Its strides appeared natural, but it approached the three mages with swift, uncanny fluidity.

Would the mages be friendly?

No. One mage fired at it, and another flashed what looked like a sword, but the shadow merely peered at them, curious and unaffected by the assaults.

“Mages use magic,” Cam said to Sheridan, “so all the rules are different.” He checked his gun in his shoulder holster and the Martin blade in its sheath at his side; he was armed with one weapon of the world and one of Shadow. Fittingly, the blade had been appropriated from an assassin sent by Martin House. Its magic worked not only through the sharpness of its edge, but also through the intent of the wielder. “Including laws of physics and nature. You can’t depend on anything.”

“Can the gray lady take them?” Mead asked.

“Chances are good,” said Ellie.

Cam glanced back at her and noted the tension lines around her mouth.

Right. He couldn’t forget how Mathilde had controlled Ellie’s shadow, either. The memory made his temperature drop a few degrees. That Ellie had prevailed that day was the only thing that kept the darkness from clouding his sight.

Ellie smiled at him. “Let them get a word in before you kill them, eh?”

Cam felt his mouth tug up, too. Message received:
Stay in the moment; leave the past behind.
He kissed the top of her head. One day soon he would call her
wife
, when this business was behind them. To that end, he gestured to Sheridan and said, “Let me out.”

Ellie’s decision to stay behind wasn’t made out of fear or weakness. Martin House had learned that they could neutralize the shadow by knocking Ellie’s body unconscious. She had to stay protected to keep the shadow in action.

Stepping down onto the pavement, Cam had a curious sense of Otherworldly displacement. The land was empty—no cars, no animal sounds, too cold for anything to grow. His footfalls were silent, the Shadow in his system running faster with the uptick of his pulse.

He wanted this over. Needed it to be over. He would never be able to find his own peace as long as violence surrounded the people he loved. As he approached, he prayed to whatever god would listen that Zander was trying to forestall more violence, too. That they could find a resolution together today.

The mages stood at ease, waiting. Cam was sure all three were graduates of Martin’s Seminary of War. They had mage-black eyes and appeared to Cam’s altered sight as gusts of Shadow condensed and held on the mortal plane in sleeves of flesh. The one on the end was darkest, so Cam tagged him the leader; it didn’t matter that he appeared to be the youngest. The silver-haired mage carried the blade, the one with a goatee the rifle.

“If you want to live,” Cam said, “you’ll go back where you came from and tell your lord and master to leave Segue’s property alone, or the next mages he sends won’t go back at all.”

Cam hoped Zander, in particular, understood where he could find Cam and Ellie if he wanted to: the next supply run.

“You’ve got Shadow in your eyes,” the darkest mage said.

“I was touched by a fae,” Cam told him. “It altered more than my sight.”
So please don’t try me.

Peace. Try peace.

The mage notched his chin toward Ellie’s shadow. “And what in pitch is
that
?”

“My fiancée.” Cam wanted no mistakes about who he and Ellie were: the selfsame visitors who had come to Martin House two months ago.

The shadow looked sharply at the silver-haired mage, who smirked at her and made a lewd gesture, hand to his crotch. It didn’t bother Cam because the shadow could and would easily make hamburger of the mage.

“Oh, I’ve heard of you,” the darkest mage said. “We all have. And we know what you did.”

Did that mean they
were
from Martin House, or had word gotten around all magekind? “Then you also know to take me seriously.”

The dark mage look at him askance. “But how’d you escape the wards?”

He was referring to the Martin House wards, which protected the property and kept people in or out, at Gunnar’s discretion. Wards were mage families’ best defense against what was to come in the Dark Age. It was how the mage families were going to survive the tumultuous transition to Shadow.

“I discovered a weakness,” Cam said.

“In Martin’s wards? I don’t think so.”

Oh, yes. “My vision is better than most.”

Cam had attended one lesson at Martin’s Seminary of War. He’d learned that if he observed very carefully, he could see a mage’s action in a rush of Shadow before it happened. Among magekind, this rush was called the
penumbra
, or foregoing intention. Likewise, he and Ellie had escaped from Martin House because he had been able to gauge the bare millisecond when the Martin House wards were dropped—just as he could see the rush of magic preceding the silver-haired mage’s sword cutting upward, toward his neck.

The penumbra was manifested in a series of time-lapsed motions superimposed upon one another, an animation that was a lockstep ahead of reality. The mage with the goatee was starting to blur, too, bringing his rifle up. He was going to shoot at the truck’s cab, presumably to drop Ellie and thus end the threat of her shadow, too.

Not going to happen.

Cam didn’t dodge or even spring to action because Ellie’s shadow had a prescient ability of its own: instinct.

With one hand, the shadow grabbed the barrel of the rifle and pointed it to the sky; with the other, it seized the silver-haired mage by the throat and slammed him to the ground so hard that the back of his skull caved in. His eyes bulged in death.

And then there were two.

The shadow pivoted, struck the mage with the goatee in the balls, and pulled hard on his rifle sling, bringing him to his knees.

Cam stepped aside as a new streak of penumbra revealed what the darkest mage was about to do. Cam didn’t want blood splatter on his clothes.

The darkest mage, clearly the one in charge, raised his own blade and cut off the head of his mage comrade. The head dropped with a soft, sickening thud, and rolled from its forehead to rest on an ear.

And then there was one.

The darkest mage shook the drip off his blade while Cam waited. The sight of ruby-red blood, the metallic scent of its iron, the shudder of the death collapses—all of it made Cam go inhumanly cold. Brittle. Mean. He saw the waver of magic gathering on the ground, the strange sense of trees on the empty fields.

Ellie’s shadow’s interest was fixed on the bodies, wondering at the slack jaw of mortality. The dark condensation of power and identity within each corpse, what mages called
umbra
, dissipated into the atmosphere, leaving behind only their macabre ends.

The remaining mage disregarded his brothers entirely and returned his attention to Cam. “Did the shadow kill Mathilde Martin?”

If Zander, who had handed Ellie the weapon, hadn’t seen fit to fill the dark mage in on the details, Cam wouldn’t either. The fewer who knew how Mathilde had died, the better.

“That’s irrelevant now.” Cam glanced pointedly down at the broken bodies. “I take it you have an alternative plan in mind for today.”

“I’ve been charged with giving you or your woman a message.”

The sense of relief was near painful in its sharpness. Cam was weary of strife, and hope—real hope this time—had him almost sagging.

“You can give the message to me.” Cam wasn’t stupid; Ellie was staying in the truck.

“Not until the other men with you are dead, too. There can be no witnesses.”

Cam wasn’t surprised—Zander would be careful not to implicate himself—but he wasn’t going to allow the soldier’s’ murder. “I’ll vouch for them.”

“Not good enough.”

A little tension wound through Cam again. “I won’t condone their senseless deaths.”

“Not senseless. They die for the honor of Martin House. There is no greater end than its glory. I ask nothing that I don’t intend for myself.”

He was going to commit suicide, as well? Sick and twisted, like all his kind.

The dark mage looked toward the truck, and Cam witnessed another unfurling of magick, but he had no idea what it could do. However, since the mage’s intention had been made clear—the contracted soldiers had to die—Cam drew his Martin blade from its sheath and plunged it into the mage’s belly before the magic could reach the cab.

Ellie was in there.

Upon impact with the blade, the mage coughed a word—“die”—and it traveled along the twist of Shadow. Cam whirled around to see who its victims were.
Not Ellie. Please.
The magic went through the bullet-proof glass—a useless measure—and into the hearts of the soldiers sitting there.

Cam was opening his mouth to shout a warning, but there was a sudden red splatter on the inside of the windshield. Gunshot?

Ellie’s shadow was dipping a toe into a puddle of blood, so Ellie herself must still be fine. In fact, she must’ve been in no danger, as her shadow didn’t seem to care about the soldiers at all.

The dark mage clearly had the same power of suggestion that Mathilde had been able to wield. The same uncanny ability that had probably pulled the Segue soldier’s trigger on John Gerry, come to beg medicine for his daughter.

Cam was disgusted at the waste of it all.

“It’s a good death,” the dark mage said.

Cam wheeled back around to him. “But
why
?”

Fine black lines crawled up the mage’s neck from underneath the collar of his shirt. The magic of the blade was working to stop his heart and breath and thought. “For the legacy and strength of my house, they couldn’t be permitted to bear witness to what happened here. And I
know
you and your woman will cooperate. My master assures me you will protect the house, too.”

“I’m not cooperating,” Cam said. Death and more death.

“You already are.” The dark mage just smiled and dropped to his knees. “Gunnar will be at Castle Hill on the third day from this one. You will have your chance then.”

“Who sends this message?” Cam had to have confirmation.

But the mage slumped forward, his umbra rising from his skin like an upward-drawn mist.

E
llie’s shadow stomped in a puddle of blood the same way a child might stomp in a puddle of water. Ellie pulled it out of the muck, but not into unison with her. The horror she’d experienced in the truck’s cab was quite enough. Sudden double suicide—the driver had shot himself in the head; the other had slit his own throat. Climbing over the bodies to get out had soaked the underside of a sleeve of her shirt. The dead on the street were just as bad; the scent of blood colored each breath she took. Her shadow wasn’t bothered at all. What did that say about her?

Cam, on the other hand . . .

Ellie reached out. “Cam?”

He flexed his hand in a tense stay-away motion. Wouldn’t face her. It’d been hard to make out exactly what was happening from inside the cab, but since his Martin blade was buried deep in a collapsed mage’s belly, he must’ve killed again. The last time, when he’d broken Slight’s neck, he came close to losing himself. Murder was not in his nature; science and inquiry were. This was Shadow magic turning him against himself.

“Honey, come over here.” She needed to get him away from the blood and bodies.

“I can’t move.” His already low voice had dropped a couple of octaves.

Last time he’d been afraid he would hurt her, but he hadn’t, and she knew he wouldn’t now.

She reached out again. If he could just
feel her
—

“Stop,” he said, even though he couldn’t see her with his back turned. “Please.”

“Cam. You’d be better over on the grass with me while we wait for help to come.” An hour. Was it too much or too little time for him?

“If I move, I don’t know what will happen, what world I’ll end up in.”

There’d been a couple of occasions at Segue when he’d gone blind to everything real and could only see Twilight. He’d been stony and stoic while it lasted, disturbed and distracted for days after.

“You can’t see anything again?” she ventured carefully.

“I see too much.” His voice was harsh. “The world is ending. Blood
everywhere
.”

“No. It’s just beginning for us.” They’d set a date.

“This darkness inside. I can’t control it. Can’t stop it.”

Ellie had lived the better part of her life with her shadow roaming at will, a dark thing tormenting her with her deepest secrets. She knew exactly how he felt. “Don’t try to stop it, Cam. Let it blow right by you. It will pass, just like the times before.”

“It will get worse.”

He meant in the future, with so much magic coming into the world. Since she couldn’t argue with that, she tried something else. “Can you see my shadow?”

Without a command, the darkest part of herself walked around Cam and stood in front of him, love naked in her expression.

His head lifted, his voice broke. “Yes.”

“Look at
me
, Cam. Grab hold of
me
.”

“I’m going to kill again,” he said to her shadow, as if confessing. “And again, and again.”

“Okay,” her shadow said.

Ellie rolled her eyes.
Stupid thing.
“Not today. Not now.”

She couldn’t trust her shadow to handle anything. Murder was a-okay as far as it was concerned.

Ellie hesitated for a second, then made up her mind. Stepping over the disembodied head, she walked around Cam so that he could see her as well.

Holy Mother of God, indeed.

His eyes. Black had replaced the green in his irises since that fateful mission in Sedona, but now it seemed as if the pupil had expanded so much that it encompassed the whites of his eyes as well. The little veins in his lids were black, too.

He made no sign that he noticed her creeping around him. She approached her shadow and stepped inside her dark half.

Cam didn’t seem to notice the transition. Her man had changed so much from the first time she’d seen him in his World of Warcraft T-shirt, hair outgrown, a little bit nerdy. He’d always had a good body, but now it was tense, always on the verge of a fight. The magic inside kept him strong, his excellent mind warring with a baser drive.

Reaching out, she took him by the hands and led him away from the bloody pond and too-still bodies. She walked him like a blind man off the road, where the air smelled like cold, bitter earth.

He braced himself on the post of a wire fence, the kind intended to keep wandering livestock off the road. The fact that he could even see it was a good sign.

Okay.

As she pulled out her mobile, she noticed the glint of sun on metal—a car coming down the deserted road. She simultaneously hit SEND while waving to the driver. The car—a smaller sedan—slowed to a stop. “No, Cam and I are okay”—she snuck another glance at him as she spoke into the phone—“but we’ll need another truck, too.”

An older couple, back seat filled with luggage, gaped at the bodies on the road before their vehicle. Ellie approached the driver’s side window to tell them to turn around and go back the other way. That it wasn’t safe here.

But the old man had already figured that out. The car reversed, did a clumsy, squealing three-point-turn, and sped away from magic and mayhem.

 

“No,” Cam said, “the mage only told me where Gunnar is going to be and when.”

If he kept his sight down and barely breathed, the circle of white that was the rim of his coffee cup would become solid. The coffee itself was a deep, deep well. And the rush around him was a mix of color and of blackest pitch, with shades of fae wavering near and far.

“I looked it up. Castle Hill is the name of a property that’s for sale in the countryside some thirty miles from Martin House,” Adam said, words like red-gold lion growls from his mouth. “It supposedly has great views, but it’s too hard for the current owner to maintain. I want to buy it out from under Martin just to get back at him for what they did to the Twilight painting.”

The cup. The white rim. And maybe the whole room would stay still and solid, too.

Zander Martin had burned Kathleen’s painting, saying Gunnar would neither see Adam nor accept any gifts. The only thing a
human
had to offer a lord of magic was fealty: subservience and loyalty. And since Adam thought himself an equal, Gunnar would watch Segue weaken and crumble. When next Adam crossed a Martin threshold, it would be on his knees with the words “I do so swear . . .” on his tongue.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Ellie said. “He has to know that if Adam were to swear fealty to any mage house, it would be to Brand.”

“That’s not the point,” another voice argued back. Cam couldn’t place whose, though it was familiar. “He wants Segue to crumble and Adam to acknowledge on his knees that he’s lower than mages, less than them. He wants utter humiliation as payback for sending Cam and Ellie to his house.”

“Why not humiliate
them
?” Another voice.

“I have every faith Gunnar Martin intends to kill us. Eventually.” That time Ellie was speaking. Her voice, he would always know.

“He did ask why I hadn’t simply brought you both back to be slaughtered like the rabid dogs you are,” Adam said. “And then he insinuated that I didn’t have the power to command you to walk to your own deaths.”

Kill. Blood. The truth was—and
shhh!
Ellie couldn’t know—that Cam liked it. No,
like
was too simple and bland a word for how it felt. He relished death in the same ecstatic way he enjoyed sex. Sex and blood both had a strange-sweet smell. They both made a body shudder. Both made the heart beat fast. And this was why he’d lost hope.

“He had to have been playing a part, Adam,” Ellie said, though her voice was growing distant. “He had to have known we told you that he handed me the weapon that killed Mathilde. You could’ve accused him right then and there, and thereby cast suspicion on him with Gunnar.”

“I didn’t know what to think,” Adam said, “but I went along with him. I told him we would never . . .” The words broke apart into so much gibberish.

“Cam?”

Up from his cup of coffee crept a sinuous ribbon of steam. It was white, too, but if he looked hard enough the twists and curls made leering faces at him.

“Cam!”

Startled, he looked up. Mistake.

The cupboards, table, and walls of the Segue kitchen created strange angles and fearsome intersections. Cosmic clouds of dark matter, the kind from which the universe was born, floated in the space, through and among the people gathered around, all of them strangers. So many people. He didn’t know where he was. Didn’t care. As long as they went quiet. Did he have to make them go quiet? Because he would. Each word they spoke was a decibel pop that resonated in his brain.

“Everyone out, now.” A voice commanded, echoing in his skull. So bossy. He wasn’t going anywhere. “And turn off your security cameras, Adam.”

Movement. Mass movement. Running away from him.

“Can’t do that, Ellie,” another voice. “Not after Marcie.”

“Well, then just don’t
look
.”

A moment of silence, and then—

An assailant came at him—gorgeously female, strong, and determined. It was so bright that the dark mist around him parted at its advance like the sun on fog. And yet he had more than enough rage to fight it back—because that’s all a person really needed to fight. Rage. He’d seen too much death today; couldn’t forget it or let it go.

He roared at the shadow.

It snarled back at him and crashed him to the floor with strength unimaginable, then sat on his shoulders, a queen of darkness, its parted knees at either side of his head. He bucked and made to flip it, but his vantage was suddenly . . . electrifying. She arched above him in an offer that stopped him utterly. Then spurred him to action.

He grabbed her hips to hold her firmly in place and lifted his head. Reading his mind—always in sync with him—she slid a bit forward, rocked her hips. The taste, texture, and heat initiated a chemical reaction, a reconfiguration of ions to alter the structure of his anger to form another emotion, just as urgent, just as dark.

In the midst of the shift, the elemental female who had attacked him became Ellie. She was naked, too, and warm and real—someone he could hold onto no matter what was happening to the world around him. She gave him rhythm and order, brought him back to himself. He found he’d forgotten to breathe. Blood drummed hard through his system.

His heart was going to burst—so what? So what if the world ended? This was the best way to die ever.

 

“You said you were fine.” Ellie gave Cam an accusing glare as she adjusted her clothes, glancing up surreptitiously toward the surveillance camera in the corner. Couldn’t be helped.

He’d scared her, almost losing it like that. Again. So soon. What if she hadn’t been here? What if tomorrow he couldn’t come back? How could she hold him?

Cam propped himself up on his elbows on the floor, but made no motion to cover himself. Ugh.
Men.
“I thought I was fine. Crept up on me. I just need more time. I’m sorry.”

She couldn’t help it. She dropped a kitchen towel on his junk. “Not your fault.”

“I’m better now that it’s quiet. Too many people talking and I start to lose it.” He did look more rested, more himself. Not so mean.

Her shadow was now in unison, and it wasn’t fighting her, so she believed him. Not that she wouldn’t be watching every second. “You need to say something when it starts to happen.”

“But it’s always happening. Even now, wouldn’t take much.”

She glanced up at the camera again. Had Adam heard that? Would he ask them to leave Segue?

Cam sat up. “Anyway, I like your methods.”

“We made a sex tape. Adam wouldn’t shut off the security cameras.”

“I’ll get the recording from him.” He paused, then grinned.

He
was
doing better.

“And you’ll destroy it,” she told him.

If he didn’t, then they’d
really
fight. She’d win that one, too.

“Do you know what touched you off?” Even asking the question made her nervous.

He grabbed his clothes. Sighed. “I think so.”

She waited for him to go on.

When he finally stood and buttoned his pants, he said, “The whole thing doesn’t feel right to me. Go out to this secluded house? That alone seems stupid. But lie in wait for Gunnar, and then what? Jump out and kill him? Shoot him in the back from a distance? Because there’s no discussion that will appease him.”

“So maybe we give him a chance to fight back?”

“Can we risk that?” Cam turned to her. “He’s a goddamned mage who was born to fight. My sight, your shadow against him? I don’t like the odds. And if he does win against us, then will Adam get another chance? I doubt it. We might as well just ask Shadowman to kill him now so we don’t have to put you in danger again. Gunnar knows how to neutralize your shadow.”

“No.” She was not hanging back. “
I
killed Mathilde.
I’m
going to see this through. I won’t let the home I’ve come to love be compromised by my actions. Gunnar started this. I’ll finish it.”

“You can’t kill in cold blood,” he said. “Self-defense, yes. But we don’t know what
murder
will do to your shadow.”

The old argument had been valid when her control wasn’t as good, but she had a handle on it now. And her shadow had seemed pretty blithe about the death and blood on the highway. Maybe on some level, everyone was a killer. Besides, “You’re not exactly ideal either, sweetheart.”

“So what do we do?” Cam asked. “Get him to admit all he’s done, like on a TV cop show? And we can tape it, or have a witness, Brand, maybe, waiting in the bushes, and
then
we can try him before the Mage Council.”