Shadowed Ground (10 page)

But she couldn’t help wondering, if it was so all-important and wonderful, then why the hell did he try and run away?

But then an even worse thought stopped her. Eliot spent years running away because of her. Because he’d been chained to her, training to protect her, when she’d been out having a relatively normal life. He’d dropped hints about what that training had been like. Weapons and fighting and endurance training… she shuddered. Her own life seemed normal, compared to his. It was a wonder he didn’t hate her guts. Suddenly, her vision blurred and her knees wobbled. She plopped down on the dressing room’s narrow bench and propped her head between her knees, taking deep, shuddering breaths.

My fault. My fault that he’s chained to me. He didn’t ask for this life, and that includes me.

The sour-candy feeling built as she dug through the mesh shopping bag. She’d just grabbed things off the rack, paying little attention. She dug out a pair of dark jeans and ballet flats, shimmying into the dark denim jeans with one hand. She’d just managed to get one leg into the jeans and was starting on the other when her dressing room door crashed open.

Eliot stood there, his face chalk-white, eyes wide with alarm. He didn’t appear to notice or care that she was in the process of getting dressed.

She didn’t even ask what was wrong. “Damn,” she swore, and shoved her other leg into the jeans. “How many?” She dragged the jeans up over her hips and fumbled with the zipper, her hands shaking so badly she had trouble making it work.

He was shaking, too, but for a different reason. He looked as enraged as she had ever seen him. His eyes had gone flat and dead as they raked her up and down. “Two in the store.” She was barefoot and unzipped, but it was apparently good enough for him. He grabbed her upper arm and started dragging.

“Wait!” she hissed, grabbing at her mostly untried-on bag of clothes as he pulled her, so quickly she skidded after him, down the dressing room corridor to a door marked “Employees Only.”

“No.” His voice was steel, like the hand on her arm. “We’re going now. There’s no telling how many more there are.” He shoved her through the door, into what had to be a break room. A round white table littered with magazines, empty drink cans, and cigarette packs took up most of the tiny room. Beyond it, Chloe could see another door that led outside. It had a heavy bar across it with a warning sign. He loosened his hold on her arm only to spin her against the white cinderblock wall. He hovered so closely she felt painted there. “Listen carefully.” The gold in his eyes sparked as he stared at her. He stripped off his jacket. Underneath, he wasn’t as armed as he had been the night he came for her, but he still wore enough weaponry and blades to get the both of them locked up as terrorists for a very long time.

Chapter Eleven: Landsense

“You can’t run through the Gap with a sword,” she protested weakly. On his back, his familiar sword hung sideways. He had blades sheathed at his hips. He carried twin black guns strapped to his sides. She didn’t recognize what kind. She resolved to find out, if they got out of this.

“I hope I won’t need it,” he said, touching the underside of the strange vambraces she’d seen him wearing that night he came for her, that seemed so long ago. He stripped them off in seconds flat. “I don’t think they’ll risk wraithfire here, but just in case, you need these.”

He grabbed an arm and slipped the golden metal over it. She expected it to close with a clasp of some kind, but he merely ran three flat fingertips across the opening, and it followed his fingers as it melted into a seamless piece of metal encasing her arm. She stared, fascinated, as he did it with her other arm. The metal, faintly golden, was as lightweight as foil. It was decorated with etchings of unfamiliar symbols and pieces of the natural world: trees, a mountain, animals, a river. She watched as the second vambrace melted seamlessly onto her arm. “Wow,” she breathed, as transfixed as she was terrified. “But what good are these to me? Don’t you need them?”

He had already released her and was opening his mouth to answer her when the break room door burst open. In the space of a second, he had gone from a reasonable person capable of carrying on a normal conversation into something else, something she had only distorted memories of from the night he pummeled Griffin and faced a horde of the Abandoned.

He pinned her to the wall with his back to her. She felt his weight shift slightly forward, felt the quivering tension running up and down his body. Even through the cloth separating them, she felt his muscles shift and coil as he dropped his shoulders downward and shifted his balance forward. Arms bent but taut, they angled out slightly, within easy reach of his weapons.

She couldn’t see over the solid wall of muscle and leather that was Eliot, but she didn’t need to. Her nostrils flared as the room filled with an unwelcome, familiar smell. It was faint, far from the full-on burning fire they were capable of choking her with, but it was still distinctive. They smelled as if they wore too much cologne, a sharp, biting metal-edged scent. There wasn’t another smell like it on Earth.

She felt something new this time, though, pressed into a corner between a tower of employee lockers and the wall. She felt her body warming up, as if merely being in the same room as these creatures of flame called up some kind of similar reaction deep inside her. She felt her body temperature rising. Sweat broke out on her forehead, beading across her neck and running down the side of her face. She felt feverish, but not in a sick way. Rather, it was the heat of rage that pulsed deep within her. She barely had time to wonder at it; her temperature rose to the point that it radiated through her clothing.

Worst of all, her scar pulsed as the creatures spoke, as if their voices had some power over her. Her Guardian stiffened and pushed even harder against her, sensing something changing, shifting between them. He radiated concern and confusion, not just at the creatures in front of him, but at the changes he felt going on within her. “Chloe,” he murmured softly, tilting his head and turning slightly towards her, “I feel you reacting.”

She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what was happening to her. She was unbearably hot, encased in her own burning skin and almost smothered by her Guardian’s protective weight. In answer, she slipped her bare arm across the back of his neck. He tensed even more, his head jerking straight up as a low hiss escaped his lips. She heard him mutter a low oath. “I’m so hot,” she murmured into his neck, the only part of him she could touch. “It’s them. I don’t know why, but I’m burning up, because of them.” She was sweating freely now, trickles of it dripping down her back. When her own sweat hit her gruesome scar, it stung ferociously. She pressed her lips tightly together to stop from whimpering. “And my scar is stinging and pulsing, like it has a heartbeat, or something.” Pain flared between her shoulders and up her neck; she felt as if she were back in the alley, that creature holding her between two hands. “Please,” she gasped out, doing her best to keep her voice to a whisper. “You need to move. I can’t breathe. I’m burning up.”

He cursed, low and colorful. “The vambraces act as shields. It’s why I gave them to you. Do you remember, in the alley, how I used them to block their fire?”

“Mmm,” was the best she could manage. He still hadn’t moved.

“Chloe,” he snapped. He had taken a tiny step forward, letting light and air between them. But the light and air didn’t help; she still burned, and her scar was pulsing hot and fast, as if a part of her skin was going into cardiac arrest. “Chloe! Listen to me! Do not reach for the elements, if you can help it. You will draw more of them to us, if you do.”

She was panting now. “I’ll try,” she all but whimpered.

“Good,” he murmured, his hand creeping up to hover above his right shoulder, inches from his sword.

“Yesss, good,” came a low, slithering voice. She still couldn’t see. “Her sssense of thisss land growsss consssiderably.”

“Thiss hass not esscaped notice,” voiced another one. She wondered, through the throbbing of her scar, why she could hear the slick sibilance in their words, when she didn’t remember it before. Were they a different kind than the ones who attacked her in the alley? If only he would move!

“You need to let us pass,” Eliot said warningly, inching his hand up even further towards his sword. “You know how public this place is. You risk yourselves just by being here.”

They must have come closer. The smell of sharp, metal edged cologne was almost unbearable now. She felt so hot, pinned against the wall. If she didn’t move, she knew she was going to scream.

“Give her to usss,” one of them said. “We will not hurt her.”

Eliot’s laugh was a short, harsh bark.

“Eliot,” she whimpered. “Something’s happening to me. You have to let me out.”

He stood, immovable as a pillar of stone, in front of her. “No.” She didn’t know if he was talking to her, or the Abandoned, or both. She let herself fall forward into his back. The sheath of his sword rested against her cheek.

“Do you wish to burn, then?” one of them taunted.

“It won’t come to that, and we both know it,” Eliot growled. His fingers were on the hilt of his sword now. She felt it sliding from its sheath, slowly, so slowly. “You won’t risk exposure here, not after that disaster in Atlanta. That was sloppy.”

“And yet she feelss our ssting, even now,” the second, similar sibilant voice taunted. “Don’t you, Chloe Burke?” Its laugh was a low, drowning gurgle.

“Fuck off,” she hissed between clenched teeth.

“You just managed to awaken her landsense. Hardly a victory,” Eliot taunted back.

“We have other weaponss than the killing fire,” one of them hissed.

“We will not hurt her. We know of her growing powerss. The Emperor wantss her whole.” It sounded almost regretful about that. “He wantss her for himssself alone.”

“Eliot,” she whined again, actively trying to wriggle out from behind him. “Let me out. They’re hurting me. I don’t know how.”

“No.” His voice and body were solid granite against her. She felt tears, like sweat, trickling down her face.

“Why won’t you draw your sword?” she pleaded. “Why won’t you kill them?”

A grating chuckle answered her instead of Eliot. “He iss right that we won’t use the killing fire. The ssword is protection against a weapon we won’t use.”

“But we have otherss,” came a nearly identical grating voice.

The weapon resting against her cheek left its sheath so fast she felt as if she had been slapped. Eliot sprung forward, his sword out, angling his body slightly to the right. She had a partial view, at last, of the two creatures in front of them. Their appearance was so mundane it was almost disappointing. At least, at first glance. Later, she would have time to reflect on the oddity of adrenaline, coupled with danger. It did strange things to time. She had time, as she looked closer, to notice strange details about the otherwise normal looking men in front of her. Their skin sagged in some places and bulged in others, as if they wore human forms like ill-fitting suits. They had an ashen pallor. One wore a hat, and she dimly remembered the two in the alley who had taunted her. They had worn hats, as well. Seeing one bare-headed, she could guess why.

Its hair was falling out in huge clumps. Bald spots dotted its scalp. Where naked skin touched air, she could see that the bald spots were actually angry red patches of skin, not quite burns, but festering and painful looking. Their movements were awkward and jerking.

Her gut twisted. They were wearing bodies like costumes. People like Scott, the dressing room attendant who was somewhere near, could so easily turn into costumes for them. They were parasites, taking over bodies. She wondered what happened to the people inside them, but some part of her knew without asking.

They were dying.

All this she registered as Eliot’s sword cleared its sheath and stood, upright and gripped with his two strong hands, between them and the deadly dying bodies in front of them. All this she saw as, at the same time Eliot readied his sword, the two creatures reached for weapons of their own, and threw.

His sword easily knocked the twin airborne knives out of the way. The lightweight throwing knives hit the floor and skittered under the round table, knocking off a pack of cigarettes and sending a stack of magazines fluttering to the floor, pages flapping like wings. A barrage of knives followed the first throw; the bodies they wore might be awkward and dying, but they still possessed supernatural speed.

But so did Eliot.

He held his stance, coiled and ready. She saw muscles bunching and releasing beneath the tight fabric of his t-shirt. His arms moved as he deflected the knives with his sword, sending them flying across the room. The break room table fell over on one side, its contents crashing to the floor. Knives embedded themselves in the mesh coverings of the employee lockers. There was no longer any pretense of quiet.

The handle to the room twisted, then shook violently. “What is going on in there?” the high-pitched voice of Scott, the overly helpful dressing room attendant, demanded. “Open this door, or I’ll call security.”

“Not a good idea, Scott,” she gasped out. Chloe raised the vambraces to her face, curling her forearms together over her head, creating the shield Eliot had warned her about. If they deflected wraithfire, surely they would work on ordinary knives. “Run, Scott, trust me.”

The door was still and silent. She hoped he took her seriously.

The two creatures in front of them changed tactics. They quit throwing knives. One of them drew matching blades as long as his forearms. “Eliot,” she said warningly. Her scar still pulsed in a heartbeat of pain.

“I see. I know, Chloe. Just stay behind me,” he warned. His voice was low and furious, but it did not carry the undercurrent of a Guardian’s command.

The one holding two knives moved within striking range while the other hung back. Its eyes were on her alone. She had a sinking feeling deep in her gut as she realized they were trying to separate her from her Guardian. “Chloe,” Eliot said as the first creature moved closer to him, “at the first possible opening, you will run for the car and drive away.”